Profitability often requires better rules and speed, not more time. (Photo: Jetta Girl)
I wrote this “margin manifesto” several months ago and somehow neglected to post it. Your requests for more content on start-up economics and processes reminded me.
These are the principles I review whenever facing operational overwhelm or declining/stagnating profits. Hope you find them useful.
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The financial goal of a start-up should be simple: profit in the least time with the least effort. Not more customers, not more revenue, not more offices or more employees: more profit.
Based on my interviews with high-performing (using profit-per-employee metrics) CEOs in more than a dozen countries, here are the 11 basic tenets of the “Margin Manifesto”… Read More
The “Art of Speed” panel at SXSW: Evan Williams, Cali Lewis, Mike Cassidy, Tim Ferriss (Photo: vantan)
I had a blast organizing and moderating the “Art of Speed” panel at the incredible SXSW conference a few months ago. It was standing room only (at least from what I could see), and I learned a ton from some of the best at creating monster hits.
Here is the recording for those of you who missed it. It’s about 60 minutes total but can be listened to comfortably in little chunks.
The description:
The Art of Speed: Conversations with Monster Makers
This session will focus on how to accomplish huge things in little time. From near-overnight IPOs and massive cult followings, to instant NY Times bestsellers and runaway viral campaigns, learn tricks from those who have created monsters of buzz, fame, and fortune… Read More
Even after outsourcing my e-mail to a virtual assistant, there are still a few messages that come over the transom.
Since the success of the book, I’ve been able to see some of the worst e-mail pitches out there. Here is an example of how to do it properly, with 5 tips and good template phrases bolded: Read More
Total Read Time: 10-15 Minutes
Have you really seen ROI from Social Media?
Social media marketing! Twitter consultancies! Conversational communications! Oh, these are exciting times.
It seems like everyone and their grandma are getting into social media. On a whole, I think this is a good thing, but here’s the problem: whenever technology becomes fashion, return-on-investment (ROI) tends to get lost in the excitement of the latest .com catwalk.
It’s going to help “the brand”? Show me data. It’s going to drive more “awareness”? Define it, isolate it, and translate it into a sales increase.
In this post, we’ll look at some real numbers (total capital, conversions, redemptions, etc.) from my latest educational non-profit campaign, the Twitter-based Tweet to Beat, which was a follow-up to the blog and leaderboard-based LitLiberation campaign, which outraised Stephen Colbert 3-to-1 with no staff and no material hard costs… Read More
The Oracle of Omaha, the world’s richest man. (Photo: Stephanie Kuykenal/Bloomberg News/Landov)
It’s 1:33am in Omaha and I can’t sleep.
Much like pre-Santa jitters as a 7-year old, I’m so excited to potentially meet Warren Buffett tomorrow for the 1st time that my little reptile brain won’t turn off. Ridiculous? Perhaps, but he (Warren, not Santa) is perhaps the greatest investor the US has ever produced.
So what do you say to the world’s richest man if you, by some miracle, end up standing at the urinal next to him? You better know in advance or you’ll sound like a Hannah Montana fan.
This is why learning to elevator pitch — how to deliver your message is 60 seconds or less — is one of the most important skills to develop if you ever plan on interacting with real players and demi-gods like the Oracle of Omaha… Read More
Branding is no longer for Fortune 500 companies and Madison Avenue agencies with excessive budgets and inadequate tracking.
Personal branding is about managing your name — even if you don’t own a business — in a world of misinformation, disinformation, and semi-permanent Google records.
Going on a date? Chances are that your “blind” date has Googled your name.
Going to a job interview? Ditto.
Here are 4 tips for preserving or promoting your name, whether personal or business, in a digital world:
1. Get Google insurance:
Register the URLs for your name and variants, and consider creating a blog. The objective here is to own the first 1-5 results that appear on search engines if someone searches your name. I don’t think most people should be bloggers, but having a Google-friendly and SEO-rich blog platform like WordPress or TypePad that is updated even twice per month as an online journal is worth the investment for having first say in your image. This recommendation comes from Mike Fertik, CEO of the much-buzzed ReputationDefender.
2. Remember to maintain positive “cache-flow”… Read More
