As I write this I’m listening to a really interesting interview on Mixergy.com with 37Signals Founder Jason Fried. Listening to Jason speak is really timely for me because I am at a point where I’m really contemplating my place as an entrepreneur. I have had a few bad habits as an entrepreneur over the last few years that have limited my growth, and limited that amount of FUN I’ve had running my businesses.
The first bad habit is taking on too many projects. I am always brainstorming new ideas, and playing around with new possibilities in my head. As it stands right now here are the projects I have on my plate:
- BadmintonLife.com
- CarEnvy.ca
- Video Production Services
- Internet Marketing/Web Development Consulting
This is significantly simpler than I’m compelled to be. I want to start several other blogs, and internet marketing projects right now, but I just don’t have the resources to do it. I don’t have the time, the money, none of it. The reason behind my desire to take on so many projects is that I truly believe that I can build some amazing businesses, I believe I can create something massive. I see all of these opportunities and think I need to jump on them before someone else does.
The problem with this is that I have no focus. I am stretched really thin in terms of resources, but most importantly my mental focus and energy. The analogy I would use is that when working on any project, whether it’s a sport you are training for, or a business you are trying to build, is that your energy is like water flow and the size of the undertaking you have is like a water hose. Your success is the water pressure you get out of that hose. So if you are diluting your energy across numerous projects your water flow is going to be weak coming out of the hose, and if you are taking on too big of a project without much energy behind it the result will be similar and that leads us to the second bad habit of mine.
The second bad habit of mine is I think too big. I know a lot of business people say you should think big. I remember reading Trump’s first book “The Art of the Deal” and he talked about thinking big. I have always thought really big, and I’m not saying that you shouldn’t think big, BUT you need to have your focus on the here and the now. The way you behave and handle problems for a small business are much different than when you’re in a big business, and also if you are distracted by your future visions you are not focused on executed in the here and the now. Perhaps the worst by-product of the “think big” adage is that when you are thinking about some big grand goal, you become intimidated by this giant mountain when you haven’t even started practicing at your local climbing wall. I think you should “think BIGGER”. Think bigger than you currently do. Push yourself beyond your comfort zone, but just enough so that you don’t scare yourself back into your shell.
I moved to Toronto just over a month ago. When I first got here I was really, really excited. I just knew that I would walk into this town and take over. In no time at all I would have a massive media company pulling in heaps and heaps of cash. This is of course not what has happened, and is somewhat naive of me to think. I’m feeling a similar feeling to when I was in Denmark, not as intense however. When I was first in Denmark I was really excited, but after a few weeks I started feeling really overwhelmed by my new surroundings. I’m really starting to come to terms with the fact that I am completely new to this town, and that I am starting from scratch. I have a lot of skills that can bring me to some great places, I really do believe that, but I need to focus on building things one brick at a time.
This reminds me of another really cool post I read recently on Mark Cuban’s blog about getting rich. In a nutshell Mark says there is no get rich scheme, if you want to get rich focus on getting rich slowly. That’s it, that is all you can do. Of course there are crazy stories of people who got lucky with some insane IPO or whatever (ironically Cuban did get very lucky with his sale to Yahoo back in the day, although likely would have gotten rich eventually anyway), but the majority of rich people were in it for the long haul.
This brings me to what I am HOPING to do now. Focus on the long haul, by focusing on the here and now. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but hear me out. By allowing myself to be small, and not feeling rushed to be huge right now, I am focusing on the long haul because I’m not in it for the short term gain. This also means that you should enjoy what you are doing right now. The future comes soon enough.
This week my family are in NYC for the US Open tennis tournament. This is the second time that we’ve come to the event, I came down with my dad and brother back in 2005 when Roger Federer won his first ever US Open. This trip has been a lot different than the last because we haven’t done any of the required tourist things like the Empire State Building or Statue of Liberty because we took care of it last time.
Murdoch Wants Google To Get Lost
13. Nov, 2009 • Categories: Media Industry Commentary • by admin
A recent post I read over at Techdirt has gotten me thinking a lot about the “free vs paid content” debate online. Apparently Rupert Murdoch is looking to stop Google from indexing a lot of News Corp’s websites in favour of putting up paywalls that require users to pay a subscription fee from access to his content.
Mark Cuban thinks this is a genius move on Murdoch’s part. The game changer in his opinion is Twitter, Facebook and similar social media sharing tools because they allow a more organic dissemination of news content than search. I agree, that for real time news content receiving something from your friends via Twitter or Facebook is more likely to pull your interest towards reading that content. However, I don’t think Twitter and Facebook are going to be of much value when the site has a paywall. You are less likely to share content that is behind a paywall, and your friends/contacts are less likely to view it once they realize they have to pay for it. Their first instinct is going to be “is this an affiliate link?” and with all the Twitter and Facebook spam that’s getting passed around now I wouldn’t blame them.
More and more I’m starting to think that online media is starting to merge media with direct response marketing concepts. Advertising revenue is hardly enough if you can only generate a CPM of $2-3! There has to be other ways of monetizing, and paid content could be worth looking at. I think paid content is better suited to niche audiences, but it could be done for a larger audience, especially something like the Wall Street Journal which is targeting a more affluent, business oriented audience who need this information quickly. The challenge is protecting that content. What is to stop a blogger or other publication from paraphrasing your content? You can’t copyright news or ideas, just the specific words that you wrote. I know GigaOM for example recently launched GigaOM Pro with an annual price of $79 for access to their content
Google doesn’t have to be everything online. Of course they are the dominant company for the time being, but keep in mind they are barely 11 years old and things change very rapidly online. I often think about the internet marketing community and how they manage to thrive oftentimes paying for all of their traffic, and not depending on search traffic at all. If you know your conversion rates and other metrics, buying visitors is a valid option if your customer acquisition costs are lower than your prices. There are all sorts of ways to build your own lists of prospects, and all sorts of ways to make money of of them. The idea of not depending so heavily on Google is potentially a good move on Murdoch’s part, and an even better move if he can get other major media companies to follow suit. It is also of course a very risky move, but as they say fortune favours the bold.
0 Comments