Friday, February 29, 2008

Additional revenue opportunities

You must be absolutely self critical and super analytical at all times, about your product, sales processs, aftersales , repeat sales.

In the process of this continual self-analysis keep your eyes open for other revenue opportunities. You'ld be amazed where they lie. Ideally look for opportunities where you do the work once and it brings in an ongoing revenue stream without any additional work (other than collecting the money / auditing the return - what a nice problem to have).

In my business we provided a free additional service for our existing clients. The clients loved the extra service and it kept them coming back for more. With a careful look at what we were doing and a very simply set up crossmarketing agreement our clients now get exactly the same service and we earn an additional revenue stream of between €750 and €1,000 per month for doing it. Ok it's not a kings ransom but a return of €10,000 per annum beats the hell out of our previous return which was a big duck egg €0.

How did I find this opportunity?



  1. I stopped

  2. I took a breath

  3. I looked for it.

Sometimes we get so caught up in the helter skelter hamster wheels of running our business that we miss the opportunities that stare us straight in the face.

My business also runs a blog. We run some adsense ads between the posts. It took about 1/2 an hour to set up the adsens account. Low and behold we currently bring in about $45 per month with visitors clicking on the links. Not a kings ransom but it pays for the coffee and biscuits in the office! Half an hours work and it brings in $500 per year.

Schedule some time every day to stop, look and think. It's not wasted time and it just might increase your revenue. Regular recurrent income without additional work is gold dust - look for it.

Reverse Planning - use it for business and to write bestsellers!

Where would you like your business to be in one year, 6 months, 1 month , 1 week. We all probably have answers, but the question is "how are you going to get there". We write a business plan but starting from where you are now and going forward has many (millions) of possible outcomes. So what to do?

I really like the miitary strategy of reverse planning. This is a process whereby you determine a long term (6 month) target. Then you imagine yourself at that point. You then envisage yourself at the point just before you reach your goal. Write that point down as a target. Then you envisage yourself at the point just before you reached that point and write that down. You continue this process backwards untill you reach the point at which you are now. Voila you have a plan with clearly defined targets along the way. All you need to do us reverse the plan and carry it out.

If you plan forwards it is easy to lose your way because there are so many possible futures. Reverse planning sees only one end point and creates a path of targets / goals for you to acheive on your way there.

It turns out that JK Rowling used reverse planning in the writing of Harry Potter and the Philosophers stone The basic idea... Harry, I saw Harry very very very clearly. Very vividly. And I knew he didn't know he was a wizard. So I see this skinny little boy with black hair, and green eyes, and glasses. And erm... Patched-up glasses, you know, that got scotch tape around them, holding them together. And I knew that *he* didn't know what he was. And so then I kind of worked backwards from that position to find out how that could be, that he wouldn't know what he was. And er... at the same time I'm thinking that he's gonna go to wizard's school. And that was when it really caught fire for me, I got really excited of the idea of what wizard's school would be like."

So you can use reverse planning for business life and writing multi million bestselling novels (apparently).

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Use the power of "leverage"

One of the lessons that I have learned over and over again is to try whereever possible to use the power of leverage. In simple terms leverage turns a small amount of inputted energy into a large amount of outputted energy. You can use systems to leverage your energy e.g. think of the difference between handwriting 500 letters and writing one e mail and sending it to 500 different e mail addresses (I don't advocate spam). You can use people to leverage your power and actions. Think of the difference between an individual fighting against the invading mongol hoards and one great leader marshalling an army to fight the invading hoards (neither do I advocate war!).

The one thing you cannot leverage is your time. Your time is your time and you cannot buy another moment. Not a morose thought, that's just the way it is. But that thought should energise you to use your powers of leverage to utilise your time as best and as efficiently as you can.

One of the (many many) mistakes of which I have been particularly guilty is the thought "I can do it all". The truth is yes I can - but the question is why should I?

This is particularly true in regard to "small" jobs like say payroll - "why should I pay my accountant €100 per month to process my small salary run, I can buy a small payroll package and do it myself and save the €1,200 per annum". A clear case of "penny wise and pound foolish". The job is "small" untill it goes wrong and go wrong it surely will - because you didn't really know what you were doing in the first place.

Use exteral expertise. Let that expertise do what they are good at whilst you do what you are good at. Once you have spent a wasted 4 hours pulling your hair out, reading the manual, bashing your head off the wall trying to resolve that problem of your own creation which you know nothing about. At that moment you'ld gladly pay any payroll, bookkeeper, IT persons the full annual fee to resolve it.What have you achieved - high blood pressure. Save your time, use it to leverage more sales, use it to think, use it to relax, use it to come up with the brilliant plan to double your turnover, whatever but don't waste your time.

This was brought home to me again today by my accountant who recounted how a new client showed him how he had run his own payroll program over the previous three years. Unfortunately he had incorrectly coded himself as a employee rather than director and had subsequently overpaid the Revenue by over €7,500 per annum. Of course he'll get it back eventually, but wouldn't it have been better off in his pocket in the first place?

Monday, February 25, 2008

Death of the Alpha Female - Bring back Richard Farleigh!

I am not suggesting that Richard Farelighs long locks are affecting his sexuality but I did read an an amusing anecdote on Rachel Elnaugh's blog. Rachel's blog makes reference to the death of the alpha female and dragons being "thrown off" the Dragons Den show because they are too nice - as she says has happened to Richard Farleigh and Simon Woodruffe.

Some bright spark has subsequently created a website to bring back Richard Farleigh at
http://www.bringbackrichardfarleigh.com/. Much to the amusement of the creator the first petition signer appears to be Richard Farleigh himself. Clear evidence of the need for a double opt-in signature to ensure the veracity of your polls, petitions, surveys, requests for further information.

Double opt in: a process whereby when you sign up on-line (for more information, newsletter, survey etc. etc.) a link is sent to your registered e mail. You must click on the e mailed link to confirm your identity. This prevents your "best friends" prank signing your e mail address and helps to avoid "anonymous" signatories.

Now to something I have learned!

As a marketing test, look down the left hand navigation bar on the http://www.bringbackrichardfarleigh.com/ site to to the latest forum posts and look at those top to bottom and then click on which one attracts your interest.

Amazing what the words nude and an exclamation mark will do! With all due respect to Deborah Meadon I don't believe anyone really wants to see her nude. Deborah nude is a bit like a toothache, you know your tooth is sore, you know is going to hurt, you know it's going to be unpleasant but you press your tongue against it anyway! Sorry Debs!

Did you know that the simple addition of a question mark or exclamation mark at the end of an ad title on Google can increase click throughs by 3-5%. On a £100,000 revenue the addition of one additional character could increase click through by 5% and if click to purchase ratio was 20%. Then adding that extra character and pressing that key will earn you an extra £1,000 per annum. Does this make the question mark the most valuable character? There are two ways you could find this out trial and error (costly and lengthy) or you can learn it from others cleverer than you!

Spend time learning, put time aside every day. Apply what you learn. Remember Einstein's definition of insanity "doing the same thing over and over but expecting different results". Reading that one nugget of information above could increase your actual revenue by £1,000 per annum. The cost of finding it out a few minutes learning.

I don't know if anybody has assessed the increase in clickthrough for the addition of the words nude or naked. I'm sure it's huge but may not be particularly relevant for headlines like "need a hotel nude?", "new garden shed nude?", "want to earn a £1,000 a day nude?".

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Winston Churchill - a guiding light for entrepreneurs?

I am very fond of Winston Churchill's quotes and particularly like: "Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts" and also "never, never, never give up". I have frequently seen those two quotes combined (probably incorrectly) and attributed to Churchill as "Success is not final, failure is not fatal, the thing is to never, never, never give up".

That statement could not ring truer for the entrepreneur. Keep going. Persistence is the greatest virtue of all budding entreprenuers. I have seen the greatest ideas and business plans fail through a lack of presistance and I have seen many poorly thought out, average products and businesses succeed through dogged, single minded, persistance.

Many of the very best entrpreneurs are so because they are very target orientated. They have a clear vision of their target and they keep hitting that target, or trying to hit that clearly visible target again and again and again. This target driven mentality is a hugely successfull asset in the start up stages of a busness (but may not apply so well at a later stage of a businssses growth - but more on that later).

Obviously it will be easier and better if you are persistent with a good well thought out business and product!

My own family motto is "Percusos Resurgo" translated as "struck down I rise again" (a clue to my identity). If you persist you will be amazed at the number of leads and contacts that you made months or years before that eventually turn into business. Regard every "knock back" as a learning experience - learn from it, dust yourself off, give yourself a shake and move on. Make sure that you use what you learn. Einstein said that the definition of insanity was "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results". So learn from your mistakes move on, apply what you've learned and "never never never give up".

I really like the posts in Rachel Elenaugh's blog. Rachel is famous for the tv show Dragon's Den and the subsequent collapse of her business red letter days - they are well thought out, interesting and informative and Rachel comes across as very likeable. (I have to admit that I don't like the tv personae developed by the Dragons on the current show - perhaps the "Dragons " have had to "sensationalise" their comments for tv. I enjoyed the snippets I have seen from the first series and the dragons input to the entrpreneurs was helpful throughout. In the subsequent series it's all about the big statement - "that idea is ridiculous", "your mad", "your wasting my time" etc. etc.). Rachel has some view on persistence and learning and self analysing on on her website http://www.rachelelnaugh.com/rachel_elnaugh_top_tips.htm

John Bird, founder of the Big Issue, puts it's success down to one thing only persistence: http://www.catfund.com/blog/?p=39

More about persistence can be seen on http://www.originpr.co.uk/2006/07/14/small-business-quote-of-the-day/ whcih also includes the fantastic Chinese quotation that "the temptation to quit will be highest just before you are about to succeed"

The art of "friendly persistence" can be seen here http://actionplan.blogs.com/weblog/2007/04/the_art_of_frie.html

Albert Einstein quotations

Winston Churchill quotations.

Lesson Two: Always put your family first

The second lesson when starting your own business is to keep your priorities straight. Write down on a piece of paper or have it tatooed to your inner eyelids - always keep your family first, keep your business second.

We all know that already (don't we?) but I can tell you that you need to remind yourself of that every minute of every day. Similar to the previous post you only have a set amount of time. Your time is your time there is no more. No matter how successfull your business is you cannot use that success to buy you more time.

It's easy to get diverted away from what's real, what's good in life. You find the business is going well and so you spend more time working on it to make it go even better.

You find the business is going badly so you spend more time working on it to make it go better.

You find that you have average success, the business is going OK so you spend more time working on it to make it go better

Can you see a similarity.

Where do we find this extra time we need to make our businesses go better. Well I found that I tended to look at the easiest place to find that extra time...family time. But the knock on effects of using family time in your business can be catastrophic. Ultimately they lead to huge homelife stresses which will reflect on your business and its success.

Nobody lying on their hospital bed breathing their last ever said "I wish I'd spent more time in the office" but plenty say (or thought) "I wish I'd spent more time at home".

So keep those priorities straight and repeat after me Family First, Business Second.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Lessons learned along the way 1. Start a business because you love it not because you want to make money!

So now I'll start to sermonise and tell you some of the lessons I've learned during my €100,000pa MBA course.

I'd like to say that this is the start of 100 steps to being a success in business, or my 60 tips to solving your business crisis but in fact I don't know how many lessons I've learned and I don't know how many posts it will take. So here it goes in no particular order:

1. Start a business because you love it not because you want to make money!

Crazy right, clearly "if this is his first lesson learned I can clearly see where his business went wrong" I hear you say. Surely we all start business to make money. Yes your business should be established to make money (unless your in the business of charitable philantropy). But this should not be the primary reason that you set up your business. Primarily get involved in a business because you love the business. The secondary reason is the money.

Unfortunately not everything we love doing in life can be a business. If "under-water-basket-weaving" is the great love of your life unfortunately this is unlikely to be a viable long term business and this should be your hobby.

But if you love management then you can set up and run any business. If you love animals try Veterinary medicine, or dog grooming or open a stables. If you love painting (and your good at it) become a painter. If you love money - set up a bank - don't become a painter because you've seen Van Gough's sunflowers sell for 30 million.

Why should we set up businesses we love:

  • If you love what you do it will reflect in your business. That will reflect in great service, great products and a great business.
  • We have a very limited amount of time. Every minute that ticks past is gone forever. We can't get it back. Our time is our time, that's it, there is no more. But this is not a morose or sad concept. Quite the opposite. It should fill you full of energy to cram every moment of every day with time spent doing valuable things. Don't waste it and do what you love.