Work Ethic is More Important Than a Good Idea

When a friend of mine heard that I was starting a business a few years back, she made a comment to me that she had a bunch of great business/invention ideas and asked me if there was anyone out there willing to pay for those ideas. Uhhh...no, not that I know of. Do you know why? Because ideas are a dime-a-dozen. I've had thousands of ideas, so have you, and so have most of the people that you know. What separates an entrepreneur from everyone else? Work ethic.

Your work ethic is what enables you to turn that idea into reality. Think about it. Most people don't want to take the time to see if their idea is actually feasible. They don't want to do market research or figure out the logistics of a supply chain or write a business plan. Even after doing all of that, they still haven't started a business. They still have to secure funding, create the product or service, etc...you get the idea. The list could go on forever.

It is extremely difficult to go from idea to successful business. If you don't have a work ethic that's better than 99% of the people out there you will crumble. I saw an interview this past weekend on Fox Sports Net with my favorite entrepreneur Mark Cuban. Mark was asked what separates him from other people; what trait that he has that other people don't that accounted for his success. His answer: work ethic.

Mark said that whenever he enters a meeting he makes sure that he's the most knowledgeable person in the room. He knows the topic at hand better than everyone else. That is his competitive advantage. And that takes a ton of work. In Mark's own words, "I've been fired from more jobs than most people have had." Most people wouldn't keep working. Most people would give up. But Mark didn't and it paid off.

People are always looking for shortcuts - some easy way to make a ton of money that no one else has thought of, the classic "get rich quick" scheme. There is no substitute for hard work. Some people accidentally fall into a fortune, but they are few and far between. Interview 10 successful entrepreneurs and I guarantee that all 10 of them will tell you that they outworked their competition. It sounds cliched and simple, but how many people ACTUALLY put in the time?

Balance

One of the toughest things about being an entrepreneur is separating those long hours from the other things that are important to you in life, and trying to make sure that those don't suffer too much at the expense of your business. I'd have to say, with all of the challenges I've faced, the one that will probably always be the toughest for me is keeping a work/life balance.

Last night I faced an interesting choice. My aunt was having a birthday party for my little cousin and my entire family was going. Now, I saw my family a few weeks back and will probably see them a few weeks from now. I love spending time with them, but most of the time we end up talking a lot about my business, mostly because they are interested and want to see me succeed. I appreciate the attention but sometimes it's just too much.

I had a great (but very long) work week this week and I just wanted to grab a beer and relax. So I did just that. Instead of going to the party, I went down to the beverage center and picked up a case of Red Stripe (my favorite beer) and drank a few beers out on the back porch. No computer, no work, no people. Just me relaxing with a few beers, and that was exactly what I needed to recharge my batteries and get my focus back.

We all need that balance. For some it's going out and partying (work hard - play hard right?), for others it's spending time with friends and family, and for some it's spending time with their favorite hobbies. In my case, it's usually a combination of those things, but sometimes it's an often overlooked form of relaxation - doing absolutely nothing.

Have a safe and fun Memorial Day everyone!

Why not change the world?

I have mixed feelings towards my alma-matter RPI (better known to some as Rensselaer). One one hand, I went to one of the most challenging schools in the country and was able to have access to people, courses, and job opportunities that most could only dream of. On the other hand, I spent $35,000/year (not including room and board) to go to a school that is 80% male and the coursework was so challenging that I spent most weekend nights doing homework while other kids my age were partying.

Regardless, there is one GREAT thing that I took away from RPI - their slogan "why not change the world?" They pound it into their students head. They have a website about it, it's on every letter you get, it's on the front of every course catalogue, and it's on a huge banner that everyone sees when they enter campus.

What a great thing to pound into a college kids mind. When I arrived on campus as a 17 year old my main concerns were passing my classes and drinking beer, not always necessarily in that order. By the time I left, I had the confidence that I really could change the world.

Now does it take a $35,000/year education to do that? Of course not. We all know really stupid people who have Ivy League educations and MBA's, and we also know really smart people who never got through college.

What it does take is hard work and determination. It takes learning from your mistakes instead of blaming other people. It takes viewing those mistakes as road blocks that you have to work a little harder to get around, not as the end of the road. It takes focus and the ability to persevere through 70 hour work weeks where you make $0.00. But most of all, it takes the belief that you CAN change the world. You, I, and everyone else who's lucky enough to be alive can have an impact. So why not change the world?

Good Luck Trying to Take eBay Down

I like to think that no business is so great that it can never be challenged. It looked like that for Microsoft five years ago, but now they are in a very competitive battle with Google, Yahoo!, and Apple. But if there's one business out there that I would put my money on being the market leader for the indefinite future, it would be eBay.

I say this not because I think eBay is run better than any other company, or because I don't think there are any worth competitors out there, but because eBay is in the unique business of being a facilitator between buyer and seller. That means that eBay's customers are BOTH buyer and seller.

Most business only have buyers as customers. It's EXTREMELY difficult to concurrently build a base of buyers and sellers. You can't have one without the other. If you have buyers without any sellers, they aren't going to find what they are looking for. If you have sellers without buyers...well you won't have sellers very long because they won't be able to sell their stuff!

eBay has the largest group of both in the world. If you are really looking for a challenge, try creating a larger marketplace. I think it's the closest thing out there to impossible in the business world.

There have been numerous challengers to eBay and all have fallen flat on their face. It wasn't because of a lack of capital or effective technology, but because they couldn't find a way to concurrently attract enough buyers and sellers.

I found this out the hard way with SportsLizard in the collectibles industry. Relatively quickly, I realized that I was going to adjust my business model. I started offering something that no one else does - a way to compare collectibles for sale on my site, eBay, Amazon, and other sites all at once. I make money by passing traffic to one of those sites if people don't find what they're looking for on my site. Hey, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em :)

Pierre Omidyar, founder of eBay, put it best in Net Entrepreneurs Only (the book I reviewed last post):

We faced competition, even in our very early days, from people who were better funded. They've all generally downsized. The reason is quite simple. If you're
a buyer or a seller you're looking for the largest marketplace. That's eBay. If you're a seller, you're looking for two things. Do I sell my item? How much do I get
for it? You can only maximize those two things by going to the largest marketplace. It's very hard for a new competitor to pull people away from us or to get
new people once they know about eBay. In order to get sellers, you must have buyers.

Book Review - Net Entrepreneurs Only

Everyone loves to read other peoples success stories. It provides us with evidence that amazing things do happen to normal people. By learning what they did to succeed we come one step closer to success ourselves. Such is the case with the ten stories told in Net Entrepreneurs Only – 10 Entrepreneurs Tell the Stories of their Success by Gregory K. Ericksen and Ernst & Young.

Ericksen interviewed ten of the most successful entrepreneurs at the turn of the century and presents their stories with a unique but effective use of lengthy quotes from the entrepreneurs. The quotes leave you with a feeling of having actually interviewed the entrepreneur yourself rather than reading a story about them. Each story is about 20 pages long but reads more like 10 pages because of the big print and free flowing pace.

The 10 entrepreneurs chronicled in the book are Jay S. Walker (priceline.com), Mike McNulty and Mike Hagan (VerticalNet), Christina Jones (pcOrder), William Porter and Christos Cotsakos (E*Trade), Gregory K. Jones (uBid), Russell Horowitz (Go2Net), Ken Pasterna (Knight/Trimark), William Schrader (PSINet), Pierre Omidyar (eBay), and Mark Cuban and Todd Wagner (broadcast.com).

Each entrepreneur has a unique story of how and why they saw the internet as a viable place to start a business, and each had a different way of getting there, but after reading all ten stories you can see some common threads between these extremely successful net entrepreneurs. Although this book was written at a time when internet business success was substantially easier (the book was published in 2000), many of the core competencies that these entrepreneurs possess can be applied in any era to any industry.

Each is extremely passionate about what they do to the point that they inspire others around them to have the same passion. Each is not afraid to take a risk, regardless of whether or not other people disagree with it. Along with that, each knows that failure is inevitable when taking risks and understands that future success depends on the ability to learn from failure and move on.

Another interesting thing that was mentioned in three of the ten stories is the fear of being blindsided by an opponent that they can’t see coming. They all talk about the proverbial kid in his basement or garage that comes up with the technology that puts them out of business. When talking about Mark Cuban, Todd Wagner said:

“I know Mark worries, among other things, about the proverbial 12-year-old in the garage [coming up with technological breakthroughs] and us being blindsided.”

This commonality is particularly interesting, and I suspect it comes from the fact that many of these entrepreneurs WERE THAT KID and they fear the second coming of themselves more than anything else. They probably fear that this “kid” will have the same passion and determination that they once had, and that, more than anything else scares them.

If I had read this book when it was written I would certainly have recommended it to any young entrepreneur. However, years later I recommend it EVEN MORE. I think that it’s a must read for anyone looking to go into business or currently in business.

The thing that you can do now that you couldn’t do when the book was written is find out what’s happened to these entrepreneurs and their companies in the time that has passed since the book’s publication. One of the biggest joys of reading this book was trying to guess whether or not these companies still existed and whether or not the same entrepreneur was still running them.

Knowing that there was the dot-com boom and subsequent crash around that time, I figured there was less than a 50/50 chance that these businesses were still around. I’m not going to ruin the individual surprises, but there was a fairly vast array of directions that these companies and entrepreneurs went after the dot-com crash.

Some of the entrepreneurs we’ve all heard of (Mark Cuban), and some of the companies we know still exist and are very successful (eBay), but many the average reader won’t be familiar with. Doing the research to find out where they are today adds an extra dimension to the book that a reader wouldn’t have experienced if they read it when it came out.

Net Entrepreneurs Only – 10 Entrepreneurs Tell the Stories of their Success by Gregory K. Ericksen and Ernst & Young is an extremely interesting for anyone who enjoys a good success story. However, it’s truly inspiring if you are that entrepreneur who strives come up with the next innovating breakthrough that puts one of these ten entrepreneurs out of business.

That's What I'm Talking About

Everyone likes to have their work validated. Whether it be with sales, visitors to a web site, or a simple pat on the back, it always feels good to know that someone appreciates what you've done. In my case, it came from an article by Mark Cuban the other day.

See, sometimes I think that I just ramble incoherently on this blog. I think I'm making a point, but I'm not sure if people reading it see what I'm seeing. After my last post about my business doing a 180 I kind of felt like that. I said:

I have found an extremely successful niche. The collectibles news that was once thought to exist to promote the buying and selling of collectibles has now become far and away the most popular area of the site. I've come to find out that collectors value getting their news from an average collector. They value my honest (and unbiased) opinion. I realized that I could capitalize on this by adding a newsletter, RSS feed, and a mobile site...and that I could make money off of the advertising.

For years the only way to get collectibles news was from magazines like Tuff Stuff and Beckett. Both of whom work closely with all of the collectibles companies and tend to give a very biased view of the industry - one that results in all parties making the most money. Many times this isn't always in the best interest of the collectors, although they'll never admit it.

I hope that one of the things people took away from it is the value of unique and unbiased news. I THINK that's one of the points I made there but I suppose the whole thing could have been taken as me rambling about how my initial business plan failed and I stumbled upon another way to make some coin.

That's why I felt a little more sane after reading Mark Cuban's post the next day entitled Blogging vs Traditional Media - This time its personal. Cuban says that:

Traditional media has become almost exclusively corporate while blogging remains almost exclusively personal

which leads to:

Bloggers drive blogs, share price drives traditional media. Blogging is personal, traditional media is corporate.

Which is exactly why blog readership is going up, while traditional media is consolidating, if not contracting. Traditional media goes to work, bloggers live their work.

That's what I was talking about! Even though I didn't say it as eloquently as Mark did, it's what was churning in my head. People can tell what your motivation is. Although, at the end of the day I am still trying to make money, I really do care about the collectibles industry and more importantly I care about the well being of a collector.

I am not a writer for Beckett who only writes about collectibles because that's where the check is coming from. I don't pretend to care and then punch out at 4:59 and forget about my job until 9:01 the next day. I really do care. I'll stay up all night writing an article because I WANT to, not because I need to. I didn't choose sports collectibles because I thought it was the best business opportunity in the world. I chose sports collectibles because I saw a business opportunity in something I loved to do. Big difference.

And that's why it works! Thanks for the pat on the back Mark.

My Business Did a 180...and I'm Perfectly OK With It

It's funny how most of the time your business doesn't go exactly as planned. Notice I said funny - it's not a bad thing. If you are running your business properly, your customers will dictate your business plan. Sometimes it's the exact thing that you had in mind, but most of the time it's something a little different.

When I started SportsLizard.com in 2004 my goal was to provide a marketplace for buying and selling sports collectibles. I wanted to become to sports collectibles what Amazon.com is for books. There wasn't a place out there like that and I thought that I could become it. I would infuse collectibles news with buying and selling and create a 'community' for collectors. A great idea...right?

In hindsight there was a problem with this plan - collectors really didn't want or need a new place to go. Ooops. They were completely fine with going to eBay to find anything and everything that they needed. They were confident with buying and selling on eBay and it's become next to impossible for me to get even half of that confidence from collectors.

BUT I have found an extremely successful niche. The collectibles news that was once thought to exist to promote the buying and selling of collectibles has now become far and away the most popular area of the site. I've come to find out that collectors value getting their news from an average collector. They value my honest (and unbiased) opinion. I realized that I could capitalize on this by adding a newsletter, RSS feed, and a mobile site...and that I could make money off of the advertising.

For years the only way to get collectibles news was from magazines like Tuff Stuff and Beckett. Both of whom work closely with all of the collectibles companies and tend to give a very biased view of the industry - one that results in all parties making the most money. Many times this isn't always in the best interest of the collectors, although they'll never admit it.

Between myself and a few other writers we have used SportsLizard.com to become the voice of the collector. We have no vested interest in the success or failure of any other company. Our only goal is to provide honest news about a struggling industry in hopes of generating more loyal readers. In particular, my articles about autograph authentication and a biased Tuff Stuff article have caused quite a stir in the collecting community.

So the past few months collectibles sales have dropped off. But my business has grown because I was able to recognize what my visitors wanted from my site and what they didn't...and then I was able to counteract the "failure" of the buying and selling with ad money from articles. I have officially crossed the line and am making more money off of advertising than off of collectibles.

Don't get me wrong, I still think there are opportunities out there to exploit in the buying and selling of collectibles, and I've still got a few aces up my sleeve, but I am much more realistic about what I am up against.

I also realize that my greatest opportunity appears to be with getting collectors a fresh view of collectibles news. Rather than force something on my visitors that they don't want, I'm moving towards becoming what they do want.

Now, most businesses probably won't do a 180 like I did with SportsLizard, but every business will have to adjust their strategy along the way. The best way to know when and how: keep good metrics so you can quantitatively analyze what your customers want and like and what they don't. If you don't track what's going on, you won't know what changes need to be made to keep you competitive.

Oh, and don't think that I don't realize that a lot of this couldn't have been avoided if I had done a little better market research. I'm not talking about the expensive kind. I bet a few weeks of hovering around the right message boards and I could have saved myself some time and money. I consider it a lesson learned for the future...

Google Trends is a Great Business Tool

My buddy Paul (see previous post)is a huge Google fan. I'm guessing his dream job would be to work for G...or even better have one of his companies acquired by G.

I'm a little more neutral when it comes to big G. I think a bunch of their products are rip offs of something Yahoo! did like 3 years ago (Google Calendar, Google Finance) or are total crap (Google Base, Froogle). I also think that many of their products are extremely innovative and invaluable for a business owner (AdSense, AdWords, Sitemaps, and Analytics come to mind).

I just got finished telling Paul this last night when I saw Google Trends. Google Trends definitely falls into the latter category. It allows you to see search trends for the last two years for any term or combination of terms. The results give you a graphical representation, as well as the top cities, regions, and languages for that search term.

This tool will be extraordinarily valuable for anyone with an online business. You can literally track global demand for your product or products over time. Other tools that I know of don't quite get the job done. Alexa Traffic Rankings is a great tool to size up your site versus your competitor's, but fails to give a snapshot of the market as a whole. Overture's Key Word Selector Tool gives you the number of monthly searches on Yahoo! but fails to give you any data over time.

It has already been beneficial for me. I experienced a peak in sales last November and December and have seen a slow but steady drop since then (thankfully traffic has increased to other parts of my site so all is good). I suspected that this was because of the holidays. But other factors such as changes in my site and competitor's sites make it tough to tell. I probably make up less than 1% of the sports collectibles market, so my data might not be indicative of what the market is doing.

So what happened when I typed in sports collectibles on Google Trends? I saw exactly what I suspected - a spike near the holidays and decline ever since. I'm also concerned about the general downward trend over the past two years, although it doesn't completely surprise me - from what I've read the industry as a whole is shrinking.

Google Trends is a great tool for every entrepreneur. It should be used for your initial market research and continue to be used to track trends in your market after you launch. Thanks for the nice little tool G - hopefully this doesn't mean the next four things you launch will suck.

Oh, and be sure to check out Steve Rubel's blog post entitled 25 Things I Learned on Google Trends. Apparently David Hasselhoff's popularity in Germany is declining. Who would have figured...

Ask Paul

Fellow entrepreneur (and one of my college buddies) Paul Allen just released a pretty cool tool called Ask Paul. Ask Paul allows a user to search all public shared folders that a computer is a part of. This is great for people with home networks like myself who keep a ton of stuff on a shared drive between laptop and desktop.

It's even better for people in a corporate environment who are connected to massive shared drives and can never seem to find anything. I know I sure could have used it back when I was in industry - I can't tell you how much time I wasted browsing through network drives to find what I was looking for.

The interface has the look and feel of a Google application so it's pretty easy to pick up. Installation takes less than 15 minutes if you follow the instructions provided. For those concerned about security, no information is sent back to any server, the application simply follows all of the possible paths for shared network folders and records file names and locations in a local text file.

If you use shared network folders at all, there's no reason not to give this a shot. The 15 minutes you spend installing it will be paid back to you hundreds of times over in the time saved looking through folders.

Embrace Geeks

I read an interesting blog post the other day on Business Pundit.com by Rob May entitled "Why Business Needs More Geeks". Being a geek at heart, I was pretty interested to see what he had to say.

The article makes some great points about how work has become a necessity as opposed to a desire, and how most companies view their employees as expenses and not assets. This results in both employer and employee viewing the other as expendable.

It hasn't always been like that - the author blames Wall Street (and I tend to agree). Wall Street has everyone focused on immediate gains. CEO's have to show profit increases from quarter to quarter or they are gone.

What takes a giant hit when this happens? Innovation and customer satisfaction. You are no longer innovating for the long haul. You are no longer trying to satisfy your customers and grow your business for the future. You are solely focused on satisfying your investors in the short term. Sometimes that might include innovating and meeting your customers needs, but too often it doesn't.

So what should we do about it? Rob's solution is embrace geeks!

I love business and I want to see it return to the days of true capitalistic competition. The days of business by legal and/or customer manipulation should come to an end.

So what can we do? How can business return to the roots of capitalism? By embracing geeks.

He gives five compelling reasons, but the most important in my opinion is #5 - Geeks are about results, not office politics. I fancy myself to be a results oriented kind of guy who HATES office politics. That was one of the main reasons that I quit my job to run my own business.

Imagine working in a company where the business leaders embraced these geeky ideas. Imagine the impact a company could have if filled with people who always wanted to learn, debate, and do things the right way instead of the easy way. Imagine working with business geeks who love what they do because they believe business itself is ultimately cool and fun.

It all comes back to people doing what they love. Many geeks LOVE what they do - I don't always know if that's always the case for people in marketing or advertising. If you are more focused on sabotaging your co-worker than getting the job done, you should be fired. In my mind it's that simple. I only want to be around people that believe in what they do and have a passion to succeed the proper way. As Rob May pointed out, that just happens to be geeks more often than not.

Impossible is Nothing

Most sports fans will remember a few years back when Adidas started their incredibly successful "Impossible is Nothing" campaign. They launched the campaign with a poster in ESPN the Magazine and Sports Illustrated with that famous shot of Ali standing over Sonny Liston.

The campaign has gone on to include everyone from basketball stars like Kevin Garnett and Tim Duncan, to disabled athletes who have accomplished amazing things, and athletes who have used sports to help fight poverty in third world countries.

Each athlete told their unique story of how they overcame 'Impossible' odds to become successful. Some of the best ones were shown as commercials, others were featured on Adidas.com. Currently the campaign is focusing on soccer players for the upcoming World Cup.

The inspiration provided in many of these stories can be applied directly to entrepreneurial success. Overcoming the odds and doing the 'impossible' is difficult whether it be in athletics or business.

The day I started SportsLizard.com, I put the 'Impossible is Nothing' wallpaper on my desktop with Tim Duncan, T-Mac, and Kevin Garnett. Those words serve as constant motivation and encouragement to me each and every day.

My favorite part of the campaign is a quote that can still be found by going here:

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in a world they've been given than to explore the power they have to change it.
Impossible is not a fact. It's an opinion.
Impossible is not a declaration. It's a dare.
Impossible is potential.
Impossible is temporary.

IMPOSSIBLE IS NOTHING.

As an entrepreneur it's not always going to be easy - you are going to fail and you are going to encounter people that doubt you for various reasons. It's how you deal with that doubt and failure that will ultimately determine what the end result is.

So next time that happens, remember that nothing is impossible. Or should I say, Impossible is Nothing!

Performance Reviews are Stupid

I think every employee, no matter how good of a job they do, dreads performance reviews. You fear that your perception of how you are doing and their perception of how you are doing might differ. But the reality of it is that they really don't matter.

At the end of my first year as an engineer, my boss and I sat down for my performance review. I was a little nervous, but I figured I knew pretty much what he would say because we were constantly communicating with each other. It wasn't a once-a-year thing, it was an all-the-time thing. He always said that we will have a performance review to adhere to company policy, but nothing in the review should come as a surprise. If it did, he wasn't doing his job and we weren't communicating effectively. Needless to say, nothing in that review surprised me in the least bit.

In today's world, feedback once a year is not enough. Successful businesses and successful employees crave and need regular feedback - certainly weekly, and sometimes daily or hourly. It depends on the nature of the business and the people involved, but it always needs to happen more frequently than yearly.

I was reminded of this today when I read a post on David Lorenzo's Career Intensity Blog entitled Other's Can't Judge Your Value.

True measurement is rare. Very few companies measure performance in a way that accurately reflects individual achievement. Mediocre workers who donÂ’t rock the boat can end up earning more points than those who go beyond the call of duty.

You know your strengths best. If you want to move ahead in a company, you would be wise to emphasize the strengths your company values, and demonstrate them at every opportunity. However, if what you value most in yourself is not recognized or appreciated by your employer, you should probably move on to a position in which you can maximize the impact of your abilities, demonstrate them, and be rewarded for them.

As an entrepreneur, this applies to the opportunities that you take. You know your strengths, so why not build your company around them? The great part about running your own business is that you are guaranteed to be rewarded for your efforts if you succeed. That's something that's tough to find in a job.

Oh, and if you have employees, do away with performance reviews. They are stupid :)

Success at a Young Age

A few months ago I got an email from someone asking me how I became "successful at a young age." Nothing feels better than getting an email like that. It's the ultimate compliment. And while my "success" in my own eyes is certainly debatable (I think everyone defines success just a little bit differently), my reply sort of sums up my thoughts on the topic so I figured I'd share it:

Thanks for the email. I think that one of the keys to being successful at any age is finding something you love to do and figuring out how to make money doing it. In this day and age, there really isn't anything out there that people love to do that they can't find a way to make money doing. It's important to do something you love because to become successful it will likely consume your life. You will be miserable if you decide to go into business doing something that doesn't interest you. If you are going to pour your heart and soul into something, it should be something that you truly believe in and enjoy doing. In my instance, I love online business and I love sports collectible so growing my business is what I am passionate about, it's what I do for fun.

As far as being young, I actually think that it's an advantage. At a young age you don't have a wife/husband and kids, don't have a mortgage, are used to living on little income, and are used to change. All of these things can help a business succeed. I realize that there is also a downside, namely lack of experience and income, but I think the positives outweigh the negatives.

I would encourage anyone, no matter what age, to pursue what they want to do. Every few months I'll read a story in Entrepreneur magazine or somewhere online about a 15 or 16 year old who has a successful business. The Internet is the great equalizer - people don't know and don't care how old you are, how many employees you have, or how much experience you have. If you meet their needs better than anyone else, you will have customers and your business will be successful.