CHAPTER COMPETITORS

DON’T COPY

There’s a formula for failure, though. The problem with this sort of copying is it skips understanding — and understanding is how you grow.

DECOMMODITIZE YOUR PRODUCT

If  you’re successful, people will try to copy what you do. It’s just a fact of life. But there’s a great way to protect yourself from copycats: Make you part of your product or service. Inject what’s unique about the way you think into what you sell. Decommoditize your product. Make it something no one else can offer.

Zappos.com – Customer Satisfaction

Polyface – sell clean meat to families

PICK A FIGHT

Dunkin’ Donuts vs. Starbucks

Audi vs. Traditional luxury car brands

Apple vs. Microsoft (&PC)

7UP vs. Coca Cola

Having an enemy gives you a great story to tell customers, too.

UNDERDO YOUR COMPEITION

This sort of one-upping, Cold War mentality is a dead end.

Flip does not have big screen, no photo-taking ability, no lots of stuff

Don’t shy away from the fact that your product or service does less. Highlight it. Be proud of it. Sell it as aggressively as competitors sell their extensive feature lists.

FOCUS ON YOU INSTEAD OF THEY – WHO CARES WHAT THEY’RE DOING?

Focus on competitors too much and you wind up diluting your own vision.

CHAPTER PRODUCTIVITY

Reasons to quit:

It’s easy to put your head down and just work on what you think needs to be done. It’s a lot harder to pull your head up and ask why.

Workflow:

• Why are you doing this?
• What problem are you solving?
• Is this actually useful?
• Are you adding value?
• Too much ketchup can ruin the fries. Value is about balance.
• Will this change behavior?
• Don’t add something unless it has a real impact on how people use your product.
• Is there an easier way?
• Problems are usually pretty simple. We just imagine that they require hard solutions.
• What could you be doing instead?
• What can’t you do because you’re doing this? For small team with constraints: if you do A, can you still do B and C before April? If not, would you rather have B or C instead of A?
• Is it really worth it?
• Is this meeting worth pulling six people off their work for an hour?

Good enough is fine

Find a judo solution, one that delivers maximum efficiency with minimum effort.

When good enough gets the job done, go for it.

Quick wins:

Momentum fuels motivation.

The longer something takes, the less likely it is that you’re going to finish it.

Excitement comes from doing something and then letting customers have at it.

Try to break work down to small pieces… You want a steady stream of good news.

When there’s something new to announce every two weeks, you energize your team and give your customers something to be excited about.

Go to sleep

If it becomes a constant, the costs start to mount:

• Stubbornness
• Lack of creativity
• Diminished morale:
  You lose motivation to attack the big problems
• Irritability:
  Your ability to remain patient and tolerant is severely reduced when you’re tired.

Your estimates suck

Keep breaking your time frames down into smaller chunks. Instead of one twelve-week project, structure it as twelve one-week projects. Instead of guesstimating at tasks that take thirty hours or more, break them down into more realistic six-to-ten-hour chunks. Then go one step at a time.

Long lists don’t get done

There’s a better way. Break that long list down into a bunch of smaller lists. For example, break a single list of a hundred items into ten lists of ten items.

Yes, you still have the same amount of stuff left to do. But now you can look at the small picture and find satisfaction, motivation and progress.

Make tiny decisions

Once ego and pride are on the line, you can’t change your mind without looking bad. The desire to save face trumps the desire to make the right call. And then there’s inertia too: The more steam you put into going in one direction, the harder it is to change course.

CHAPTER PROGRESS

Embrace Constraints

Constraints are advantages in disguise.

 Shakespeare – limitations of sonnets

Ernest Hemingway & Reymond Carver use simple, clear language to deliver maximum impact.

Southwest – Flies only Boeing 737s -> Every employee can work any flight. All plane parts fit all of its planes.

Even when you have more resources and people, you should still force constraints – only one or two people working on a product at a time. Keep features to a minimum.

Build a half product, not a half-ass product

You can turn a bunch of great ideas into a crappy product real fast by trying to do them all at once. You just can’t do everything you want to do and do it well. You have limited time, resources, ability, and focus. It’s hard enough to do one thing right. Trying to do ten things well at the same time? Forget about it.

Start at the epicenter

There’s stuff:

• you could do
• you want to do
• you have to do (Start point)

 *Notes:

What are the stuff we have to do?

So figure out your epicenter. Which part of your equation can’t be removed?

 *Notes:

Cook4You:

• What are the stuff we have to do?
• Variety of food (a menu of 10 dishes that we can switch around) Do we have that already?
• How much should we price each item?
• How do we insure food quality is still there after a week? 如何保证新鲜?
• How do we market ourselves? How do we get people to trust our product?

 Tripatchers:

•  Profile – What are the asterisk(*) items?
• Maybe it’s a good idea to start with constraints: Location + Serivce Catalog
• Location: New York City – Shanghai
• SC: Photography? Simple show around the city type of service

*/notes

Ignore the details early on:

Details make the difference. But getting infatuated with details too early leads to disagreement, meetings, and delays. You get lost in things that don’t really matter. You waste time on decisions that are going to change anyway. So ignore the details – for a while. Nail the basics first and worry about the specifics later.

  Sharpie vs. Ballpoint pen

Making the call is making progress

You don’t have to live with a decision forever. If you make a mistake, you can correct it later.

Be a curator

You don’t make a great museum by putting all the art in the world into a single room. That’s a warehouse. What makes a museum great is the stuff that’s not on the walls.

It’s the stuff you leave out that matters. Constantly look for the things to remove, simplify, and streamline. Be a curator. Stick to what’s truly essential. Pare things down until you’re left with only the most important stuff. Then do it again. You can always add stuff back in later if you need to.

Throw less at the problem

Watch chef Gorden Ramsay’s Ktichen Nightmares and you’ll see a pattern. The menus at failing restaurants offer too many dishes. The owners think making every dish under the sun will broaden the appeal of the restaurant. Instead it makes for crappy food (and creates inventory headaches).

That’s why Ramsay’s first step is nearly always to trim the menu, usually from thrity-plus dishes to around ten. Think about that. Improving the current menu doesn’t come first. Trimming it down comes first. Then he polishes what’s left.

Focus on what won’t change

The core of your business should bebuilt around things that won’t change.

*Notes

Cook4You: Healthy, Cost Saving, Easy to manage (heat, eat and toss)

Tripatcher: Patch your trip

*/Notes

Industry Examples:

Amazon – Fast/Free Shipping, Great Selection, Friendly Return Policies, and afforadable prices.

37Signals – Speed, Simplicity, ease of use and clarity.

Japanese Automakers – Reliability, affordability, and practicality.

Fashion fades away. When you focus on /permanent/ features, you’re in bed with things that never go out of style.

Tone is in your fingers

Use whatever you’ve got already or can afford cheaply. Then go.

Sell your by-products

Everything has a by-product.

Lumber industry uses sawdust, chips, and shredded wood for synthetic fireplace logs, concrete, ice strengtheners, mulch, particleboard, fuel, and more.

Launch now

launch before everything’s perfect; this approach just recognizes that the best way to get there is through iterations.

Get the chisel out and start making something real. Anything else is just a distraction.