Thoughts from LGA in New York

1. The end physical product represents 5% of the design process. Making that part of business work is a highly specialized and small trade.

2. The steps necessary to get a product to a shelf (the other 95%) is best learned through experience or intense study because most of the tool/methodologies used are "behind the scenes". The major exception to this rule is people. 70% of communication is visual. A lot of it comes down to body language and tone.

3. America is an aging nation. The % of the population in the 55 - 75 age range will have more purchasing power over the next 20 years. Comfort will be more important than contemporary.

4. I have never seen so many beautiful women before in my entire life. In particular and most importantly, lots of foreign women. Move to New York? Teach English?

5. I got positive feedback from a mentor. It felt got. I also got negative feedback from a mentor. That felt less than good. Its important to trust the people you ask for feedback from and that they themselves are in the top 10%. My mentor was both. These people are valuable and important to hold on to.

6. I love great service with a fanatical sense of passion. Danny Meyer's restaurant Union Square Cafe absolutely blew me away. The waitress was smooth in her approach, a star example of off the cuff humor and flawless in her execution. At its core I find great service extremely good for this world and useful.

7. Art comments on society. In particular, MOMA talks about the last 50 years. Thinking in different frameworks can be fun, frustrating and useful all at once. Mostly fun though.

8. New York reaffirms that people are time poor.

9. Too much of the world is about the visual and it frequently doesn't reflect reality. This is not inherently bad, but without a compass can be destructive.

10. While it sounds cheezy, family is the foundation of many critical aspects of life. Always remain thankful and let them know it.

Blogger accepting i phone & trip to NY

First off thank you to blogger for enabling i phone users to post. Now insights can be written about from anywhere in the world and at any time.

Second, Im currently in New York and its incredible! More on this later but this city clearly has the most variety and spunk of any in the US. I cant think of a better, juicier place for anyone eager to learn about american passion and the things and people it creates.

Arresting forces

The style of design I am always excited to see is what I have coined, hurricane images. Hurricane images stop you dead in your tracks and instill an immediate and powerful sense of awe.

From what I can tell, each image in this realm is built upon a specific environmental structure. Two different, but not directly opposing factors intertwine creating a new and unusual picture. To work it out in my own head I think of colors. The two factors don't exactly interact like black does with white, but instead share a more complex relationship. One that incorporates elements of environment and camera angle. A black hat with a purple electron if you will.

I ran across two good examples today. One is a phrase, the other is a picture.

First,
"Credit Suisse Report Sets Gold Market On Fire"
Gold on Fire. Wow. That is an amazing image.



Second,


This man's name is Akeel. He is a lawyer.

Specificity drives results

As I learn more and more about the start-up world I am beginning to see a widening gap between what is public and what is true. The engines that propel the press focus on a niche of the world and repeatedly comment on it. Sex, drama, and celebrities are the first that come to mind. This leads me to believe that there exists a vault of information about how things work that is hidden. What does the un-obvious look like? Its a much larger conversation than I currently have time for but lets explore a brief example and we can come back to it later.

The topic is cats.

I. The Set Up
CatTV is a business that was started in 1989

Core insights:
- People spend a lot of time with their pet
- People spend a lot of time watching TV

Need:
- How can owners deepen the meaning of their relationship with their cat?

Solution:
- TV programing for cats. Pictures of birds and squirrels.
- Owner will feel useful and needed by their pet

This sounds ridiculous. I know. Lets face it, it is ridiculous. How could this ever work? Wouldn't someone have already figured it out if it worked?

But lets get into the details of the operation and think about why its actually a very good business to test.

II. The Detail
1. Target segment is extremely specific. United States cat owners. Easy to study target, multiple established marketing channels, large volume of potential customers.
2. The production costs to get the business up and running are nothing. Video tape some birds, put a few adds out and set up a phone number/website
3. No competition. People frequently flock to popular or fantastical markets because they've shown explosive growth (including me). Well, why not go where no one is? The end game is to win with customers. Isn't it easier to win when you're the only option?
4. Speedy arrival at the margin. All of these components combined get the business owner to the point where he/she can test their product and success very quickly

III. The Result
So here's the nuggets. What actually happened.

The production costs where actually relatively high: $25,000 and took 4 months to produce. Thats a good amount of money for a cat video. (Twice as expensive and twice as long). Only 400 videos were sold in the first year and half. (Have patience). As soon as one newspaper article was published sales jumped to 30,000 a year. (Don't be an idiot, market your product where people who are interested will see it) Sales stayed at 30,000 a year for 10 years!

The videos were priced at $14.95. The math? $4.5 million in revenue. Oh yeah!

Drucker

Peter Drucker was right. The only way to judge your own performance is to go back to the original goals you set for an initiative or project (after work has been done) and grade yourself on reaching those goals. I recently conducted this analysis on my performance in a recent project and came up with this 4 step tracking tool to focus my work and accelerate delivery.

My plan is to check my performance each day 4 times a day on the four below criteria.

1. Delivery Focus - "Stop paying attention to smiles. Do you have a goal, do you have a list?"

2. Execute sub-segments - "Which sub-segment of the project are you executing on?"

3. Hit your daily goals - "Are you on track to hit your daily goals? If no, start shedding."

4. Work with experts - "Are you working with experts to improve the quality of your work?"

I am in the production business. Producing high quality information under a specific time frame is my game.

One of the interesting things I discovered during the process is that my likeability frequently prevents me from receiving real feedback. My people skills can actually be a weakness. At times I have even found people even intimidated/overly impressed with my people skills. Upon reflection I think this is one of the great pitfalls of many people's personal development. Many occasions, environments, companies reward people that are nice and well liked. My view is that its actually a crime to teach people that just being nice gets the job done. It doesn't. Producing and having impact gets the job done. Consequently I coined the phrase "Stop paying attention to smiles" and created the column for delivery focus. Its something I look forward to working on.

(Ever heard the phrase: "You want to get something done ask a busy person". Why? Its because those people are producers and live their life to have impact)

The approach

Its challenging when you go through an entire day and 90% of the people you run into are just existing...

New learning: Start every day with a new song. Each day is the beginning of your battle to change the world. Start it fresh, with new possibility in front of you.

Tutor Vista

Last week I read an article about a phenomenal new business venture called Tutor Vista out of India. Tutor Vista is leading the outsourcing 2.0 trend. The concept is simple: Unlimited tutoring for your high school student for a monthly fee of $99 a month. It was started by a successful call center tycoon in India.

Its simple, meets a defined need and is built upon a steady supply of product. Solid business venture.