For those of you who don’t know yet, I’m proud to be part of the team at Offermatica (recently acquired by Omniture). Here is what I’m sure will be the first in a series of shamless plug posts as I use most of my energy to get settled in SF. 

The Wall Street Journal’s list of best-selling books for the week ending September 8, 2007 - 2 out of the Top 14 mention Offermatica:

• No. 2: Four-Hour Workweek;
  
• No.13: Super Crunchers

Full list here:

(Credit to Stephanie Yang at Offermatica.)

Technorati Tags: Offermatica, Omniture, Super Crunchers, Four-Hour Workweek

I got some interesting advice tonight from a friend who’s started two businesses. He thinks that one of the most important things to have going into a new venture is a rough financial plan. He articulated it this way.

Let’s say you’re starting a one person consulting company. One way to approach the problem is to start backwards from how much money you need to survive in the first year:

Amount you need = (profit/customer) x (# of customers)

Or you can go about it the other way:

# of customers you need = (Amount you need) / (profit/customer)

This is no substitution for the financials section in your business plan but it gives you a quick way of determining how things are going. That way you know ahead of time where you are in relation to your goals. My friend used this calculation when he decided to abort his last project because he realized that the number of customers needed was completely unreasonable in the given time frame. He credits this formula for the extra $50,000 in his pocket.

Technorati Tags: entrepreneur, financial, businessplan

The whole Second Life phenomenon is just too weird. For those of you who don’t know, it’s an online society where you live out a second life. What makes Second Life different is that you can buy (with first life money) everything you need to live a great second life.

Take Anshe Chung’s Second Life land development business:

Second Life participants pay “Linden dollars,” the game’s currency, to rent or buy virtual homesteads from Chung so they have a place to build and show off their creations. But players can convert that play money into U.S. dollars, at about 300 to the real dollar, by using their credit card at online currency exchanges. Chung’s firm now has virtual land and currency holdings worth about $250,000 in real U.S. greenbacks.

Now American Apparel is opening the first Second Life store where you can buy clothes for your avatar for $1. What?

I guess this is the first sign that I’m slowing heading over that hill. What the heck is going on? I remember, in my day, we didn’t have second lives…

Technorati Tags: secondlife, e-commerce

I attended the VISA big thinking conference on Monday and it was quite good. Most of the sessions I went to were really informative and interesting. If you’re a small business owner in the Toronto area, I strongly encourage you to attend next year.

Here are some of the most compelling thoughts from this year (in my humble opinion). It’s a very brief list considering have about 7 pages of notes from the conference.

• Your job as a business owner is to make stress go away. Understand your customer’s stress and make it go away more effectively than your competition. — Donald Cooper
• Specifics are engaging. A niche doesn’t necessarily have to define what you actually do — but it helps your target audience identify your particular product/service with their situation. — Michel Neray
• The first secret to coaching your team is to demonstrate that you are dedicated to helping everyone on your team become everything they want and everything you need. Build their self-esteem or don’t say it. — Tom Stoyan
• Three business imperatives: (1) focus employees on customers, (2) measure, track your progress and redirect resources when necessary and (3) have a management system in place to keep you on track. Also, having fun should be a part of your management philosophy. You need to incorporate fun into your management style. — Kraig Kramers
• Make decisions quickly. You have to be working all the time. Always keep the message the same (look at their ticker symbol TFR i.e. two-four). Never wait until tomorrow to do something that can be done today. — Teresa Cascioli

I think these events are primarily supposed to be about meeting people and I did a lot of that too. But thanks to VISA for putting on such a quality event. Excellent stuff.

Technorati Tags: bigthinking, VISA, essentialmessage, kraigkramers, canadassalescoach, donaldcooper, lakeport, beer

You can create goals, strategies and spreadsheets all the livelong day but without someone holding you to your commitments — where does your motivation come from? For the first little while you will probably be able to motivate yourself by sheer force of will. Eventually however, you need someone to answer to when you don’t live up to your commitments.

When you’re working for someone else that task is already done for you — like it or not — you’re accountable to your superiors. VCs, angels and other investors should hold the entrepreneurs  accountable. But when you’re starting a new self-financed venture, who are you really accountable to?

Find someone to hold you accountable. Find someone who will call you on your B.S. Most importantly, find someone who will challenge you to determine why you didn’t live up to your commitments and help you work through the problems.

This role could be filled by a mentor, personal coach or even a spouse. Just make sure you find someone to make you accountable so you don’t end up spinning your wheels.

Technorati Tags: accountability, mentor, entrepreneur

People have been asking me: What the heck is this new business that you’re starting? Well, I’ll tell you.

Our name is 3Simple and you can read up on us by visiting our new website: http://www.3simple.com. We’re business consultants who help executives bring data-driven management to their organizations. Data-driven or evidence-based management is the practice of basing business decisions on the best data available. It’s about setting specific numeric goals, committing to them and making sure your staff have the resources required to achieve those goals. Companies must then measure their progress.

The big picture goes something like this:

• Firm’s management/decision makers devise overall strategy
• 3Simple helps the firm understand what metrics are useful for measuring the success of that strategy — as I’m sure many of you know, these metrics are referred to as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
• 3Simple works with the firm to develop specific numeric goals and help management understand the importance of setting goals, committing to them and then pushing the entire organization forward to achieve them
• 3Simple then sets up the reporting frameworks (including dashboards, scorecards and other data views) so that every person in the organization has a picture of their influence on KPIs
• 3Simple works with the organization to manage the change required in adopting evidence-based management

After that we help companies adopt more technologically-advanced forms of evidence-based management including predictive modelling or data-mining.

[Begin technology digression]

Evidence-based management requires a way to view the data. This is where the technology comes in. Using business intelligence software, we’ll be able to deliver the data in compelling ways. If you’d like to learn more about business intelligence — try dmreview.com or intelligententerprise.com. We’ll be working with open technologies like Pentaho, BIRT and JasperReports because we believe that companies should adopt an open, flexible technology strategy.

[End technology digression]

That’s where we’re at right now. I’d like to thank BrandDesignStrategy for their excellent work on our corporate identity and all of the friends and family who have been so supportive. Special thanks to Sarah for reading and re-reading the website. We (myself and my new business partner Reg Pew) welcome any feedback — either on this blog or on the 3Simple website.

Technorati Tags: businessintelligence, evidence-based, Toronto

My lawyer once told me that business is just taking a product or service and selling it for more than you obtained it for. And I believe that. Sometimes I think all of this business theory is more than a little overdone. Truth be told, you can go a long way without any of it. Sam Walton made it pretty far on his own instinct. Here are the basics you need to start a business as I see it.

Strategy

I think the most important idea is strategy is summed up in Jack Welch’s Winning:

“In real life, strategy is actually very straightforward. You pick a general direction and implement the hell out of it.”

Marketing

All you really need is The World’s Shortest Marketing Plan to get started. (I found this via Guy’s blog.)

Accounting/Finance

Get a decent accounting program and track your revenues and expenses. Be meticulous and keep your books up to date. When you need help with government filings and other complications — retain an accountant that knows your software package.

As for financing — start with your savings and beg your friends and family to help you. That will get you started. Just watch those expenses — build it on the cheap.

Operations

Don’t be reckless. Design operations to be as efficient as possible by stepping back and thinking about your business as a whole. Work to automate those tasks that take up most of your time. Don’t worry about those that cause minor inconvenience. And again — watch those expenses.

HR

Even when you’re tired or moody, try to treat your employees like gold.

Technorati Tags: businessplan, basics, entrepreneur

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of integrity today. It started when I was watching some of the extras on my Glengarry Glen Ross DVD. In one segment, Jack Lemmon talks about how his father would have been appalled by the behaviour of the characters in the movie.

My mind then wandered to Warren Buffett who has always preached that integrity is the most important part of business. To be more accurate: “Mr. Buffett has been quoted as saying that he looks for three things in his manager: intelligence, honesty and integrity. If they do not possess the last two characteristics, the first one will kill you.” (source). Countless others have identified integrity as paramount to success. (My favourite being Ralph Waldo Emerson’s “Character is higher than intellect.”)

Integrity isn’t a selfless act. I believe that having principles and honouring them forces one to acknowledge something bigger than oneself and provides meaning in the process. And if Harvard’s class on positive psychology is any indication, this is one step towards happiness.

I understand if you’re skeptical. The business world has been plagued by scandals and this trend will no doubt continue. People abuse power. And if you do a search on integrity you’ll find all sorts of articles about how businesses implement it and even a list of the Ten Universal Characteristics of Integrity. All of these things are meaningless if you really don’t believe that integrity should be the number one guiding principle of your business and your life.

Technorati Tags: integrity, business, bigpicture, happy

The good folks at Hyperion are giving out a free article from the Harvard Business Review concerning evidence-based management. Evidence-based management is creating a culture of decision making that is data-driven rather than gut or instinct driven. I think this movement is going to be big for the next few years. Then I think that people are going to take it too far and then I think that instinct-based management will come back… but I digress…

One of the most interesting concepts the authors talk about is the psychology behind the resistance to using data in decision making. They contend that people resist evidence-based decision making because:

1. Anecdotal evidence feels richer than do numbers on a report or print out.
2. People pass on old habits without examining whether new best practices have emerged.
3. People want to use their expertise — they want to feel important.
4. Marketing/advertising create a fog around what is, in fact, best practice.
5. Ideology/dogma exist in companies and are powerful agents resisting change.
6. Facts and evidence are great levellers of hierarchy.

Fascinating stuff.

My favourite feature of evidence-based management is that, if used properly, it can be tightly integrated with goal-setting and goal-achievement. A company can decide what metrics define its progress. Initiatives can be judged based on their impact on these metrics. In an ideal implementation, management can always have a sense of how they’re performing by looking at the metrics.

That said, those reasons why people are likely to be resistant to this movement shouldn’t be discounted. I don’t have much interest in building a big, cold business on data autopilot. I want people to feel that their expertise and past experience count — for the simple reason that they’ll likely be happier if they know that their feelings, not just their data, are valued.

Technorati Tags: data, evidence, management, hardfacts

• What comes first in business: employees or customers? This post at Joel on Software gives an answer (and the comments are worth reading too).
• Put the f word on your business card and use a coffin for your desk — these and other tips in How to differentiate your company.
• 12 books that changed the world.
• And finally, David Foster Wallace’s essay on the usage wars in the English language.

“In ways that certain of us are uncomfortable about, SNOOTs’ attitudes about contemporary usage resemble religious/political conservatives’ attitudes about contemporary culture:[4] We combine a missionary zeal and a near-neural faith in our beliefs’ importance with a curmudgeonly hell-in-a-handbasket despair at the way English is routinely manhandled and corrupted by supposedly educated people. The Evil is all around us: boners and clunkers and solecistic howlers and bursts of voguish linguistic methane that make any SNOOT’s cheek twitch and forehead darken. A fellow SNOOT I know likes to say that listening to most people’s English feels like watching somebody use a Stradivarius to pound nails. We[5] are the Few, the Proud, the Appalled at Everyone Else.”

Technorati Tags: differentiate, employee, customer, english, language