Jon Dale

Execution

Lots of people have ideas.  Very few people act on them.  Between having an idea and shipping it is the real work, the execution.  

Without the ability to execute an idea is just that, an idea.

Zuckerberg had something the Winklevi did not, the ability to execute, quickly.

The magic is in the execution.

When everything is important

...nothing is important.

Surplus

Surplus is the extra left over from a transaction.  Surpluses can be leveraged to make change.

There are two ways to leverage surpluses:

Make surpluses in an unrelated way and route them to where they are needed.

or

Do what creates the surpluses.

If you want to make change you need to be doing one or the other.

How do you create surplus?

Winning

Contrary to popular belief, you don't win by coming up with something better.  You win by having a better story.

Here's the rub. You can't just tell the winner's story better than the winner.  You have to tell a different story.

What story are you telling?

How to lead a tribe

1. Find people who share a dream

2. Connect them to each other

3. Take them where they want to go

Here's the secret.  You don't need everybody.

You need 1000 true fans.  People who will cross the street to join you in what you're doing.

 

A few questions for the journey:

Who are you upsetting?

Who are you connecting?

Who are you leading?

Your deadline or mine?

Very few people have a habit of delivering early.  Most people wait until the last minute to start on a project and then deliver right before (or more often right after) the deadline.  I've found this to be especially true with graphic designers and web developers, but I think most of us are guilty of this at some point.  

Here's a really good approach to deadlines I learned from Seth Godin during SAMBA. 

Don't use other people's deadlines and never do anything at the last minute. 

If someone gives you a deadline, don't use it.  Instead set your own deadline ahead of theirs.  Get in the habit of shipping early. You'll exceed the other person's expectations.

How do you treat deadlines?

Five reasons to consider venture capital

In yesterday's post I gave 5 reasons to bootstrap your business.  Today I wanted to take a look at reasons why you might want to consider taking outside money.

1. The people on the VC team.  This is probably the most important thing to consider when contemplating taking outside money...it's more important than the actual money.  What expertise do they bring to the table?  Who can they introduce you to?  What doors can they help open?

2. You need to expand more quickly than bootstrapping allows.  It's almost impossible to bootstrap your way into a nationwide (or global) product launch.  It's just too expensive.

3. You need to scale quickly.  It would have been really difficult (perhaps impossible) to bootstrap facebook.  The scale of infrastructure and development that was needed far outstripped facebook's ability to generate revenue early on. 

4. You're building to be acquired (rather than to get cash flow positive).  So you've invented an amazing new technology that will change the game for (insert your favorite big dot com here).  In order to get enough market share to be noticed you need to offer your service for free and build a user base.  That can be really expensive.  If you can find VCs who believe in what you're doing it makes sense to take their money so you can build your user base. 

5. Venture capital leads to more venture capital. Once you've got outside investors in the game with you, they have every incentive to see you succeed.  Don't underestimate the importance of this.  As they introduce you to other VCs you'll reap the benefits above over and over again (especially number 1).

5 Reasons why you should bootstrap your business

1. When you take someone else's money you answer to them.  This will force you to make decisions differently and sometimes not in the best interest of the company (your company). 

2. Constraints force creativity.  It's really healthy to ask questions like how would we do this with less money?  How could we do this with no traditional marketing?  How could we do this with less employees?  

3. You might love what you're doing and want to stick with it long term. Which leads us to the next point.

4. If you take in investors they'll want an exit, that's why they made the investment in the first place.  What happens if they want out and you want to stay in?

5. You don't have anything to lose.  Seriously, this is a big deal.  You don't have a ton of money to build a business, so you don't have a lot to lose.  Big companies have everything to lose.  You don't, you can take risks they can't, take advantage of it.

Here's a great free resource from Seth Godin on Bootstrapping.

 

Entrepreneur or freelancer?

A freelancer gets paid when he works.

An entrepreneur makes money while he sleeps.

A freelancer says, "It couldn't work without me."

An entrepreneur says, "Only tell me what happened today if it was an exception."

A freelancer takes his time and trades it for money.

An entrepreneur takes other peoples money and takes risks with it.  He then (hopefully) sells the company and gives them 10X their money back.

One isn't better than the other.  But it is important to understand which one you are.

How I replaced Google Reader with a twitter list and hootsuite

I used to love Google Reader.  It was a wonderful tool that brought all my favorite blogs together in one place and made them easy to read and share.  It was great...until it wasn't.  It soon become one more inbox that I couldn't keep empty.  My unread items soon numbered in the thousands and then the tens of thousands.  I felt guilty every time I logged in.  

It seemed like the right thing to do.  Find a good blogger and subscribe to their feed.  Right?  

But let's face it, there are very few bloggers who put out a great post every time. 

I've found a better way.  I very seldom miss important posts and I read lots of posts that would never have shown up in my RSS reader.  Here's how I do it.  I let other people that I trust and respect put my reading list together (and they don't even realize they're doing it).  

All you need is a twitter list and hootsuite.

First, create a twitter list of the people who matter in your space (or just use mine).

Second, open that list as a column in hootsuite and filter it for the keyword "http".

That's it.  Now you've got a list of links your sources deemed important enough to tweet about today.  

Give it a try.  You'll be surprised at the variety of content this surfaces.  And if there's any bloggers you want to make sure you read add them to your list.  If they write a good post they'll probably tweet about it.

How are you choosing what to read every day?