Smart business resolutions for all SME’s.
There’s a New Zealand online business I came across the other day, which may as well have had a photo of me pinned to their mood board when they conceptualised it.
From the moment I spotted an ad for it on another blog, to the moment I followed them on their Facebook page. Read more
Smart business resolutions for all SME’s.
There’s a New Zealand online business I came across the other day, which may as well have had a photo of me pinned to their mood board when they conceptualised it.
From the moment I spotted an ad for it on another blog, to the moment I followed them on their Facebook page. Read more
Part Seven in our series on business blogging.
We’re wrapping up our business blogging series with a special guest post from Annabel Candy, author of the ebook Successful Blogging in 12 Simple Steps.
While we think Annabel is pretty rad, what sets this book apart from the other 1,465,462 ebooks on blogging doing the rounds of the web is it’s easy to use format – and action points! Annabel clearly highlights key takeaways from each chapter, along with action points and a checklist – so you know where you should be focusing your efforts. Read more
It’s only a hop, skip and jump until Christmas day. End of year parties colour our calendars and employees around the country are booking their leave.
Many businesses either shut down or fall back to a skeleton crew over the holidays so it’s important to include your social media monitoring and engagement into this roster.
If your customers could have operational, service or purchasing issues over this time ensure whoever is on duty is trained up and familiar with your processes to address and answer tweets or Facebook questions. Read more
Part Six in our series on business blogging.
There’s been a pretty common theme of questions coming from those of you following our business blog series. How the heck do I find the time to run my business and get a successful blog going on the side?
Like all things, great blog content takes time and effort to generate, and you’ll need to put some thought into planning to ensure you maintain your post schedule, whatever frequency that might be. Straight from Tim Ferris himself, an uninspiring blog is more of a liability than no blog at all. Think about it from your own perspective – if you were researching a company and found an abandoned blog on their site, it would probably make you question their ability to see a project through to completion, right? Read more
If you’re anything like me, ‘editorial strategy’ invokes images of a news board room. Clark Kent and Lois Lane running around in those news hats with little bits of paper sticking out of them, trying to put the paper to bed for the night.
But believe it or not, an effective and well thought out editorial strategy will play a key element in the success of your blog.
At ProBlogger event, Darren brought out some heavy hitters to talk strategy with us. Sonia Simone, (who I raved about back here), Sally Bagshaw (owner of the brilliant copywriting business Snappy Sentences) and Lucy from The Design Files – all who know a thing or two about creating great content. (and have probably already found several grammatical errors in this post already!) Read more
My partner and I recently went out to dinner in Melbourne. Our waiter seemed nervous as he poured us water and it took what seemed like minutes for him to dish up our bread using the fork and spoon technique.
It was absolutely wonderful to watch.
What? You might ask… Yes, this could sound like sub-standard service. But it wasn’t. It was heart-warming and moving. Read more
Part Four in our series on business blogging.
You’ve started a blog and created some content – why aren’t people flocking to your site?
The reality is, unlike the movie starring Kevin Costner, you can’t just build a great site and sit back and watch everyone comes to read your articles. You need to go out and gather a tribe of people to follow you.
So where do you start? Read more
Photo by Steven Wright
The crazy innovation days of Silicon Valley at its prime appear to be back. Not only are we seeing this in the flow of money to small start-up companies again, but also more recently in the rise and interest in idea-generating social events.
StartUpWeekend.org is one such event. Founded in 2006 StartUp Weekend runs hundreds of events all over the world, using a network of volunteers, where participants compete to launch a new company in 54 hours. And it’s really gaining momentum. So far, 35,000 people have attended 300 Startup Weekend events, across 91 countries with over 200 local organisers. There are over 1700 startup ventures right now that begun at a Startup Weekend event!
Anyone is welcome; simply register your attendance on the website in advance. You pitch your idea to the crowd – no limits, no boundaries, no conditions. The catch is you only have 60 seconds to give your pitch – hard stop, no exceptions. The crowd votes for their favourite – those with the most are crowned team leaders. Team leaders then, during an hour of madness, lobby the crowd, fish market style, to get people to join their team and find a quiet space to work. And away you go.
Fast forward 46 hours, and it’s time for my favourite part of the event. The final pitch. Each team presents their idea to a panel of judges, competing for prizes, street cred and investment opportunities. While I’m always amazed at just how much teams have achieved in such a short space of time, what really blows my mind is just how far the idea has evolved from its original concept.
One of the things teams learn very quickly at Startup Weekend is agility. They test their idea. Make some tweaks. Conduct market research. Make more alterations. Call a few friends and industry contacts. Change things up again. They are steadfastly committed to building the best possible version of their idea – even if it means changing things up and moving in a direction that can be miles away from their starting point. When a change in direction is considered a fair distance from the current idea this is know as a “pivot” and big pivots are called out and celebrated when you reach the final pitch. Even having an official term for this situation talks to just how much agility is embraced as an essential component to innovation.
What a great lesson for business owners. How many of us start our business, and then fall into the trap of doing things ‘the way they’ve always been done’? Offer a product, but forget to keep an eye on developments in the industry? They say the only constant in life is that it changes.
I’m a big believer that for SME’s to succeed and prosper; they need to jump on board the innovation cycle. Those that are constantly looking for ways to improve – either their service or their product – are the ones that will remain at the top of their game. I’d love to see more adopting a ‘try and change’ model, where they’re actively looking for tweaks they can make to improve their business. And it’s relatively easy to do. Spending a few minutes each day reading your industry’s news online, or doing a quick survey of your customers can uncover some new ideas that you wouldn’t have otherwise considered. Or hand the floor to your staff for a ‘think tank’ afternoon. You’ll be amazed at what they can come up with.
You also need to ensure you internal processes are set up for innovation too. Automate manual tasks as much as possible so that when a change or pivot does occur, it doesn’t incur huge amounts of manual labour to make it happen. Remove as much change management infrastructure (e.g., red tape) as you can
And it’s important not to be afraid of innovation! If you try something new and it doesn’t work just as you planned, simply go back and step and try something else. There’s nothing wrong with a lesson learned – the late Steve Jobs will be remembered as one of the most successful tech visionaries of our time, but even he had some products that flopped.
We’re all for embracing innovation here at MYOB – at the moment we’re focusing on cloud technology, and how we can harness it to enhance our product offering. We’re comfortable with the idea of driving innovation, and we’re always looking for new ways to improve our process.
Struggling to get your innovative juices flowing? I recommend heading along to Startup Weekend. It’s the perfect incubator to float a new idea, and there’s nothing like spending a weekend with creative and motivated minds to boost your enthusiasm and inspire you to change things up in your business.
Keep an eye out for the next Startup Weekend in your area – and I’ll see you there!
Simon Raik-Allen | Chief Technology Officer – MYOB
“I set goals, but I never reach them. I always self sabotage”.
This comment came from a client when we got onto the topic of goal setting. So, I delved a bit deeper, and asked what goal she had set but hadn’t achieved.
‘My goal was to reduce my spending.’
“How did it go”, I asked
“Awful, I ended up spending more than I was before, so I gave up”.
Saying you want to reduce spending isn’t actually a goal, it is just an idea. Our brain is a wonderful machine. It works on what we focus on, in this instance the focus was on ‘spending’, so the brain said “YIPPEE, let’s go shopping!!” (by the way this isn’t just a girl thing, it happens to guys as well).
My client hadn’t self sabotaged her goal at all; she just hadn’t set her goal clearly enough. Many of us set goals, or at least we think we do, but how often do we actually achieve them? Read more
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