On Internet Business

Getting and keeping the best staff the ‘1-800-got-junk’ way

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Leadership

Since listening to Cameron Herold in March 2009, I have been interested in the practises of 1-800-got-junk – a company that, under Herold’s leadership, grew to over $106 million. One of their key successes is in recruiting and retaining the best possible staff.

How do they make themselves a great employer?

• The ability to have fun – Herold believes that people who are enjoying themselves collaborate better, communicate more and achieve more. He seeks out those who don’t take themselves too seriously and can ‘hang loose’ because he believes rigidity is damaging to business growth. By making fun part of the work day, Herold encourages his staff to enjoy life and work and to feel they are prioritised by their organisation, not just cogs in a machine.

How do they recruit the right staff?

• Cultural fit – fit first, skills second is Herold’s law – when he’s hired somebody with excellent skills, but whose outlook doesn’t match the views and vision that prevail in his organisation, it’s always gone wrong. Having staff whose focus and beliefs are congruent with the focus and beliefs of the organisation as a whole offers stability and the chance to move forward as one.
• A sunny outlook – optimism and a positive nature are vital to Herold’s view of the organisational ethos. Pessimism creates a negative business culture that is threatened by challenges and opposed to change and that means that stagnation, rather than growth, becomes the desired business model.
• A shared vision – Herold offers a two page ‘picture’ of his own organisation and sees if it inspires the potential recruit – if they get excited about the way he wants to do business and if their own vision for their future makes him feel excited to recruit them, then it’s a match.

How do they maintain growth?

• A fire within – when his staff want to help achieve his BHAG (big hairy audacious goal) for the business, and when they are motivated by the BHAG, not the short term rewards of bonuses or incentives, then growth follows naturally and organically.
• Love of goals – all his staff post their top three weekly and monthly goals above their desks, and this means that the whole organisation ‘trickles up’ to overall success – Herold believes that some people naturally set goals for themselves and those are the people who are more likely to achieve them, so goal setting is one of the key personality traits he’s looking for at interview.
• Tenacity – the ability to manage constant change is what Herold defines as tenacity; it’s not time-serving but the natural response of some individuals to work through challenges rather than giving in to them and he says he sees it in his key employees, time after time, challenge after challenge.

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Entrepreneurs’ Organization Forum meetings

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

In May I will be taking over the presidency of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization in the UK. Stepping into this role is exciting and has caused me to reflect on the benefits that entrepreneurs obtain from working with EO, notably the peer-to-peer support and expertise of Forum.

What is Forum?

It’s a confidential peer support system that allows individual entrepreneurs both to present challenges and issues that confront them to the group, and to comment on the challenges and issues being face by others, by sharing relevant personal experiences.

What makes it different to a normal discussion?

First, there’s a one day training programme to help entrepreneurs learn to talk about taboo subjects ranging from marital strife to annual profit. This training gives entrepreneurs a chance to explore what good communication is, how a safe environment for sharing sensitive information works, and what their responsibilities are for maintaining integrity and confidentiality.

Then the three key principles come into play at each meeting. They are confidentiality, personal responsibility, and gestalt language protocol. This means:

1. Everything said in forum is ultra-private.
2. That members are reminded that they only get out what they put in – so not only do they have to assist others by sharing their experience where they can, but they also have the personal responsibility of taking back any lessons they learn from the experience of others and putting those lessons into practice.
3. That giving advice is forbidden – only sharing experience is allowed. This is crucial to the development of entrepreneurs and their businesses because it gives priority to personal insight rather than to offering advice – it makes the recipient of the experience wholly responsible for turning it into action, and it means they have nobody to blame for ‘bad advice’ if it doesn’t work out as they anticipated it would.

Each of the monthly sessions focuses on an issue presented by one member, which he or she would like the others to help him or her resolve. After a presentation of the issue, which can last up to twenty minutes, those around the table with the presenter are given three minutes each to ask questions that clarify the problem and illuminate the wider context within which the problem, and the entrepreneur, operate. This, in itself, helps the presenter learn about the problem they’ve identified and whether they have framed it correctly. Then discussion is based entirely on the personal experiences those around the table have had with that issue.

What are the benefits of Forum participation?

• Personal responsibility is enhanced, while new ideas are made available in a safe environment for sharing sensitive information
• The ability to learn from the experiences of others without having to follow any kind of prescriptive course
• Many Forum members feel that by sharing their own experiences they help others avoid or transcend problem issues, so they are ‘giving back’ to the entrepreneur community.

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What you dont want to see when buying insurance from AXA online.

Posted by Michael under Uncategorized

It was all going so well. Simple, easy quick and then press the buy button and voila !

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EU and retail sales – online up, store-based down, problems ahead

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Online Retail

It’s predicted that online retail business in Europe could increase by 20% in 2010 – massively exceeding store-based trade. Key market increases are expected in France, Poland and Spain as they develop the online retail habit that has already bitten the UK, Germany and Italy. Research conducted by the Centre for Retail Research for price-comparison website Kelkoo predicts that the euro-based online shopping market could reach 172 billion euros in 2010 – which would outstrip the forecast for USA online retail growth of just 10%. By contrast, the predicted growth for shop-based European retailing is just 1.4 %.

The UK will see the lowest rate of growth, just 12.4%, although overall it is the largest European market, being worth around 50 billion euros. It’s a staggering rate of growth in comparison to retail – for example, German retail sales dropped by nearly 2% last year.

And while online retail booms, the euro economy as a whole is worrying everybody – the PIGS: Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain all have national credit rating under extreme pressure in the euro-zone – and while the Irish government has pushed through difficult budgets to ensure economy stability returns, Greece in particular seems unable to commit to the same degree of rigour. As the governments in Athens, Lisbon and Madrid face pressure from other euro-zone nations that really don’t want to be bailing out their neighbours, tiny Latvia which chose to peg its own currency to the euro-standard is worst off of all – it’s lost a quarter of its economy since the worldwide recession started, and retail sales have dropped by nearly a third.

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Googles 9 principles of Innovation

Posted by Michael under SEO Conferences and Exhibitions

It is impossible to know what the future holds. It can’t be predicted. There is radical uncertainty.

During the two hour discussion on Tuesday between a group of EO members and Google’s Robert Swerling  I learnt what principles Google uses to stays ahead of the competition ?

1. Innovation, not instant perfection.

Launch and improve. Never come out of Beta. I remember Tom Peters referring to this as “Ready, Fire, Aim.” Some programmers like to code for months or even years and hope they will have built the perfect product. That’s castle building. Companies work this way, too.  The problem with this approach is that if the users don’t like the product all the time spent on the product has been wasted. If the idea doesn’t work it is better to find out sooner rather than later.  
‘The Googly thing is to launch it early on and then iterate, learning what the market wants–and making it great.’ The beauty of experimenting in this way is that you never get too far from what the market wants. The market pulls you back.”

2. Ideas come from everywhere

At google they accept ideas come from anywhere external or internal. Since the meeting I have read, they have an internal list where people post new ideas and everyone can see them. It’s like a voting pool where you can say how good or bad you think an idea is. Those comments lead to new ideas.”

3. A license to pursue your dreams.

“Google is engineering company” and to retain the best engineers, it lets them pursue their dreams.  An engineer’s time is split 70% /20%10% between main, adjacent and completely different projects. Engineers spend 20% of their time working on whatever they want, and Google trust them to build interesting things.

4. Morph projects, dont kill them.

Any project that is good enough to make it to Labs probably has a kernel of something interesting in it, even if the market doesn’t respond to it straight away, there maybe a way of commercialising it. If users don’t take to the product morph it into something that the market needs.”

5. Share as much information as you can.

Everyone can see what everyone else is working on. Collaborate and over communicate! Google has sophisticated systems including their intranet that shares information across the company, employees have insight into what’s happening with the business and what’s important. To reduce duplication every Monday, all the employees write an email that has five to seven bullet points on what they did the previous week. These are then collated into a giant Web page which is indexed.

6. Users, Users,Users.

Google believes by focusing on the users the money will eventually follow. In a virtual business, if you’re successful, you’ll be working on something that is necessary. Subscribers or advertisers will eventually pay for it.

7. Data is apolitical.

Some companies think of design as an art form. Google treat it as a science. It all comes down to data. Run a test and whichever design does best is chosen. Google have an academic environment where data is king.

8. Creativity loves contraint.

People think of creativity as this sort of unbridled thing, but engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of that little box: ‘We know you said it was impossible, but we’re going to do this and that to get us there.’”

9. You’re brilliant, were hiring.

Cultural fit is a key part of google success. Googlers want to work on big problems that matter, wanting to do great things for the world, believing that we they build a successful business without compromising on standards and values. Google is extremely focussed on ensuring that only the smartest and most committed people make the cut and become employees. They use rigorous recruitment methods to ensure only those who can thrive in Googles environment make the cut.

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“They came, they puked, they left !” what I learnt from Avinash

Posted by Michael under SEO Conferences and Exhibitions

“They came, they puked, they left !” what I learnt from Avinash

Most of Tuesday was taken up listening to people from Google. My morning was taken up by Avinash Kaushik, an analytics evangelist at Google and the most enthusiastic person I have ever heard speak about statistics.

What did I learn:  

1.Never Forget the Long Tail

Rather than focuses on the top 10,20 or 50 keywords that bring sales, manage the “long tale” that generate sales.

2.Attribution and does it matter

How do you attribute value to the all the various channels or parties (affiliate, PPC, organic search, banner ad) that have contributed to a sale?

An important point to note is that if the normal cycle from first customer visit to purchase is short ie (1 day) the attribution issue doesn’t really exist and the sale should be attributed on a last click basis. If the time taken by a customer to go from enquiry to purchase is much longer then attribution is more important.

There are numerous models that are being suggested. Avinash’s preference was “nuclear decay”. This attributes greater value to the clicks closest to the date of purchase.

3.Do the basics right

Avinash showed how often internet retailers frustrate rather than fulfil the demands of consumers. Simple searches for “wireless printers went” led to pages and sites that didn’t offer or display “wireless printers”.

Even searches for “underwear UK” , showed a similar pattern. If a consumer is looking for underpants and a retailer is paying for an advert, it makes sense to take them to a landing page offering underpants. But even leading retailers like M&S don’t do it. You want underpants, they take you to their home page.

4.Every business is unique.

Rather than assuming what works for other companies will work for you or that universal business truths always hold true, be “thoughtful, sceptical and objective”. In short test what you believe and prove yourself right or wrong.

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Entrepreneurs’ Organization Benefits

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources

Membership of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization brings a wide range of benefits from local chapter support for your business through to healthcare and counselling through a partnership with the Healthnetwork Foundation, and customised learning programmes from some of the world’s top business schools.

However, one of the less used, but highly valuable EO benefits is the Regus Gold card – it allows Entrepreneurs’ Organization members to use purpose-built business lounges right across the globe.

Access to a business-focused workspace that’s conveniently located is vital when you’re working away from home – it gives you a professional and efficient hub from which to operate, and the support of proper systems and facilities that make it almost as if you were still at your desk or in your boardroom in your own office.

I recently spent the afternoon working from Regus Berkeley Square and it was a fantastic experience. Not only does the Berkeley Square Regus offer a superb Mayfair location, it provided me with a comfortable seat, plenty of power sockets, complimentary tea, coffee and water and friendly professional service, but also purpose built space with good light.

EO members can sign up here – and obtain access to specially designed lounges in: Berkeley Square, Wood Street, London Bridge, Monument and St James’s in London; Victoria, Brindley Place, Fort Dunlop and Blythe Valley, Birmingham; Manchester Business Park and Manchester Peter House; Sunderland; Gateshead; Leeds; Reading; and Portsmouth.

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Review – the value of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to business

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Online Retail

Mechanical Turk is a service provided by Amazon, better known for book sales, that allows individuals to complete simple tasks for small payments, or businesses (called requesters) to post low grade work which is then completed swiftly by a range of people.

It’s a dual user website, like elance, where businesses post HITs (Human Intelligence Tasks) and individuals apply to complete them. The difference between elance and Mechanical Turk lies in three areas:

1. The payment to service providers
2. The relationship between the requester and the HIT completer
3. The nature of the tasks.

First, the payments – each HIT has a fee, often a really tiny amount, and the business may pay sixty individuals a few cents, rather than one individual the whole amount as they would with elance.

Second, there is no interrelationship between a requester seeking to have HITs completed and the people undertaking them. The whole process is mediated by the Amazon service so you don’t have any real sense of who’s doing your work or why.

Third, the tasks are short-term, repetitive and requiring lower skill levels than elance. If you want several dozen people to test the registration system on a new website, Mechanical Turk is your baby, but if you want detailed feedback on their experiences of the registration process, it’s not.

You can limit the geographic location of the folk who complete your HIT, so for example you can ask only UK workers to review your UK road sign quiz, or only German speakers to read your new German-language website.

Payments are managed by Amazon Mechanical Turk which takes a 10% fee over and above what the requester is going to pay the HIT completers –if a HIT pays $0.20, Amazon Mechanical Turk collects $0.02. The minimum commission charged is $0.005 per HIT.

And that’s one of the biggest problems – you can use the Mechanical Turk, if you’re not a USA based business, but it’s complicated, or as Amazon put it: Requesters must provide a U.S. ACH-enabled bank account and a U.S. billing address in order to submit a request for tasks to be completed through the Amazon Mechanical Turk web site. If a Requester is not a legal entity, but is submitting tasks to Amazon Mechanical Turk as an individual, he or she would also need to provide a U.S. driver’s license number. So if you have an American arm to your business, Turk may be valuable to you, but it’s not truly international for requesters as it is for HIT completers.

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How businesses should cope with bad news – not like Toyota

Posted by Michael under Leadership

Damage to Toyota’s image is no longer growing by the day – it’s multiplying by the hour. The recall of the latest model Prius hybrid – the car that’s been an icon of Toyota’s engineering and green ambitions – is hammering the nails into a public relations coffin for the Japanese manufacturer.

The global recall has now reached more than eight million vehicles, but the cost of solving the problem technically may be minor, compared to the cost of putting right the debacle of lost public confidence.

Toyota got three things terminally wrong:

1. It failed to explain what it was doing to fix the problem
2. It didn’t apologise appropriately or fast enough

And, a particularly Japanese PR failure this one …

3. It wasn’t humble enough to its customers.

Point 1 – Not only did Toyota fail to recognise and respond to the problem with its cars, it tried to blame a supplier and even suggested that the drivers of the vehicles might be ‘in error’ – it’s a cardinal failure: the customer may not always be right, but even if they are wrong, you don’t tell them so. And you certainly don’t say the problem is in their heads or their ability to use your products, because all you’re doing is telling them that they shouldn’t buy from you in future

Point 2 – the company’s crisis management was invisible. When the company CEO finally appeared on TV, it wasn’t at a press conference – he was pinned in a corner at the Davos summit and forced to comment, briefly, on the issue, before he drove away – in a German manufactured car! There was a hastily called news conference last week, but the spokesman for Toyota wasn’t a board member and seemed unconvincing in his comments. When things go wrong, the public expects to see leadership from the top.

Point 3 – when a Japanese person makes a mistake, they bow low in apology. During the scheduled conference the Toyota spokesman did not bow and address the audience with an apology – while non-Japanese may have failed to recognise the insult, the Japanese press did, and pointed out that Toyota had ‘insulted’ its customers. When a company makes a mistake, it needs to apologise with honesty, speed and conviction.

That insult, on top of the faulty information supplied in trickles from the company itself, might have seemed like the worst that could happen.

Until today – when a senior American lawyer went on air to tell Toyota owners that if they drive their cars, now they have been ‘given notice of a problem’, they could be classed as having taken responsibility for any accident that results from vehicle faults. In other words, American people now believe that if they get into their Toyota car, their insurance has been invalidated. Already car hire companies have reported that they are running out of rental vehicles. The only cars they still have in their lots … are Toyota models.

And even that isn’t the lowest of the low for the Japanese manufacturer. One knock-on effect that the company has no control over is that the price of second-hand Toyota cars has begun to drop and there’s evidence of a rush in the UK to get Toyotas into the scrappage scheme, perhaps so their current owners can buy something they consider more trustworthy.

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UK entrepreneurs confident about the future

Posted by Michael under Entrepreneur Resources, Leadership

Image courtesy of James Cridland

Despite the challenging tax and regulatory environment, entrepreneurs expect this year to be good for business, with many expecting both profitability and revenue to rise.

A recent roundtable, involving some of the UK’s leading entrepreneurs, cast light on a survey conducted by Investec Specialist Private Bank and the Entrepreneurs’ Organization. The roundtable, organised by realbusiness a leading resource for entrepreneurs and small businesses, cast light on the responses of the UK’s entrepreneurs to the current business climate.

While the survey revealed that almost 90% of entrepreneurs expect to increase business revenues this year, there are still areas where the UK does not support its entrepreneurs as well as they might hope.

The survey showed that 83% of entrepreneurs are assuming that the UK economy will not get worse over the coming 12 months while 63% believe it will actually improve.

More impressively, 89% think their business revenues will increase, compared to the 4% who predict a revenue drop.

Peter Selkirk, Chief Executive of Egbert H Taylor and Company, Britain’s largest manufacturer of commercial waste and recycling containers pointed out that, ‘The survey tells you as much about Britain’s entrepreneurs as anything else’ While Bill Laio, co-founder of social network Xing.com and CEO of Finaxis AG said that, ‘The UK could gain from a better awareness of the benefits that entrepreneurs bring. Entrepreneurialism is good for everyone.’

It’s true that adverse economic conditions often bring entrepreneurship to the fore, leading to the establishment of new businesses and the exploration of new ways of doing business. 72% of those responding to the survey said that the current state of the economy could bring them new opportunities.

However, the downside is that the tax and administrative regimes in the UK are seen as a brake, limiting innovation and business grown as far as entrepreneurs are concerned. Less than half of those surveyed 46% were investing in innovation and 10% were actively considering relocation their business operations off-shore.

I expressed the view that there was an entrepreneurship risk for the UK, ‘If measures aren’t taken to encourage people to stay, there are so many other places which are more attractive. Technology has made it so much easier to run a business from anywhere in the world.’ Bill Liao agreed, saying ‘punitive tax policies and short-term thinking are hurting the UK’.

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