Entrepreneur Mag - Startup Weekend Cover!
Congrats Marc, Clint & Franck! Absolutely honored and humbed to be part of the Startup Weekend board .. you guys bring a level of intensity and focus that's rarely seen in such a young group of folks.
Dan's posterous
7 Secrets of Winning by Ken Leblanc
If you don't know Ken. You should. He's been a friend of mine for over 10 years. His entrepeneurial story is amazing, starting from very humble beginnings. I just finished reading his keynote nodding in agreement the whole time. It's a must read for anyone starting or growing a business.
WHAT WINNERS KNOW
By: Ken LeBlanc
"Whether you are a chess player, professional athlete, or a business owner the number one rule in winning has always been the same. Surround yourself with people who are wiser, more accomplished, and just plain smarter than you are!I've tried to do that constantly over and over again with my life and I have been richly rewarded for it. I feel that I work with some of the best coaches, trainers, business partners, mentors, and franchise owners in the world. Personally, I always try to bring people on board who are smarter than I am.So, as 2010 was winding down, I took some time to reflect. I studied world class leaders, authors, speakers, athletes, business owners and our top performing franchisees.Here are what I believe to be the top 7 “Secrets of Winning” I have uncovered from this elite group.
#1. Winners Know What They Don't Know.This might sound like a contradiction, but if you know what you don't know, you can go out and learn it, or find someone who can guide you through it. Real ignorance is not a lack of knowledge or education, but a lack of curiosity. The moment you think you know everything ... you're fucked.
#2. Winners Know To Avoid Cynics.There are no successful cynics. Think about it: Real success, in any way society measures it – money, fame happiness, family – cannot be achieved in the presence of a cynic. Why? Because cynics and skeptics love to place the finger of blame on the disease before figuring out how to get healthy. The blame game is the easy way out. You will never hear a winner say, "I got screwed", "That should’ve been mine", "I never catch a break”. These are ALL dead end answers.Winners understand the world owes them NOTHING. They go out and find what they need without asking for permission> Winners are driven, talented, and work through negatives by focusing ONLY on the positives. And that's why they avoid the quicksand that cynics represent.Cynics will pull you down They ply their drug one-on-one: It feels good to cynic to stay angry, to be pissed at the world and stay in one place forever. They specialize in what I call the "bitch spiral", which occurs when like-minded people get together and complain with such intensity that every slight against them becomes a gigantic conspiracy. They attack the successful under the banner of injustice: “Wal-Mart is killing small businesses”, “The Yankees’ payroll is ruining baseball”, and “Nobody is making money in this business”.Just as faith and fear cannot co-exist, cynicism cannot reside in the same residence as Belief. Cynicism is not disbelief, but unbelief, a refusal. That is why cynicism is so dangerous to the average person. If you lose that sincere belief in yourself, in your relationship, as a child, parent, friend, or of your business, you become worthless to that being - no matter how talented you are.Winners run as fast as they can from cynics.And fire them from their lives!
#3. Winners Know How To Dive InWinners don't care too much or dwell on failures. Business is not a marathon; it's a series of sprints. And most sprints are won at the moment the gun goes off. Many of us spend our time worrying about failure. Real winners don't give a shit about failure because they know that in no time they'll be diving into their next chance for success.
#4. Winners Don't Wait For PerfectI have shared this concept with a number of our PropertyGuys.com franchisees over the years. And it still holds true today. Winners focus on what they have - not on what they don’t have. Winners trust that version 1.0 out of the box is what it is and run with it. Even if they know that an updated stronger, better, cheaper, and faster version is coming soon, they still run with 1.0. Winners make the best of what they have in front of them and don't give a rat’s ass about what they are missing or what’s in their competitor’s tool box.
#5. Winners Are Married To Their ProfessionThis is something I’ve always known that was important and agreed with, but never realized how important it was until I heard Kevin O’Leary speak at the Atlantic Dream Festival back in October of 2010. Kevin is the guy who some think is a complete jerk on Dragon’s Den, but keep in mind he is the same jerk who sold his software business to Mattel for $4.2 billion dollars.Here is what Kevin O'Leary has to say on this subject:“People say to me that life has to have balance. I disagree, when you create or start a business you become its slave, there is nothing else, there is no balance. It’s just you and the business. If you are a real entrepreneur and what you strive for is ultimate success, you become myopically focused on it. There is no Saturday or Sunday anymore, just you and the business. If you doubt that you won’t become a slave to your business you will not become successful. There is no balance, no family time, no wife, no kids, just the business".I often get criticized for this a lot. BUT IT IS THE TRUTH. The reason you create partnerships and a family is so they can have your back while you create wealth. The whole reason to become an entrepreneur is to pursue the ultimate goal of freedom. It doesn’t matter if people don’t like you. It doesn’t matter what they think about you. It just doesn’t matter. The goal should be to make that business successful. To most people, O'Leary's statements might seem a bit extreme, but it’s tough to argue with him. He has 4.2 billion reasons why he is right.But the one thing that I have found to be true with all successful business owners is that winners never stop thinking of their business. They are obsessed. It’s embedded into their lives. They live, breath, and eat the business. They are in business mode 24/7/365. Winners are married to their business.
#6. Winners Are CommittedWinners look into the mirror every single day and peek at the ONLY person responsible for their success. They don't blame their financial or family situation. They don't blame the market. They don't blame competition. They don't blame employees or co-workers, the government or "the man". True winners look in that mirror every single day and know they are the ONLY person that can make or break their business. True winner's become accountable to themselves first, which by default makes them accountable to their business and their ultimate success!
#7. Winners Expect To WinSince 1977, the International Ice Hockey Federation has been organizing the World Junior Hockey Championship. And every year only one team truly EXPECTS to win that tournament. This one team EXPECTS to win so much so, that anything less than a gold is cause for national disgrace and witch hunts over what went wrong. While other teams might jump for joy over a silver medal, the very idea of silver is sickening and repulsive to this one team.Since 1977, this team has won no fewer than 15 of the 33 gold medals up for grabs. They have also captured a dozen silvers and bronzes – finishing out of the medals on just 6 occasions.The Canadian World Junior Team is a classic example of a team that EXPECTS to win; just like the NFL Steelers, the New York Yankees, Los Angeles Lakers and as much as I hate to say it, decades and decades of the Montreal Canadiens. You ask any one of the players or coaches who have been inside great organizations like these and they will tell you that the very idea of losing is disgusting. The parallels from the worlds of the Steelers, Yankees and Canada’s World Junior Team to the big winners in business like Apple, Nike and McDonalds are unmistakable. These are all great examples of teams that fully EXPECT to win when they step out to do battle!If you take just one lesson from this list, I would hope you honor yourself, your families, your teammates at work by refusing to lose and EXPECTING to Win!I know I EXPECT nothing less.I EXPECT to WIN!
I'd rather have less features - than more - and risk confusing users
After I left Syncplicity, I ran into the CEO of Dropbox and asked him my burning question: "Why don't you support multi-folder synchronization?" His answer was classic Dropbox. They built multi-folder support early on and did limited beta testing with it, but they couldn't get the UI right. It confused people and created too many questions. It was too hard for the average consumer to setup. So it got shelved.
via quora.com
This is how I look at product at Flowtown. I've got a list of 25 features I've collected from our users and I consistently rank them by simplicity and relevance to the core of our promise (what's that one thing we do best). Just because you can build it doesn't mean you should. Until I figure out elegant way to suppor a feature, it stays in the list. I'd rather have less features - than more - and risk confusing users.
Activation Metrics Explained - Product: Timely (by Flowtown)
Timely is an app we built to showcase some of the technology we're working on. Timing & Analytics.
Over the past 2-3 weeks we've been working on improving our landing page, on-boarding flow, and tweaking things to improve our activation and retention metrics. Here's how it been coming along.
Traffic analysis:
Since we got very little traffic before Jan 4th (according to Google Aanalytics), and Twitter connect was broken some part of the 3rd, I just looked at the high traffic days 4th through 7th:
Activation:
Out of 267 visitors to the site, 161 (60%!) have scheduled their first tweet.
Likely Reasons:
- Source of traffic was more qualified
- Added a separate page for account creation + explanation text http://timely.flowtown.com/#/signup
- Realized people weren't in tweeting mode during signup, so we suggested 5 fun quotes for first time users.
- Added "study a twitter account" on homepage - demonstrate value before account creation (thx Josh!)
Other numbers:
152 (56%) have tried the study (entering twitter account name) before signing up.
14 (5%) have tried to sign in before signing up.
We lost 77 (28%) once we asked them to connect their Twitter account. We can't tell whether on that page, or after dealing with Twitter.
We lost 27 (10%) somewhere else, most after successfully connecting their Twitter account.
Conversion Funnel
Next Steps:
- Interview users who didn't tweet and find out why (I just email them, usually get a 12% response rate)
- Extract benefit statement from surveys and test on home page (25% response rate to surveys)
- Test new flow: Tweet first, then connect twitter (give, give, give before asking for a commitment)
- Test better tweet recommendations
- Implement simple retention email (3 days after, reminding them their queue's empty.)
Let me know if you have any questions and if you found this interesting or helpful?
Team: Andrew, Assaf, Jerome
The Real Reason Gary Vaynerchuk Rocks!
".. your ability to re-ignite our belief in ourselves, is so much more important than the social tools and business shit we hear all the time.
Steve Jobs on Product Details
The iMac is not just the color or translucence or the shape of the shell. The essence of the iMac is to be the finest possible consumer computer in which each element plays together.
On our latest iMac, I was adamant that we get rid of the fan, because it is much more pleasant to work on a computer that doesn't drone all the time. That was not just "Steve's decision" to pull out the fan; it required an enormous engineering effort to figure out how to manage power better and do a better job of thermal conduction through the machine. That is the furthest thing from veneer. It was at the core of the product the day we started.
This is what customers pay us for--to sweat all these details so it's easy and pleasant for them to use our computers. (emphasis mine)
Advanced Tips For Highly-Converting Websites #NinjaTips (PDF)
The Lean Startup Roadmap /by @ericries (designed /by @kissmetrics) #Learn #Code #Measure
