Predictable Success

June 25, 2010 by Leave a Comment

This books explores the ‘secret code’ to achieving success in business. The author, a serial entrepreneur having started over 40 businesses, states that there is indeed actually a formula to success, its just that we do not know about it.

In his own words, “As a serial entrepreneur who has personally launched over 40 businesses, and as a consultant and coach to hundreds of business leaders, I’ve come to realize that the ‘growth code’ is out there, in plain view for anyone who knows where to look. There is indeed a code, a pattern, a DNA if you will, to achieving predictable success. The difficulty is that because most business leaders work in a limited number of business environments during their career, they don’t have the opportunity to see the pattern recur often enough to successfully decode it.”

Download the book: [download id=”33″]

What do you think?

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With:

How To Turn Your Skills Into A Real Online Business

June 24, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Open for businessA lot of the people reading Like Chapaa have a skill set. They are strong in web design, writing, marketing, Web development, or some other different skills.

People with such skills who want to be entrepreneurs often end up selling their skills as services. That usually entails trading money for their time, expertise and experience. It’s the path of least resistance (and risk) and a way to form a source of income. The problem is that while the business might be moderately successful, there is a limit to how successful the business can be. There are only so many hours in a day and only so much that you can charge for these services (no matter how good you are). Since freelancing is not a real business model and does not scale, you should focus these skills on building a system-based business.

Here are some ideas to create a new business based on the skills that you already have.

Scale Your Skills
Instead of doing the work yourself, have 1, 2, 5, 10, or even 50 people do the work for you. Once you have other people doing the work, there is no limit to how big you can grow the business. Start by creating a manual detailing everything that you do and make it a repeatable process that someone else can follow. You will still have to find some people with some ability as you don’t want someone with zero creativity to design high-end websites for your clients. But if you create an efficient process in getting new clients and delivering their service at a reasonable, known cost, you can start scaling the business.

In order to reduce your risk, I would start out with contractors. Pay them on a “per project” basis so you are only obligated to pay when you get paid. Your profits won’t be as high and it can be tough to find reliable contractors with good prices and quality products but once you do, it becomes very easy to scale up your business. Start out with determining your profit margin and you can estimate projects based off of the quote you receive.

Create a “Product”
If your skills are in web design, pick a market and create your best web design that you can sell over and over again. If you create a really great web site with a lot of cool features for restaurants (newsletters, birthday club, email-a-friend), sell it to restaurants operating in different markets. You might charge a lower price for each site but it will require less effort to set up. It’s even something that you could hire a contractor to set up on a per-site basis.

If you are a writer, you can also create a ‘product’ around your writing skills. You just have, for example, to look for something that would benefit by having a well written guide/manual. For instance, many writers make money by writing How-To ebooks for platforms such as Joomla and Drupal. I know others who have created a complete and re-usable business plan which they sell to anyone looking to write a business plan quickly.

If you are an Adsense expert, you could sell a program to similar businesses of keywords and ads that are pre-built and tested to be very effective. Just make sure you don’t sell it to competing clients.

Become a ‘Digital Landlord’
This is very similar to creating a product, the difference being that you do not sell it outright but rent it out and collect a subscription fee. Please have a look at this: Landlord 2.0

The basic idea is to utilise your expertise to create a service. If you are an accountant, you could create an accounting system which you charge a monthly fee for people to use it either online or offline. When most people think of this, they think that it has to be a large undertaking. That is not the case, you do not have to recreate Quickbooks, the secret is to niche – create a simple accounting system specifically for freelance web designers (incidentally, such a system is badly needed).

If you are a marketing guru, you could create a marketing system for very small businesses and freelancers (guys earning 10,000 to 500,000 a month) – a system whereby the businesses completely outsource marketing to you. Again, such a system is badly needed in today’s Kenya (most of these business owners are too busy to market properly and would appreciate some help, as long as it actually generates more business).

Web Site Flipping
basically, this is the selling of websites. It might require a little more investment but you could also bootstrap and start with a small portfolio that you constantly turn over and make more money off of them. But the idea is that you should buy websites, improve them, and then sell them. Maybe it’s a website that just needs a few tweaks to convert better, or a site that needs some basic search engine optimization, one that hasn’t utilized Pay-Per-Click yet, or one that could use all of these changes.

Create systems to effectively find, value, purchase, and improve sites. Most people who flip websites might do it on a “one off” basis. They don’t create systems to repeat the process over and over again. I liken it to real estate flipping companies who have scaled their business so they buy multiple properties, have a select group of vendors they use to improve the properties, and then sell it. They have great systems in place. From the very beginning, they have a set budget and they know what changes they can make and how much value it should add to the price.

Create Software
Ok, nothing too original here but I think this is a case which people think too big. They think the only software worth creating and selling is something that nobody else has created. There are a lot of niche markets for which you can build useful software. You don’t have to create Microsoft Windows, just something that is useful to your targeted niche market.

For example – you could create an online scheduling service for businesses that take appointments like doctors, salons or beauty parlors. There is a lot of scheduling software out there but if you create a product specific for an industry, you have created a successful product.

And the best part about software is that once it’s created, there is very little effort to maintain it. Unlike trading hours for dollars, you can create a mostly passive form of income.

What Do All the Ideas Have in Common?
It probably wasn’t apparently obvious with each of these ideas but they all involve targeting a niche market. You’re not going to be able to create something that works for everyone but if you create something that has utility for a niche market, your system based business can grow quite successfully.

Image courtesy of Pheezy.

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: , , , , ,

Landlord 2.0

June 21, 2010 by 3 Comments

I want to be the “Digital Landlord”. I want to own website real estate that I can “rent” to small businesses.

This isn’t about owning domain names since that would not work. People would just buy different domain names – they aren’t that important for local businesses.

No, this is about owning the building, or the website in this case, that is set up such that it is like a goldmine for people, renters. Renters would be willing to pay landlords money if the property is on a prime piece of real estate that practically guarantees a certain level of business, right?

It is Better to Rent than Sell

One of the first rules of real estate is never sell properties (or something like that). What it means is that you don’t usually want to sell a great piece of real estate if you can make money hand-over-fist from it.

We’re marketers with web development skills. We could build websites and sell them to our clients, but what’s the value in that? We would rather make mostly passive income by renting out an extremely high value service month after month.

Websites are worth the amount of time that the designer puts into the website plus a premium based on the designer’s/company’s reputation and ability.

But let’s change the perception on that product from a website to a marketing system. If it can generate Kshs 30,000 consistently, the business owners aren’t going to pay for the amount of effort it takes to create, they’re going to pay for that high value that it generates for them. I don’t know too many business owners who wouldn’t pay you Kshs 5,000 to generate Kshs 30,000 in new revenue.

Let’s say that you can do this just 2 or 3 times a month consistently. Don’t you think the business owner would be more than willing to pay you Kshs 5,000 a month for a LONG TIME than Kshs 25,000 just once?

Build a Ton of Buildings
If this works one time, why not do it over and over again? I can build a bunch of different buildings, or “client generating systems”. And I rent out a part of those buildings to a ton of different clients.

Let’s put some numbers on it:

  • I can rent out my system to 100 different clients in the same industry across the country at Kshs 5,000 per month (I won’t get too greedy)
  • That’s Ksh 500,000 per month for just one “building”
  • Once that works, I can build 20 different “buildings”.

What’s better than being a digital landlord? And I’m sure you can figure out the math for the monthly income….

Interesting in investing in websites? If you want to get into this but have no idea how to search for, value, evaluate and manage a website, give us a call. We’ll work something out.

Filed Under: Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With:

What If The People You Outsource To Are Not As Good As You?

June 18, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Following yesterday’s post, Outsource Everything, I got a few emails from people who wanted to outsource but were unsure whether anyone could get the job done as well as it needed to be. That’s an understandable reaction and it was something that I fought when we tried to outsource some of our work. Sometimes it feels like it’s more work writing up a description of what needs to be done rather than just doing it yourself.

So I put together a list of 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Care if Your Outsourcers Can’t Do the Work as well as You Can:

  1. So what? – My first response is so what if they can’t do the work as well as you. I guarantee you that they won’t be able to do things as well as you can because they can’t read your mind. The problem is that most people expect the work to be perfect right away. It doesn’t have to be. If someone else can do 80% of the work and you just have to go back and clean up the last 20%, you still saved a lot of time. Unless you find someone you really trust (and that takes a lot of experience), you should do some type of quality control over what’s done. Don’t just think you can hand it off and forget it.
  2. You’d be surprised how well they can do the work – This isn’t always true but it happens more often than you would think. Often times I send off instructions and just know that I will get some horrible deliverable and there will be a million questions along the way. Then I’m pleasantly surprised to see that they exceed my expectations.
  3. Some things you’ll never be able to get rid of – There have been some tasks that I wanted to hand off to someone else to do because I didn’t like doing them but then I realized there was no way to do this. These aren’t tasks that you should be outsourcing because they aren’t something that you can provide step-by-step instructions to. These are things that you have to think about and there is no way that someone else will be able to know what you’re thinking. Just outsource everything else, bite the bullet, and do this one yourself.
  4. Don’t hire them to do everything you do – Make sure you have specific tasks for them. Don’t provide them high-level needs and expect that they will think of everything. If you can’t write it down in steps, it’s not something that you should hire them to do.
  5. Find things that are monotonous – A lot of your activities might have a “thinking” component and a monotonous component. Don’t be afraid of doing the “thinking” parts and handing off the monotonous components. We do this a lot when we outsource web design. We determine what the overall design and feel of the site is and then outsource the actually coding with clear instruction on what needs to be done.

The key is to remember that you’re not hiring someone to solve world peace. You’re just hiring them to do some monotonous tasks for you. It’s not going to be everything you do but you’ll start finding more and more tasks that you can write instructions to and that you can hand off. And don’t be afraid to break it down so you provide most of the brainpower and they do the rest.

Filed Under: Small Business, Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: ,

Outsource Everything

June 17, 2010 by Leave a Comment

Outsource everythingOne of the things I am a huge fan of is that every Business Owner should outsource everything that they possibly can. I know I’m not breaking any ground with this idea (if you want to read a great book on the power of outsourcing, I strongly recommend Thomas Friedman’s, The World is Flat) but what I am advocating is pushing this idea to the max. I look at everything I have to do to see whether it’s something I can just outsource it so that I can free up even more of my time.

One of the first really big projects that we received was for a web application in which we were paid a HUGE amount (our largest project for us at the time). This was a project that we scoped out as taking at least 3 months of our full attention. This is back when we were just testing the entrepreneurial waters and had other full-time jobs. All of our spare efforts were focused on this first product delivery, and we delivered as planned by focusing our efforts on it fully.

That project led to another one that was 3 times as big as the initial project and took us another 6 months to complete. Now it wasn’t for 3 times the dollar amount because of a partial equity deal we were involved in. The problem was that when it was all said and done, we had put in about 9 months, and all we really had to show for it was 1 client, 1 project, and nothing else for our business from the previous 9 months.

We don’t regret that period of time. We had a lot of flexibility because of our situation, we learned a lot, and we spring-boarded from that to working on the business full-time, but there was an important lesson learned there.

I Should Have Outsourced Everything that Didn’t Need Us.

The development of the application that we spent all of our time and effort on should have been outsourced to a development company that could have completed the effort based on the requirements that we had already created. We would have made a lot less profit from those efforts but we could have spent that time (which was A LOT of hours) on developing new business, creating new products, or just being lazy!

The important distinction are those efforts for which we are required and those for which we are not. New product/service development and most marketing efforts require our involvement because it’s very tough to outsource something when it’s not even defined yet. But for something that is relatively basic like web application development, we should have outsourced the efforts.

What Else Should I Outsource?
Honestly, if it is something that would take more effort for me to write up the instructions for someone else to do, then I’ll usually do it myself. Otherwise, I delegate it off to someone else. These are just a few things that we did ourselves until just a few times when we realized that it’s much more efficient to hire someone else to do it:

  1. HTML Updates for existing websites
  2. Contact Generation for Marketing efforts
  3. Direct Mail Generation for Marketing efforts
  4. Service Delivery fulfillment for direct mail pieces in our online marketing system
  5. Follow-up calls to existing leads
  6. Sales Lead generation and adding new leads to our contact list
  7. Web Application development

The Financial Mathematics of Outsourcing
The finance behind outsourcing is pretty obvious and has been discussed many times over so I won’t spend much time on it. Simply put, if you can get someone to do something for Ksh 10,000/- and your time is worth more than that Ksh 10,000/-, it is simply an efficient form of resource allocation. Or to put it another way, it might cost you Ksh 5,000/- to outsource a very menial task to someone and during the time that you might have done that yourself, you could create a new marketing campaign that generates Kshs 50,000/- in new business.

You don’t even have to do anything else during that time. If you would just like to spend less time working in your business, the Kshs 5,000/- might be a small cost for the additional free time that you generate.

You Don’t Necessarily Need Offshore Outsourcing
A lot of people automatically associate (and confuse) “outsourcing” with “[offshoring]”. Offshoring is just one way to outsource your work. You can also outsource it to onshore companies. By far, the majority of our outsourcing work goes to local resources. It’s just been easier for us in most cases to pay a little extra money and get someone we can communicate with easily.

Regardless of where you find people or companies to outsource your work to, you need to start outsourcing everything so that you can continually focus your efforts on building your business.

Photo courtesy of MarkHillary.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With:

Growing A Business Without Money

June 13, 2010 by 1 Comment

Thinking up a business idea and launching it is pretty easy, if you ask me. Running the business and growing it is a whole different story. It is where almost all businesses fail at.

I’m very much in favour of bootstrapping and I discourage everyone who wants to start a business by borrowing. However, we must realise that growing a business with no money is very hard and nearly impossible. When you do not have money to spend on your business, you end up being the chief employee – you do all the work. This leaves you little to no time for doing the more important stuff like thinking up (and implementing) new strategies, marketing, etc.

Businesses that are trying to grow with little or no money face a very steep challenge and, if not careful, may end up always being on the chase for a big break (a well paying client/deal) that will enable the business to normalise its activities. I consider such businesses to be operating more on luck than anything else. However, I think every entrepreneur worth his salt has passed through something similar.

Unless you just want to learn how to operate under extreme pressure, find a way to get some money to get your business up and running. Debt is bad, but it may be a necessary evil.

Filed Under: Small Business

Doing it like Fareed

June 9, 2010 by 5 Comments

I’m not a big fan of X-Fm Djs – I find them annoying. But I love my rock, so I’m glued to the station all day.

Fareed Khimani I have massive issues with. He has a nice voice, and he’s kind of cute, but he has this thing: nag-nag-nag-whine. Also, he can be a little rude – which I guess is the whole point of the show.

I like him for one thing though: he got me to like Alice in Chains. Let me explain.

Some weeks ago, I was in a matatu on my way to work. Almost all matatus like to play The Maina and King’ang’i show, or as I prefer to call it, Matatu FM. Matatu FM has great music, but the presenters annoy me. Their call-ins are even worse. So my morning routine is get into a mat, plug in my earphones, tune in to X-Fm, and crank it loud enough to drown the matatu.

Yes, I expect to be deaf soon.

Anyway, I was listening to Fareed, and he started talking about how he was going to play the coolest song ever, and how it would get us all jumping, and how if we didn’t like the song, we were boring.

He hyped the song five more times before he finally played it – twice. It was just a regular rock song, and I didn’t get what the hype was about. But because he’s said it so many times, the name stuck in my head.

The name of the song in Man in the box, by the rock band Alice in Chains.

Later, he picked out his favourite part of the song, which is the riff-and-chant in the beginning. He played that bit over and over again, explaining how cool it was and why.

Then, he declared it the ‘May Traffic Song’, and for the next one month, he  played it two or three times a show, usually after the traffic update. I learnt to expect the song, and within a few days, I’d learnt some of the words.

I still have no clue what the song is about, but when I eventually found myself singing along and enjoying – even loving  it, I was amused. The song in itself didn’t impact me, but hearing Fareed get so excited about it, and having it played so often, I guess it grew on me.

So here are some business lessons we can learn from this cute, annoying man.

1. It’s all about hype

Create awareness of your product, service, or business. Make it a big deal. It can be word of mouth, hot air balloons, luminous rollerblades, a regular twitter account, glow-in-the-dark vuvuzela, anything really.

Your product doesn’t have to match the hype, but it will get noticed. And once prospective clients notice, you’ll have a foot in the door. That’s always a good place to start.

2. Be persistent

Fareed’s song didn’t impact me the first time I heard it – or even the second or third. But on day 2, I noticed it’s great walking music, and by day 3, I liked the words to the song. They are so fun to yell to.

Keep yourself in the client’s mind. Make follow-up calls, get sponsored in prominent places, remain visible.

3. Be consistent

The thing with this song is it doesn’t change. You’ll hear it a million times and it sounds exactly the same. You might pick a word or note that you hadn’t heard before, but the content is the same.

Once your client notices you and starts to like you, be sure that the thing they like is always there. Going herbal can sometimes be a bad thing.

4. Tap into mnemonics

People make links in their heads, often without knowing it. Baby girls get pink, little boys get blue, metro kids wear orange, valentines means chocolates, roses mean passion and love. There isn’t any specific reason for this. They’re all just trends that caught on.

Fareed go me to associate man in the box with traffic. So every time I’m in a jam, I wait to hear the song play, even when I’m tuned to a different station.

Associate your product with something popular, or trendy, or common, something with staying power, something that clients see every day. They’ll become conditioned to your work. That’s why in Kenya, all detergents are ‘Omo’ and all margarine is ‘Blue band’.

5. Stand out

This song has a great riff, rebellious lyrics, and an interesting beat. But more than that, the band has an amazing name. It’s hard to forget anyone called Alice in Chains. Why is Alice in Chains? What did she do? What kind of chains are they? And more to the point, who the- is Alice?

Have your product stand out. It can be as simple as giving it a catchy name or colour, or as complex as making it actually good. You could also pull a saf-com and make it really, really ugly.  After all, cute fades – just look how quickly we get bored of babies.

Either way, pull a Krest with it and stand out from the crowd. Make it memorable.

Speaking of sodas and pop music, there’s a Sprite advert on TV that has teenagers ramming each other and making bubbles. At some point, a really prettylady makes a stage dive.

I have no clue what the advert means, but I love the music behind it. Does anyone know what it is?

Crystal Ading’ is a professional author, editor, rock lover and mother. Her work is available through www.threeceebee.com.

Filed Under: Small Business Tagged With: