The way to keep a startup alive is momentum. Momentum is the pulse of the business. And to create momentum in a startup, we do stuff. Lots of it!

It is very much like having a little baby. When a business is new, nothing happens without the founder making it happen. The phone doesn’t ring, orders don’t come through the email, product doesn’t get created. It’s when we are doing lots of stuff to move our business forward that we feel like it is alive. And when we are distracted by other parts of life, nothing seems to happen and the startup feels dead.

Steve Sammartino made an interesting observation about momentum on his blog. In physics, momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. As a startup, we don’t have mass, we are not big. Therefore we have to focus on creating velocity (or speed). That is moving as quickly as we can, making every effort to start up fast.

So how do we use momentum to start up fast?

Part of the excitement (and stress) of a startup is that we are working with uncertainty. We don’t yet know what is going to work, so we need to have a massive action plan – that is, throw lots of stuff on the wall and see what sticks. I did use the word ‘PLAN’ here. We want to be strategic about the stuff we do, so we need to think about it, but the purpose of doing lots of stuff is to test our assumptions about what will work and then build and improve on the strategies that do.

This is something like having to make a path across the mud. We might lose it at times and get dirty going across, but we have our eyes on the destination. And as anyone who has crossed mud knows – we want to implement as quickly as possible. Not get bogged down, but keep moving forward.

My strategy at the moment is to look at the data I am getting from my efforts, make a decision about what the next move should be and test it as quickly as possible. Then my business feels alive and so do I!

What strategies are you using for creating momentum in your startup?

Related posts:

1. How to set simple goals to grow your business

Her phone, an iPad and her deceased father’s watch and wedding ring were stolen.

But what she is most upset about is that her Macbook has disappeared together with a lifetime’s worth of content including all the files and business data for her business. She doesn’t have backups, which leaves her in a pretty nasty situation.

As you can imagine, she is praying the police recover her property.

Web based businesses can also be vulnerable to losing business data. I personally know business owners who have found themselves in the following situations:

• A entrepreneur with an online business had a dispute with her business partner who locked out of her site and she effectively lost control of the business
• An entrepreneur who had an online startup had outsourced the backend development to an overseas developer who also set up the hosting. He never organised to get a backup and when the hosting was discontinued he was left with no prototype to show investors and no backup to be able to put on another host. He managed to solve this, but could have lost three years work and the opportunity to pitch to investors due to not having a backup.

We hear it so often and yet most of us still fail to do it – BACKUP your data!! This simple tip can prevent enormous stress and mitigate a serious business risk.

 How to protect your business data

There are different ways you can implement backing up the data in your business. Various programs can backup your computer. Remember to backup your USB (thumb) drive as well because they are so easy to lose.

Website files (including WordPress files) should also be backed up. Same for financial software files.

Basically you want to make sure that there are multiple copies of any information which is crucial to running your business. And it’s a good idea put a copy of your backup in a different geographical location.

Backups should also be scheduled regularly – daily, weekly or monthly depending on your needs. Otherwise you might lose your business data and be left with a backup that is two years old.

Action – create a backup plan

Make a list of what data is crucial to your business. Next to each item, write a backup method and how often the backup should occur. Then schedule it into your diary. Or even better, use software to automate your backup process.

Further Resources

Backup options:

• WordPress: The free WordPress Database Backup plugin will backup your WP site and put a copy on your server and also email it to you if you like.
• Hard Drives: There are numerous software programs available to backup the data on your computer.
• If you are a bigger business and have more complex backup needs, there are a range of enterprise solutions available.

Join the Conversation

Have your say in the comments – or use them to create a little bit of extra motivation and accountability to get your action task for today done.

And I would love you to join me on Facebook  or Twitter.

Image used under Creative Commons license courtesy of  Ruben Molnes

No related posts.

How I created and launched a startup from an internet café in Zimbabwe, Africa

After my last interview with a big mining firm, I got fed up. I had gone to many interviews with big companies, and the result was always the same. With unemployment at a staggering 80%, one can imagine the stiffness of the competition, now add corruption and your chances are next  to none.

I graduated with a Bsc Information Systems from Midlands State University of Zimbabwe in December 2009.When I graduated I had high hopes of a good job – two years later I realised that no one was probably going to give me that chance any time soon.

Confronted with a not so rosy future , I decided I was going to build a web application. I had read so many stories, so I was optimistic, plus it was the only chance that I had to be noticed.

I needed an idea , so I brainstormed a couple of ideas but none of them interested me. Then it dawned on me that I needed to solve a problem that I had experienced. If people didn’t like the idea , I would just use my application for my own good. I visit a lot of  hip hop sites and sometimes a site might have only one good story. I decided to build a  hip hop link aggregator with social networking features. It would also give me an opportunity to sharpen my programming skills.

My programming skills were a bity rusty, I did not have a internet connection, there was no one to help if  I encountered a problem and I did not have  a debit or credit card to purchase a domain  name or hosting. It seemed impossible but I had no choice.

First, to solve the domain name problem, I contacted a friend who had a debt card. He purchased the domain name  www.mixdem.com for me. With that solved I searched google for a good free webhost and found Capnix.

Having purchased the domain name and found hosting, I began development of the website. I would work mostly during the night because during the day the would be no power most of the time. When I encountered a challenge , I would work at it until I found a solution.

I would  go to the internet café to download websites that I needed to scrape and also search for solutions to problems that I had failed to solve. Implementing the social networking capability was difficult but I managed to pull through. It has features like voting on content that you like, you can follow people like on twitter, share your thoughts, comments, algorithms to rate content and messages between members.

Three weeks later I had a working prototype and was ready to test it. I now wanted to launch. I went to the internet café and created an account with Capnix Hosting. I logged to my Godaddy account and set the nameservers to point  to my Capnix account. I uploaded the website and set up the database. Then I waited for the nameservers to propagate.

After two days I checked and the website was not yet accessible. I had made an error in  created  the account so I had to do it again. After hours of trying to figure it out, I finally managed to set it up and my website was now visible.

The time to promote the website had come. I set up a Twitter account and engaged with the hip hop community there. I also posted on Facebook about the project and a couple of classifieds websites. I was just looking for feedback and was not expecting a  lot of traffic.  About a week after the launch, the response has been humbling. Considering that I did not do much marketing other than tell few friends, the site had 500 unique visits which is quite impressive. A lot of people have contacted me with business ideas and others want me to freelance on their projects. As a result of this project, my future now seems bright and I have started getting a lot of opportunities that I did not have before.

If you find yourself in a position like me, don’t lose hope – instead start a project and tell people about it.  It doesn’t have to perfect. And use all the resources you can get!

(Used with permission of Munyuki Manasata

Takeaways:

What we can learn from this IT entrepreneur:

 Next steps:

No related posts.

It’s one of the quirks of our human nature that we tend to skirt around our biggest issues. Our biggest challenges are, by definition, the most challenging and hardest to solve. That’s why we tend to avoid them rather than do them first, because they are emotionally harder and take more effort.

We like to try and pretend they are not there – until life and our circumstances force us to pay attention.

My suggestion today, is not to wait until your hand is forced. Be proactive and make it a priority to solve your biggest challenges first.

Working on the biggest challenges in our business (and life) makes rational sense because they are the biggest obstacles to us moving forward and we are going to have to tackle them sooner or later anyway.

The upside is they are also our biggest opportunities for business growth.

Everything else suffers when you don’t tackle your biggest challenges

To illustrate this, I want to share with you a few examples from my own life.

I have been living with a serious chronic health condition since I was fifteen. For most of my life up till now, my strategy has been to ignore it and hope it would go away. I achieved a lot with this strategy, but it was through sheer bloody mindedness and I was just surviving, physically and emotionally.

Last year, I (finally) saw that nothing else in my life was really working the way it should because of my ill health. My family, work, social relationships – everything suffered. I knew there were some people who had recovered from this illness despite the doctors’ prognosis and I determined that I would find what I needed to know and do whatever it took to get well.

Since then, I have taken action and have made it a priority to focus on my health. I am about 300% better than before which is awesome. And, as an unintended side effect, I am seeing business growth. Other things in my life, like this blog, are gaining momentum because the health obstacle is now so much smaller than it was.

A confession – I am still learning this lesson

Last month, I set three goals for my work. They represented  the three challenges I needed to solve to move forward and grow the business:

1. To invite some other experts to contribute to 365 Startup Tips
2. To finish the opportunity evaluation for a new startup I am working on
3. To do a quote for someone who wants me to research and write an investment memorandum and business plan for them.

My plan was to have them done in a week. It’s a month later. They are still not done. I have accomplished lots of other stuff in the last month, but not these three most important things.

Why not? I planned, I identified the tasks, but I failed to schedule them and set a deadline. In other words, I allowed myself to procrasinate. And life happened.

Here are my new strategies

• Just do it.
• Don’t wait for inspiration
• Set a deadline and force yourself to stick to it.
• Don’t do anything else till these things are done.
• To keep in mind the reasons why these things are important.

In other words, be really disciplined.

By the next time you read a new post from me, these three goals will have been blitzed and I am sure I will be seeing business growth because of it!

Action: Identify and solve your biggest challenges to unlock business growth

First of all, in your life:

Is there anything happening that is affecting multiple areas of your life and that you need to deal with?

It could be your health, a relationship that is not working, your finances,  one of your kids who need your attention because they are going through a challenge themselves. Is it simply that you don’t believe in yourself and what you are doing?  What can you do to deal with it?

Even if you don’t know, determine to make it a priority until you can see a way through.

Secondly, in your business:

What are the three things you could do that would impact your business the most?

Make a plan to get them done, schedule them into your diary and get started. If you like, use the comments to tell us what they are and make yourself accountable. We’ll be supportive.

Further Reading:

I found this post by Darren Rowse inspiring. It’s about how he turned his blog into a business in 6 months, because he had a very compelling reason to solve his biggest challenge – no income.

Join the Conversation

Have your say in the comments – or use them to create a little bit of extra motivation and accountability to get your action task for today done.

And I would love you to join me on Facebook  or Twitter.

Image used under Creative Commons license courtesy of  Tomasz Stasiuk

No related posts.

All of us have a phenomenal gift – our brains. Our brains will come up with an answer to any question we ask of them. They are always creating new ideas (business ones included!) but often we either don’t pay attention to them or dismiss them. In addition, we can train our brains to notice and and create more ideas, but that’s a topic for another post.

The trick is to capture as much of the information our brain is throwing us as we can.

A great way I have found to do this is to keep an Opportunity Journal. All this is, is a notebook where you can record ideas that come to you. This works for coming up with ideas for new businesses as well as generating ideas for your current business.

You can record your ideas in whatever way works for you (although I have found, having done this with hundreds of university Entrepreneurship students, that handwritten seems to work best.)

An opportunity journal works for several reasons:

• You have a written record of your ideas so you don’t forget them. This has the added advantage of getting them ‘off your chest’ and freeing your brain to think about other things
• You get what you measure. If you are looking out for things to write down, your brain will automatically come up with new ideas for you.
• Your ideas are often synergistic. I find that I will have an idea that keeps coming back in different guises (time to pay attention!). Or that an idea I had 3 months ago can tie in with and improve an idea I am developing now.
• You can look back through the journal and it will remind you of ideas you wanted to implement instead of forgetting about them.

Action: Start an Opportunity Journal to capture your new business ideas

So, how are you going to do this? I suggest buying an unlined notebook (I like A4 visual diaries – lots of room. Coloured pens or textas are good too.) This isn’t for show so don’t worry about making it pretty.

You can record new business ideas however you like:

• photos
• cutouts from magazines or newspapers
• sketches for product ideas
• flowcharts
• mind maps
• and of course text

Join the Conversation

How do you keep track of your ideas? What medium works best for you?

Have your say in the comments – or use them to create a little bit of extra motivation and accountability to get your action task for today done.

Or join us on Facebook  or Twitter.

Image used under Creative Commons license courtesy of  jah~

Related posts:

1. Why having a bad business idea is a good thing

Everyone starting or running a business has been in the position where it feels like things are a bit overwhelming. We’ve all wondered how to get more done.

There’s so much to do and not enough time. You have to order new supplies, respond to customer service emails, design new products, book more advertising and get your bookkeeping up to date, let alone doing your tax return, tweeting and updating your Facebook page.

When things are like this (which, let’s be honest, is all the time) it’s easy to stick our heads down and try to plough through.

However, the nose to the grindstone strategy of dealing with the workload is counterproductive.

And why? The simple reason that there will always be more work than we can handle.

So if we just put our head down, we will never have a break.  And because we are humans, not machines, eventually something important will give way: we mess up a big order, botch a key sales presentation, fail to make strategic plans or, even worse, our health gives way or our closest relationships show signs of strain.

Here’s the key to get more done:

We are actually more productive, happier and healthier when we make time for regular downtime in our routine.

Downtime is important because:

• It gives us perspective and an opportunity to realign ourselves with our priorities and goals
• It allows our mind & body to rest which is important in strengthening our immune system. Think of it as an insurance policy to help prevent getting sick, and recovering more quickly when you do.
• Our productivity increases
• We socialise and exercise. Not only is this fun, but it restores for our sense of well being

The idea that we cannot afford to take time off is a dangerous myth. Even Y-Combinator participants take time off.

“We encourage founders to not underestimate the importance of exercise, sleep, and taking breaks to restore energy and creativity,” says Harj Taggar, a partner at Y Combinator in Mountain View, Calif. “It’s better to average eight solid hours of productivity a day than it is to output 12 hours of mediocre ones. [Twitter cofounder] Jack Dorsey is running two $1 billion plus companies and he finds time to take Saturdays off to recharge.”

- from Alina Dizik’s article on 6 Time-Management Tips From Accelerator Programs

Action:

Are you using the head down approach? How can you increase your startup productivity? What simple routines can you incorporate into your daily and weekly schedule to give yourself some time out?

Things I am personally working on right now include:

• Setting an alarm to go off regularly so I remember to drink water (and breathe!) regularly during the day. (Anyone know of a good alarm app I can put on my computer?)
• Noticing when I feel tired and giving myself a short break instead of pushing it.
• Taking time to connect with my kids each day when they get home from school
• Doing a sport I enjoy on Saturday mornings. (I’m currently having a go at archery.)
• And I am working towards not working at all on Sundays!

Further Reading:

Book: Toughness Training for Life – James E. Loehr.

This is an amazing book explaining the principles behind getting more out of ourselves while staying healthy. It covers simple strategies, developed through the author’s experience as a sports psychologist, that you can implement to become more effective.

Not the most well-written book I’ve read, but the information is priceless. It’s on my ‘Most personally impacting books I’ve read” list.

Join the Conversation

What do you do that keeps you refreshed and energised?

Have your say in the comments – or use them to create a little bit of extra motivation and accountability to get your action task for today done.

Or join us on Facebook  or Twitter.

Image used under Creative Commons license courtesy of  ukslim

No related posts.

Sometimes doubt about our idea is wisdom in disguise – there can be good reasons why we should be skeptical.

But much of the time, our doubt comes from fear – it is our critical voice talking. Seth Godin calls it our lizard brain. The thinking we do that is based on fear and, if examined, is often irrational. It’s the part of us that wants to take the path of least resistance because we perceive that as being safer than being innovative and stepping out. It is also the part of us that sabotages us just when we are on the verge of doing something great, the part that encourages us to play small.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?’ Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

We are all meant to shine as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

- Marianne Williamson, quoted by Nelson Mandela

Action: Implement strategies to believe in yourself

You probably have two visions in your head:

1. one of you running a successful business and what that looks and feels like
2. and one of you not making it, failing and what that looks and feels like.

Today, decide which of these feels best to you and DECIDE to focus on that. (My guess is that it will be the first option!)

• Take some time today to focus on your success and make it even more vivid for yourself. Write down what the business looks like when it is finished and what you feel like, who you have become. You might like to write a dairy entry 5 years from now describing your life, how it has changed and what you are doing. Make it as vivid as you can, because you will need to hold on to this picture and review it regularly to get your business off the ground and to the stage you want it to be.
• Reflect on specific occasions when you did believe in yourself. What made the difference there? What did you do, say or believe that helped? Could you use the same strategies in your startup?
• And the failure picture? Look at it also to see if there is any rational basis for your doubts. List what you are afraid of, where you think the weak points and and then go and get the information you need to validate the assumptions you have made. This will boost your confidence. And if your doubt is not rational, choose instead to focus on the first image you have created and believe in yourself!

Join the Conversation

What beliefs do you hold, actions do you take or words do you say to help you believe in yourself?

Have your say in the comments – or use them to create a little bit of extra motivation and accountability to get your action task for today done.

And I would love you to join me on Facebook  or Twitter.

Image used under Creative Commons license courtesy of  Nick-K

No related posts.

Creating a startup is all about working in uncertainty. There are no guarantees and there are lots of things we don’t know. But the deadly things that can kill our business are

the things we don’t know that we don’t know.

They are called … wait for it …

assumptions!

(There, I told you it sounds boring.)

But stay with me, because if you understand this, it could make the difference between a business that works for you and one that fails.

Making assumptions can mean big trouble

An assumption is a statement that is assumed to be true and from which conclusions can be drawn.

Samuel Butler, a British poet, said “A little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but a little want of knowledge is also a dangerous thing.”

My interpretation of this is that firstly, assuming I know about something is dangerous and also, not knowing something is dangerous.

The danger in a startup comes when we don’t recognise that we are making assumptions. If we draw conclusions and act on ‘knowledge’ which is actually an assumption, we could be headed for trouble.

Big Blue: a perfect example

Let’s take the president of IBM, Thomas J Watson’s famous quote as an example: “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” Now there is some argument as to whether he really said this. ‘Assuming’ he did, can you see how the conclusions IBM would draw from this assumption would influence their business? If you had a new product that had only 5 customers, what would you do?

I would:

• Make it really really expensive (to cover my costs)
• Find 5 really big companies with lots of money to buy it
• Try and make lots of money from servicing
• Lease it to customers rather than sell it (to help their cashflow)

If on the other hand, we assumed that we had a product that had a market of 1 billion (the amount of computers in the world), what conclusions would we make?

• Price it so we had small margins – so we could sell a lot quickly in order to capture market share
• Concentrate on making production rapid so we can meet demand
• Segment the market and create different versions for different market segments
• Outsource manufacturing where possible; production components, assembly
• Hire distributors and/or retailers to get it out there for us

Can you see that these look like two different businesses? All from one assumption about the market being changed. I know which business I would rather be in!

Now there is two ways most people will go with this:

1.  If you are a perfectionist, your tendency will be to get bogged down by having to know everything up front, which is not possible. So you need to give yourself permission to go forward without knowing everything.
2.  If you are super optimistic, you will be likely to not worry too much about the details and charge full steam ahead. You need to recognise that there are some details that are important to get right for your business to be successful.

 So, how do you handle assumptions in your start up?

1. You have to make assumptions. Obviously in life and business, we need to make assumptions. We assume the computer will work when we turn it on. We assume that we will be able to walk when we get out of bed. If we spent time validating all these assumptions before taking any action, we would all end up in the looney bin, not to mention not getting any work done! In a startup, we don’t know everything and can’t find everything out before we start. So we need to make assumptions in order to take action.
2. Work out which assumptions are critical. Not all assumptions are important. Some are non-critical and you will adjust and change them if they are not working as you go along. But some assumptions will have a big impact on whether your business will succeed. They will be different for every business but will be based around your key success factors (see post here);  like who your target market is, what the demand is for your product, how much people will pay etc.  So recognise what the assumptions are that you have made.
3. Validate the critical assumptions. Be aware and catch yourself when you are making assumptions about critical aspects of your business. Ask yourself, is this statement based on facts or feelings? What evidence do I have for this? Writing things down in an opportunity evaluation or short business plan helps with this. If something is critical to your business’ success, you want to make damn sure your assumption is right. So go and do some research – and keep doing it until you are confident you were right or you have changed your assumption (and your business model). It is important to approach this with an open mind. You don’t want to prove yourself right, you want to find out the truth – before you waste a lot of time and money. It’s about getting the foundations right.

Why am I so anal about this?

Some time ago, when I was a naive want-to-be business owner, my husband and I bought a business. We made a critical assumption: that people could grow mushrooms of a commercial quality at home. It sounds silly now and of course anyone who knows anything about mushroom farming knows that they are grown in a highly controlled environment that people don’t have a hope of replicating at home. We did check this with an expert, but not the right one. Needless to say, we came to grief when we bought the business and lost a lot of time and money. But it did set me on the path to learn all I can about evaluating opportunities and starting successful businesses – so I guess it wasn’t all bad. However, I would like to think that you could avoid my mistake.

So what assumptions have you made about critical aspects of your business? What evidence have you got to back them up? And how can you get the information you need?

Image used under Creative Commons license courtesy of FurryScaly, Flickr.com

Related posts:

1. Why having a bad business idea is a good thing

• How do I come up with a good business idea?
• How do I know if my idea will make a successful business?

In addition to this, most new entrepreneurs expect their first business idea to be a great one.

I did too!

However, now I know that in my journey as an entrepreneur, it has taken creating and evaluating hundreds of ideas and then executing a few, for me to develop my skills to the point where I can create and recognise ideas that will make successful businesses.

So how do you begin that journey as someone wanting to start your first business?

In the University Entrepreneurship program I teach, we have a whole subject for each of the questions above them. So I am going to give you an overview to those questions  here and then expand on them in future posts.

How to become a business idea machine

Great entrepreneurs have trained themselves to be really good at spotting opportunities, connecting information and creating alternatives.

And really, it’s a matter of practice!

The idea is to create routines to practise coming up with ideas. Keeping an Opportuity Journal is a good practice. Write down all the ideas that cross your mind in as much detail as you can.

Do this regularly.

Set yourself the challenge of creating one idea a day. Soon you will find that you are creating more and better quality ideas because you are training yourself to notice them.

And you will have a whole notebook full of ideas you can go back to for inspiration.

There are lots of creative thinking techniques you can use to generate ideas and to train your brain to spot opportunities more readily.

Some techniques that you might like to research include:

• 6 thinking hats - Edward de Bono
• mind mapping - Tony Buzan
• Idea box
• brainstorming - including using association or random words to trigger ideas
• spotting trends
• Find a problem to solve

How to find an idea that customers want

My favourite technique to spot business ideas is to listen to people talking and identify what problems they have.

People will often complain about little things that niggle them. That is our cue as entrepreneurs to identify an opportunity.

Successful entrepreneurs solve problems for people. Eg. Problem: “I wish I knew when this taxi would get here.” Opportunity: An iPhone app that tracks taxis and shows you where the closest ones to you are.

So, will this great idea be a profitable opportunity ?

Once you feel you have found a problem which is worth solving, then you need to take it through an evaluation process to see if it is feasible (and profitable) as a business.

A lot of people run into problems in business because they have an idea and launch without conducting this kind of analysis. That’s why I am an evangelist for doing an Opportunity Evaluation – because I feel it is absolutely critical to a successful business.

A lot of problems can be avoided by doing this right at the beginning – so don’t miss this step!

Be strategic

Opportunity Evaluation involves

1. asking strategic questions
2. getting real data and customer feedback to answer them
3. validating your assumptions.

Some of the questions that are important to answer include:

• What problem are you trying to solve?
• What is your solution?
• Who is your target market?
• What is their compelling need to buy?
• What is the value proposition you are offering them?
• How can you reach them?
• What is happening in the external environment your business will operate in?
• Politically
• Enviromentally
• Economically?
• Socially?
• Technologically?
• What is the competitive environment like?
• Who are your competitors?
• How much power do your customers and suppliers have?
• What will your business model be?
• what will you keep in house? outsource?
• how will you make sales? pricing? costs?
• how can you stop others copying what you are doing?
• What risks do you face and how can you mitigate them?
• What will your exit strategy be?

Get real data

Answering these questions (plus a few others) will give you a good idea whether your idea will be worth pursuing as a business or not.

Your answers should be based on solid market research. Gut feel is a good place to start, but you want to back that up with solid data before you invest your time and money. (Getting an MVP out there can be part of this process.)

 With the feedback you get, make your idea even better

The magic is, that in the process of finding the data and interacting with your potential market, you will discover great strategies to tweak the original idea to make it even better and more profitable.

Having this thorough knowledge of the industry behind you will also give you a lot of confidence as you move towards launch.

Although this looks like a long list, it doesn’t have to take a long time.

Once you have run a few ideas through the opportunity evaluation process, you will find you do it quite quickly and are coming up with better and better ideas.

Is the idea a good fit for you?

The final thing to look at is whether the opportunity is a good fit for you personally with your current skills, resources, time, contacts and interests. Some ideas may be great ideas but not good for you.

I had this experience several years ago.

I was working on a business opportunity to help accountants outsource their basic bookkeeping tasks. I eventually realised, that although it was a reasonable opportunity, it was not a good fit for my skills and personality.

The opportunity evaluation process also showed me that the target market was not  ready for this idea in Australia and I wouldn’t be able to grow the business to the size I wanted to.

So I moved onto the next idea after spending minimal time and money.

So why is it good if the idea turns out to be a dud?

Running an idea through an opportunity evaluation process and deciding not to execute it, is a good outcome.

You have saved time and money which might have been wasted developing a product or service that people don’t want.

You get to move on to another idea that has higher potential as quickly as possible.

You will also have learnt a LOT about what makes a good business and your next ideas will be even better.

Related posts:

1. ‘I’ve got a great business idea – can I sell it?’
2. How do you know if you have a great business idea?
3. Steps to starting a business: Part 1 – Finding and Developing an Idea

I want to use social media  to be a real person and genuinely interact with others. Like most people, I don’t like spam or gratuitous self-promotion and I don’t want to inflict it on others either. However, social media has to be manageable, so I am looking for ways to automate tasks that don’t need my personal touch. Then I can spend that time on critical business building tasks.

Here’s a great automation tool I have just discovered. Tweet Old Posts is a WordPress plugin that will take your old posts and randomly retweet them for you. You just set the frequency and away it goes. It can also add text to the tweet and hashtags if  you like. You can also exclude some posts from being retweeted.

So how has it worked for me? I have been using it since the start of February, so just over 2 weeks. So far my Twitter following has jumped by about 30% and I am getting a lot more retweets of my posts.  Traffic is up on my blog by a huge amount too. Admittedly both of these are off a lowish base.

Why does it work?

• Twitter moves so fast, that getting my content out there more often gives more people a chance to see it and notice it.  I am going to experiment with the frequency of tweeting old posts – both more often and less often and see what that does to the number of people engaging.
• It doesn’t come across like an automated bot.

Cautions:

You would need to have enough content on your site for this to work. If you are light on content so far, you may want to set the frequency of the retweets further apart. I am conscious it might get annoying to followers to have the same old posts coming up again and again. I don’t want them to tune out or get annoyed.

Also, this shouldn’t be the only thing on your Twitter feed. You should also engage with your followers and retweet other content they may find useful – or you think is interesting.

And lastly, a thank you to all the wonderful people I’ve connected with on Twitter who have given me positive feedback about my posts. (You know who you are.) You make my day!!

Action:

If you have a WordPress blog, look up the Tweet Old Posts plugin on WordPress and install it today. Test different settings and measure the stats to see how it helps to build users and drive traffic.

Think about: what else can you do to automate social media tasks?

Further Reading:

I learnt about this plugin (and some other great tools) from this great post from Kissmetrics: Twitter Marketing Guide

Join the Conversation

Have you used this plugin or another tool that you find helps to automate Twitter tasks in a human friendly way? Let me know.

Have your say in the comments – or use them to create a little bit of extra motivation and accountability to get your action task for today done.

And I would love you to join me on Facebook  or Twitter.

Related posts:

1. Startup Tip #22 Match your customers demographic to the social media network they are using