10 Questions Entreprenurs Should Ask To Focus

Why 5% Succeed Best Selling Book CoverJackie Nagel, at Synnovatia offers excellent questions every entrepreneur should ask to focus their vision. That got me thinking about some of the examples I’ve collected, saved and used when developing projects, designing possibilities or delivering profit.

Elaine Starling co author of Why 5% Succeed: The 5 Principles of Predictable Profit, shares Key Questions To Triple Bottom Line Any Project, Business or endeavour worthy of your time and attention.

So once you know what your why is all about, you can focus on your customers. One of the best ways to do that is to Build an empathy map of your customers, clients. This is a powerful exercise and it’s often uncanny how close you can come without any other market research. If you do verify your empathy map with research or focus groups, you’ll have highly relevant data. If you do or don’t verify with focus groups, revisiting the empathy map regularly to revise or refine is essential if it’s to remain a useful tool.

Once you build an empathy map of your ideal customer it informs the steps to be taken that implement your customer engagement strategies. If you’ve done this much, your chances of producing relevant results for both sides of the bargain.are pretty good. That’s something to build on.

Asking questions is part of how we’re wired so why not ask really good ones? The best advice I have on the subject is to really be present when listening to the responses..

Key Questions To Triple Bottom Line Any Project, Business

Thanks to Elaine Starling author of  Why 5% Succeed for a really useful way to leverage opportunities and energize business practices. You can accomplish anything. You are unlimited and incredibly resourceful!!!

Have a blast writing about your projects and you’ll be totally energized for an amazing 2016!!

  1. How the project will benefit YOU.You As Center Of Your World– What skills will you practice or learn?
    – Who might you meet because of this project?
    – How might you be positioned socially and professionally because of this project?
    – How do you FEEL as you write about this project?
    – How long will it take you to complete this project?  If it took all year, is it worth it?
    – Can you automate this project at some point?
    – Is the impact of this project ongoing or a onetime burst?
  2. How the project will benefit OTHERS.Multiple people back of head view– Who will benefit?
    – How might they benefit?
    – How could it change their lives and the lives of those they know?
    – Is the impact of this project ongoing or a onetime burst?
  3. How the project will benefit the WORLD.– What might the ripple effect look like?  How would it spread?
    – How might the world change because of this project?  (Imagine the most AMAZING results EVER!!)

When you’re done writing, put it away for 24 hours.  Then re-read what you wrote and stack the pages with the most impactful on top.  You can rate them from 1 to 10 if you want to, but it’s really based on how you FEEL as you review what’s possible.

 

Tracking Web Users: Confusing Consumers For Profit?

Cartoon Man With Magnifying Glass Viewing Man Viewing ComputerThere’s a lot we take for granted in our web browsing. There’s all that tracking of where we go and what we do – even if we do nothing. And don’t get me started on privacy policies, terms and conditions and all the other ridiculously long scrolling admonitions we often agree to with a knee-jerk response to end the tedium and get on with what we came for.

Nate Cordozo has an excellent story about this on Electronic Frontier Foundation‘s site. If a business model wouldn’t work if users had to opt in, it deserves to fail. Maybe if we flipped the funnel so to speak, we’d get a far better web user experience. If every site had a default “NO Tracking” setting, we’d start to reassert some autonomy of our virtual lives.

Then again, maybe that’s the point. The more we get used to ‘sharing’ everything in our virtual world, and I use that term loosely, then we’ll be used to submitting to all sorts of other practices, policies and laws designed to constrain what we as free humans can do .

When do you think the last time that “This call is being recorded for training and customer service” actually resulted in either? Why should we think web tracking will be any different?

Socks With Sandals Comes Full Fashion Forward

Rainbow Socks With Flip flopsHow do you set a trend? Sometimes it’s not giving a shit about what other people think. Wearing socks with sandals is now fashionable once more. If you live in California and wear them rear round, a nice heavy sock is a welcome addition to the Winter comfort zone.

Don’t believe me, check out this story by Stu Woo and Ray A Smith from the Wall Street Journal.