5 Reasons Working From Home is a Bad Idea

November 18, 2010 by 3 Comments

Thinking of starting your business by working at home? Here are 5 reasons why that is a bad idea:

  1. Productivity – You’re functioning at about 75 percent productivity in a coffee shop or at home. The distractions are everywhere. At the coffee shop it’s the annoying person on the phone; at home it’s the cat, the dog, the neighbor, the internet is down, the TV is on…
  2. Space to think – If you’re serious about building a company –a real company, not an app or a feature – than you’re going to need space. You’re going to need whiteboards and desks and printers and stable Internet service and phone booths and meeting space.
  3. Don’t lose that third space – Without space, your boundaries between work and play dissolve to the point that you don’t know how to work and how to play. When you live in coffee shops or work at home you tend to go at one speed, whether you’re crushed for time or not. When you have an office with a product deadline looming, you stay there until it’s done.
  4. World-class teams don’t work from home – For a little while you can get away with attracting people to your kitchen table, but very soon you’ll be competing with other start-ups/companies for talent – and your comfy couch is not going to get it done.
  5. Space is cheap – Office space is cheap and plentiful assuming you don’t need super nice digs. It’s also surprisingly cheaper than you think when you do a fully loaded cost analysis. When you’re not at the office, the chances of you bringing your lunch are probably lower and the coffee is definitely more expensive.

Adapted from VentureBeat‘s “5 reasons working from home (or Starbucks) is a bad idea“.

Filed Under: Small Business

Winners of “Blue Ocean Strategy”

November 16, 2010 by Leave a Comment

From the competition that we had announced last week, we are pleased to announce that we randomly picked the following winners:

All three receive a free copy of “The Blue Ocean Strategy“. Kudos to them.

Watch out for more and better competitions from Like Chapaa. Before the next one comes around, have a look at the Chapaa Shop.

Filed Under: Miscellaneous Tagged With:

Interesting Kenyan Sites #13

November 14, 2010 by 2 Comments

Communications Commission of Kenya – it is not often that you get a website done by the Government of Kenya that stands out for being well done. The CCK website does just that! The site design is well thought-out and the information on the website looks fresh and well managed. Kudos, CCK! Every other Government webmaster should look up to this!

50-50
NiKenya.com – an interesting domain name. But sadly, we do not think the idea behind this site is well executed. I still cannot answer these questions: “What is the purpose of this site?” “Why should I sign up?”. Hopefully we’ll get an answer soon.

Flops
McDave – this is an Online Fresh Fruits and Vegetable Shop Based in Nairobi. I personally think that such a business, if well done, can be very successful in Nairobi and other major Kenyan towns. Sadly, McDave does not seem to be well done. First, their design seems to be “all over the place” but the main problem is this: When you see an online shop put, on their website, advertisements from Google Adsense, then you know the online shop is suffering from a lack of purpose. If this goes on, it will not be long till you see McDave go down in failure. This would be sad. McDave should either focus on their stated business of selling fruits and “veges” online, or change their focus to something else and do that.

Global Essence – I’m not quite sure what this site is supposed to be all about. It looks like some sort of music related information website. Their footer says “Copyright 2008 Globalessence.net All rights reserved” so we know the last time anyone put some effort into this site was way back in 2008.

Communication.go.ke – another week, another site by the Government of Kenya down. Sigh. We do not know how long this one’s been down, but its pretty clear no one is interested in seeing it get back up. Sigh.

communication.go.ke website down

communication.go.ke down, and out (click for larger view)

Rumours
Word on the street is that a bunch of Kenyan have just received a considerable amount of funding to build a high class Kenyan porno website. The website is to focus on amateur pornography (where you are encouraged to upload your own clips of the stuff). While I think that this website has a good chance to become wildly successful, I wonder if it is right to go ahead and do it. What do you think? Do you know of any other similar Kenyan websites?

Filed Under: Cool Sites

Sometimes Price Does Not Matter

November 12, 2010 by 2 Comments

I got a nice email from Ramit Sethi today:

Hey, Kelvin

A few days ago, I threw a party in my NYC apartment. I went to the nearby liquor to buy some drinks, and when I got to the vodka area, I started trying to decide which brand to get.

Absolut? Ketel One? Grey Goose? Vladimir?

Interestingly, I know all the research about taste-testing for drinks. When you subject people to a double-blind test, they essentially cannot tell the difference between vodkas, wines, or soft drinks. In fact, I wrote about this extensively in my book, where I cited a famous wine study where the world’s top experts could not even tell the difference between white wine and red wine when the drinks were disguised.

So there I was, standing at the counter deciding which vodka to buy, steeped in research, knowing full well that my friends wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in taste.

Yet I still bought one of the most expensive bottles.

Why?

This will be useful to you when you sell your services to earn more money on the side.

The bottles ranged from about $10 to $40/bottle. In my budget, $30 makes no difference to me. Yet I was throwing a party for friends. I was a little nervous to show off my new apartment. I was in a rush. All of these things add up.

What went through my head — as someone who has extensively studied the research behind marketing and decision-making?

“Yeah…I know all the research…but I have a nice apartment, and what if my friends think I skimped on the drinks? It’s only $30…I might as well get the good stuff….damn, I’m running late…this lady has been watching me stand here for 9 minutes and probably thinks I’m a weirdo…I should just get this one and go.”

Notice what’s going on?

I’m not stupid. I know that “premium” vodkas cost more, with essentially no difference in product, and the owners take the extra money as pure profit. I knew all of this logically….yet it didn’t matter.

No matter how educated or smart you are, you are STILL subject to the same influences as anyone else. I’m influenced by social approval…and scarcity…and price.

And so are the people you’re trying to sell your services to.

If you like that, you may want to join Ramit’s Earn1K course.

Does price always matter to you?

Filed Under: Make Money, Small Business

Getting Free Advertising Online

November 11, 2010 by 1 Comment

You. You are in business for yourself, hopefully in a field you know a little something about. And while you know something about it, chances are a lot of others don’t. That means you have something to share. And there’s your ticket to a little free advertising on the internet.

Blogging
First off, if you do not have a blog for your business, start one now. A little thing worth noting: Google LOVES blogs. They index blogs and their spiders are all over blogs. So, by starting a blog and writing effective and helpful content which targets your target market, you will get into the search engines. Do so effectively and often and you will be established as an authority in your field.

Blogging is a very effective means of free advertising for your business, but let’s take it the next level.

Article Hubs
Article hubs are sites which collect content written by a large collection of authors into one site. What makes a hub different is that the authors put their content up there for the specific purpose of being republished. An example of this is Ezine Articles. There a LOT of them out there.

Now, a TRULY lazy blogger would go to a site like this, grab some content for free, and republish it on their own blogs. That’s a way to go, but the real benefit comes in being on the author side of the equation. If you are running a blog site (and you should be), you are obviously writing some content. You are making the content public anyway. Why not put some of that stuff out onto the article hubs and allow other sites to republish it? One of the conditions of doing so is that the person republishing your article has to include your short bio and a link to you with the article. YOU write this bio and you can link it using your own keywords. When they republish your article, you get credit for it and, more importantly, a link to your website.

That’s free advertising, guys. Your articles can go viral, just like a video on Youtube.

It Takes Writing
Yes, this method of online promotion takes writing. I know we have some lazy website owners on this site, but all owners (lazy or not) would like to get free publicity on the internet. So, it’ll take some writing.

Happy marketing!

Filed Under: Internet Culture, Small Business

Very Cool: Safaricom Annual Report 2010

November 10, 2010 by Leave a Comment

The Safaricom annual report for 2010 is available online. Why are we writing about it on Like Chapaa, you ask? We dislike like Safaricom just as much as the next guy, but we have to give credit where it is due.

Before any further talk, have a look at the Safaricom Annual Report 2010.

I’ve personally never even seen company reports that look so good. Let alone a Kenyan company. Safaricom, you did well, very well. Kudos! More of the same innovation, creativity and ingenuity, please.

Are you a Safaricom shareholder? Aren’t you proud!

PS: Thanks to SkunkWorks for pointing this out.

Update: It appears that this is nothing new, Zain had one just like it: Zain Annual Report.

Filed Under: Cool Sites

Blue Ocean Strategy (Free Book Inside)

November 10, 2010 by 16 Comments

Blue Ocean Strategy is an outstanding book. It clearly outlines the steps to developing new market space and breaking out of the trap of competing head to head with competition. Red oceans are defined as bloody battlegrounds where companies compete against each other in a head to head fashion. Blue oceans are new market space conceived by forward thinking managers to de-commoditize their businesses. Examples of businesses that have implemented this strategy are such as Curves, Southwest Airlines, Cirque du Soleil, Yellowtail Wine, Bloomberg, and even the New York City Police Department.

Tools such as the “strategy canvas”, the “four actions” and the “blue ocean idea index” are provided to assist the reader in visualizing how to create a blue ocean in their industry.

The authors also provide relevant direction on how to successfully integrate a blue ocean strategy into any company by selling it into the organization correctly. Finally, the very useful appendix provides detailed examples in history of continual blue ocean creation over decades. Examples given are the automotive, computer and theater industries.

I would highly recommend this book to any business person or business student. You can purchase the book here.

You know what? We’re giving away free copies of this book to anyone who leaves a comment below. You don’t have to say anything specific, just join the conversation. Good luck!

Filed Under: Tips Hacking and Reviews Tagged With: