Monday, April 27, 2015
TWO PIECES ARE HAUTE AND PERFECT FOR DAY OR NIGHT
Thursday, April 23, 2015
HOW TO PICK A CO-FOUONDER
Picking a co-founder is your most important decision. It’s more important than your product, market, and investors.
The ideal founding team is two individuals, with a history of working together, of similar age and financial standing, with mutual respect. One is good at building products and the other is good at selling them.
The power of two
Two is the right number — avoid the three-body problem. Think Jobs and Wozniak, Allen and Gates, Ellison and Lane, Hewlett and Packard, Larry and Sergei, Yang and Filo, Omidyar and Skoll.
One founder companies can work, against the odds (hello, Mark Zuckerberg). So can three founder companies (hello, @biz, @ev, and @jack). In three founder companies, the politics can be tough — gang-up votes, jockeying for board seats, etc. — but it’s manageable. Four is an extremely unstable configuration and five is right out. When 4-5 founder companies work, it’s because two founders dominate.
Two founders works because unanimity is possible, there are no founder politics, interests can easily align, and founder stakes are high post-financing.
Someone you have history with
You wouldn’t marry someone you’d just met. Date first. Guess which pair of famous co-founders is in this photo:
Go through something difficult, like a Prisoner’s Dilemma or a Zero-Sum Game. If being ethical was lucrative, everyone would do it!
One builds, one sells
The best builders can prototype and perhaps even build the entire product, end-to-end. The best sellers can sell to customers, partners, investors, and employees.
The seller doesn’t have to be a “salesman” or “business guy”. He can be technical, but he must be able to wield the tools of influence. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs aren’t salesmen, but they are sellers.
Aligned motives required
If one founder wants to build a cool product, another one wants to make money, and yet another wants to be famous, it won’t work.
Pay close attention — true motivations are revealed, not declared.
Criteria: Intelligence, energy, and integrity
It’s not the kid you grew up next to. It’s not the person you like the most. It’s not the hacker most willing to work for free.
It’s someone of incredibly high intelligence, energy, and integrity. You’ll need all three yourself, and a shared history, to evaluate your co-founder.
Don’t settle
If it doesn’t feel right, keep looking. If you’re compromising, keep looking. A company’s DNA is set by the founders, and its culture is an extension of the founders’ personalities.
Pick “nice” guys
Avoid overly rational short-term thinkers. There are bounds to rationality. Partner with someone who is irrationally ethical, or a rational believer that nice guys finish first. Be especially careful with the “sales” guy here.
What you don’t know
Business founders who don’t code use bad proxies for picking technical co-founders (“10 years with Java!”). Technical founders who don’t sell also use bad proxies (“Harvard MBA!”). Learn enough of the other side to have an informed opinion. If you’re not seriously impressed, move on.
FAQs
What if the right guy already has his own startup? Convince him to work on yours part-time — he’ll drop his idea once yours gets traction.
Breakups are hard
If you’re going to fall out with your co-founder, do it early, recover the equity into the option pool to keep the company going, and recruit someone else great to fill the missing slot. Build in founder vesting (a.k.a. the “Pre-Nup”) to keep the breakup from getting messy. Building a great company without a partner is like raising kids without a…
Nearly everything I’ve written on this topic applies to dating and marriage. Coincidence?
Go forth and multiply.
Monday, April 6, 2015
7 Mistakes to Avoid When Building Your Online Presence
From the Shopify Blog
1. "If You Build It They Will Come" Mentality
They won’t. Building your business (and traffic) takes time, energy and effort. According to Internet Live Stats, the internet has about 1,202,012,086 websites at this very moment, and according to WorldWideWebSize there are 4.44 billion pages. Take a moment to think about that. When you create your store, you will be website number 1,202,012,087. How are people going to find you?
Building the most beautiful site and filling it with great products won’t make customers come. When you start a business, you have to realize that launching your store is just the first step in a great journey to building your business. There are however many steps that come after launch.
2. No Logo
A logo is usually the first thing a visitor sees and one of the first impressions of your online store. Most if not all ecommerce platforms will display your shop title in standard text if you don’t upload a logo yourself, but this isn’t good enough.
So why do so many people launch stores with no logos?
Usually it’s because most people still think that in order to get a logo made, they need to find a designer and spend hundreds (or thousands) of dollars. The fact is though, this isn’t true. Far from it. There are so many options available now for creating a free or very inexpensive logo that there’s no reason your shop should be using a default text logo.
Image Credit: DesignDistrict
3. No Social Proof and Forcing Social Proof
We all know that social proof can help with conversions. It’s not for lack of trying that many new merchants are failing at this though. Most of the time, the social proof is being implemented wrong or it's forced.
Let’s take a look at several ways you can implement social proof wrong and why it does more harm than good:
Reviews. What Reviews?
We often tout that adding reviews to your online store is a great thing and can help conversions. While reviews can definitely lead to increased conversions, if implemented at the wrong time, they may also do the exact opposite.
When you’re first starting out, you probably want to consider holding off on adding a product review section to every product page until you have some customers that you can ask for reviews from. This is especially important if you have a larger catalogue of products.
As a visitor, looking at a store or a product page that has a reviews app with no reviews can be a cause for concern. Why are there no review? Has anyone purchased this product before? This acts in the exact opposite of social proof causing customers to question if they should purchase from you.
Prominently Featuring Social Accounts with No Followers
Much like the reviews, many online shoppers use social media as a trust indicator when purchasing from a store for the first time. You can be on every single social network but if you have no followers and engagement, it may end up doing more harm than good.
So what’s the solution? Instead of prominently displaying all of the wonderful social networks you’re part of, start with one and work on building up a decent following. As you begin to build it, you can add and display new social networks. This will also give you some focus and allow you to better explore the potential benefits of each channel rather than scattering yourself and efforts.
4. No Proper About or Contact Page
A lot of store owners end up underestimating the sales potential of their About page. Have a look at your own analytics and you'll likely find your About page is either the second most visited page or in the top three. That means this page is important to visitors.
Even though this is one of the most important pages for your visitors, many new online merchants tend to skimp on this page. Don’t.
Let's look at some of the biggest mistakes people make on their About and Contact pages:
No Story - Who exactly are you? How did your store come to be? What’s the story of your products? How are they made? You don't need to create an elaborate story, however, a few paragraphs that store visitors can relate to are hugely beneficial.
No Location Details - Yes, you’re an online store, but that doesn’t mean people don’t look for an address. Many visitors still want to know where you're located and where your products ship from. For many visitors, it’s just an issue of trust, for others they want to know if they need to consider customs and duties if your products ship from another country.
Using A Generic Email Address - Yes, Gmail is great but that's not going to cut it for your business. So many first time merchants are guilty of using a generic, throwaway email address. What does that say to customers? Take the time to set up a proper domain name (youbrandname.com) and set up proper email addresses to let your customers know you're in it for the long haul.
Must Read: How To Write The Perfect About Page
5. Not Actually Thinking About Overall SEO Strategy
Probably the most common problem with new online stores is not doing any SEO or not doing it properly. It’s not rocket science but it’s not easy either. Coupled with the fact that SEO can take a while to show any signs of success and it ends up being a complete afterthought (if even a thought at all) for most new online businesses.
The thing is, SEO is quite necessary and can be one of your most powerful tools as it can continue to bring in targeted traffic to your site, day after day after day. Unlike channels like Facebook and Google Adwords which stop delivering traffic the second you stop paying.
Can you list the top 10 keywords you’re trying to target in the long term right now? If you can’t, it’s time to actually think about your SEO and keyword strategy.
6. Focusing On Too Many Things
Business is hard and complicated. Imagine a brain surgeon doing multiple surgeries at one time. It would be disaster! The same holds true for building a business. Sure someone's life isn’t on the line, but the life of your business likely is.
All too often, entrepreneurs get scattered, chasing their tails, the next shiny app or growth hacking tactic instead of finishing that they started. This leads to a scattered approach that will rarely show positive results for the business.
In a previous post we discussed the importance of focus for your ecommerce business. Focusing on too many channels taxes your energy and will rarely produce the desired outcome. Focus on one task at a time, one channel at a time and one goal at a time.
7. Not Giving Each Marketing Channel a Fair Shot
Finally, one of the most common mistakes new ecommerce entrepreneurs and veterans alike make is not dedicating enough time, energy and money to each marketing channel. Along with being one of the most common mistakes, this also can be the biggest mistake for your store.
There are many ways to get traffic for your store. There’s literally hundreds of marketing channels, however, none are something you can flick a switch for.
Whether it’s search engine optimization, search engine marketing, Facebook Ads, Instagram marketing or influencer outreach, they are require a really solid effort and sometimes money. Spending $50 on Facebook ads and not getting any sales doesn’t mean the channel doesn’t work and you should give up on it. It may just take more money to find the right audience that will respond best or changing the ad design and copy to something that speaks to your audience better. It really does take some time and patience to figure each channel out.
When building an online business, prioritize and tackle one channel at a time. This means strategically choosing the channels that you believe will work best for your business and taking the time to understand the inner workings of that particular channel, strategically planning your attack, giving the channel enough time and money to prove itself and tracking the results carefully.
Conclusion
Building a business is hard work, however, no matter how much work you put in, the small details as outlined in this post can sabotage your efforts and hard work.
Make sure you regularly take some time to take an objective look at your store, your marketing channels and your goals to make sure you're on the right path and you’ll be well on your way to more traffic and sales for your online store.
About The Author
Richard Lazazzera is a an ecommerce entrepreneur and Content Strategist in charge of customer success at Shopify. Get more from Richard on his blog.
Great Advice from Lisa Price on Staying True to Your Authenticity
Lisa Price, Founder of Carols Daughter
Once you've reached that milestone when you're ready to start delegating major responsibilities, you'll have to perform a tricky balancing act.
Lisa Price, founder of Carol's Daughter, which specializes in natural beauty and hair products, says that relinquishing a bit of power comes with its benefits.
"As you go through the process, you'll discover that those things that you're fearful of giving up, you really gain different securities and checks and balances that you may not have had before," she says.
However, be careful not to completely hand over the aspects of your company that make it uniquely yours.
"What can happen is when other people come in and they have 15 years of experience in the industry and they've done this for 10 years or 20 years, you think: well, they know better," Price says. "And you listen to them. But then you can see the reaction from your customer may not be quite what you want it to be."
When Price saw this, she got back involved with her brand's messaging. Though she keeps an open mind about how to deliver that message, she's adamant about preserving the company's original personality.
"Whatever the message is of your brand, whatever that DNA is, whatever it is that makes you authentic, you always have to push that forward. Always," she says.
Check out the video below for more on Price's messaging strategy.
A Few Quick Tips on Building Business Credit
A good business credit score is a key tool for building your small business. In addition to proving that you're handling your company's finances responsibly, a positive credit rating may help you get lower interest rates on business financing and better terms with your product/service suppliers. Down the road, your business credit history can also serve as a positive "financial snapshot" of your company for potential business partners or buyers.
Here's what new business owners should know: Personal credit scores generally range from 350-850, but business credit runs on a 0-100 scale. The higher your score, the better. The main three agencies that report business credit are Dun & Bradstreet, Experian, and Equifax. And although it can take a little time to establish credit for your new business, it's actually relatively simple to do so.
- Create a "track record." Potential creditors want reassurance that your company is legitimate and trustworthy, especially if you're a young business owner, says Ty Crandall, author of Business Credit Decoded. Maintaininga professional image helps, and that can include basics such as having a good-quality website and a professional e-mail address (not "Soccerfan21@gmail.com). Even more important: If you have an outside office, list your company's name-;rather than your personal name-;on your lease and utility bills. Those payments may be reported to the credit-reporting agencies and are a simple way to begin establishing your company's credit track record.
- Get a D-U-N-S® number. This nine-digit number uniquely identifies your business with Dun & Bradstreet, the largest business credit-reporting agency. It's similar to how a Social Security number identifies an individual to the personal credit reporting agencies, Crandall explains. You can apply for a free D-U-N-S number at Dun & Bradstreet Credibility Corp. (dandb.com), then use it whenever you apply for business credit. Some organizations, including government agencies, require a D-U-N-S number before they will work with you. Also good to know: "Businesses are often pushed to buy extra services along with their D-U-N-S, but you can get the number alone at no charge," Crandall says.
- Charge it. Small business owners should always separate business and personal expenses for tax and record-keeping purposes, according to Brian Ward, senior director for business information services at Experian. A smart way to do that--and build your business credit at the same time-;is to open a credit card in your company's name and use it only for business expenses. As you make consistent payments, your card issuer will report that information to the credit bureaus. Over time, that data can have a positive impact on your business credit score.
- Open credit lines with vendors. Future lenders want to see that you've handled past financial obligations responsibly, says Ward. A way to prove that is to open credit lines with suppliers (from office supply stores to delivery companies) who will extend you a small amount of starting credit and will agree to report your payment history to the credit reporting agencies. "Many vendors don't report accounts to the credit bureaus, so it's important to request that they do so," Ward says. Make your payments on schedule or even early to boost your business credit rating. Over time, you may prove your business worthy of larger credit lines and loans from both vendors and financial institutions.
