THE DREAM IN ACTION

image via mie2002

As I began writing the blog THE DREAM IN ACTION.com I decided to read about about making dreams realities and how people are doing that in the real world today. About a month ago I reached out to the publisher of the book ‘Put Your Dream To The Test’ by John C Maxwell, and I was sent a free copy of the book (awesome perk of writing a blog). I dove into the book a week or so ago and I’ve decided that the content is so good that I’m going to do a bit of a series on it. The series will not be a complete review of the book, but think of it as part book report, part my thoughts on dream achievement, and part direct quotes. I hope that I can convince you to check out the book and put your dream to the test because the value I’ve experienced so far has definitely exceed the cost of the book.

Maxwell’s book is broken up in to 10 sections or questions that you need to be able to honestly ask yourself in order to put your dream to the test and evaluate the likely hood of it coming true.

• Ownership – Is your dream your dream?
• Clarity- Do you clearly see your dream?
• Reality – Is it in your control?
• Passion – Does it inspire you?
• Pathway – Do you have a strategy?
• People – Who will help you get there?
• Cost – What will you have to give up?
• Tenacity – Are you moving towards it?
• Fulfillment – Are you happy?
• Significance – Who else benefits?

Today I’d first like to pull a topic from Maxwell’s book. The idea of keeping your dream in focus, and the importance of focus in order to make any dream come to fruition.

lanjut →

I’ve been working in Uppsala, Sweden, about 45 minutes north of Stockholm, this week and have learned a few very valuable business lessons. I was lucky to have the opportunity to travel when most other travel opportunities have been cut, and I’ve really focused on making the most of the trip.

Coming into the week I wanted to focus on really investing myself fully into the deliverables that I’d committed to in order to justify the trip and also through building relationships that are critical in order to successfully execute on the project in the future. With those two focuses in mind, I’ve learned quite a lot and have, I think, succeeded in both.

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At BarCamp Milwaukee last weekend I hosted a session on Startups in the Financial Crisis. It was very well attended and turned out to be an incredibly valuable discussion for a lot of people. (Thanks for all the great feedback!)

I wanted to revisit some of the content of that discussion to emphasize what a startup needs to focus on within a very tight economic environment. When the DJI is down 40% from this time last year things change. Budgets have been cut, investment capital has been reduced, and now only the best will get funding. I’m going to pull one out of my fathers book: “I’m not going to tell you what to do, but here is what I would do if I were you…”

Get Lean

I don’t mean just start running and eating well (although that may help). I mean reduce the FAT of your startup! Stop paying somebody to do sales if your product isn’t ready to be sold. Look for small inefficiencies that can be improved. If your development teams finds that they are spending excess time on bug fix, think about changing your development strategy. Obie Fernandez’s team at Hashrocket, employs the “Pair Programming” strategy. You may think it would be a waste for two to do the work of one but the time and effort save on bug fix is huge. Focus on two words when looking to LEAN your startup, EFFICIENT & EFFECTIVE.

Focus

This one also implies that there are decisions to be made. The obvious is, what to focus on? Well don’t take this advice and go put yourself in a cave coding. It is super important that you focus on the product from a user feedback perspective. You need to be out there building your community and asking for feedback from them. If you don’t know what your community thinks of your alpha release, how do you even know what to code? It is very important that you are out there building relationships and building opportunities for future collaboration and growth with other entities. The startup ecosystem is alive and well, if you are not tapping that (ass) your really missing out.

Profits

You used to be able to sell your 100k views with no monetization strategy to VCs… that might not work these days. Today your going to have to prove that you have value the old fashion way…sell (which implies someone is paying real $$$). It’s important now to show investors that you can actually make money. Jason Fried (37 Signals) talks about not having to build a  Domino’s, but just build a profitable Mom & Pop pizza shop that makes money month after month. Profits will become more and more critical and you may have to make difficult decisions to get there. Even Google is cutting back, so your startup will likely have to also. The gist here is focus on the bottom line!

As many of you well know I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV. Gary is authentic and uses that authenticity to build great businesses. A few weeks ago I reached out to Gary for a spotlight on ActionsTalk, my start-up that features great entrepreneurs and allows them to tell their story to our viewers.  We sent Gary the topic questions as a guide for his spotlight and he filmed this week. During filming and thinking about growing a business he decided to address the topic of small business growth and this video was posted on his personal site garyvaynerchuk.com.

Then Loic Lemeur chimed into the conversation (and referenced a conversation I earlier had with Loic!) with his thoughts on  content, community, and an intense step by step focus.These are the people that I listen to closest when fighting through the trials that come along with building a start-up. Their experiences and opinions are invaluable to my development as an entrepreneur.