“There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”

I am pretty sure Shakespeare was talking to entrepreneurs directly that day.

Those of you that have known me for a long time always ask me the same question when we run into each other: “So Steve, what are you doing now?”. I go on to describe my latest venture, which is no doubt completely different from whatever I was doing the last time we met. They usually chuckle a little and shake their heads and I often wonder what they are really thinking. “That Steve sure has an exciting life” or “Poor Steve, stuck as an entrepreneurial nomad” or “Steve should see someone about his A.D.D.”. Actually, all of these are probably true.

I my 35 years of adult working life, I was employed by others only twice. Each time lasted less than a year before I put in my notice. In both cases I left for the same reason: I felt like I was being “held back”; not allowed to succeed. It made no sense to me then, and I would like to say I have grown to understand it, but… nope, no sense. People like me are born destined cursed to blaze our own paths: paths to success, and paths to utter failure. Guys like me have come to learn, or will, that Success is not something you achieve, but rather, something you have every now and then. Entrepreneurship is an ocean, and we should all take surfing lessons before business school.

Have you ever watched professional surfing in-person? On TV, it seems like these guys just get one big wave after another. But in-person you get to see just how many waves they pass on. They sit there in their boards, watching as far out as they can see. Looking for the big one, the right one. Occasionally, I can imagine them saying, “Damn, that was it” as they watched one go by that they were not ready for. Just as often I am sure, they jump up on one only to realize that it is not taking them very far or they wipe-out. But eventually, because they are focused on looking, they get on a big one. And they ride, they flip, they curl for the awestruck crowd, and all of a sudden they hit the beach and its over. There are a few, who caught a wave at the perfect angle, parallel to the beach, and just kept on riding. Zuckerberg caught a good one on his first try, Steve Jobs finally caught one. I’ve caught a few big ones, but never a parallel one like them, mine always hit the beach.

I keep watching, every wave is unique. I just jumped up on another one… it feels strong… it might be at the right angle too, but I don’t know, I have felt this before and was wrong. It’s starting to rise, and the beach is pretty far off, now its up to me to pick the right line, stay up, and see how far it will take me. I wiped out on my last few attempts, so I am very focused this time. Out to my right, I thought I saw a shark’s fin chasing me…

A decision has to be made. A decision that most entrepreneurs will have to make, often many times in their careers. Whether to continue down a path… or not. It seems like a simple decision, A or B, but it is not.

Entrepreneurs are simultaneously the smartest, and dumbest people I know. Smart, because we actually come up with new ideas and at least attempt to execute on them. This separates us from the rest of the people on the planet. Dumb. because we too often get caught up in our ideas and try to keep them alive when they should be killed off. I personally know many entrepreneurs who have wasted years of their lives on ideas that simply can’t get off the ground. Ideas that are too radical, too early, too late, underfunded, or just plain dumb. I have had several ideas over the years that fall into each of these categories.

One of the nice things about being an entrepreneur in the internet space is that we never actually have to “Kill off” an idea. The internet superhighway is littered with abandoned carcasses of ideas. We could just delete the files and domains, but why? “Maybe I will get back to that later”. I have at least 15 live domains with dead ideas floating around out there. What good are they? I dunno, but it only costs me $9/yr to keep all of that past effort alive. For each one I have invested months of time, energy and brain cells… it is too painful to just delete them. I can usually see, in hindsight, exactly what caused each one to fail. Why I could not see it in advance, is another entrepreneur’s dilemma. While each of them is a “learning” opportunity, you sometimes wonder how may lessons there are in this damn course.

So I have decided not to pursue the Automated Webinar idea further. That does not mean it goes away… it just goes to the side as I focus on the next thing. It will remain out there in my peripheral vision for a while. So what was learned from this one? The main thing is speed. I think this applies to anyone in this space, speed kills, or rather, lack of speed. One of the wonderful things about internet ideas is that just about anyone can jump in, of course that means that a lot of people are in the sandbox. Many ideas have failed either because someone else came up with the same one, or stole yours, and was able to execute it better, and/or faster than you could. Frankly, that is what I was doing. As you may recall, I did not come up with this idea, I just thought I could do it better, and I did. But then someone came along behind me and did it even better, and got it to market faster. It is all very Darwinian.

I have executed a lot of ideas. I have had a few singles, maybe even a few doubles, but not a home run yet. But a lot of strike outs. Yet I keep stepping back up to the plate, and I keep swinging. It’s what entrepreneurs do. I heard Eric Ries on This Week in Startups recently talking about this dilemma, and he said a lot of things that made a lot of sense. I ordered his book, The Lean Startup, if you are in this space, you might want to check it out also.

So what am I doing now? Well, I’m so glad you asked. I have four new things I am working on, and three ideas that are rattling around in the back of my head. If you enjoyed this series, let me know… maybe I will do it again.

It has been quite a while since I posted to this series, and I would imagine some of you have forgotten about it. To be honest, I have been waiting for something good to write about, but I decided to write anyway. Last we heard our “hero” was considering crossing the river to the dark side of town, where the “Get Rich Quick” gangs hang out, in an attempt to jump-start his venture…

Oh, I knew there were sharks in the water, but I swam over anyway. What an exciting, enlightening, multiple meeting, back slapping, fortune dangling… complete waste of time, money and resources.

Even though my partner Carmine reached out to them first, he quickly dismissed them as all being full of shit, but not me. I apparently had an unconscious need to move backwards. The GRQ guys all seem very similar… to begin with they are very nice guys, who all think they are smarter than you, or anybody else for that matter. The fact that they cannot build anything sustainable, which, in the scam business I can imagine is hard to do, actually illustrates just how oblivious they are. A smart person with a good sustainable idea, will not be able to maintain a GRQ guy’s focus if a slime ball with a sneaky idea shows up.

Interestingly, some of them actually have a conscience, have convinced themselves they are doing good, even speak of a higher moral ground their “life guru” instilled in them… oh wait a minute, we can make a couple of more dollars by screwing a new “partner”, no brainer.  Maybe a feigned conscience is a sociopathic coping skill. The mission statement seems to be “We want to help as many people pay us too much money for useless information as fast as we can before the word gets out”. Ironically the GRQ guys have great references and testimonials! I guess for every 10 people who get taken and know it, there is at least one who wants to rationalize his being taken… easier than admitting you paid what? for what? to your friends who used to think you were smart.

Okay, this is starting to sound like someone who is bitter because he was unable to swim with the sharks and keep up… probably, but that chunk bitten out of my ass will heal. The Sharks swim on, they have to, we all know if a shark stops swimming he dies. I need to stop writing now as I have a compulsive desire to go wash my hands.

Next Post: Persevere or Pivot?

previous post in series: Competition at every Turn

Okay, I know I wrote about competition earlier in the series, but frankly you cannot over-cover this topic. Today, competition is everywhere and can pop up out of nowhere, just ask my competitors who were here first. But, it’s their own fault that I am now in the middle of their sandbox. If this base was covered well enough, I would not have tried to enter the space. It’s a race, they had a big head-start, but may have squandered their lead. 

The “Fat Cat” syndrome. It can creep up on you, and it obviously has on the existing players in the automated-webinar arena. Not that any of these operators were well-funded techno-glomerates, most are what I call “scheme-weavers”. The first new product to solve a problem, will garner the early adopters. In the internet marketing/”info-prenuer” space, everybody is looking for an edge, so they are all “early-adopters”. Being “First” can be a great position, even if your product is not that great, when there are no other options available. But, if you are lucky enough to get some exposure from some big name early adopters, you better be ready for an attack.

The first attack wave is the copy-cats. They basically duplicate what you are doing with a different name, and a lower price. They will steal a share of the market with the lower price, but unless they are able to leap-frog the first guy by a wide margin, their cheap price usually does them in. That is the case in this space as several of the also-rans have already been abandoned on the side of the information super-highway. If you’re lucky, as the first one, this carnage of copycats may dissuade others. Unless someone like me gets you in their sights. I don’t mean to say that I am some superman, there are a lot of people like me in the world, take the whole country of Japan. China copies, Japan improves. Every single thing you own is an improved version of an original.

In the automated-webinar space there are several contenders. I had looked at them all earlier and lumped them all together as junk and pretty much dismissed them. Now that we are taking this second look at the “Get Rich Quick” crowd, I start hearing one name more than others: “Stealth Seminars“. Seriously? “Stealth”, sounds like an honest operation to me. Why not “Pick-Pocket Seminars”? Clearly their naming was intentional… I get it. So I decide to take a closer look at this platform as it is the one I keep hearing that these “info-marketers” are using. I mean Frank Kern is on their homepage! I listen to their pitch audio on their website. Why do all these guys sound so similar? Is there some book that says speaking in a southern accent makes you more believable?  If this is a technology platform, how does hillbilly help? Must be one of those “If an idiot like me can do it, surely you can too” deals. I go ahead and sign up  for their demo webinar to check out their platform.

True to their claims, their entire approach centers around lying to your audience. After registration you are taken to a thank you page on a bogus “conferencing” site. The word “Live” is sprinkled throughout. I go ahead and click on the link and I’m taken to an amateur looking landing page with a video placeholder and a plain text countdown that shows the wrong amount of time left. Seriously, this is their own product demo? The webinar does start on time, in spite of the clock, and I am dumbfounded. The guy actually pretends to be answering questions from the audience he sent there who already know this is not live. I dunno… maybe you CAN bullshit, bullshitters… I don’t usually bash competition, but this is blog series is not a marketing effort, so screw ‘em. I don’t want to brag (yes I do), but just look at the side-by-side of our platforms below:

At this point, I am feeling pretty good. The leading player’s product is junk, so it’s just a matter of getting our platform in front of the right faces.

Next Post: Marketing to the Scheme-Weavers

previous post in series: Ain’t no hill for a Climber

In my last post I jumped out of chronology to respond to something in real time. In this post I go back in time again. Where was I? Oh yeah, I remember. Maybe you sell something that gets doors slammed in your face a lot, that sucks, I’ve been there also. But not this time, this time it’s worse. I actually have people quickly taking my call, listening to my proposition intently,  and then saying “I’m all over it”. 

You are probably thinking “What’s wrong with that, isn’t that what you want?”. Here’s the problem, as excited as they are on the phone, the don’t ultimately do anything. It’s human nature I guess. You meet the greatest couple on vacation. You spend your entire vacation hanging out with them because they are sooo cool. You’re like instant best-friends. When the vacation is over, you both say “we will definitely stay in touch” and then you never speak to them again.

Momentum is hard to create and very easily stopped. Getting prospects to act is like pushing a truck, as soon as you let go, it stops, unless you are lucky enough to be on a hill… preferably down-hill. It sometimes feels as though you could tell a prospect “Hey, I got these awesome $10 bills I’ll sell ya for $5 each”, “Really, let me go get my wallet”, and they never come back. What happens? Do they get distracted? Are they all just lying to me so I won’t feel badly. Like the restaurant owner, I would rather have you tell me my concept sucks! Well, I need to find out what the problem is.

I reach out to several people who told me they were “working on their content”. They all pretty much said the same thing “Still workin’ on it”, and yet I know they are not. Some said it was more work than they thought. I am thinking that we have become “Option 3″.

Today, everybody is hungry and looking for fast money. Long-range, even mid-range planning is basically gone, everyone is in “gotta pay the rent” mode. When faced with several potential income generating options, our’s is just not coming across as the fastest path to cash. Ironically, had most of these people spent a day or two on this months ago when we first spoke, they would all be generating revenue from our platform today. Instead most are still chasing their tails… how do I crack that nut? This is the most frustrating position for an entrepreneur: when everybody says your stuff is great, but they don’t act. If they said “its sucks” at least you would know that you have to go back to the drawing board, but where do you go in this situation?

I decide to come back to that later, and focus some time on our first platform and my real goal of enterprise level use. When I think of enterprise, I think of budgets and resources. Most of them have both. I go back to our marketing site and give it another look, through enterprise eyes. Clearly, since I put this together several things have happened. First of all, we have added a lot more features than are mentioned. But more important, the content is not properly targeted to enterprise. This actually happens a lot. You have your “ideal” target, but you also have all these tertiary targets, and you try and create a message that resonates with all of them. It ends up not resonating with any of them. I need to create some” forks”.

This is starting to remind me of the Social Media Engine project with Phil. Phil wanted to target MLM, I wanted to target SMBs, clearly the message had to be different, even if the product is the same. We settled on a landing page that asked which track you were interested in, a fork, you click and you are sent over to that content. The problem in my mind was SMBs were being asked “are you an smb or an mlm?” Thus planting the seed in SMBs heads that this product served MLM also and turning a lot of the SMBs off. This is real bad because the SMBs have money, the MLMrs are all broke. So I learn from my mistakes, and I know the “fork” needs to be right.

What am I forking? Well, on the “Free to Attend” front, as I have said many times, I really want enterprise. But enterprise is a long play. Enterprise usually means bureaucracy and politics and all the time that wastes. We need to start generating revenue. So I am looking at the “Get Rich Quick” crowd again as a jump-starter. The problem is, like MLM, most of the people pitching “How I made my Millions” are also broke. But they are spending money, even if it is their last few dollars, on webinars. But once again that damn competition has popped up, to spoil my plans.

Next Post: Competition at Every Turn

previous post in series: Crisis Management

I realize that I wrote a post in this series just this morning, titled “Damn the Know-it-Alls”, but I just got off the phone with Paul Tobey and I thought, OMG, what if he decides to check me out and sees this post I wrote on the same day I spoke with him. Not that Paul has nothing better to do than to poke around my blog, but on the off-chance, I would feel like a total ass if he thought I was talking about him in that post. So I interrupt this series to share with you my call with Paul Tobey (shameless name drop).

Okay, first of all Paul is a true expert, who probably does “know it all”, but he is the polar opposite of the type of people I was talking about in my last post. He almost apologized for pointing out the flaws in our system. Those of you who have been following this series know, I have no problem with criticisms of our platform, I want to hear them. How else will it get better? How many restaurants do you think might still be in business today, if when the owner asked “How is everything?” ,  the customer actually said “Well, it all sucks” instead of “fine” when they didn’t really mean it. On the down side, Paul will probably not be a customer of our service, at least not for his main business, and for good reason.

Paul is a trainer, and he sounds like a damn good one. Paul has a process, that sounds like a damn good one also. Unfortunately for us, Paul’s process involves a lot of attendee interaction and so his training webinars tend to take on a life of their own, which is hard to do when the content has been previously recorded. Now, Paul is a pretty big-time guy and I was thrilled to get almost an hour with him on the phone, even if most of the dialogue was reasons why my platform won’t work for him. Would I have loved Paul to sign up on the spot for our platform? Sure, but what I got was much more valuable, “Insider Insight”, and I got it for Free!

To be fair, our platform is not really designed ideally for training. While we have plans to create a training front-end, when I really stop and think about it, I know that will be a challenge. Particularly for the better trainers like Paul who clearly have more than just a hope that their attendees learn something. If I had to guess, I would say we can currently meet about 50% of Paul’s requirements. Not good enough. Can we ever get to 100%? Probably not. If we can get to 85%, would Paul compromise to meet us there? Not a chance. So for now, I have to resign myself to the fact that not everyone using webinars is a candidate for our platform. I hate conceding to the big boys’ platforms on anything, but for now, I must, on this one thing anyway.

Again, that “Insider Insight” was a rare gift. No, I’m not gonna tell you the good stuff Paul shared, you will have to wait and see when we roll it out. I also got similar valuable insights from Wayne Turmel (shameless name drop #2), who I don’t want thinking I was talking about him in my last post either, should he happen to run across my blog.

So that’s enough “Crisis Management” for one day.

Next Post: Ain’t no hill for a climber

previous post in series: Damn the Know-it-Alls

If you offer a product or service to egomaniacs… I feel for you. Both our platforms’ primary market targets are either public speakers or others who are comfortable presenting so most are egomaniacs, who by definition are “Know-it-alls”. Before you can even open your mouth, they already know everything you are about to say because, of course, they are so much smarter than you.

How much different would the world be if everybody was able to set aside their narrow, self-absorbed views and actually “listen” to someone else for just a minute? I’m guilty. Especially if you call me out-of-the-blue and want to pitch me on something that is in my wheelhouse. I am not actually listening to the whole of what you are saying, I am listening for keywords to shortcut back to my current knowledge. I want to quickly reconcile whatever you are pitching to my existing understanding, opinion and biases, so that I can save you all that explaining, get off the phone and get back to my online Mahjong game that the timer is running out on after telling you that I have to go because I have six people on hold. Within 45 seconds, our conversation has dissipated from my brain.

As I have said many times in this series, there are no new ideas, and your’s like any others are variations of existing things. Don’t get me wrong, you may have completely “re-invented” the space, but the space was already there. I think a lot of entrepreneurs get sucked into the sales pitch shortcut of saying things like “Our service is similar to Google, only better”. Oops, you just lost. You just saved me from having to listen by giving me all the context I need in your first sentence. You would have been much better off forcing me to parse keywords from your pitch as I was at least partially having to listen for them. But in an effort to get me to understand too quickly (because you know I am in a hurry to get back to that Mahjong game), you tried to take a shortcut.

Oh, its frustrating all right. You know you have a better mousetrap… not just a little better, but a lot better. But your target has been using the other mousetrap for years. You know you’re dead-in-the-water if you start by comparing similarities, you have to start by contrasting. Okay, you have a better mousetrap… what’s better about it? Great, you got a whole list of things. Of those things, which is the one thing that “most” of your target market will perk up to? The item, that while parsing your pitch for keywords, your prospect’s brain suddenly gets snagged on something you said. Their brain continues to try to tug away to get back to their understanding, but you caught their pant-leg in your chain… guess what? Now you actually have their attention.  In our case, ironically, it seems to be the ability to have full video in their webinars. I have learned to bring that up very early in my pitches now.

Next Post: Crisis Management

previous post in series: Re-Pivoting

No, no, no… re-pivoting is not the right word. I’ll come up with a better one by the end of this post. Here’s what happened: we are working away on our new “Pay to Attend”, “Expert Webinar Marketplace”, having almost forgotten about our first “Free to Attend” idea, when the phone starts ringing. 

We had not shut down the first marketing site (Today’s Webinars), we had just launched another one (Next Webinars). I had every intention of re-visiting our first idea, but we needed to start generating revenue and it just seemed like the expert idea would get traction faster. So like I said, the phone starts ringing, and these people are interested in the “Free to Attend” platform. Why all of a sudden? I have no idea. My head is deep into our new idea and I have to stop for a minute and remember what was so awesome about our first idea. Oh yeah, pre-recorded content and all our bells and whistles for attendee interaction (shameless plug).

So I’m talking to this dude from Canada. I like Canada and Canadians, but this fellow is not their sharpest representative. I know the call is not going to go well when he asks if I could call him right back on this number so he can save on long distance. I do, because I’m a sucker. He starts by telling me that he is using some service that costs him $65/month that sounds like more of a go-to-meeting clone than an actual webinar platform. He tells me that he does all his presentations live, and gives his attendees his phone number so they can call him (of course) offline during his “webinar” so he can react to their questions on the “webinar”. I kindly explain that our system does not work that way, and he asks if I will contact him when we add that functionality. I explain that we will not ever be adding that functionality as our platform is designed for a different purpose. He says this functionality is critical to how he does it, and insists that I call him back when we add it. I say, “okay, you’ll be my first call”. Moron.

I take another call from a snooty, professorial sounding guy. He is listening quietly until I mention that the content is pre-recorded at which point I can actually “hear” him stand up. “What? What kind of fraud are you trying to perpetrate here? Webinars are supposed to be live!” , “Says who?” I looked it up, just to be sure, and according to the World Dictionary, Webinar means “an interactive seminar conducted over the World Wide Web”, fine, that’s what we got, no fraud.

I spoke to another guy who crowed that he always has at least 300 people on his webinars! While not really impressed, I did manage to work up a “Wow!” for him. He says he has been doing basically the same topic for a while now, but is not sure how this would work for him. Since he has been doing it for so long he has been able to cover just about every question that has been asked, and fine-tuned his presentation as a result, but still, every webinar, he gets someone with an obscure question that he needs to be able to address in the webinar.  How could he do that with our platform? Seriously, you got 300 people online listening to your well crafted content, and you’re gonna run 299 of them down some rabbit hole to address one attendee’s obscure question? I don’t think the platform is the problem here.

Another guy (why all guys?), says he likes to do his webinars “free-form”. His slides are really just “there”, he prefers to present his “stream of consciousness” on the fly. Sounds like a rambling snooze-fest to me. I reach the conclusion that webinars are not automatically successful, regardless of platform. In fact, the platform probably has little to do with success. I spoke to many more people who were already using the established webinar platforms, and many of the initial reactions to the “pre-recorded ” aspect were similar, but I did find plenty of enlightened people. A common “perk-up” point would be when I would mention that you can have video in your webinar. “What?, did you say video?”. Video is hot, and will be for a while, we all know that. Many presenters would like to add some video to their webinars, but due to the design of those platforms, it’s not workable today. Those of you who have been paying attention, might be saying “Steve, if your content is pre-recorded video, then of course you can “do” video”, yes, I get the irony. This also means that a lot of people are still not understanding what the hell I am talking about.

I speak to several more Webinar snobs and was able to craft my pitch a little better (“you can even do video”) duh. And, since we do have the live chat capability (shameless plug), our webinars can be as live as you want them to be. People are starting to come around, and I am once again seeing a life in the “Free to Attend” angle. I talked to a few people who were using free webinars to pitch their video products who I got to thinking about converting those products to “Pay to Attend” webinars and using both sides of our platform.

Okay, so I’ve thought about it, it is not so much a “re-pivoting” as it is a “straddling”. Two different markets, with different needs, all of which we can satisfy with our platform, at least, in my opinion.

Next Post: Damn the Know-It-Alls

previous post in series: Competition Sucks!

Ugh… competitors. Why you gotta be dancin’ at my party. Hey… that’s my booze, put that down, and stop pukin’ on my prospects with your stuff.  These are just a few of the things they are probably saying about me. Yup… since I just got here, I’m crashing their party. But I don’t know anybody here… how am I gonna get noticed. Lampshade? Hmmm…

Like I said at the outset of this series, there are no new ideas, only competition you have not discovered yet. So here we are with this new spin on our plan, an Expert Webinar Marketplace, and I hear about these Business Expert Webinar guys. I start doing my market research, after the fact. What the hell? There are several people going after this space. I shoulda figured, Webinars are Hot right now (shameless plug).

Most of the sites I find are generating their own paid content, fine, that’s not my market. But the Business Expert Webinar guys are standing right in the intersection of me, and my idea… and it looks like they have been here a while. On the bright side, they do seem to have a lot of webinars on their system, so I guess the idea is good.  I got my “Proof of Concept”, without all that trial and error. Time to dive in and see what they got going on.

Looks like this operation is run by a guy named Lee Saltz, and he looks like a pretty bright guy; must be if he came up with the same idea that I did. Maybe even a little smarter because he came up with it before me. I am sure if informed about our operation Lee would say something like “Competition is great, help shines a spotlight for us all” or something profound like that. Whenever anybody says that, they are not really happy about it. But, at this stage, I doubt that he has even heard about us. His site looks very web 1.0, so that’s good. He also seems to be promoting a bunch of other services and “Expert Webinars” is starting to look like an “oh yeah, we got those too” thing. Wait a minute, maybe that means this angle is not a strong as I had hoped. I mean it seems like he has hundreds of them in his system… maybe his cost of living is just higher than mine.

To be fair, we are not actually competing “directly”. Their site is a portal of listings with the ability to collect money and then send people on to a third-party webinar platform. We, on the other hand,  are a webinar platform with a marketplace frontend. So I guess our “Frontend” competes with them. Now we formulated our revenue model before we heard about these guys, so I figured I better compare to see where we need to make changes. What’s this? A $499 setup fee? I had not even thought about that… damn, that Lee is very smart indeed,  maybe we’ll add this later, after we’re established. Looks like he has also got some limits too, only 12 webinars a year and looks like the attendee price is set at $99. Not sure why that is necessary, we’re starting out with up to 52 webinars a year and you can charge whatever you think people will pay. Maybe we’re being too generous… How about the revenue share? We decided to keep it simple at a 50/50 split. Looks like on their system you get either $20 or $40 per attendee depending upon whether they came from their efforts or yours. Seems almost like pitting the presenters in competition with them to get attendees first. They have several other revenue opportunities which feel mostly like affiliate stuff that I doubt many presenters cash in on. I mean I can promote my own event and get $40 per attendee plus exposure, or I can spend the same effort promoting someone else’s event and get $20 each and help their exposure, hmmm… let me think about that one.

I conclude that Lee has had the luxury of having this space all to himself and therefore able to set the terms. We decide we need to change nothing to have a better deal for presenters. But I am likin’ that setup fee idea for the future.

Next Post: Re-Pivoting

previous post in series: Now will you buy it?

I am jacked up… this is a much better idea and we are finally on the right road. I mean, who is not going to jump all over this? We got the magic word “free” on our side now. So we send out some inquiries for “subject matter experts” who might want to turn their “expertise” into cash. Voila, the phone starts ringing.

I take a meeting with Jim Patterson and Cristine Campos at Panera. Jim is a social media guy of course, but first and foremost he is an MLM guy. Jim is likin’ the idea. Christine is a social media gal, of course, who does a fair amount of live social media training so I’m thinking she has content at least. Christine, however, believes her training is above average. Realizing that eventually there will probably be a lot of social media webinars, she asks me “how will people know which ones are the good ones?” Hmmm… “How about if we had a rating system” I offer, having no idea how I will accomplish this. “That works” she says and commits me to a bunch more work.

My next meeting was with Rachel Haviland at another Panera (I prefer Panera to Starbucks because the coffee refills are free). Rachel is a social media gal, of course. Rachel also liked the concept, especially the ratings part. Great, now I definitely have to figure out a rating system. Of course all three of them say they will start working on content right away. I crack open the platform and start noodling on a rating system.

Ratings? How would this work… legitimately. Most rating systems can be gamed. Yelp has an entire army who do nothing but weed out sketchy ratings. A business owner rates himself as great and his competitor rates him as crappy, with a few real ratings from customers in between. But the rating idea has grown on me. It certainly would be an incentive for producers to produce great content. I settle on a simple “5-Star” rating concept, after contemplating the need for more than 5 stars. I whip up a little script and put it on the “sample” page. Looks lovely. But wait a minute, once again the fatal flaw of most ratings systems: anybody can rate. Requiring users to login wouldn’t help, that still doesn’t mean they actually “saw” the webinar they were rating. Hmmm… How about if the ratings were only “displayed” on their page, but were actually entered in the webinar platform. I can use one of those nifty forms we can do in our platform (shameless plug, nobody else has this feature) for that. Perfect. Can it be gamed? Well, I guess a producer could send 100 of their friends to their webinar to give it high marks, but they would all have to pay. Win for me, please game it.

So I continue taking meetings with people. The new “rated webinars” idea goes over great with most people. However it did scare off some people. I assume they were not as confident in their content as others. Oh well, our marketplace will be better for it. Poor webinars are not going to do anybody any good in our system. Again, a cool, nay a great, feature, suggested by a prospect.

I decided I should create a little survey to see what other ideas people may give me just for asking.  I use LinkedIn Answers and ask the following question:

“While most webinars today are free promotional efforts (10% information and 90% pitch), there is a growing market for “Pay for Knowledge” (100% information). Under what circumstances would you pay attend a webinar?”

I know, using a question to promote an agenda is a little sketchy, but half the answers promoted agendas too so I guess that’s how that works. But I did get some interesting responses. In the interest of transparency, but brevity, I will link to it here and just highlight the points made that agree with my delusions below.

“I am absolutely sure that I am going to learn something” Gave me new idea

“Summarize up front before I sign up what I can expect to walk away with even if I do not engage your offering after the webinar. And recommend just a few top references for follow-on studies of the subject in general, with and without direct ties to your offering if possible. The point of the “value” of the webinar is to deliver the information to me effectively, and faster than I might comprehend just sniffing around on my own.” Ratings should take care of this

“I guess what it boils down to is cost vs. perceived value. If the customer feels he can channel that knowledge into some kind of measurable and tangible financial or even personal gain, then it’s a matter of the promoter establishing a price point with the minimal amount of “pain” (time and price) to the attendee” Supply and demand, got it

“If the webinar is a stepping-stone for what I’m trying to achieve, the next question is if it’s a fit for my budget. Finally, how much do I trust a person or persons delivering the information to do so effectively? What’s their track record?” Ratings, and reinforces new idea

“For me the focus isn’t on paying for the “webinar.” It’s paying for the value, the knowledge received and the expected return on investment” same as above

“Since most of them are free, at this point I’d have to be able to get APA approved CEUs toward my license or it would have to be an amazing topic” gave me new idea

“When I know that they’re not going to waste my time with a bunch of crap. That immediately eliminates most of the webinars out there. I am engaged when one brings value to the conversation.” said already

“I’d only pay to attend a webinar when I am confident I’m going to get value for money. I would want Testimonials, including what people have really done with the info post-webinar (success stories)” reinforces new idea above

Okay, so I consider this exercise a success for what I wanted to achieve. The only negative I heard was that there is a lot of good free content out there, but we all know nothing is free unless it is pitch laden. I heard several concerns that I feel our platform already overcomes and got some new ideas. For example, I will add “reviews” and I may look into possibly even another front-end for the CEU market.

I’m feeling pretty good about things now. After mentioning to someone on LinkedIn that they should check out our webinar marketplace platform, they replied “isn’t this the same thing as Business Expert Webinars“? Holy Crap! I had researched the market for our first idea, but this marketplace idea was an offshoot and I did not even think about researching it. Like I said before, there are no new ideas.

Next Post: Competition Sucks

previous post in series: First Pivot

I am starting to get both nervous and frustrated at this point. Is the world full of morons, or what? Can’t they see how awesome my idea is? Do they not want to make a bunch of money or get a bunch of clients? Or was I sleeping at the wheel during my 30 years of entrepreneurship and actually don’t know a damn thing about it? 

Must… trudge… on… We concluded that the fastest route to success was to pursue people who already had presentations and we determined they were public speakers, presenters and the like and we also discovered along the way that they don’t want to pay… they want to get paid. This was going to require a change to our platform, as well as our revenue model. We were going to have to do what Jason Calacanis refers to as a “Pivot“. If you don’t know who Jason is, I’ll tell you; I stumbled across this podcast one day called This Week in Startups. It is hosted by Calacanis who I originally thought, after listening to one episode, was a pompous ass who knew nothing. Over time I changed my mind and decided he is actually extremely knowledgeable about the space I am in, still a pompous ass, but now I don’t miss an episode.

So we decide to “Pivot” which, as the term implies, means to take your idea into a different direction than you originally planned. I think a lot of start-ups fail because they get too married to a concept. How many people have to tell you you’re wrong before you change your mind? All of them? Listening to clients is more than just waiting for them to stop talking so you can continue your pitch. Even though you may know in your bones that you know what your client needs better than they do, you still have to reconcile to their way of thinking. My girlfriend asks “If there are 4 quarters in a football game, what’s this overtime thing, a fifth quarter?”, “Yes dear, some games have five quarters”, “how can a single thing have five quarters?”, “i think it’s that new math”, “oh”.

Listening to clients is extremely valuable for start-ups looking for that proof of concept. In fact, we got some of our best ideas from client pitches. For example, one of the really unique features of our platform is the ability for an attendee to fill in and submit a form… during the webinar! That idea came from an attorney who said “I wish it could do this”.

So back to our pivot, we decide to offer our platform to public speakers and experts in such a way that attendees would pay to view their webinars, like any other paid seminar or event. We would split the attendee fees with them and charge them nothing to be on our platform. I’m likin this idea. So again I go about building another marketing site, because this is a completely different pitch. We’re gonna call it Next Webinars!

As I am working on the marketing site, it occurs to me that if enough “experts” created webinars on our platform, we could actually create a “marketplace”. Kabaaam! Brilliant! So I set up the marketing site to be more like a directory of webinars. In my usual state of delusion, I envision having millions of webinars, making billions of dollars.

We now have an entirely new market and pitch for our platform. I am convinced that this will be much better than our first idea. Let’s go pitch it again!

Next Post: Now will you Buy it?

previous post in series: Buy it Please

Okay, so you got a product of some kind and you’ve created a marketing site to show off the features of it. And, in my case you have a girlfriend chirping in your ear to do something with it. Let’s grab our laptops and go see some prospects.

We decided at the outset that we were in this to make money and determined that a fair fee for someone to use our platform would start at $600/month. We arrived at this figure partly based on some research by one of the majors that it costs, all in, about $400 to do one webinar. But we were going to let our clients run a webinar once a week which works out to about $150 each, which seemed like a bargain to us. But the first few people we spoke to crapped all over themselves when we told them the cost.
We decided that we were talking to the wrong people so we analyzed this a little more and decided that we needed to be approaching people for which a qualified lead was worth a lot of money so our cost seemed cheap, like lawyers, chiropractors, etc. Plus these people were already doing lead generation…we just had a better place for them to direct those leads. So we started reaching out to them. Aha, much better traction now. “I love it, what do I have to do?” was music to my ears. “Well“, I say “first you have to create a video presentation“. “Great, how do I do that?” It’s a video, moron… musta just hit the stupid ones first. No problem, we’ll talk to some smarter prospects.

The following 10 sales calls went about the same, everybody loved the idea, the platform, our demo, even the price was not an issue, but as they lowered their pens to stroke the check their heads popped up, “Wait a minute, how do I get the video?“ I got this sick feeling in my stomach. Creating video presentations was simple for me, so simple, I forgot that is not really simple. In fact, we could have solved this problem by offering to create them, but I really did not want to get caught in that quagmire. What to do?

We decided we need to partner with a firm to produce these presentations. We weren’t interested in profiting from this part, just get it done so people can start paying us. So we find a local design firm a friend of my works at and go tell them what we’re up to. They too think it is a great idea and agree to create presentations for our clients for $1,000 each, seemed fair. We still would need to figure out how to convert these to videos, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.

So now we’re back out there telling people we have a solution to the presentation creation issue… turns out that was only part of the problem. Now that we had a solution to the technical aspect, people had to actually think about what they might present. I reached a disappointing conclusion: many people in business, successful or not, are at a loss to be able to explain who they are and why you should consider them or their products. It’s kinda like creating a “Mission Statement”, which most companies don’t have because they can’t come up with three sentences to distill their offering. I am starting to get really frustrated now.

Fine, screw these people, we need to find people who already have presentations. Presenters and public speakers all got material… let’s go after them. Great, after a few inquiries we find that there is existing material out there, and converting it to video for our platform is not going to be an issue. But now the price is. In fact, it is the opposite. These pros do not speak for free, they expect to get paid, not pay us! How the hell is this going to work?

Next Post: First Pivot

previous post in series: Marketing Site

It’s funny, as I sit here at Panera Bread writing this, I am talking about things that already happened. I already know the outcome so the challenge is going back in time in my mind to where I was at this point in the journey and trying to remember things I intentionally tried to forget.
So where was I? Oh yeah, so we got a back-end platform hacked together with duct tape and baling wire but it works and looks pretty good. Now we need to create a site to market the platform. I turn to good ole WordPress to knock out a site. I find a theme that I mostly like, determine penguins would make a memorable mascot, and start typing. I go about explaining the need for our product and contrasting it to the competition and as I am writing I am coming to the realization that I am going to have to show the product before anybody will even understand what I am talking about. So I stop writing for a while.

The core of our platform is pre-recorded content so the first step is to create a video. Simple enough, I bust out PowerPoint and spend a few days putting together about 30 slides in a deck that explains what and why. Then I pop open Camtasia and record my presentation as I speak into my headset microphone. I had created a lot of training videos in the past so this came pretty easy to me. Finish up the recording, do a little editing and upload it to Cloudfront. Then I create the script files for the webinar, deciding I will run it 3 times a week and put some buttons on the marketing site to “Sign-up for our Webinar on Webinars”. This is about an hour long webinar with a lot of information, probably more than a lot of potential prospects need. Plus when I am talking to a prospect in person I can’t very well tell them to sign up for our next webinar on Tuesday and sit in their lobby until then, so I also to created a short “on-demand” version that showcases our features. I go back to writing more marketing copy on the website until I reach a point to where I think it is presentable enough to show to someone.

I’m nervous… is it good enough? Will people understand it? Will my hacked together script break? WILL ANYBODY BUY IT? I keep fiddling, tweaking this and that for weeks. Until one day when my girlfriend says “are you going to make any money with this, or what?” She’s right of course, I would probably fiddle with it forever but realizing Perfection is the enemy of Good, I decide that it is time to show this to somebody.

Next Post: Buy it Please

previous post in series: Let’s Build Something

Most entrepreneurs are strong in some areas and weak in others. Launching a start-up in just about any field is going to require multiple talents; odds are you won’t have all of them. I know there are exceptions, and I consider myself half of an exception.

I am first and foremost an idea person and a marketing person, however I also know enough about coding to hack around and cobble something together, if for nothing else than proof of concept. Frankly, I am not sure how others do it; most of the good marketers I know don’t know a lick of code, and most of the coders I know could not sell ten-dollar bills for five bucks a piece. In fact one of my other shiny objects is an idea for hooking these two types together in partnerships, but for now, most idea people and marketers have to hire a coder. Literally reach into their pocket and extract cash to get to proof of concept. This keeps a lot of people out of the game; not that a lot of people have not thrown a lot of good money at bad ideas. How much time and energy you are willing to spend until you reach this point is the biggest gamble in the start-up process.

A lot of idea people will attempt to recruit overseas virtual coders to save money, and there is a place for that, but I think it is after proof of concept. Also, unless you understand a little bit about code, there is little chance of you succeeding with offshore help. Again, my definition of proof of concept is that somebody, anybody forks over cash for whatever it is you are hawking. This is a lot harder than it sounds when you exclude friends and relatives.

So I am lucky, I can code… not much, but enough. If you are thinking “good for you Steve, but that doesn’t help me in my situation”, remember this series is about my journey, not a tutorial. So, for me it starts with the open-source marketplace. There are millions of chunks of functionality out there, written by god knows who, or why for that matter, that are available for use by anyone. Once you have mapped out what your “thing” is, and know what functionality you need, you can usually go out and find the pieces. The challenge is connecting the pieces. You see a “real” coder would just write it all, I am a copy and paster, which is not that hard. Where I am usually challenged is connecting the pieces. If a coder looked under the hood of any of my beta stuff they would probably ask me why I am using 47 wires to do something when I really only need 2. As long as it works and gets me to POC, all I spent was my time.

Okay, so I got something cobbled together, it works… sorta. What this usually means is that to the outside world it does what I said it would, but behind the curtain there is way too much work required on my part. That’s okay, I’ll fix it up later. Now it’s time to let some people know what I got and see if anybody will buy it.

Next Post: Marketing Site

previous post in series: More Features Please

In my last post I talked about that “One Killer Feature”, the one that could give me an edge on the established players, the one that they would not replicate. In my case it was pre-recorded video presentations. Some of you who may have read this series from the beginning may be thinking “Wait a minute, I thought Steve said his inspiration for the idea came from scripts that used pre-recorded presentations, what’s he trying to pull here?” Ah yes, but I also said there are no new ideas. Let me explain.

I did originally say I got inspired by the scripts that were wooing internet marketers with the pre-recorded video webinar concept, but I did not say I planned to compete with them or serve their market. Here’s the lay of the land as I see it.

On the one hand, you got the legit webinar platforms serving corporate america as well as education and even small business with a complicated platform centered around the live event experience that include tools for live interaction.

On the other hand you have these scripts whose use of video has nothing to do with making a better event, but rather fooling people into thinking they are actually watching a live event. I can say that most webinars available right now for those type of products, i.e. “Get Rich With My System” are using these scripts. The fact is, while you are sitting there “participating”, you are 100% alone; there is no one else on the other side of the screen, you are watching a video. Yes, I decided that video is better; if the content is good, it’s better than live. My problem with the scripts is with the fact that you are led to believe you are participating in a live event, when in fact you are the only live one there. Maybe that’s where the phrase “I got a live one” came from. The only interactivity you may have might be the option to ask a question that in fact is simply emailed to someone.

So I saw the webinar market being served from these two extremes. What I wanted to do was to take the best of both options and create a new, better option.

I prefer the target market of Go-to-webinar, Webex, Readytalk etc.; you know, legitimate businesses. I wanted to be able to provide a platform that utilized pre-recorded content, but included the live interaction with the presenter, just like what many presenters were already doing on these platforms, but on a platform designed for presenting that way. That alone, however, would not be enough, I needed to add more features.

Basing the content on pre-recorded video meant that I could create a platform that was completely different from the big boys. For example, since almost all presenters kept the mute on and did not utilize the live speaking attendee feature, I did not need to worry about that one. Since my content was to be pre-recorded, all of the presenter hand-offs, screen switches, etc, would be part of the video, so I did not need any of that functionality either. This also meant that I did not need to require attendees to download any client software to participate. This last item was huge, as there are still a lot of people out there who are leery about downloading anything to their computers.

Another major failing of the big platforms was that presenters could not “give” anything tangible to their attendees. I wanted presenters to be able to offer attendees the option to download a document, during the webinar; a white paper, spec sheet, brochure, whatever, so I added that to the feature list. Again, because of the difference in platforms, I was also able to do something else the big boys could not do: allow attendees to fill in a form during the webinar. Not just answer a poll, but actually fill in an informational form of some kind: email newsletter sign-up, information form, hell, even an order form for that matter with a “Buy Now” button, during the webinar. I also had to provide for that live interactivity, so true live chat functionality was added to the feature list. I liked the idea of displaying a list of attendees to everyone as it adds social proof that the content is valuable and important, so I added that to the list. I also thought it was always a little pathetic to hear a presenter beg his audience to “please go to my website after the webinar”, so I added automatic redirection the list so that shortly after a webinar ends, attendees are automatically redirected to the presenter’s website.

Wow, if I could put this together, this would be incredible. But, how would my presenter clients know? Okay, so I needed to add some features for them as well. How about some analytics? Not just how many people watched, but maybe how long they watched. If a presenter could see he was losing a lot of attendees at a particular point in the presentation, maybe they could fine tune it? That would be cool, added to list. I should also make sure they get the name and email of all the attendees so they can follow-up, in fact, we’ll send them the list of registrants whether they attended or not, still qualified prospects, right? Added to list.

Whew, that’s a lot of features. If I could put that together I would definitely have something. While I know I will come up with even more feature as we go along, I decide that this list is sufficient to build something and see if we can get any traction.

Next Post: Let’s Build Something

previous post in series: One Killer Feature

Features are like your big nose. It makes you unique. Possibly even desirable to someone who feels they smell good. Features are the reason we initially select one person over another and also why we select one solution over another.

I realize this series is probably getting very specific to what I am working on. My hope is that you can relate it to what you may be doing, otherwise prepare to be bored.

So in my last post I discussed Minimum Requirements, and how that does not give you a damn thing. The only way that even gets you in the game is if you have something completely new, which I don’t believe anyone does. So we are all trying to build better mousetraps. Everyone in the space I am approaching (Go-to-Webinar, Webex, ReadyTalk, etc.) has the piece of wood with the big spring on it. I start with a piece of wood and a big spring also, but they have some things I don’t have: users, history, name recognition, financial backing, employees, rock solid platforms… okay forget it, I changed my mind.

Okay, changed it back. I can still carve out a niche in this well guarded space if I can come up with some features that people would want that the others don’t offer. But, if I come up with some great feature, what’s to keep them from just adopting it to keep me from getting any traction? I need a feature or features that they cannot replicate, at least not without making too many changes to their model. So let’s back up a little. I’ve been thinking about competing on the platform level, probably a lost cause unless I can somehow change the rules. So forget about the platform for a minute… what problem are they solving? What is a user hoping to accomplish via webinars? Well I assume they like the idea of being able to engage a large audience from anywhere in the world to convey their message. They probably like the interactivity and the whole “event” level feel. Maybe there is a different way to attack this need, something the existing players could not adopt.

So there are thousands of people and organizations that, for their own reasons, have adopted webinars as a tool. Let’s walk through what is involved for them and see if we can spot some weaknesses in the status quo.

I guess the first thing users need is someone in their organization to “do” the webinars. I think a lot of them choose poorly here, but I am not going to solve that problem. Then, they are going to need something to present, a PowerPoint or something, hmm…, maybe some opportunities there. They are going to need an account on one of the services… maybe an opportunity there also. They are going to need to learn how to operate the software… a definite opportunity there. They are going to need to create a webinar event and promote it, check and check. At the scheduled time for the webinar, they are going to have to login to a control panel of some kind and start running their webinar, possibly with multiple presenters, multiple hand-offs, potential technical difficulties, dead air, animations that may not work, etc, all while making sure they cover all of their points and not end up looking like a stammering incompetent boob… Bingo.

So I decided the weakest point in the process is the actual live webinar presentation process. We have all been on webinars, you look at a box on the screen with different things showing up while someone is talking, often a stammering, incompetent boob who runs way past the scheduled time. It’s almost like watching a really bad video. Wait just a minute! Why isn’t it a video?

I started doing a little more research on the better produced webinars… guess what, most of these folks already figured it out. In many of the best webinars, the presenter fires up the software and points his window to a video. No wonder he sounded so smooth. He’s also messaging with everybody, answering their questions right along, running polls, (I wondered how he was able to do that and run a presentation, I could never multi-task that well). Does anybody know they are watching a video I wondered… the content is good, the presenter is right there interacting, the presentation is flawless, ending at the exact time they said it would… I concluded that I would RATHER be watching a video. This is a much better use of my time. Eureka! I had just figured out my One Killer Feature. The webinar content for our platform will all be pre-recorded video.

While many of the webinars on the main platforms are actually videos nowadays, it’s kinda like pulling a wagon with a school bus. I mean all of the technology development in these platforms was centered around running live presentations; the ability to show different parts of your desktop, the ability to hand-off to different presenters, etc. I think they may have made a mistake when they offered recorded replays. The recorded replay distilled all of that technological effort into a single video file. Watching the video file, from a content standpoint was actually the same. In fact some of the guys using video started that way, playing the video recording of their prior webinars on the screen of their current webinar. All the benefit, with none of the hassle. Some of the smart ones realized, wait a minute, I don’t have to replay that crappy video from my last webinar where I had that problem with my slides, I can record a presentation on my own computer, and edit it to perfection. So now you know the secret to the really smooth webinars. They play a perfectly edited video and skip 90% of the features of the platform.

I decided this would be the centerpiece of our platform, with all of the money the other guys have spent on their live technology, there is no way that would even consider switching up to video, in fact I assume they are annoyed at the practice happening on their own platforms.

Next Post: More Features Please

previous post in series: Minimum Requirements

Let’s face it, there’s a lot of stuff out there that while cool, never goes anywhere. Cool, usually means someone looks at your stuff, says “cool” and never comes back or uses it. I don’t find that particularly cool.

I think that a lot of these “cool” things failed to meet the minimum requirements of viability. Also known as MVP or “Minimum Viable Product”. Don’t get me wrong, cool is on the list, but it’s down the page a bit. At the top of the list is “What problem am I solving?”

I realize that this is Biz 101, but it seems to have been either forgotten or ignored a lot lately as there are an awful lot of things out there that do not solve any problems. I had a colleague point out that video games are doing quite well without solving any problems. But I actually think they do solve problems: filling idle time, boosting egos, stress relief, etc. I didn’t say you had to solve world hunger to be successful. There are a lot of unimportant problems to be solved.

We originally decided the problem we would be able to solve with our webinar idea would be “qualifying prospects”. We were convinced that there were a lot of businesses out there that were actually generating too many unqualified leads from their marketing efforts. Sure, that may sound like a good problem to have, until you find yourself on the phone all day wasting time with people who cannot buy your stuff. Clearly, the bigger market, is the one that does not have enough leads, but we did not feel that webinars could help that group as much.

So, if you take our idea that webinars could be used to qualify a large volume of generic leads, you have to then think about how this would work in order to develop the minimum requirements.

So let’s see, it would have to start with a promotional effort to generate these leads… no problem, we were going to target those who already had successful efforts that were driving traffic. So our first step would be where are they driving them. Most were probably driving them to either a website, landing page or 800 number.  So minimum requirement #2, we had to provide a landing page. A page that would not only describe the webinar, but also help sell it, and provide for some kind of registration and saving to database for later. Then what? Well, from our research we learned that a lot of people simply forget they signed up for a webinar, so we needed to provide some reminders, probably several. So an auto-responder goes on the minimum requirements list as #3. Prior to the beginning of the webinar people will be clicking the link in their reminder email that has to take them somewhere. So a login page is minimum requirement #4. Once the webinar starts, we have to have the code in place to present it, minimum requirement #5. A webinar platform is not going to get very far if attendees don’t have a way to communicate with the presenter, so some kind of chat mechanism is requirement #6. And, since the competing platforms all provide for polling, that is no longer a feature, but minimum requirement #7. Most of the competing platforms also provided for some live audio from attendees, but we noticed nobody actually uses that feature, probably due to the chaos, so we omitted that one from our list.

So that’s about it. Those are the minimum requirements to be an also-ran. Meeting these requirements would put us an a similar functionality level with the major players, but they are all well established with big marketing efforts behind them. So how does one stand a chance of success against such formidable competition? Features, and at least one Killer Feature.

Next post in series: One Killer Feature

Previous post in series: Product Development

Okay, so you got your idea. Now what? I think that you start with two lists, “Minimum Requirements” and “Features”. Minimum Requirements are exactly those things that your product will need at minimum to compete at all. If you can’t develop these, you should not be trying to develop this product at all. I have seen many people who see a good idea, and try to jump on a trend with a product that just falls short. The world is littered with them. Am I going to say that it is not that much harder to have built a good product? Hell no, it’s a hell of a lot harder.

If you are able to fulfill the Minimum Requirements, congratulations, you are on your way towards building an also-ran. Be prepared to spend a ton of money trying to out-market the competition. In fact, be prepared to spend far more money than you would have spent to actually come up with a better angle. Which brings me to the core of whether this, or any idea, will succeed. The Features List. Features are what differentiate products and in the process defines your market. The competing products in the “Automated Webinar” space were not without features, but their features were geared towards a particular market: “Internet Marketers”. We were aiming at a different market: “Traditional Business”. Therefore we needed a different set of features.

In our case, we planned to build a better mousetrap, at least for our target market. In order to build a better mousetrap, you have to first experience all of the other mousetraps. This will be the first of many times you will need to bust out your wallet. We signed up for every service and bought every script that was attempting to service the market we envisioned. Expensive? Yes. Necessary? I hope so. I saved myself a lot of time on one of my prior ideas, when I realized someone else had come up with a better solution than what I had imagined. Now could I have gone ahead with my inferior implementation in the hopes that I could out-market them? Sure, happens all the time, but your shortcomings will most likely trip you up eventually. I think, if you can’t beat ‘em… do something else.

Fortunately, in this case, every new script I investigated or service I tried, reinforced my opinion that everybody else was missing the mark, or at least the mark I saw. The other benefit of peeking into all the competition, is that you can cherry-pick the good ideas you find. I had several thoughts that I did not see implemented by anybody, but I also saw several things that I had not thought about. Some of these ideas were good, and well executed, of course they go on the minimum requirements list. But often, the good ideas were poorly executed, and these got added to the features list, along with my other ideas nobody was doing. Often, if you go into the support forums, users will indirectly tell you what is missing. I am amazed at how many product developers ignore their users’ suggestions, usually dismissing them as either unnecessary or not possible. Sure, you will see your unique use cases, but often, if you read closely, you will find a recurring feature request that the product developer is not addressing. Laziness, ego, time, money, lack of better option for clients are all reasons to ignore these requests, and thereby create an opportunity for someone like me.

Where else can you discover potential desirable features? I have had great success in LinkedIn groups. There are a lot of groups on LinkedIn, most likely there is a group related to what you are thinking. Often, your established competitors will have created one. By joining, and just reading what people are saying, you can come up with all sorts of possibilities. LinkedIn Questions and Answers is another treasure trove. Personally, I prefer to lurk and listen. I understand that the rules of marketing have changed, and many people feel that it is perfectly acceptable to go into a competitor’s group and pimp your product. It’s happened to me, I don’t like it, and I won’t do it. I think it diminishes you. When I see someone doing this, I don’t think “Wow, I need to check this out” I think, “What a desperate Jerk”. If they are that desperate, their product is probably not very good. Similarly, a lot of people feel that it is perfectly acceptable to pimp their product or service in other people’s blog comments. They will start out with what appears to be a reasonable comment, that eventually mentions their product or service… class-less, and obvious. There is a tactful, and appropriate way to accomplish this goal, and I will get into that in a future post.

Next post in series: Minimum Product Requirements

Previous post in series: Partners

In my career, I have started over 30 businesses… yeah I know, short attention span. In some of these I had partners, in others I went solo.

Maybe it’s just me, but looking back, I usually made more money when I had a partner, of course I have been involved with partners where I didn’t make money also, so it’s no sure thing. I felt this webinar platform idea was going to be huge, so I decided right at the outset that I did not want to carry the full load alone.

A while back, I was contacted in my capacity as a SCORE Volunteer counselor to do some speaking through Scores’ speakers bureau. Carmine Denisco was looking for speakers to add some related content to workshops he was doing on video. Carmine and I really hit it off and we developed a good relationship that was in place at the time the webinar idea came about. In fact, I think we both saw it at about the same time. So we decided to move forward with it on a 50/50 basis.

Carmine is a stand-up guy, and we can finish each other’s sentences, but I did not really need a partner for this idea. I was perfectly capable of developing this on my own, but I wanted a partner. I think too many people try to keep everything to themselves, to reap 100% of the reward. I have found that is not only lonely, but also you end up with something that is based solely your opinions, including any biases or perceptions that you may have. Without someone to say “That’s Stupid” every now and then, you will probably develop something no one will want. Another issue, particularly in the internet space is time, if you don’t get to market fast enough, someone else will, so how fast can you work by yourself?

A partner needs to bring more to the table than just pointing out your moronic maneuvers, and I have always found it a good idea to divvy up the responsibilities early on. Understand that effort will never be equal. I have seen many viable businesses explode because a partner felt he was carrying too much of the load. Its gonna happen, there will be inequities in the work load distribution, sometimes these will shift back and forth, and in some cases they will always stay tilted in one direction. That’s life. If it gets too out of hand then maybe there needs be a discussion of the financial distributions, but it is usually a disaster in the making to start comparing skills brought or hours or minutes spent. Who knows, maybe that one time your partner said “that’s stupid” led to the ultimate success of the venture.

Next post in series: Product Development

Previous post in series: Inspiration

Although I have launched over 30 ventures in my career, I was struggling to come up with something interesting to write, because my brain kept diverting over to my newest start-up and all the issues I am working on there. So I decided to double-dip, and write a series on starting an internet business. That way I can keep thinking about it, while I write.

I must confess, that as of this writing, this start-up has only just launched, so I cannot tell you if the stuff I am going to write in this series will end up being a “How to” or a “What not to do”, but it will be one or the other.

I guess we have to start at the beginning, the inspiration. Over the years I have listened to countless people tell me about their “great idea” for a business venture. Most of them don’t do anything about it. Frankly, ideas are over-rated and a dime-a-dozen. In fact, I would say almost worthless. Especially today, and especially in the internet space. Execution is everything. If you can’t execute, you won’t realize shit. That said, you can’t execute without an idea, so I’ll give it that.

So some of you may recall that I was partnered with Phillip Black for a while in Social Media Engine, an online social media training center. Phil and I were running around doing live workshops to promote our system and I was acutely aware that this was not the most efficient way to promote it. I mean the core of our product was Facebook training. Something that anyone in the world could benefit from, and here we were talking to 40 or so local people at a time. This was going to be way to slow for me, so I set out to find a better way to promote it.

I did like the idea of explaining to people what we had going on, I just didn’t like the limited numbers we were able to explain it to at a time. I needed to be able to get our message out to a broader audience that was not geographically bounded. Since we were already comfortable in front of cameras and speaking live, I decided to look into webinars.

Webinars seemed like a very logical choice. We could give our presentation to anybody in the world, save the cost of a venue, and best of all, I did not have to wear any pants. So I started investigating. Go-to-webinar, Webex, etc, I studied all of them. In the course of my investigating I ran across this concept of “Automated Webinars”, OMG. This was perfect. I could “record” a webinar once, and play it over and over as though live? This was too good to be true.

I found several scripts out there for “Automated Webinars”, unfortunately they all seemed to be targeting “Internet Marketers”, you know those people with the “Make 7 figures in a week online with my system” guys. They are the New-Age con men. People have fallen for the Get-Rich-Quick scheme forever so it seems natural that the internet is full of that. I think they may have even supplanted porn. But I digress. The programs I looked at all suffered the same fatal flaws, mostly because of who they were targeting. Some were just written poorly, most were missing what I thought to be critical features for what I wanted to do.

You guessed it. I had an inspiration. As someone looking for just this kind of thing, I knew the features I wanted. I thought, hmm, if I’m looking, then other people like me are also looking and they had to be as disappointed as I was. If only there were a system that had the features I wanted….

There are two kinds of ideas out there, new ideas, which are rare, and old ideas that can be done better, which are everywhere. I decided I could do this better, so I let Phil know that he was on his own and started diagramming the perfect webinar solution that was in my mind’s eye.

Next post in series: Partners