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Aggressive Small Business Marketing & Advertising
Big thoughts, ideas and how-tos for aggressive, fast-growth businesses and the entrepreneurs who fuel them.
Personality tests, playing to strengths and entrepreneurship
Posted by Michael Cage on Saturday, September 30, 2006This funky map (if you don't see it, visit this post's web page) from PersonalDNA.com means they have me tagged as a "Considerate Inventor." The personality traits described are pretty much dead-on. If you are interested in who is behind the words, you can read My Personal Dna Report. (I recommend you do your own, too.)
One of the most important things an entrepreneur can do is understand who they are at their best and what they are most "at home" doing.
When you have an awareness of your strengths, you can develop systems ... people, vendors, processes ... to a) keep you doing what you do best and b) keep your business moving forward.
Pain and struggle happens when you try to "change" core aspects of your personality to match what you (or your accountant ... management ... yoga teacher ... or business guru-of-the-month) think they need to be. Greatness happens when you engineer a system to support and nurture your strengths in a venture. Took me a lot of blood, sweat and tears to learn that lesson.
Tip of the hat to Fred Wilson (an "Animated Leader" whose crap-littered sidebars I thoroughly appreciate) for the test.
There are 1 comments, add your own!Messy offices, ADD and Entrepreneurs
Posted by Michael Cage on Saturday, September 30, 2006And now for a mix of interesting stuff I read this week...
Hi, my name is Michael and, despite my endlessly unorganized office, I love looking at office pr0n. Way too much time spent at Flickr this week. [Flickr Home Office Photos]
...speaking of which, the US Census says half of all small businesses are home-based. [US Census on Small Biz via Dan Pink]
Fred Wilson on ADD, messy offices and entrepreneurs. If he thinks his office is messy, I'd hate to hear what he thinks about mine. 
[Attention Deficit Delight]
And for something completely different...
Sell what your market wants ... or what your market needs? Seth points to HP's new "slimming effect" camera. [Slimming photos with HP digital cameras via Seth]
There are 7 comments, add your own!Anthony Robbins, Infomercials and Experiential Marketing
Posted by Michael Cage on Wednesday, September 27, 2006When I teach marketing workshops to information entrepreneurs, I tell a story about myself and Tony Robbins.
A little over a decade ago I would time my nights so I could come home and watch his "Personal Power" infomercial. I couldn't afford to buy the tapes (no CDs at that time) ... but just watching the stories of other people transforming misery into success was enough for me to believe it might be possible for me, too. So I watched, night in and night out ... and dreamed about what life would be like with those secrets in my hands.
Later, when I could finally afford the tapes, making that purchase felt like I was conquering the world.
All this before I even listened to the first one.
Today, Seth Godin posted about an infomercial doo-dad called the Pasta Express (emphasis mine):
Actually, the Pasta Express is a plastic tube with a perforated top. You put boiling water into it (probably a tricky act), add some pasta and watch it turn into a gloppy mass as the water cools. Not only doesn't it solve your pasta problem (what, you didn't have a pasta problem?) but it makes bad pasta.
So, how does it sell?
It sells because the point of the commercial isn't to sell you something that will help you make better pasta. The point of the commercial is to sell you something that you will enjoy buying.
More and more, we buy stuff where the buying is the point, not the stuff.
There is a danger of looking at this too cynically.
Don't make the mistake of thinking it is an "either/or" proposition ... that the point can be EITHER a) the experience of buying OR b) the experience of using the product.
The most effective marketers put as much attention on crafting a compelling purchase experience as they do a compelling delivery/usage experience.
Do you?
There are 5 comments, add your own!Great entrepreneur podcast (Jason Calacanis)
Posted by Michael Cage on Monday, September 25, 2006Terrific podcast with Jason Calacanis of Weblogs, Inc., now part of AOL. If you are an entrepreneur, you'll be shaking your head in "been there, done that" recognition and respect. Download and listen at Venture Voice.
NOTE: The back episodes of Venture Voice are also well worth listening to.
There are 1 comments, add your own!In the experience economy your customers want…
Posted by Michael Cage on Monday, September 25, 2006From Jim Gilmore, of The Experience Economy fame...
In the Agrarian Economy, the dominant purchase criteria was Availability (price being set by supply-and-demand, and only influencing the quantity of materials purchased in the marketplace). In the Industrial Economy, Cost became the dominant driver of purchases as Mass Production made more and more goods affordable to the masses. In the Service Economy, Quality come to dominate, with the performance of offerings became most important as consumers increasingly rely upon others to perform certain activities on their behalf. And now, in the Experience Economy, in an increasingly unreal world of staged places and mediated events, consumers want Authenticity.
Everyone talks about authenticity as a "silver bullet" nowadays.
But it's not.
You can be the most authentic company in your market, but still fail miserably. Just like you can have the best product in your market, and go broke.
In order to leverage authenticity into revenue (the best business ideas in the world fail not because of management or funding or branding ... but because the people who run them do not know how to turn great ideas into dollars) you need to be able to communicate it to your market in a way they a) find relevant and b) respond to.
In other words, being "authentic" does not "replace" that "icky marketing" ... no matter how much some people wish it could and would. Being authentic is an amazing foundation upon which your marketing can be successful.
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