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.

Today I watched a presentation by engineer Michael Pritchard. He has developed a technology that has the potential to solve the problem of access to safe drinking water. His Lifesaver water-purification bottle could revolutionize water-delivery systems in disaster-stricken areas around the globe. The bottle uses nanotechology to filter even the filthiest water into sterile, safe drinking water.

Truly life changing technology

Perhaps even more amazing: according to Pritchard, it would cost about 8 billion US dollars to hit one of the Millenium Goals of halving the number of people without access to safe drinking water. That is a lot of money, unless you put it in perspective: the UK government alone spends 12 billion UK Pound or 20 billion US dollars on foreign aid each year. That money would be sufficient to give every single human being on the planet access to safe drinking water. It would change the lives of 3.5 billion people and save the lives of 2 million children, every year!

The video below will explain it all in just 10 minutes.

This video was filmed in July 2009, at the TED Global conference in Oxford, UK.

When I became a self-employed consultant at the beginning of 2008, it gave me the wonderful opportunity to work from the convenience of my home office. It also allows me to bake my own bread every day.

I know you can buy bread in bakeries, shops and supermarkets, and there are household appliancies that will make the bread for you, but I bake it from start to finish. There is a mill close to where I buy the flower. I have little packets of yeast. And every morning before starting to work, I make a dough, wait for it to rise and then put it in the oven. The result is that at lunch time I have a very fresh bread, still a bit warm. The satisfaction from eating your own bread is a great feeling, both physically and psychologically.

Today I watched a video that explains what happens when baking bread. The metaphors are truly awesome.  Bread is the staff of life, but in order to make it you first kill it (harvesting the wheat), then you bring it back to life (adding the yeast) and then you kill it again (the backing process).

Peter Reinhart is a master bread maker. He can present this tale with much more passion than I ever can. Enjoy the video, and your daily bread!