Thinking small in a big world - click to enlarge

Starting a new project or new business is often a leap of faith, nobody knows what the outcome will be, exactly. But the effort you put in has a direct effect on the results. Seth Godin talks about this in his blog ‘An atomic theory of business size‘.

In the article, he warns about unrealistic expectations from scaling up a well-running business. You can’t just take an idea that works well at one level, multiple the number of staff by a factor of five for instance, and expect turn over and revenue to also increase by the same factor.

But there is another side to the same coin: while working on establishing a new business, your attitude will have an enormous effect on the outcome. If you set out to be a major player in your town, you can’t expect to be market leader nation wide, because your actions and image don’t align with that.

Talking to potential customers, partners, suppliers or employees, you could behave and speak as if you have already achieved your goal. You’ll come across as a serious contender, as long as you make sure you stay close to the truth. There is a fine line between sounding very confident and plain lying.

(Photo credits: Bies)

Recently I wrote about a new project I was considering, and the 16 questions from Seth Godin that forced me to really think about the fundamental motivations for starting it in the first place.

One of the first things we had to do was to prepare a pitch for a potential customer for the project. In essence, we were going to propose a fundamental change in their thinking about how to generate extra revenue for the company. That made me think about another blog post by Seth Godin: Change and its constituents.

We decided to make a list of all the stake holders within the organization of our potential customer. Using this list, we established if they might feel hurt by the proposed change or benefit from it (or perhaps even both). This enabled us to prepare a response for every objection that we might encounter.

The pitch was going to be for senior executives in the organization, and our first task would be to win them over. But after we left, they would have to go and essentially sell our proposal to the rest of the company. Handing them an appropriate response for each possible objection we could think of might just make the difference.

Visit Seth Godin's blog for more thought provoking ideas and questions

A few months ago, I bookmarked a blog post by Seth Godin that really made me think at the time. He lists 16 questions that people should answer when they’re planning to start a business. What I liked about these questions is that most of them are not the typical multiple choice questions that you often see. These are open questions that really force you to dig deep into your motivations and personal goals.

I revisited this page this week because I’m working on a project that quickly turning into a completely new business. Instead of just rushing into the project, I sat down and made myself write down the answers to all 16 questions. Putting words to paper means you can not fool yourself into thinking you’ve fully answered the question.

As it turns out, it’s not always as easy as you would think to understand your own reasons or needs that guide you when considering a new venture. Often, you just go with the flow and continue doing what you’ve always been doing. Working through these questions helped me to be better prepared for the project and to be ready for when the project turns into a real business.

The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page

In July 2009, I posted on this blog about “7 Common problems with landing pages and how to fix them“.

Today I found the perfect companion to this post in a page on “The Anatomy of a Perfect Landing Page“, published by Formstack. The tips included focus on copy, content, and structure, and the use of images, video, links and color.

OpenX Master Class: October 7, 2010 in Amsterdam (Netherlands)

On Thursday October 7, 2010, I’m hosting an OpenX Master Class in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. During this unique event, a small group of experienced OpenX users will gather to discuss advanced features and use cases of the OpenX Ad Server software. As an OpenX consultant with over 7 years of experience supporting OpenX users from around the world, I will be facilitating this event to make sure it will be an intense training course and a memorable experience.

Read more and sign up for the OpenX Master Class.