Writers, inventors, product developers
are always asked where their ideas come from.

For Sir James Dyson,
ideas come from terrible flaws.

In March/April’s The Costco Connection
he shares

“We always look for products
with some kind of terrible flow.
If we cannot dramatically improve
the way something works,
we won’t touch it.

Sometimes it’s the realization of the flaw
that drives us to develop the technology,
as with the dual cyclone.

Sometimes it’s the other way round;
we’ll have the technology and
observe that it could be good
for something else.

That is what happened with Airblade.
We had been developing
a fast-moving sheet of air
for something else
and realized that it could be used
for scraping water off your hands.”

Have you seen some terrible flaws?
Can you correct them?

As almost everyone in the blogosphere knows,
Google is cracking down
on spamtastic guest posts.

I don’t accept guest posts
on this blog.
If a blogger has something
interesting to say,
I encourage her/him
to post it
on her/his own blog
and I’ll link to it.

But if I DID accept guest posts,
I’d look at my goal for my blog
and which strategy would help me
achieve that goal.

A buddy’s goal for one of her blogs
is to convert Google traffic
into book sales.
(She has another blog for fans)
She has decided to
not accept guest posts
on the Google happy blog.

Another buddy has a goal
to support up and coming entrepreneurs,
giving them a place
to talk about their businesses
and their products.
She’ll risk Google’s wrath
and continue to host guest posts.

But they have made conscious decisions.

Google has changed its guest post policy.
It is time to
re-examine your guest post policy also.

Marissa Mayer, the CEO of Yahoo,
made headlines recently
for her memo to employees
requesting they come into the office.

We talked about telecommuting last week.
This post isn’t about that,
not really.
It is about assigning blanket solutions
for all employees, all companies.

A friend is a salesman.
His company doesn’t have
an official telecommuting policy.
His manager, however,
has a meet the client policy.
He tells his employees
if he sees them in the office too often,
he knows they’re not doing their jobs,
meeting with clients
or prospective clients.

If the best employee
to solve your business problems
lives across the country
and can do the job remotely,
it is foolish to force her
to come to the office.

If potential customers gather
at coffee shops, college campuses,
grocery stores,
wouldn’t these locations be better sites
for your product development meetings
than your office?

Where your employees work
should WORK
for your employees, your customers,
your business.

A friend was recently advised
not to bother with accepting cash
from her small business’s potential customers
as
“no one uses cash anymore.”

Is this true?

Nope.

As Carlos Arango,
principle researcher
with the Bank of Canada,
shares in
March/April’s The Costco Connection

“Cash is the most frequently used payment method
at the retail check-out
and accounts for 54 percent
of all transactions in Canada.
With transactions under $25,
the percentage jumps to
70 percent.”

Society is not cashless,
not yet.
If you are selling in retail,
investigate
before eliminating cash transactions.

Recently I was in a store,
waiting in a long line
for customer service.
The employees manning the counter
would answer phones
as soon as they rang,
leaving the customers
who were actually IN the store
to wait in the line.

Finally, I called the store’s
customer service number.
I watched as the employee
picked up the phone
and answered my question.

Ridiculous, isn’t it?
Yet this happens ALL the time.

As Jeff Mowatt,
author of
Becoming a Service Icon
in 90 Minutes a Month,
shares in
March/April’s The Costco Connection

“Walk-ins take priority over phone-ins.
Don’t interrupt a visitor
to pick up the phone.
That’s what voice mail is for.
If you must take the phone call,
ask the visitor’s permission.
Then tell the caller
that you are with another customer
but will look into his or her request
and call back.”

Service the customers
IN your store
first.

The ideal romance couple
has differences
(which creates excitement)
but at the core,
they’re the same,
working toward the same goals.
At the end of the novel,
they’re together,
in the same happy place.

We often talk
about how the business partners
we choose
should bring different skills and personalities,
strengths and weaknesses,
to the partnership.

This doesn’t mean
we should have nothing in common
with our partners.
We should have the same vision,
the same goals,
the same definition of success.

Ensure your business partners
are traveling in the same direction
as you are.

Yesterday,
we talked about building story-worlds.

A local business did a great job
of building a story around their products.
Over the past couple of years,
they’ve shown the same family
using their products.
These family members are recognizable.
We know their personalities.
We know which new products
each family member would prefer.

Then in a commercial airing this year,
the actor playing the father
and the actor playing the neighbor
were switched.

With this simple continuity mistake,
the world went from being ‘real’
to being ‘fake.’
Even though I knew it was a marketing campaign,
I felt betrayed by the company.

In the romance writing world,
we have editors and beta (or test) readers
who ensure there are no continuity mistakes.
Little mistakes like changing the hero’s tie color
pull readers out of the story.
They destroy trust.

When you’re building a story
around your product,
appoint someone to look for continuity issues.

What is the future of branding?

Jonah Sachs predicts

“Brands will build “story-worlds,”
not canned, thirty-second spots
designed for broadcast.

Brands that hope to create
engagement, exploration, and sharing
will need to create cross-platform content
that begins as a video story,
continues in interactive experiences,
and perhaps reaches climax in
an actual real-world experience.

This requires characters that live and breathe
(rather than pop up for thirty seconds and die),
plots to unfold over time, and
a place in the world for audiences
to insert themselves.”

This world building doesn’t have to be
complicated.
It can be as simple
as showing the same family
in more than one commercial.
The family lives with the product
as you want your prospects
to live with the product.
They are real, have personalities, faults.

Building a brand story
is a marketing tactic
any business at any stage
can do.

Consider building a story
around your products.

Google’s Chief Financial Officer,
Patrick Pichette,
isn’t a fan
of the working from home movement.

Why?

As he shares

“There is something magical
about sharing meals.
There is something magical
about spending the time together,
about noodling on ideas,
about asking at the computer
‘What do you think of this?’

These are magical moments that
we think at Google
are immensely important
in the development of your company,
of your own personal development
and building much stronger communities.”

Of course,
working from home
doesn’t have to be all or nothing.

A loved one spends
at least one day a week at the office,
working the rest of the week
at home.
He has the best of both worlds.

Working from home,
like any strategy,
isn’t suitable for all careers, all businesses.
Do what is best for YOUR career/company.

Failure almost always comes before success.
Successful people know this,
they accept this,
they often expect this.

As Lewis Schiff
shares
“Indeed, the “normal” psychological reaction
to failure is to distract yourself
and do something completely different
right away.

But extremely-successful entrepreneurs
typically defy this “normal” reaction.
They go back and
try again at things they fail at.

That’s because they often believe in something
I call the “failure faith,”
a powerful conviction that
every setback offers vital lessons
that could not be learned any other way.”

If you want success,
learn how to embrace failure.