Rokos creates playful, functional, sculptural products, that behave in unexpected ways. The products encourage a rich interactive experience. I like to explore the physical properties of materials to generate aesthetic, intriguing concepts. I work to ensure Rokos delivers exceptional quality in every piece. I won’t compromise at any stage of the process, from design through to manufacturing.

You can find Rokos at www.rokos.co.uk. I’m also on Facebook and Twitter.

What made you decide to start your business?

I had a design for a fruit bowl – the 22° 36° 48°. It sits at the three angles of the title to display or hide it’s contents.

I had pitched it to the buyer at the Conran shop, who liked the bowl, but they did not wish to set up an account for only one product. Since my other work was conceptual rather than commercial, it was clear that if I were to supply Conran with my products, I would need to have a range of things to sell them.

So I created a wine decanter – the 13° 60° 104°. It leans over and gets drunk, with the drinkers.

However, at this point, I realised that it made sense to create a brand to sell these products under and that brand has taken on a life of it’s own.

What made you decide to enroll in School for Startups a year ago?

Starting a new business alone is very tough. Whilst things had been moving forward steadily, it was a daunting journey ahead and I was well aware that there was so much I did not know about setting up and running a business.

There were many things I knew I needed to learn and gaining all this business knowledge was going to be a very steep hill to climb.

I saw Doug speak for the first time and I went over to chat with him right after his talk. I presented him with a leaflet about the Blindspot range of products and he reviewed them from a business perspective – an angle I had not seen them from before.

He gave me very clear and insightful advice. I was able to afford the subsidised course fee for School for Creative Startups so the decision to join was a no-brainer.

What meaningful answers did you discover in working with Doug Richard and the experts he’s brought in to advise and mentor you?

My most important lesson has been not to do every job personally. Many things can be outsourced which is more efficient than trying to do everything myself. This saves time, which I am learning to treat as a valuable and limited resource.

What meaningful and useful knowledge have you acquired over the last year through School for Creative Startups?

Doug taught me to use the support of companies larger than mine: Google Ad-Words can help my customers to find me. Amazon Fulfillment will deliver my goods. Shopify’s built in e-commerce takes payments for me.

We had training in how to negotiate and I learned that by asking some questions first, it is possible to discover opportunities for a better deal for both parties.

What were the most important topics covered at School for Creative Startups bootcamps and seminars? Why were they important to you?

Doug’s lectures about the web were fascinating. It was a revelation to realize I could develop a relationship with the press. I had seen them as closed doors, but now I know that it is okay to ring them and have a chat. Getting a design into the press is more powerful than paid advertising (and it is also, of course, free).

Shane Reading taught us that it is perfectly acceptable to email news to the people on our mailing lists. They want to know what’s happening with me and my brand. She explained the importance of using creativity to make the experience of receiving goods more personal.

Who you have met, through School for Startups, that made a real impact on you?

My first sale was made at our opening exhibition by fellow student Jamal. Not only did he close the deal, but he also discovered that the selling price was too low and suggested that I increase the retail price to the piece’s market value. We have continued to help each other at events and I am hoping that Jamal’s flair for sales will rub off on me.

I have found it to be highly supportive to have the school behind me. Program director Medeia Cohan and program coordinator Chris Cunniff run the school from the London office. When I reach a point where I do not see an answer to a problem I will call on them and they will suggest an answer or put me in touch with one of their many contacts who can help me with the particular problem. Chris has recently put me in touch with Nova Stevenson of Post Creative, who has agreed to take on my website development at a special discount for students on the course.

Business guru Nancy Fulton sits at her computer in Los Angeles and provides lightening fast answers to my business questions. I asked her to review the Rokos e-shop and I implemented the suggestions only moments after having sent my questions!

Which speakers and mentors have had the biggest impact on you and your business?

I am supported by several mentors – serial entrepreneur and celebrity, Doug Richards is guiding the business. He had advised to have something creative to post out to the London shops, telling them about the 22° 36° 48° bowl.

Fortunately, my current intern Leo Choi is a genius and he is turning my request for a paper pop-up bowl card into reality. It was particularly appreciated last weekend, when I needed some emergency business advice on a bank holiday Saturday evening. I emailed my dilemma to Doug and he emailed back a suggestion within a couple of hours.

Medeia, who has a spectrum of contacts, puts me in touch with some fantastic people, when I reach out for help. One of which is Jamie Scrimgeour, who has a proven background in design and manufacturing and has been advising me on manufacturing strategy.

I had exchanged more than five hundred emails in my search for a manufacturer to produce the 13° 60° 104° wine decanter. I realised that there must be something wrong with my approach. Jamie explained that large orders are everything to a manufacturer. My best offer so far had been to produce 10,000 units – not possible for me just yet.

Jamie taught me that, even though I can not promise specific large numbers, I can communicate my goals for the future. So, even though I am starting with small orders, a manufacturer can see that I am likely to be making larger orders in the future. With this new approach, I immediately had strong interest from two manufacturers.

Home chef Arno Maasdorp, (owner of a magnificent beard and the man behind the Saltoun Supper Club) noted how the three concave bases are reminiscent of the deep punts found at the bottom of an expensive bottle of wine. Arno explains that the correct way to hold a bottle of wine is not by the neck, but by the bowl and observes how it is possible to hold the large bowled 13° 60° 104° decanter here, because the thumb can sit inside the punt. With his precise attention to detail, he advised that by making small adjustments to the scale, the three angles could also represent standard wine measures: now the upright position measures a Magnum, the middle position holds a 750ml and the downward position shows that the decanter could use a refill. “That’s very good”, I said. “It’s bloody genius, that’s what it is”, Arno replied. He is generously promoting both products at events and in his diners’ club. His insights enrich the experience of enjoying a Rokos.

Which of your products are you proudest of? Why?

People react most strongly to the 13° 60° 104° wine decanter. It is a pleasure to see their immediate desire for the product and it has recently won the prestigious Red Dot design award for outstanding product design.

Do you feel you’ve developed relationships through this program that will help you in the months and years to come?

I do think so. School for Creative Startups offers ongoing support to it’s alumni’s and I’ve made some personal relationships with mentors and fellow students that I think will last many years.

About Jim Rokos

Jim is a multi award-winning designer. This year he has won the Red Dot design award for product design and also Faces of Design competitions. He holds an RSA award and his innovative cat food bowl won BBC’s tomorrow’s world’s Best Inventions pilot. His Blindspot series is Design Parade selected. While studying, D&AD included his work in their competition’s book.

Jim had explored many creative areas, before discovering his passion for Industrial Design. Originally trained as a model-maker in the film and television industry (The Muppet Treasure Island, Band of Brothers, Tomb Raider, Victoria and Albert), Jim’s innovative cat-food bowl sold over 50,000 pieces throughout Europe. Jim then went on to teach at a special needs school in London, before completing a Master’s degree (2006) in Industrial Design, at Central Saint Martins College of Art & Design (part of London’s University of the Arts).

Working from the studio in London, Jim is passionate to explore materials to create original and visually beautiful, refined concepts. He enjoys every stage of the design process. New creative techniques are sought to generate original ideas.

Now he is launching the brand ‘Rokos’, which creates products that are playful in their form and behave in unexpected ways, promoting an exceptional interactive experience. ROKOS explores the physical properties of materials to generate visually beautiful, intriguing concepts.

Related posts:

1. Featured Entrepreneur: Brett Afshar
2. Featured Entrepreneur: Charlie Wright
3. Featured Entrepreneur: Nadeem Azam

WordPress is very popular for good reason. Designed from the ground up to be easy to use and search engine optimized, it is also free, relatively difficult to hack, and supports thousands of plugins available on demand from within the application.

In this article we review 5 free WordPress plugins that will help you market your startup more quickly and cost effectively online. They will take most people under two hours to install and configure. The benefits will be apparent to most website owners within one day.

How do you install plugins on your WordPress site?

Once WordPress is installed on your site, and you know how to log in to the Administration Dashboard, click Plugins. You’ll then see all the plugins currently installed on your site. Just click Add New to install new ones. Use the Search tool on this page to find Plugins by name or by the function they perform. There are thousands to choose from.

Warning: Not every Plugin works with every installation of WordPress. When you search for plugins by keyword you will see, next to each Plugin, a Details link. If you click Details and the resulting page says “Warning: This plugin has not been tested with your current version of WordPress” you should probably not install the plugin because it is meant for an older version of WordPress than you have and it may disable your site.  If this warning does not appear, take a moment to confirm that the number of people who have downloaded the plugin is high and that the plug-in is rated at 4 to 5 stars. Following these instructions should ensure installing a given Plugin is relatively safe.

Tip: On a high traffic domain you should have a test version of your site you work on and another that the public sees. That will allow you to test changes to your site before they go live. If you can’t do this, you should, at the very minimum, make sure your website is always backed up. There are plugins that make that easy for you, including one called EZPC OCB.

And now the plugins . . .

Subscriber2
Every WordPress power user has a tool they love to use for collecting email addresses from those who drop by the site. Subscriber2 is my favorite because it is very simple to install and it not only automates the collection of email addresses, but will send out emails to your subscribers for every post, twice a day, once a day or once a week. These emails are the best way to ensure your customers remember where to find you. Note, each message Subscriber2 sends out will have instructions that tell the user how to remove themselves from your mailing list. Subscriber will automatically handly that for you too.

Tweet Old Post
Almost no startup owner has time to update Twitter and yet the single most effective thing you can do to promote your business through Twitter is to post content of interest to your market every one to four hours. After you install the Tweet Old Post plug in, configure it to tweet at the desired interval, then specify which category contains the articles you want promoted. This plug in will not handle all your twitter marketing for you. You will still have to login once every 24-48 hours to respond to direct messages and other interactions if you want to see any real benefit from Twitter at all.

Feed WordPress
This tool will create new posts on your site by reading any RSS feed you direct it at. This means that you can go to news.google.com, search for any keyword or topic, and then turn that into an RSS feed that posts on your site ensuring there are always new articles for visitors to read when they stop by. You can specify how often the tool updates your page, can have it hold new posts as “pending” until you’ve read and/or modified them, and can specify what categories the new posts are listed under. Not every site needs this tool, but for those who need to have daily return traffic to their blog, it is very useful.

Tip: There are instructions on news.google.com that describe how to turn any search for articles into an RSS feed, which is just a text-only version of a list of articles, excerpts and links. RSS Feeds are used by sites worldwide to create links to news articles all over the internet.

Counterize
This tool will track every click on your site so you can see, at a glance, where your traffic is coming from (down to the IP number if you are in the States), what pages they are looking at, what pages they drop off your site on, and what keywords are important to them. Now, you can certainly install Google Analytics on your site to all these things, but having the tool located on your site in a format that makes it easy to see if today’s new post is getting hits, is very handy.

AddToAny
This tool puts a link on every post which lets your users share your page with their friends on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Reddit and dozens of other social networks. This is a must have for any network these days.

Other Plugins

There are certainly many other great Plugins you should consider installing on your site, from interactive sliders to display your videos to tools that watermark your images so they are harder to steal, but generally the five above will prove very handy to almost every startup website owner.

Related posts:

1. An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Search Engine Marketing Site & Page Structure Matters
2. Social Media Marketing is Never Spam
3. An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Google PageRank & Search Engine Optimization

If you find that business discussions in social situations routinely end up with you giving your services away free, the following advice will be useful.

You’ll find our suggestions particularly handy if you are just starting your business and many of your customers will necessarily come from your personal circle of friends and acquaintances.

Pricing Favors and Avoiding Freebies

There’s a rule salesmen often follow when closing sales . . . “He who names a price first loses”. Why? Because if you name too high a price a potential customer goes away offended. If you name too low a price you discredit the value of what you do and you cheat yourself out of a fair price.

Always Remember, What You Do Has Value

When people ask you for advice or help, whether at a social event or a business networking event, they are indicating that what you do has value to them. So, the next time you end up in a social chat which somehow turns into a solicitation for free advice or help, be friendly. Spend a few minutes talking about specific actions they can take to resolve the problem.

At some point they’ll either drop the topic or say “Can you help me?”

At this point you should say, “I don’t know. What’s your budget?”

Then wait without saying anything.

If the person you are talking to doesn’t say anything, or moves on to other topics, they don’t have a budget and you’ve just sidestepped offering your services for free.

If they say “I can’t afford to pay,” say “Well, after our discussion, I’m pretty sure you can find what you need online. There are so many good sites for free help this these days.” Then feel free to move on to other topics. Resist the urge to make their problem your problem just because you’ve shared a good discussion.

What Happens if They Want to Do Business?

If someone ask how much you charge. The only sensible reply is “It depends on what you want done”. If time permits, generate a list of deliverables then ask “How much can you afford?” or “How much will that save you?” or “How much revenue will that generate for you?” That sets some framework for a price.

If the person just refuses to participate in negotiation, try naming a high price for your services. Sometimes it helps to use the phrasing, “Well right now I’m doing that for a few clients who pay . . . ”

While this may not get you work, it will let you get back to the party.

Learning to Handle This Situation Well Makes Networking More Profitable & Social Events Less Trying

The truth is, most nice people won’t waste your time for long if they don’t have a budget to pay you for what you. Once you know they are interested in paying you, the only issue is price.

Some people will waste your time, either because they are naive and think you can afford to work for free or they have a different set of business ethics from most of us. When you run into those people, it’s best not to turn them into “customers” or people you owe services to. They can waste a great deal of your time, and when you sell services for a living . . . time really is money.

Related posts:

1. Social Media Marketing is Never Spam
2. Protecting Your Business From Bad Social Media
3. Matt Black, Business Development Manager of Social Enterprise Magazine

Some people say that it is not what you know but who you know.  Truth is, it is both. If you are an entrepreneur running a business-to-business enterprise, investing time into social networking sites like Facebook (www.facebook.com) can seem like a waste of time because it probably is.  There’s little point in delivering your message about photocopiers and courier services to folks discussing dating venues and baby bottles. How can your business posts not seem like spam in that context?

That is why there is LinkedIn.com, a site where business people can talk business to other business people safely.  You really can find a large percentage of the business people you know, and those you want to know, on this website.  Perhaps more important, there are several tools that let you connect to those open to new business proposals and new networking relationships.

Using LinkedIn effectively is easy if you do the following:

1. To create an account, just go to www.linkedin.com.  Provide all the usual data.  Linked in has tools that will mine your email box for friends. If that email box happens to be your business email box, allowing LinkedIn to issue invitations is probably appropriate.  You can pick and choose contacts if you prefer.
2. Once your account is setup, your resume entered, your friends invited, go join some Groups in the business areas that matter most to you. Media, manufacturing, import/export, etc.  Groups are for people that actively want to network through LinkedIn.  Important: Being in a group with someone means you can contact them for free through LinkedIn messages. Because it means you can search for the people you need to know, based on their job title let’s say, and if you find a contact that’s in a group with you . . . you can send him a well written message and far more often than not he will reply. This means you don’t have to pay for InMail messages.
3. You can search for people by company, title, location and other parameters.  This is handy.  If you need to find potential funders for example, try searching for angel investor, private equity, venture capital, private lender, investment manager or hedge fund manager. You’ll get some useful results.
4. Make sure your profile links to your website, and make sure your website has your phone number, email address and Twitter account.
5. Ask questions on the Answers forum if you need help.  Answering questions for others is a great way to create new networking connects and demonstrate special expertise.
6. Post jobs on LinkedIn when you need to hire people.  You’ll be surprised how many well qualified people find you here.  It is also very useful to see applicant profiles, including connections, when folks respond.
7. You can now post ads on LinkedIn, and they offer some useful targeting tools.  For best results, purchase a low cost subscription to Linked in and make ads drive customers to your page.  Your subscription will allow you to see who has visited your page and you can then email them through LinkedIn to follow up on their interest in whatever you are advertising.  You can also have links on your LinkedIn page point to a special offer for LinkedIn customers on your website or offer them a free product or service so you can collect their email address so you can contact them in the future without going through LinkedIn.
8. Within Linkedin Groups, you can post links to news articles and start new discussions.  If you have the lowest priced LinkedIn paid subscription you can see who has visited your site from these groups.

LinkedIn is not Facebook.  So this is not the place to post baby pictures, expose political or religious preferences, or discuss who you are dating.   The negative reactions you receive from such a breach are every bit as bad as you get from “spamming” Facebook with a blatant business message.

LinkedIn is, however, an exceptionally good place to make new business connections and to maintain them for long periods of time.  It is a great place to market your business and promote all your website has to offer.  It really is a fully functional business community, and for business-to-business enterpreneurs it is much better than Facebook.  I look forward to seeing you there.

Reminder:  If you have a creative startup you would like to start, or already own one that is struggling, apply to School for Creative Startups.  You get several multiple day bootcamps, an on call mentor, help from well known industry pros, and several training sessions per month from experts in a wide variety of fields.  Check it out.  Applications are being accepted . . .

Related posts:

1. Promoting Your Business Effectively On LinkedIn
2. LinkedIn, Google Places, Twitter, Facebook & Google Page Rank
3. 5 WordPress Plugins for Startup Search Engine & Social Media Marketing

For example, Marconi gets credit for the Radio when Nikola Tesla invented it (according to the US Supreme Court who adjudicated the patent).

So abandon any illusion that having a great product or service will result in you having a strong business. To be successful you must be well known. Unfortunately, as a startup, you probably can’t afford to buy the advertising and promotion you need in order to do that.

That means you must find another way to get the visibility your business needs to thrive.

What is Visibility?

From a business standpoint, visibility is the awareness your potential customers have of your product or service.

How Startups Acquire Visibility Quickly and Cost Effectively

Startups get visibility when those who have it elect to showcase them or what they sell.  When you are looking for ways to get visibility you must start by looking at who your customers already perceive and follow.

Celebrities: Every generation of teens follows their set of idols.  There’s a reason that Elvis, Madonna, Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus all have lunch boxes. The cool thing about pop celebrities is that they target not just an age group but other demographics.  The Police hits one market and Fifty Cent hits another. Celebrities can be as local as a favorite school teacher or civic leader or as well know as the prime minister of a country or the president of an international conglomerate. Take some time to consider which celebrities are visible to your target market, then do some research to discover what social initiatives and projects they are working on. Is there any way your startup can support them with labor, free or reduced cost product, or small amounts of money?

Related products and services: What other products and services do members of your target market already use? If you produce educational puzzles, your closest point of contact with your target market may be a local museum or educational institution.  Can you create a product or service just for them that showcases your enterprise while giving them a higher rate of profit and name exposure than they might otherwise receive?  If you can’t work with market leaders, are their secondary or tertiary brands that serve your potential customers that need a way to differentiate themselves from their larger competition? Can you provide a cost effective way for them to do that by providing products and services for free or just above cost?

Events and locations: One reason why location can be such an important factor in a business is that a good location may well bring your enterprise into contact with hundreds or thousands of your customers every day.  How many people pass through the train station closest to you? How many people go to your local grocery market every day? Is there a way you can position yourself in the path of that traffic? Alternatively, are there trade shows you can go to, or events you can create through services like Meetup.com, that will bring you into contact with potential customers? What do your customers in these places have to see instantly in order to perceive the unique value of what you have to sell?

A Word About Remarkability…

Selling a product people need or want at a price they are willing to pay, then becoming visible to your market by working with or through those in contact with them, are two firm requirements for creating a thriving business.

You can vastly accelerate the rate at which you succeed by making your product or service itself “remarkable”.  That means designing the product so that people who use it have every incentive on earth to tell others about it.  To use Twitter, Facebook or Skype you must invite your friends, family and business contacts to use them.  This explains their meteoric rise over the last decade.

If you sell a dog walking service, giving your customers leashes or other gear that promotes your enterprise ensures that every time their dog goes for a walk other dog owners learn about what your company does for a living.

You can make any product or service remarkable if you take the time to consider how the product will be used, what social or economic advantage your customers can derive from sharing it, and how you can make that introduction effortless, natural and beneficial for all parties.

Visibility & Remarkability…an Unbeatable Combination

Startups who focus on a creating great product or service delivered at the right price have often incurred all the costs associated with starting a successful business.

Without investing a similar amount of thought, time and effort in visibility and remarkability, they’ve maximized cost without maximizing the possibility of finding customers quickly and cost effectively.

If you have never figured out how to cheaply, quickly, remarkably become visible to your customers, it’s time to take that step.

Related posts:

1. Want a Good Business Fast? Serve People You Know…
2. 5 Ways to Acquire & Analyze Customers Before You Have a Product
3. Successful Startups Almost Never Compete On Price

If you make the mistake of starting business with the wrong partner you may well find you have to walk away from an idea you really love because your business never gets off the ground. Alternatively your business may succeed in the short term only to dissolve in a pool of expensive infighting.

That means it pays to ensure that your partner or partners in a business are reasonable people you can work with for years to come. It also pays to understand how to structure your relationships with these co-owners around the hard realities of building an enterprise from the ground up.

Here are some fundamentals to think about . . .

Ownership of a startup should not be a gift. While you and your partners may have the best of intentions at the outset, many people who start out to create a new business find they just can’t follow through on that commitment over the 2-5 years it takes to get it off the ground.

If a partner leaves a business during this critical time period he must be replaced and often this replacement will need to be compensated with equity in the enterprise because the startup simply can’t afford to pay founders what they can earn elsewhere.

If all the equity in the enterprise has been permanently gifted to the initial partners then there is no way to compensate anyone new that needs to come in.

Equity in a business needs to be vested over time to avoid this problem. Get legal help to draw up contracts between the company and its founders to document transfer of equity over a period of time. This is called “vesting”.

Partners should also discuss what benchmarks will impact their salary, bonuses and dividends, in the early years of a company’s life. Uncertainty in these matters creates great divisions that widen as time progresses and they can become extremely toxic when and if a startup succeeds.

Equal may not be fair. If one partner in an enterprise brings more money, promotional power or expertise to a new enterprise than the others, he usually needs to get compensated more because he is bringing more revenue to the bottom line and he is giving up more in lost opportunities to be a part of project than others.

If you try to compensate everyone involved in your startup evenly despite great differences in what they bring to the table you’re probably creating an unsustainable business.

Honesty and transparency are an absolute requirement. A partnership is like a marriage and when a business has lots of partners it becomes a very complex marriage.

Even if everyone is doing their level best to meet their obligations to the enterprise things may get tough. Starting and running a business is ultimately a risky enterprise. If you have to factor deceit into the equation the whole undertaking becomes untenable.

Partners must agree that if you say you are going to do something do it. If you promise to do something you must do your level best to come through on the promise. If you change your mind about something you offered to do, or find you can’t meet your obligations, that’s something you have to let your team know as soon as possible. Failure to abide by these tenets will, and should, have real-world ramifications.

Affirming this expectation early in an enterprise establishes a company culture where problems of all kinds are addressed openly, quickly and effectively.

Good partners stay calm. We’ve all heard stories about Steve Jobs being a real jerk to work for. Histrionic, derisive, derogatory…just exactly the kind of guy you’d quit working for if he didn’t own one of the best businesses in the world.

Well, when you launch a startup…you don’t own one of the best businesses in the world. You just own a startup. So if you act like a jerk you are going to lose employees and you will probably see partners defect at critical moments.

As founder of a startup, you don’t have to become best friends with every employee and you probably shouldn’t be. You don’t even have to be friends with your partners, though it helps. You do have to be someone who creates and supports the environment everyone needs to get work done. So when things go bad strive to remain calm and effective.  Make the problem the problem, not your bad behavior, not your threats, not the fear you inspire.

Work. It is surprising how many people start a business only to spend all of their time discussing their work, preparing to work, recovering from work and very little time actually getting work done. When you run a business people can’t tell you what to do so if you’re a procrastinator you’re free to procrastinate until your business goes right out of business.

When you interview those who work with successful startup owners you hear over and over again just how hard they work. They are often the first one’s to log in the morning and the last to log out at night. They are the people you have to beg to go on vacation and to take time off because you really worry about them.

Rest assured that your partners in a project notice when you’re offline three out of every five days. They notice when they are working weekends and you aren’t. They are watching you every moment because they are working all the time.

Recognize the work of others. Successful teams play as a team and win as a team. Partners recognize the successes of one another and remember them when times are hard. They also recognize the achievements of their employees and compensate them accordingly. This is important because working for a startup often requires more risk taking and longer hours than working for a well established business. There’s more uncertainty.

If people know, at least within the company, their best work will be recognized and rewarded then putting in those hours becomes much easier. Remember to “catch people doing something right” and thank them for it.

A final note…

Following these guidelines gives your startup its best chance at success and minimizes the risks it presents to you, your partners, your employees and your customers.  It also ensures that whether your business succeeds or fails those who are most likely be queried about your work for the enterprise will have nothing but good things to say about you.

Related posts:

1. How to Avoid Killing Your Startup with Bad Business Deals
2. YouNoodle.com Calculates How Much Your Startup Will Be Worth in 3 Years
3. Rob and Nikki Wilson, Founders of On the Up & Read International

Your product may allow people to speak to one another over great distances like the telegraph, telephone and email has done before. Perhaps it costs less, perhaps its faster, but the underlying need it serves has always existed.

When you can identify all the products and services your target market is using to meet the need your offering addresses, then you have identified your competition.

Five Problems Your Competition Can Solve for You

The best thing about your successful competition is that they’ve already come up with a bunch of solutions you can use in building your business. If you have twenty competitors for your ice cream shop and all of them them offer frozen yogurt, there’s probably a good reason for that. Maybe the new health conscious frozen dessert eaters need that low-fat option to become regular guests. If none of your competitors mention gluten-free brownies in their brownie-based ice cream options, it’s probably not a benefit that will send customers to your store in droves.

From your successful competition you can learn:

What your customers value most. The things your competition mentions at the top of their website, feature prominently in ads, take time to say in commercials is what customers want to hear. Those are things that should become part of your pitch to customers as well.

Where to find new advantages that will please your customers. If your competition promises fast service, that’s something that people value. If you can find away to provide faster service that can become a significant advantage for your business.

Where to find customers. If your competition runs ads for their self-filtering water bottle in cycling magazines, chances are your competing product may find customers there as well. Perhaps more important, you may find that sponsoring cycling events or getting your products sold in cycling stores opens up markets you never considered.

Where to find suppliers, service providers or resellers. Your competition shops for source materials and other resources just like you do. When you can’t find suppliers look at what your competition is doing to meet their needs. Your competition also needs channels to its market and visibility partners that help them find new customers cost effectively. The solutions that work for them may well work for you, even if initially you work at a smaller scale.

How to set prices. Your successful competition is already in the market you are serving. They know what their customers want to pay. They know what distributors and resellers demand in terms of revenue sharing. If your price is higher than theirs, your product must deliver advantages yours don’t. If your price is lower than theirs, there are probably costs you aren’t taking into account as a startup that you will have to accomodate as your company grows. That is a good indication that you need to start out at a higher price. Note, even if you can offer your product for far less than your competition, realize that the profit you are giving away is money you could be using to market your business. Most startups should not compete on price for exactly this reason. When profits are too low, you have no resources to devote to helping your business grow.

What’s Not to Love? 

If you’ve resisted analyzing your competition because it seems like too much hard work, take a step back and think about how many mistakes you can avoid and how many problems you can solve just by finding out what the proven experts in your industry are doing right.

Related posts:

1. How to Set the Price of a Product or Service
2. Text: Prices are discovered . . .
3. An Entrepreneur’s Guide to How To Price Your Products And Services

A: Once you have customers, changing your pricing structure is always going to be a problem. One of the best ways to handle this (and certainly one of the safest) is to start finding other people willing to buy what you sell at a higher price as soon as possible.

When you have a few customers paying you a higher price, and you have some income security for the months ahead, you’re in a position to talk to your largest customers about your new economic realities without being concerned that losing them will cost you your business.

If you really have to renegotiate the price you are charging for an on-going project, you’re in a particularly difficult position. Your best hope is probably to tell them what you can deliver and when you can deliver it for the amount of money you’ve negotiated, then to tell them what you can offer for a slightly larger investment.

Ultimately, when they are paying the bill and you already have a deal in place, they decide how much they are going to spend. You just have to see how much you can adjust what you deliver without finding yourself unpaid, in court, with a very angry ex-customer.

I would absolutely start shopping for new customers as soon as possible. If you find that your pricing is so well known in your market that no one is willing to pay the higher price because you’re firmly associated with a very low one, you have a problem. If you are dependent on customers who will not be willing to accomodate any price change because they are those unique consumers or business customers who always want the low price leader . . . then you probably need to launch a new brand (or even a new company) that offers your product or service at a higher price.

We’re all familiar with companies, like airlines, who offer a “standard service” and a “premium service”. We’re all well acquainted with companies who sell one version of their product as a “generic” while selling a “name brand” version of their product right along side it.  Begin thinking of how your company might be able to use these solutions to solve your problem going forward.

There is some good news you can take away from this rather trying situation.  Repricing is something almost every successful startup has to undertake as they begin to grow. The economic factors that a young business builds on are often not the realities they face as they grow.

Congratulations…

Related posts:

1. An Entrepreneur’s Guide to How To Price Your Products And Services
2. Sell Your Products & Services with Advantages Not Features
3. An Entrepreneur’s Guide to Getting High Value Products & Services in Front of Key Individuals in Large Companies

While it is possible to research any target market effectively (as outlined in other articles on this site) a new entrepreneur starting their very first business usually does better when their target market is a group of people they’ve spent lots of time with in years past. This dramatically reduces the costs associated with market search, product testing, pricing and promotion. While these tasks still need to be undertaken to ensure a successful enterprise, the entrepreneur will find it much cheaper, easier and faster to get all the feedback he needs.

For example, if you have worked in a nursing home for ten years, your first business will find its first customers very quickly if you create something of value to those who live in nursing homes and their families. If you work in London’s financial district and come into contact with hundreds of banking and investment management professionals every day, creating a great product or service for them probably won’t take you long and your first sales may happen even before your product is finished.

One of the very best things about being an entrepreneur is that you can give yourself an income pretty quickly just by looking at the people around you and providing something you know they want. Another great thing about being an entrepreneur is realizing that your first business doesn’t have to be your last.

You may decide to start your first business just to replace a 9 to 5 job. If youachievee this objective, in two or three years you may well have enough income and free time to build a second business that attempts something more ambitious.

If you are desperate to start a business, and it sometimes seems that goal will be forever beyond your reach, spend the next month looking at the dozens of people you see each and every day. What do those people really want and how can you provide it?

You’ll be surprised how much easier starting a business looks and how little it suddenly seems to cost when you start with a target market that is very close to home.

Related posts:

1. An Entrepreneur’s Guide to The Fastest Way to Build a Good Business
2. Living Without Air: Ship Early, Ship Little, Ship Fast
3. Trying to figure out what business to start? Some practical advice…

Those running larger businesses, where much of the intellectual property has been previously created and secured by others or where most of the key business relationships are already in place, are in a position to make little deals that incrementally grow their business without much risk.

For example, the Managing Director of Sainsbury’s can decide to experiment on placing standalone bakeries in train stations without putting much on the line. He might spend two million pounds on the test, but it’s a tiny fraction of the business he’ll do in a single day.

A startup entrepreneur, on the other hand, usually only has the hours of their team to invest, the intellectual property they can create in a given month or year, and maybe a few thousand pounds they’ve saved up from other activities. So when they they do a deal (even a very small one) they are often tying up a huge percentage of their resources.

That means startup entrepreneurs have every reason not to be sloppy or cavalier about the deals they do and yet new business owners often make some of the most avoidable mistakes on earth.

Want to avoid making costly errors early in your company’s development? Her’s what do to . . .

Know why you’re doing a deal before you say “Yes”.

This sounds incredibly simple, doesn’t it? Who would agree to a deal for no reason? The answer is . . . lots of people.

Let’s say you’ve come up with some good product or service. Perhaps you’re a producer with a good movie and someone wants to buy the right to distribute it. Perhaps you’re a programmer with a little widget that accidently went viral and now someone wants to license it from you. Perhaps you own a little marketing business and some fast talking mid-sized business liked a campaign you’ve run for someone else and they now want you to handle their account.  If you’re like many new business owners you’ll say “Yes”to a deal simply because you’re surprised anyone is talking to you at all. You’ll feel its easier to work with someone who approaches you than to go find someone better to work with and you’ll want to believe it is easier to execute someone else’s plan than to come up with one of your own.

If you can’t state explicitly, and provably, how a given business deal will effect you, your company’s profits, and your company’s future you don’t have enough data to do a deal. Don’t go forward until you have those answers.

Don’t pretend you aren’t doing a deal.

The only thing worse than saying Yes to a deal you don’t want is not signing an agreement because you aren’t sure you like the terms or don’t understand the terms . . . then doing tasks outlined in the agreement anyway.

New business owners do that a shocking percentage of the time. They start work on a handshake deal and never go forward to create a real contract. They don’t understand that if you create anything or acquire anything (customers, assets, etc) under that half-contract no one knows who owns it and that means the property is compromised.

It means that if you’re the least bit successful you will have created something that has to be fought over and argued about before it can be fully exploited. That vastly decreases its value.

So don’t start work until you have a clear letter of agreement or contract that outlines who does what, who owns what, and how property will be broken up if the deal is dissolved.

Remember that you and someone else can both agree to own a list of customers, a piece of code, a collection of content that you develop. You can both gift one another the right to exploit it any way you want.

If you are working with someone, perhaps another startup owner, who has nothing to invest, that kind of deal means you can both reap the rewards of your combined labor.

If you are working with someone who is going to provide payment, you need to work out what exactly they own and what they expect for the money they provide. Make sure it is very clear how either of you can terminate the deal and who takes what with them when they go.

If you can’t afford a lawyer for an hour or two to review an agreement, you can’t afford to do the deal. Don’t share a lawyer with whoever you’re doing business with  to save money because that attorney has a built in conflict of interest. Rest assured he is working for the guy that pays him.

If you are doing any deal that’s going to suck up weeks of your time, or under which you’re going to create anything or pay for anything to be created, you need a contract.

Don’t try to weasel out of a deal without letting the other guy know.

Want out of a deal? Do not ask the opinion of thirty mutual friends and business associates to find out what they think. That makes you look unprofessional. Don’t just stop work and move on to other things. That may  mean that new work you do comes under control of the contract you didn’t dissolve.

Pick up the phone or send an email or schedule a meeting and say “This isn’t working out. Why don’t we stop and move on to other things?” If you expect things to be contentious, contact your lawyer first.

Doing anything else usually maximizes the negative impact of a terminated business relationship on your enterprise. A clean, honest, straight-forward approach to terminating a business deal minimizes costs when all is said and done.

Don’t do joint ventures or negotiate long term business deals with people you don’t know and can’t find out about.

When you’re a small business, hungry for cash, just becoming visible to a wider world, you’ll come into contact with people who want to do business with you. Some may have something great to offer, many won’t. You need to know who they are and how they work in order to know if they can keep any promise they make you.

How do you learn more about them? Look up their business on services like Dun and Bradstreet. Hire a detective to run a background check. Get references from people they’ve worked with that you can verify as being successful. There are a million ways to learn what you need to know.  But find out who they are, what they’ve done, what their patterns are before you sign and agreement with them. Always remember that a bad business relationship early in the life of your company can put you right out of business.

A good beginning matters . . .

Many of the most important relationships you’ll make for your enterprise are those you negotiate in its earliest days. While you must remain open to new opportunities, you must also become proficient at vetting those opportunities to ensure that you invest time and effort into those that will pay off.

If you can follow the four guidelines above you should manage to avoid doing bad business with all the wrong people.

Related posts:

1. Establishing a Good Business Partnership: What Startup Founders Need to Know
2. The Startup & The Scammer: A Real Story
3. Naked Business: A Startup & A Small Business are Two Different Things