December 21st, 2011 0

Punching above your weight: Tips for small startups taking on the big guys

This month I wrote an article for VentureBeat about how small companies can fight their big competitors.

The original article is located here: http://venturebeat.com/2011/12/02/punching-above-your-weight-tips-for-small-startups-taking-on-the-big-guys

Here’s the re-post:

Boxing, mixed martial arts and wrestling employ weight classes to ensure the competition is fair and you’re tested on skill, not size. In business, weight classes don’t exist, so if your company is a young, skinny 95-pounder, while your industry is filled with 300lb giants, you’re going to need to tighten up your laces and punch way above your weight. If you want to survive these mis-matched fights in today’s saturated marketplace, you need to get comfortable.

Here are tips to help you, the little guy, use your small size and agility to your advantage.

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November 9th, 2010 2

You were given opposable thumbs – so use them.

The (Simple, Business) Definition of Monkey Work. (1) : any repetitive, methodical task that takes a single Homo Saipan ten hours or more to complete every month. (2) : a good candidate for automation.

Entrepreneurs, you know what I mean. We’ve all faced a never-ending pile of simple, repetitive, but necessary tasks that must be completed routinely and on time to ensure “the machine” runs and continues to grow as smoothly as possible. The pile starts small and manageable, then the list of required tasks gets longer and harder as you win more customers, foster more vendor relationships, and plug more into your business.

Inevitably, one day you’ll look up from a mundane task and cry, “Help!” The way you answer the call will determine the fate for you, and everyone working within your four walls. Even the “outsiders” like investors, partners, and service providers will be impacted by the culture you build to sustain your existence. It’s your responsibility to ensure all parties’ best interests are upheld. No pressure, eh?

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• Pull-Quote: If you notice your business moving to the left side of the evolutionary timeline - change it now.

October 18th, 2010 1

Have a Little Brass

We all know that entrepreneurs need to have vision, focus and drive. But, one entrepreneur trait that keeps coming up in our shop is ‘brass’. Having a great idea and bringing it to fruition is only half of making it in business. To go the distance you have to have brass – that boldness that allows you to create a great company and draw attention to it in ways that build, boost and bolster it.

Creating something that makes people say, “I’ve never seen that before” takes courage and instinct. It also takes foresight and planning. It might not sound as though this boldness is a good bed-fellow for checklists, but the old adage is true – failing to plan is planning to fail, even for rebel rousers.

This is especially true for entrepreneurs that move forward with a somewhat controversial program to draw attention to their product or service. They must understand that “daring” and “impetuous” are not mutually exclusive and that inviting the world in to meet your business means that some might try to tackle it.

This sense of daring and a willingness to create a rub in the marketplace has transformed many an entrepreneur into a legend (Steve Jobs, Thomas Jefferson). Taking risks has also caused a fair share of crash and burn moments. Here are some good and bad examples that come to mind, and what we can all learn from them.

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• Pull-Quote: In a world of followers - it’s actually easier to be different.

August 24th, 2010 2

When to Make it Rain (in Marketing)

In business, “turning on the faucet” is a metaphor for flooding a target market with the full spectrum of marketing and business development. It’s when you formally say, “Here we are world! Watch us take over.” Preempted by a series of conscious decisions, you must strategically deploy the full arsenal of tactics at just the right time to achieve success. If you go too early, you’ll misrepresent your service. Too late, and you’ve missed the boat.

My “a-ha moment” came when I was running TargetScope, an interactive marketing and web development company. We were successful (by our own measures), and the company had a growing customer base and profit margin. I thought I would continue down this path, then the website of one of our biggest clients (a very large, very well known turkey company) was hacked… the day before Thanksgiving 2007.

It was a critical time for our client, and we (the development team) were scrambling to help get their site back online. We realized instantly the potential for a vastly larger business opportunity – secure web hosting. Even though we’d made the decision to head down this new path, we didn’t stop TargetScope (as you know it) in the weeks or even months that followed.

More than two years passed before we turned on the faucet and publicly entered the web hosting scene. How did we know the time was right? How do you know when to open the floodgates?

Typical, type-A entrepreneurs will move as fast as possible, and your team will require that energy and drive to make it to the finish line. My warning, however, is not to throw caution to the wind and put the cart before the horse. There are some conscious checkpoints that must be addressed along the way to help ensure your success.

Get the Product in Shape

We made the decision to become a secure managed hosting company in 2007 and spent almost every minute of the next full year questioning what it takes to get there. Quibbling over the “grand scheme of things” bought us the time required to physically and technically build a secure hosting infrastructure – the backbone, the technology, the network, the guts.

During that year, we didn’t launch our website. We didn’t deploy a complex search marketing strategy or ad campaign. We just focused on the hosting solution to ensure it could fulfill the needs of websites in peril.

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July 5th, 2010 6

Stop Negotiating

How many times have you prepared a proposal or quote with terms written for negotiation? If you artificially increase your pricing just so you can lower it to make the customer “feel good”, you’re wasting time and tarnishing your brand. Stop it. Now!

At FireHost, we do not negotiate pricing with prospective clients, and here are a few reasons that I strongly believe you should not either.

Negotiation Kills Precious Time
During a sale, I want every minute, every word, and every thought to foster value for the buyer and seller. When the conversation turns to price, attention is redirected to a detail that doesn’t really matter. Now, I’m not suggesting money grows on trees or that you should spend recklessly, however if all eyes are on price, it’s easy to lose sight of the business need. When the conversation is derailed, services are misconfigured, requirements are shortchanged, and that’s just the beginning of the downward spiral to disaster.

Negotiation Degrades Your Unique Qualities
If you’re good at what you do, defend it. Don’t degrade it. When a prospective client’s decision is based largely on price, give the client one more minute of your time (but not a second more). In that minute, adopt a very deliberate dialogue. Try something like, “Our pricing is $____, and here is what’s included… ______. Any questions?”At the end, you’ll know if the relationship can move forward, or if you can move on to more lucrative endeavors.

It’s easy to forget that money IS time, and that’s exactly why you won’t catch anyone who works for me saying, “What are you looking to spend?”, or “If I lowered our pricing to ___ would you buy today?”, or the classic “Let me run that up to my boss for approval.” It’s just a bunch of run-around, time-wasting crap. If a prospective client doesn’t “get it” when you elaborate on your unique features and benefits, reallocate your time to one who does.

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• Pull-Quote: You will get more deals if you’re prepared to lose some.

June 2nd, 2010 8

The Opportunity Donkey

Some people are graced with the ability to predict technology and market shifts. Do I posses this inner “genie-in-a-bottle” where every wish I touch comes true? <cough>Steve Jobs</cough>

NO.

My superhuman abilities come by way of being able to withstand continual, hard knocks (or kicks in this case) from opportunity… Pretty impressive eh?

It was thru this series of blows to the head that the idea of “my opportunity” (FireHost) manged to break through my thick skull and become the up and coming secure hosting company it is today.

After several years at an absolutely fun job with a fast-growing agency (where I was building large websites for large clients during the dot-com hay day), I set sail and started my own interactive marketing agency. Soon after, the dot-come bubble burst <pop>, and all the large clients with large agencies pulled back on spending. Good thing for me because I was now an agency of one and could undercut any Gucci wearing group that had monstrous overhead to feed.

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• Pull-Quote: Catching lightning is tough. Stop for a second and look up, the lightning just might catch you.