Be Different or be dead

April 27, 2020

What surprising legacy will COVID will leave when it’s finally over?

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What surprising legacy will COVID will leave when it’s finally over?

Every major event in the world plans to leave a sustaining legacy long after it concludes.

The 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver left the Sea-to-Sky highway from Vancouver to Whistler along with many other game’s venues which stand ten years later and will likely be a reminder decades from now of the one-in-a-lifetime experience some of us witnessed.

And Steve Jobs gave us the iPhone.

COVID-19 didn’t intend to leave a legacy, but the deadly virus will.

Here are six remnants of COVID that I believe (hope) will influence us as we move forward and will be indelibly etched in our society forever.

1. The frontline

COVID demands that either the frontline get the recognition it deserves or the human species better be prepared to encounter the armageddon.
In this crisis, frontline workers are finally getting the respect and adulation they rightly deserve.
I have been advocating the value the frontline contributes to organizations for decades, that they are the face of any enterprise and that they carry their brand at every customer contact moment.

Well, thanks to COVID, the world now recognizes the importance of frontline workers, but not to individual organizations, but to humanity.
Healthcare workers, truckers, first responders, food preparers and deliverers and elderly care home support staff have all been thrown into the spotlight because of the service they provide to others in the COVID crisis.

They are now given the gratitude they have earned for the professions they have. Without frontline workers doing their job selfishly, leaders of organizations and of countries simply can’t succeed. And with their undying unselfish efforts, either will COVID.

2. Technology

COVID has forever changed how we communicate with one another, and will fuel, I believe, greater use of technology generally.

“Let’s have a ZOOM meeting” is becoming part of our vocabulary just as “Google it” is. And the Boomers are discovering the fascination with FaceTiming or using Skype to see their grandchildren as the only way they can stay in touch.

I’m seeing a greater willingness for people generally to explore and learn new ways of doing day-to-day things with the help of technology; there is a greater motivation to “dip your toe” in new technology because of COVID and I believe it’s a tipping point for technology use, particularly among the older demographic.

In addition, the need to shop online will forever change our consumption habits. People who never shopped online now do, and those that did it before are now doing more of it.

Bricks and Mortar operating businesses under pressure from online buying before will be even under more pressure post-COVID. The pressure to meet online needs of people will never relent; because of COVID it will be the norm of customer behaviour.

3. Personal space

COVID demands that we NOT invade the personal space of others; that we refrain from contact closer than 2 meters or 6 feet in order to prevent the transmission of the virus. I believe that this fingerprint of the disease will in the future take on a deterministic role in how certain functions are performed.

Physical spacing will drive workplace layout and design and will also influence how herd demand in the airline and entertainment businesses for example will be met. Pressure will be applied to the economics of product and service topologies, but will force solutions that best balance the needs of safely separating people and delivering acceptable profit margins.

4. Innovation and creativity

COVID stimulated innovation and creativity, as organizations had to figure out how to adapt to the new rules governing social distancing; it wasn’t a theoretical exercise on how to enhance innovation in their business, it was a matter of survival. And many didn’t make it.

Small businesses shifted from an in-house dining model to a takeout one; larger companies, in the face of reduced demand for their normal products and services, shifted their resources to produce the tools for fighting the virus such as masks and ventilators.

5. Customer service

The COVID world reemphasized the critical importance of caring for others, and this has profound implications for getting back to business as unusual. My reader knows how passionate I am about serving leadership and customer service based on taking care of others. Well, COVID has brought the importance of these attributes in people out into full display.

Under the banner of “we are all in this together” and “show kindness to your fellow humans”, the need to subordinate one’s own needs to the needs of others assumes a top priority.
I hope this attitude carries forward as a critical COVID learning. I have been critical of organizations that are more in it for their shareholders and care less about their customers and employees.

Customer respect — as evidenced by their dumb rules and policies — has waned over the years and perhaps now we can get back to the basics of serving customers and delivering what they desire.

6. The environment

Efforts to contain COVID by lockdown and isolation have resulted in a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions and other pollutants that contaminate the environment.

After many weeks of these measures, parts of the world are able to literally “see” the results of cleaner air.

The Himalayas, for example, after 30 years can finally be seen from the Punjab region of India due to the significant reduction of air pollution.
This is likely to be a stimulus for more climate change action and support from the population generally where people can actually feel what it’s like to have a more contaminant-free environment.

Every legacy is created by something truly remarkable, be it in the form of a great persona or an event with a powerful impact that changes the future course dramatically.

COVID is such an event. It has the potential to leave a long lasting positive affect on all of us.

I hope we remember what it gave us and use it productively.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 4.27.20 at 04:55 am by Roy Osing
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April 25, 2020

3 simple steps to get the funding you need for your bold startup idea

3 simple steps to get the funding you need for your bold startup idea.

If you don’t have interested investors, your new idea will quickly die. There are some specific ways to get your small business funded and mistakes you need to avoid.

These three steps will get you the money you need to get your winning idea off the ground and make it a going concern.

Step #1. Understand the stages of startup fundraising

There are several stages of fundraising that should be understood.

The first one is seed capital.
It represents the sum of money you have raised before going to the investment community. Simply saying, it’s a sum of your personal money you’re ready to spend on a startup.
‘Series A’ is funding you receive from your initial investors to launch your business; ‘Series B’ financing is normally required to show that your startup is able to be cash flow positive and ‘Series C’level financing is needed to underwrite future growth in your business.

Step #2. Choose the right fundraising strategy

There are various types of investors. Additionally, it’s possible to cooperate with different investors types during startup development.

▪️Angel Investors — This category of investors usually stand for one person that wants to invest in your startup. It’s common to cooperate with them during seed capital or Series A. You can find the investors at the conferences related to your industry.

It’s also possible to find Angels online using such services as Angellist and Gust. They all work pretty much in the same manner, all trying to find promising project ideas and willing to help them start.

▪️Venture Capital — This type of investor normally includes enterprises or large companies that provide promising startups with money. These investors tend to be very demanding. To get investments from them, you need to assure them that there is little or no risk.

The only way to secure a Venture Capital investment is through multiple meetings with the companies’ representatives. The process can be extremely time consuming and arduous. to get their support and finances.
If you are unsuccessful in attracting a VC during the launch phase of your business, you may attract them after launch when they see you can be profitable.

▪️Business Incubators. These are organizations that help startups grow. For example, they offer seed capital for promising ideas. They also serve as mentors to newly minted CEO’s organizations by providing educational workshops and lectures as well as having successful business people engage with startup leaders.

Business Incubators exist all over the world, Y Combinator, for example, has worked with such popular startups as Airbnb, Dropbox, and others.

▪️Crowdfunding. These platforms collect donations from people. This way is perfect if your idea is connected to the charity. GoFundMe and KickStarter are the most popular platforms for crowdfunding. Also, it’s possible to use crowdfunding if you are ready to give some bonuses to your investors.

▪️Initial Coin Offering. This type is new for the investment field. An Initial Coin Offering (ICO) is the cryptocurrency industry’s equivalent to an Initial Public Offering (IPO). ICOs act as a way to raise funds, where a company looking to raise money to create a new coin, app, or service launches an ICO.

Step #3. Pitch your startup

To get investments, you need to describe your project. It’s required to persuade investors that there is minimum risk. To achieve this result, you need to prepare. There are many ways to express your new idea; these are two of them.

▪️Prototype — In the case of a software development solution you could present a workable prototype, allowing potential investors to see the main project idea and the detailed functionality through an MPV version of the app.
You could also present the design of your software solution which should be detailed enough to show that it is different than anything else they’ve seen before.

▪️Pitch deck — The Pitch Deck is basically the physical presentation of your startup idea. This presentation should contain data about expected revenue, marketing strategy, and more. There are many tools you can use to make a presentation including basic PowerPoint and Google Slides and more professional ones such as Figma.

Mistakes to avoid during startup fundraising

There are several reasons why investors reject certain investment opportunities.

▪️Obscure niche — your target market isn’t clearly defined. You need to define your intended niche and be able to show how your new idea meets customer needs better than anyone else competing in the same space.

▪️Copied idea — it’s obvious to the investor that you have copied someone else’s idea — and it’s one of the most common reasons why investors don’t provide funding. In order to attract an investor’s attention, your idea must not only be fresh in terms of solving an important problem in your niche, it also has to be unique and stand out from your competition.

▪️Inflexibility — you are unwilling to modify your idea in the face of valid feedback. Adhering to your original idea in the face of new input and valid criticism could take you out of the funding game.
Many successful startups have adopted a modified concept along the road to secure funding based on what they’ve learned from talking to potential customers and by observing the actions of potential competitors.

▪️Bad developers — your developers don’t deliver what they promised. Even if the project idea is excellent, bad developers can change the situation. For example, freelancers tend to not meet deadlines.
One of the most popular options is to outsource web development activities in an effort to get more reliable delivery of results, affordable prices and higher quality. Clutch is useful to study the reviews of various outsourcers.

▪️One founder — you have only one investor, and that is you! Startups with only one founder investor tend to be more risky for investors who generally prefer to see a number of people who have put up their money to support your idea. There’s comfort in crowd support so try and assemble an investor group before looking for additional financing.

Securing the funding you need for your startup can be time-consuming and complicated, and there are a number of pitfalls to avoid. But if you “do your work” as discussed here, your chances of success will improve significantly.

— Vitaly Kuprenko  is a writer for Cleveroad. It’s a web and mobile app development company with headquarters in Ukraine. He enjoys writing about technology and digital marketing.

• Posted 4.25.20 at 04:11 am by Roy Osing
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April 20, 2020

Why being second is absolutely the wrong position to have

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Why being second is absolutely the wrong position to have.

Seriously, think about it.

When you’re second, you’re staring at a backside; I’ve never found it a pleasant view particularly when you consider what the unobstructed view looks like.
Without the backside staring you in the face you’re looking at wide open spaces, a landscape void of other humans; nothing but untampered dimensionless opportunity.

The backside placed before you is not only an obstruction, it’s the tissue that stands between you and your maximum potential.

I believe we should be encouraged to avoid the backside view, to go for the position that has an expansive view with no backsides in sight.

But the narrative out there today is exactly the opposite: “It’s not winning that’s important, it’s playing the game.” and “I don’t care if little Roy wins the game as long as he is having fun.” is the normal commentary that pervades the conversation when it comes to the notion of winning.

Some schools on sports day don’t want to hand out winning ribbons because it highlights the winners and says nothing about participation. “Everybody should get a ribbon” essentially communicates that you should be rewarded for just showing up.
What a shock when kids in these schools grow up and have to fight for a career among hungry competitors.

And some schools don’t hand out letter grades; rather they introduce a system that recognizes effort and not the result. So, if you put in a ton of effort you might get an “exceeding” rating; if you didn’t try that hard you may get an “improvement needed” one.
Trying is important but the ultimate measure of how effective one is at trying are the results that are delivered.

The fact is, that in the real adult world, where you stand in relation to others matters; it separates you from the other participants.
“I achieved a first class mark in economics” is more important to your life than “I tried hard and enjoyed the subject content.” Like it or not, that’s the way it is.

A job candidate would last about 30 seconds in front of me after uttering such nonsense. What I want to know is what they achieved, scholastically and organizationally not that they “tried real hard”.

Anytime I have been sucked into believing that coming second was ok it was rationalization behaviour at best

It was an attempt to make myself believe that looking at someone’s backside was acceptable.

The problem is that when I find myself accepting a posterior perspective there are some seriously destructive forces at play that can cause personal damage.

Motivation — My motivation to drive forward stops.

Why should I push myself to try and show my backside to the leader of “the race”? And as a result of this logic, I take my foot off the gas because I don’t believe there will be any consequences.

But there ARE consequences. I may not overtake the backside I’m staring at but at least I’m motivated to try which is completely different than accepting the inevitability of being second or third or fourth and being ok with it.

Survival and success in the world requires highly motivated individuals who will do whatever it takes to avoid a backside view.

Creativity — My creativity takes a rest.

Highly motivated people tap into their creative spirit naturally as their heart beats. If I’m driven to see the backside in my rear view mirror, I MUST solve the problem I’m looking at. I MUST look for an opportunity to get by it.

But if I’m ok with second position, I stop looking for a solution; I don’t need to be creative in the moment and I stop my creative juices from flowing.

Success demands creativity; the backside view stultifies it.

Competition — My competitors have an advantage.

Hungry competitors are always looking for an edge, and if they see that I’m complacent and have no motivation to seek the number one position they will gladly step in and achieve it themselves.
It’s a zero sum game to them and it’s the easiest way for them to gain an advantage: whatever I give up, they take. Simple.

So while I suffer this ideological disease, they pump up the volume to put yet another backside in my forward view. Winners NEVER let their competition have an advantage because they pay for it in the long run.

A second best attitude let’s them in when I should be shutting them out.

Rationalization — I’m fooling myself.

I believe I’ve accomplished something when I haven’t, even though people around me say “Well done!” “Good job!”.
A false sense of accomplishment is what it is when I see a backside and feel pleased with my performance. I guess it’s better than seeing 2 backsides buts never as good as seeing none at all. None = brilliant and that’s THE target I’m after.

The reality is that a backside view means I’m not going to grab the brass ring.
The only salvation from a backside view is if I learn something from the experience and never see a backside again.

So if my backside learnings catapult me into an open field in my next competition then second works as an interim step to my final goal.

Teaching — I’m failing my job as a role model to others I care about.

I see myself as a teacher, and being ok with a backside view contaminates my perspective which in turn is manifested in the lessons I teach.
What I want to help people with is how to win, how to be remarkable and how to transform their reality into amazing things.

How can I do that when I am happy with seeing back pockets? I don’t think I can.

So for better or for worse I need to aspire to an open field at my feet if I am to be able to help my closest people be the best they can be.

Don’t get sucked in to the playing the game is what’s really important narrative. It’s not the real world and it robs you of the very essentials it takes to achieve rewards in your life and your career.

Don’t look at the backside.

Pass it by…

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 4.20.20 at 05:12 am by Roy Osing
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April 18, 2020

How to use the principles of influence in online marketing

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In 1984, psychologist Robert Cialdini wrote a groundbreaking book called Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.

It was based on years of studying the sales strategies used in car dealerships, telemarketing firms and fund-raising organizations to identify six key principles that influenced people to make buying decisions.
His work has helped many business over many decades, and the same principles also apply to online businesses.

Let’s take a look at each of the six principles and give you an idea of how they can be used in online marketing:

1. Scarcity

People are always driven to take action when things are scarce. If you want your offers to really entice them to make a purchase, you need to give them a strong reason. There are many ways to use scarcity in your online marketing.
This can be anything from offering a time sensitive discount, providing exclusive bonuses for the first buyers, to only selling a limited number of products for acting on your offer.

2. Commitment

People are more inclined to take action once they’ve committed to a previous action. The idea here is to get people to act on small commitments and lead them forward with bigger ones throughout the process. You can think of it as an ascending ladder.
A great way to use this principle in online marketing is to start with lead generation. Give new subscribers a valuable gift for signing up to your email list. You can then follow up with a low cost offer and follow that up later with a higher priced offer.

3. Consensus and social proof

It’s human nature to look to others for proof. People want to follow the crowd because they want to belong and make the right decisions. Social proof is a form of consensus where things like customer testimonials can help convince prospects that your product or service has great value.

A great way to use this in online marketing is to use case studies and personal video testimonials on your sales pages and content. In the eCommerce industry, reviews are one of the most powerful forms of social proof. If you want to go for consensus, you can focus on building a community and create stories involving your customers.

4. Reciprocity

When we are given something of value, it’s normal to return the favor. This principle of reciprocity is a simple buy powerful way to get prospects and customers to take action. A great way to use reciprocity is to offer something that is appealing and relevant to your audience.
This can be anything from free samples, free products, informative content, and free trials. This not only makes people want to return the favor, it gives them a glimpse of the value your business offers.

5. Liking

At the end of the day, people prefer to do business with people they like. This principle is simple but not easy to pull off. How can you get people to like you with online marketing?
You can create a strong personality, tell emotional stories, engage your audience, provide valuable content, and establish clear brand values. The whole process will build a relationship with your audience and also communicate all the ways your business is distinct from the competition.

6. Authority

People want a way to distinguish an average person from an expert. By positioning yourself as an authority, you will be able to do a better job in selling your product or service online.
How do you establish authority? You can mention recommendations from well known figures in your industry, use authority badges (As Seen on TV, Featured on Fox News, Mentioned on the Morning Show, etc.). Other authoritative elements like certifications, degrees, and licenses will also help.

Have you come up with any ideas on how to use these six principles in your online marketing yet? These examples should give you a lot to work off. Make sure you integrate as many of these principles as you can for your next marketing campaign.

— Ted Chong is from Ice Cube Marketing, a digital marketing agency in Singapore that helps local small businesses acquire leads from channels such as Facebook and Google.

• Posted 4.18.20 at 05:07 am by Roy Osing
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