Nothing is more rewarding for any business than taking an account away from a competitor. Successfully persuading a competitive user to leave their existing vendor for you takes an enormous amount of patience, skill, and strategy. Unfortunately, most business people don’t approach the strategic issue of competitive loyalty properly, and they pay for it with limited success in their take-away efforts.

To be successful in taking accounts away from your competitors, you have to begin by looking objectively at the situation from the viewpoint of your potential client. Consider for a moment the implications to your prospect. By asking them to move their business to you, you are essentially asking them to:

1.) Tell the current supplier that they are fired;

2.) Go through the process of setting up an account with a new supplier, including all of the tedious, time-consuming paperwork;

3.) Get to know a whole new set of people to work with;

4.) Get to know a whole new set of different and unfamiliar procedures;

5.)Take the risk of making a bad business decision, and paying the consequences.

This collectively adds up to a sobering fact that you must accept and work with: Unless your prospective client is having a major problem with their vendor, trying to persuade them to abandon that relationship is an exercise in frustration and futility.

Does this mean that you should abandon your efforts to sell to the competitive user? Not at all. The key to success here is to abandon the notion that you can immediately replace the existing supplier. Instead, re-think your strategy for success. Look for ways to supplement the existing relationship without replacing it, by providing a product or service that meets a specific special need that the primary vendor is either not capable of addressing, or has chosen not to.

Unless your prospect is having a major problem with their vendor, trying to persuade them to abandon that relationship is an exercise in frustration and futility. This approach is much more productive, and gets you over the two major obstacles you face in selling to the competitive user:

(1) You find a way to get your foot in the door and prove yourself.

(2) You turn the prospect into a customer, opening the “pipeline” for additional opportunities if you deliver.

My biggest new client one year was a competitive user who told me initially that they were happy with the resource that they were using, and weren’t open at that time to new alternatives. Accepting this, I was able to persuade a decision-maker within the account to allow me the opportunity to supplement their existing relationship by delivering a specialized service that the current supplier was not addressing.

This initial program soon led to more opportunities, and before long I had successfully acquired a full business relationship that has proven to be one of the best I have ever had. This strategy worked because I requested — and received – a small opportunity to prove myself, without threatening the existing vendor relationship.

Look for ways to supplement, not replace, the needs of the competitive user. By delivering value on  a small scale now, you can position yourself to reap big rewards later.

*This is a guest post by Landy Chase, Author of Competitive Selling: Out-plan, Out-think and Out-sell To Win Every Single Time

Yesterday afternoon I took a break from being so busy to catch up on news making rounds in the tech world and one that particularly caught my eye was Adam Ostrow’s Mashable piece: Social Networking dominates our time spent online. I wasn’t really surprised by the stats, I mean everyone saw it coming at some point but it did get me thinking. It got me thinking about just how useful Social Networks can be to the ambitions of Entrepreneurs and the destiny of their startups.

At the moment, big companies especially have found ways to leverage the high numbers seen by social networks and seen good results too. However, for some reason, startups are still struggling to understand the dynamics. It was even more glaring when I saw a Starbucks commercial and a Mazda commercial simultaneously and at the end of each commercial, there was a link to the facebook page of each of the two brands. Neither of them bothered to put their website URL or other contact information, just a link to their facebook pages. On the other hand, I look around me and start-ups are so focused on getting people to their website that they give little thought/attention to their brand position on these social networks. These big companies know what the deal is, I mean there are well over 600 million members of social networking sites, including atleast 60% of wealthy consumers in the United States according to a survey by the Luxury institute. The survey went on to say that “American consumers with an average income of $287,000 and an average net worth of $2.1 million typically have memberships in 2.8 social networks”. They know where the people are and where the money is, so they are constantly looking for ways to tap into this resource.

There is an obvious increase in the activities of start-ups on social networks, no doubt, and we can all see they are trying to engage fans and convert them. But if there’s anything we can learn from these big brands, it’s the need for us to take it one step further! Start-ups must learn to spark conversations around their brands. It’s cool to set up a page on facebook and get people to fan you or even give you feedback when you ask for it on your status updates but it’s beyond cool to not just be a part of the conversation, but be THE conversation.

While working for a client recently, I was looking for ways to engage moms who typically are the most popular users of the site and found myself on a social network called BabyCenter. I later found out that Johnson & Johnson had started the site in order to get moms around the country together in one place where they could share experiences, tips all while promoting the company. Reports show that BabyCenter reaches an amazing 80% of all moms to be and new moms in the USA. By doing this, Johnson & Johnson have managed to engage a whopping population of their target market for a lot of its products. They have sparked conversations around them which has in turn led to significant increase in sales.

Most recently, the entire web world couldn’t get enough of the “old spice guy”. Prior to this campaign, Old Spice was pretty much second to Axe for most men when it came to grooming but how things changed in only a month. Old Spice decided they couldn’t continue merely chasing customers on social networks, it just wasn’t working! And so they decided to do something to get people’s attention. With the success the campaign saw, they started engaging customers via video by responding to tweets sent in to them from both celebrities and general public. Mashable later reported that Old Spice saw their sales double as a result of this campaign.

Entrepreneurs are creative and innovative people afterall, so coming up with ways to spark conversations should be no trouble. It is bound to be rough and tough for those scraping the barrel in terms of funds but not every campaign requires you to max out your credit cards. Take a step back, think of ways to promote your brand, ways to be the that start-up that keeps them coming back but in all you do, keep it real with your consumers.

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In my most recent blog post, I stressed the need for Startups to focus on gaining early adopters before looking for any sort of funding whatsoever. These days, the cost of building a tech start-up is considerably less than it used to be, Dave McClure knows all about that and was kind enough to share his investment thesis with the rest of us. (I intend to get some money from him for Causerific someday, but not now.  Dave is a very astute investor man, tells it the way it is and as long as you don’t mind the vulgar language that sometimes greets you when reading his articles or listening to him, you are bound to come away with something useful. Even Fred Wilson agrees.)

I have found that the value of a start-up to customers and investors alike rises when there’s notable dynamic growth in user-base versus a stagnant number. It sounds funny to me that some people believe ‘building the product’ is the single most difficult part of a start-up, this is definitely not the case. I have worked with enough start-ups to know that selling it to your ‘market’ is just as difficult if not more (especially if you are bootstrapping). Remember that saying “build a product and the users will come”? load of toss! It takes significant hours of research, sales skills, serious balls, creativity and a bit of luck. The most recent start-up I worked for as VP, Marketing & PR is completely bootstrapped and as such I have limited cash flow to work with. Majority of what I do along with the rest of my marketing team is on social media and word-of-mouth (from blog interactions to casual chats at booths of tech events like Disrupt, Tech week etc.) We certainly don’t have the resources to do big paid search marketing campaigns or buy the Leaderboard ad spot on TechCrunch, and so growth might be a bit slower than what a start-up like Milo for example has experienced. In situations like this, I always advice focusing on your early adopters and getting them to like your product/service enough that they tell other people about it. In our case, the users most certainly didn’t JUST come, they came eventually and still come in BUT only after serious work on our part.

So, these early adopters, how do you find them? where do they camp out? and most importantly how do you convince them to check you out? The truth is that early adopters are usually not that difficult to convince and here’s why:

1.) Early Adopters should be people who have a passion for the ‘niche’ you are building your company in. If your start-up is a website service that lets people rent fancy clothes from a huge collection submitted by fashion enthusiasts like yourself, then your early adopters are mostly made up of people who love fashion as much as you do. They are the fashion bloggers, the fashion designers, working class women with a secret desire to leave their office work and make a mark in the fashion industry etc.. These people already like the ‘industry’ with which your start-up identifies, so when they find out that there’s a new product/service that somehow changes niche they already have a strong passion for, it’s a no-brainer.

2.) Early Adopters are often open minded. These are people who are willing to give new ideas a chance. By nature, their personality supports a penchant for finding things they love and giving it a chance to grow on them.

Finding these early adopters depends on your ability research and your willingness to spend long hours scouring the web for people who are passionate about your industry. Unfortunately, there is no easy button that you press and a list of people appears! Now converting these early adopters depends on your creativity and sales skills. If as an Entrepreneur, you are not creative, then you really have no business being an Entrepreneur. Not even those business books and such would save you here.

If you don’t have the money to bring customers to your site (ads), then you must go to them and talk to them. Look for people who blog about the industry you are in, send them emails and give them phone calls (when it applies). Tell them about what you are doing and how it will make the industry different. Get on forums where the fanatics and enthusiasts hang out, start discussions and sell them on your brilliant new product! There is no doubt that things like these take time and it won’t bring you 100 members your second day, realistically, it takes time before you will start to notice constant flow of sign-ups or purchases. But who said Rome was built in a day? Patience is a virtue possessed by the most successful people in the world!

In conclusion, never give up on your start-up because 3 months in, you only have 50 active member. The fact that they are ‘active members’ is evidence you have done something right. You might need to take another look at your marketing plan or that display of patience. I have seen guys build a ‘website’ today and send emails to WSJ, TechCrunch and VentureBeat the next day hoping to get covered. It’s never going to happen! If you know of one, please feel free to leave a comment below. These things take time, get those several bloggers to talk to their mini-communities about your product, leverage the power of social media, make use of videos that could catch on etc.. and soon enough your Early Adopters will be the ones doing the marketing for you!

First of all, I think it’s necessary to say sorry to the readers who e-mailed me about my lack of blogging for the past few weeks bar the Causerific intro blog. I had spent a lot of my time trying to finish up work on the project that my blogging suffered. Now that it’s done (for the most part, still in beta), I will certainly be more active with my blogging.

I was listening in on a chat between a journalist and two investors some months back at TechCrunch Disrupt in NYC, the premise of the chat was: how to find a gem in a pile of start-ups that spring up every day. Every single day, a typical tech blog like Mashable receives up to 50 pitches from Entrepreneurs or PR people looking to get mentioned, Journalists and investors aren’t spared either. During the chat, one of the investors lamented the rate at which his inbox filled up everyday and how majority of the people sending him messages have only built a website but NOT  a start-up.

There’s a popular misconception amongst most young entrepreneurs nowadays. The huge success seen by Facebook, Box.net, Youtube etc… has got young college grads thinking about driving Ferraris and working 4hrs a week from the beach. I enjoyed a webinar I watched where Gary Vaynerchuk briefly explained the differenece between “Unemployement” and “Entrepreneurship”. Unemployment can lead to Entrepreneurship but never confuse that with the belief that you are a “Entrepreneur” all of a sudden since you can’t find a job or you were fired.

Back to the previous discussion. There truly is a difference between building a website and building a start-up. A website is fully functional, it is a great idea and people would love it just like a start-up, but unlike a start-up, you and your roommate are the only ones using it. While I am not an investor, I think it’s completely understandable that most VCs and Angels will rather invest in an idea that several people like and already use than a mere website. I am a believer in the “get users first, then chase press and investment second” school of thought. Not only does it give you more credibility, but it raises both your value as an Entrepreneur and the value of your start-up. Most young Entrepreneurs that send me emails asking if I knew any Investors that could be of help barely have 5 users besides them and the fake profiles they’ve created. Get yourself some early adopters, I tell them. Look for people who love your idea as much as you do and get them to use your service. Push them to spread the word to their friends and co-workers, before you know it, you have several hundred people giving you feedback on how you can improve your service. In the next blog post I will talk about how to find these early adopters and how to market to them.

For young Entrepreneurs building start-ups, it’s important to note that most VCs, Angels, Journalists aren’t automatically sold on your “awesome idea”. They take a liking to you as a person and how well the “awesome idea” has caught on with the group of people you have built your start-up for. You most likely don’t have the $$$$$ to spend on ads and big marketing campaigns and so the only way you can go about building a user base is researching your niche, find out the people who are enthusiasts about the service you are offering, bring them to your site and get them to help spread the word. Soon enough you will be ready to have a tech blog cover you. In the mean time, work hard in the trenches and stop being unreal with your thinking that you can code a website, design it and start asking VCs for 100k the next day or asking WSJ to write a piece on you. If it were that easy, there will be 50 new Facebooks everyday.

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After 4 weeks of work and planning, I finally released my latest project today, 15th August to the public. As expected, it is only a partial beta release. I say ‘partial beta release’ because there’s a lot of growth space for the project and many things I plan to add. Ok back to the basics, I hadn’t made much noise about Causerific prior to today, not because I wanted to keep it from people but primarily because I needed to focus on making it simple, building it right and getting it to the point where I thought it was worth sharing.

My idea for Causerific is simple: A platform for anyone who needs help, to come share this need with the world and find people who are willing/able to help. With Causerific, I want people to be able to post any “need” whatsoever and get it out there to the world. With that in mind, I made it possible for people to come in and donate money to a good cause or donate their time (by physically offering hep). Over time, there will be other ways people will be looking to offer help and ways to track these offerings. That’s the focus of the next update.

To create a cause you must sign up/in. I have tried to make the process as simple as possible and feedback/suggestion is very welcome. A key component of the site is the location and maps feature. With this feature, you can check in at your current location and find causes close to where you are. Some causes are listed as ‘global’ and others as ‘local’.

In conclusion, Causerific is simply a platform to connect people and so it is your important responsibility to verify the validity of causes before you donate time, donate money or even recommend it to people. Read the reviews, call the phone number listed or email the cause creator to find out how valid this cause is. At the moment, Causerific doesn’t verify, it is something we have in the works though. I certainly hope you enjoy using Causerific and find a way of making a difference in the world.

Causerific is on Twitter and Facebook.

E-mail: info (at) causerific.com

Tolu Babalola.

This is a guest article by Rick Mathieson, Author of The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital Marketing Success
in an Anytime, Everywhere World.

#1: Don’t Ask How, Ask Why
Just because social networking is hot, that doesn’t mean its right for
every new business. Don’t just ask yourself what your social
networking strategy should be. Ask why it should be, and why your
target customers should care. Seattle-based Jones Soda couldn’t afford
pricey TV commercials to launch its brand of beverages. So it used
social media to connect with consumers in very personal ways. Fans can
upload photos that can be printed on Jones bottles. Today, it has over
1 million submissions and has used upward of 4,500 of the photos for
bottles — which consumers can collect and trade on the Jones Soda
website. As founder Peter van Stolk recently told BusinessWeek: “We
allowed the labels to be discovered, and that gave consumers a sense
of ownership. With big soda brands, the Britney Spears model of paying
a lot of money to some hot artist to sponsor your beverage is so done.
The wonderful thing about our competitors is for all the money they
have, they should be thinking more originally but they don’t. If they
ever do, I’m dead.”

#2: Keep It Events Based
Certain consultants (and business book authors) can have success using
social media to share their stream-of-consciousness about things
happening in their fields of expertise. But for most small businesses,
a much more strategic approach is in order. Think of social media as
digital direct mail — the ability to deliver a limited-time, social
network-only offer. Countless small pizza shops, for instance, offer
weekly specials on social networks to get people into their stores.
One shop, called Golden Knights pizza, has discovered 40% of its
business can come from these efforts, according to Clickz. In fact,
according to a recent Rice University study, Facebook fans of one
Houston-based café chain visited 20% more often, and spent 33% more,
than non-fans.

#3: Keep It Social — And Keep ‘Em Coming Back
Youth-oriented discount travel company STA uses social media to enable
customers to meet other people who love to travel, and who may be part
of the vacation packages they purchase. Users can read about other
people’s adventures through their own words, tips, pictures and
videos. And they can ask experts about travel related issues. Best of
all, every month, the company offers travel prizes to Australia,
Japan, Europe and other destinations. And Twitter and RSS feeds will
even send STA subscribers the cheapest flights so they can stop
spending hours online searching for the best deals.

#4: Don’t Just Pitch, Sell
The price of developing apps for Facebook is coming down, and with
ingenuity, can even be revenue builders. Pizza Hut recently launched a
Facebook app that enables customers to place orders without leaving
their profile pages. There’s no reason a small company, say a local
sandwich shop couldn’t do the same. Los Angeles startup ice cream
truck company Coolhaus takes a different approach. In addition to
differentiating itself with ice cream sandwiches designed using
architectural principles — with names like “The Mies Vanilla Rohe”
and “The Frank Lloyd Light” — “we roam the entire radius of LA and
update our location on Twitter,” co-founder Natasha Case tells Young
Hollywood. The idea: To entice people out of offices and onto the
street for an “ice cream social” that racks up serious sales.

#5: Don’t Just Talk, Listen
Social networks are also an excellent way to solicit feedback from
your customers. Perhaps you’ve heard of Dell’s “Twelpforce” (or
Twitter help force), a team that fields questions, offers and
suggestions and sends Twitter-specific promos to followers.  There’s
no reason why your startup can’t use social media in the same way,
answering any questions your customers have about the products they’ve
bought from you. Of course, as sophisticated as that may sound to
monitor and respond to social networking chatter, it should be noted
that it’s far more useful to have highly-trained, highly-effective
customer service in the first place. If you want to get cutting edge,
start there.

Author Bio
Rick Mathieson, author of The On-Demand Brand: 10 Rules for Digital
Marketing Success in an Anytime, Everywhere World, is an award-winning
writer and leading voice on marketing in the digital age. His insights
have been featured in ADWEEK, Advertising Age, Wired, Broadcasting &
Cable, and on MSNBC, CBS Radio and NPR, while his next-generation
business models have earned recognition from USA Today and Dow Jones
Interactive. His first book, Branding Unbound (AMACOM 2005) was widely
praised in the business press. A regularly featured speaker at
industry events, Mathieson also serves as vice president and creative
director for Creative: Advertising & Interactive Media, one of Silicon
Valley’s most prominent advertising agencies. He lives in San
Francisco, California.

“If people don’t talk about me (whether it’s the truth or falsehood), then I worry. Because it means I ain’t nobody. So either way people better be talking about me.” – 2face

Public Relations is never an easy game, it’s tough, makes you anxious and sometimes very frustrating especially if it’s with a Lean Startup. I should use the next few lines to shed light on what I mean by “Lean startups” before I proceed. Over the past few years, the economy took a huge tumble, stocks lost their value, interest on moneys put away declined and ultimately investors lost a lot of money. As a result, it became incredibly hard for companies to get loans and it trickled down to smaller startups. Entrepreneurs who sought seed funding had to start cutting back on how much they asked for and sacrifice some aspects of the start-up that they had anticipated in order to succeed. This is where the term “Lean Start-ups” apply. When a start-up cuts its expenditure to fit a smaller budget while still optimizing products.

PR in itself isn’t easy, it’s even more difficult when you are Lean and fresh off the tracks in your start-up journey. I have seen both sides of the table, I’ve been involved with an established company that had no problem getting their press releases to the top news outlets, and most recently with a fresh off the tracks start-up with no reputation acting as wind beneath its wings. My experiences have shaped the way I think PR should be applied and how I talk about it with people. Despite all the differences, there’s still a universal agreement in what makes you succeed in PR: Make yourself/brand unmissable.

It’s normal, every Tom, Dick and Harry want their stories and press releases published in BusinessWeek, CNN, VentureBeat etc.. why not? those are the most popular news outlets. Even blogs like TechCrunch and Mashable are constantly receiving several hundreds to thousand pitches per day! So getting your new start-up published in any of those is almost as easy as walking through the eye of a needle. Based on my experiences so far, I have found some tips that could help New Entrepreneurs on their way which I’ld like to share.

1.) Don’t hire a PR Firm. I have nothing against PR firms, some of them are awesome and do amazing work. However, if you are a fresh off the tracks start-up with “Lean” on your mind, you know for damn sure that you can’t afford a PR firm. PR firms charge somewhere between $5k to $20k per month for their services. Besides the astronomical cost, the way I see PR, is different from the way many other people see it. You want to be a brand, a movement that people can relate to. With PR firms, that could get tricky. I have found that the most success comes from having a PR person who is part of your brand, speaks the brand language and HAS solid experience.

2.) Put yourself where you can be seen. For all the hype about social media and how it helps localize PR, I am of the school of thought that offline PR is still as important if not more important than online PR. Networking is absolutely vital for new start-ups and the more connections you make in person, the better your chances of getting heard. This sort of ties in some ways to the point I made above about PR firms. The physical connections that will be made via PR firms vs. those they make online for your start-up is a very small fraction. You want to interact and mingle with people who can make an impact for you. I have always been a fan of TechCrunch events, SXSW etc… these are the sort of places where lasting impressions can be made. Twitter is an example of a startup that found fame by putting itself where it can be seen. They chose to launch the service at SXSW interactive in 2007, we all know the state of Twitter at the moment. I always advise Entrepreneurs to go out and meet other Entrepreneurs, mentors, journalists and even Investors at these sort of events, you have a better chance of getting heard by meeting in person rather than being one of the 1,000 people sending them emails daily.

3.) Interact More, Pitch Less. When you are doing PR for your start-up, make sure you cut down on the pitches and interact instead. Even on my blog, I get many emails from people pitching their startups to me. I only put out very few of those on the site, and that’s only because of the way I was approached. When you talk to people about your startup, be the one who stands out, be the one who doesn’t pitch. It’s far easier to approach the situation as though it’s two random people, meeting for the first time and simply talking about their careers. It’s just more relaxed and less “in your face” when done this way.

4.) Focus on the smaller News Outlets. One method that has always worked for me and start-ups I’ve been a part of is starting on a small scale. When you contact smaller, less popular news outlets and blogs, you have a better chance of getting a positive result than when you contact a national/international outlet. Most of the smaller syndicates don’t get pitches or stories sent in from the bigger companies, so they are more receptive when smaller start-ups reach out to them. On the other hand, if you really have to get in touch with the bigger news sources, make sure you are contacting the junior writers rather than the Chief Editor. The later most likely receives 5 times as many pitches as the junior writers do, so you stand a better chance scrolling down the staff list. Either way, you are getting some “air time”!

5.) Build Relationships early with Journalists in your Niche. Getting press is the fastest and best way to endear your brand to your customers. We all know this, your start-up would either succeed or fail depending on how it is received by the customers. Your ability to secure top talent to join your team, raise capital and convert members all boils down to how solid your PR campaign is. That being said, nothing drives PR faster than Journalists. Their views and opinions about your start-up could make or mar your chances of making a splash.

For those who have tried pitching journalists, you know it’s rare to get a call back or reply email if you are part of a fresh off the tracks start-up. The key is relationship building. You need to start interacting with the journalists you intend to reach out to in the future on a regular basis and long before you need them. You need to comment on their articles, e-mail/tweet your thoughts on their previous articles and get them to know you. After a while, you name sticks out, they know who you are and start respecting your views. Soon enough, when you contact them with a NEWS-WORTHY article from your start-up, the chance of them working on it is far greater than if you are a random PR guy emailing them just like every other person does.

In summary, never forget that PR is all about getting people to know about you. Come up with creative ways to do this so you can make a lasting impression. This guy did it, even though he was selling himself and not a brand, but you get the message. He created ads on google for the names of the bosses at the company he wanted to work for, so that when they google themselves, they see his ad asking for them to hire him. Creative eh? Be that guy! Be daring, adventurous and you might just be ripping rewards sooner rather than later.

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Of dreams, not nightmares

” you might as well dream big, since it’s a dream. It doesn’t cost you any more to own a Lamborghini in the dream than it costs to own a Bicycle” – Unknown.

There once lived two boys in a small township. Boy A, growing up, had always been told how much money the the local cheese sellers made and how great it would be if someone from the family made that much money. As expected, the young boy set his sights on that goal and whenever he went to bed, he had dreams of being the top cheese seller in the town. Several blocks away form Boy A’s home was Boy B. Boy B never felt comfortable in this town, he always thought people were too cautious and the standard of living could be better. He started visiting other towns, reading books and learning about things other people did. He found that there were several other things he could do to make him be who he truly wanted to be. He started dreaming of making money and having people work for him, doing things people really wanted to see! Truth is, people always work toward their goal and you get what you work for…most of the time. Fast forward 40-something years, Boy A is the top cheese seller in Blackheath, England and Boy B is Founder/Chairman of the Virgin Group with an estimated net worth of £2.6 Billion.

When you dream, you open yourself to a whole new world of possibilities. You find that it is possible to imagine things and attempt to live them out. This ability to not only dream, but dream big is a common trait of the most successful Entrepreneurs of our time. When Mark Zuckerberg sat down with some of the board members of Facebook and told them he saw their numbers doubling in 6 months time to over 300million users and refused to back down on his decision to change the Homepage and not carry banner ads, things got heated. Some employees who were starting to see a decline in the rate of pageviews and signups at the time even started to panic, resign and take other positions. Today, the evidence is there for all to see, Zuckerberg did make the right decision.

There’s so much talk in Silicon Valley about the importance of Lean startups and why Investors are looking to invest only in Entrepreneurs who know how to make the most out of a little change. The gospel has spread like wildfire and Entrepreneurs have started cutting back on their goals and asking for less money in a bid to look like they can be “lean”. If you have built a prototype and you’ve shown without a doubt that there is a market for your product, it IS time to take over that market and scale up accordingly. Don’t target the west coast only and ask for 1/4 of the money you need because you want to appear lean, knowing fully well that scaling up and reaching out to the entire country will yield the best rewards. When you work on your startup, how about put it all on the line, dream of the best your company can do and go for that.

“…at Inter Milan  we are a blood team not a skin team. When we play, we leave it all on the pitch. You don’t see skin on there, you see blood. As long as we win, it doesn’t matter.” – Jose Mourinho (Manager of Inter Milan FC after beating Barcelona in the semi finals of the 2010 UEFA champions league)

Innovation comes in handy

Innovation is something you either have or you don’t. Some people will make good Entrepreneurs and some wouldn’t. Simple. The ability to envision something most people don’t even know they need and then make it really happen is what makes a true Entrepreneur. For the life of me I didn’t know why anyone would care about Twitter when I first heard the idea. Evan Williams (@ev), co-founder of Twitter was addressing a room full of Entrepreneurs, geeks and a handful of investors a few years back right after releasing the product to the public. He said “we had this idea of letting people express themselves and share what they are doing with friends in 140 characters or less.” At this time, Facebook was still rather bare and didn’t have the “status” feature it has now, but still a good number of people found the idea totally unnecessary and didn’t see the point behind it. They believed that bit of social interaction where you can tell you friends what you are doing was already available on Facebook, so why tweet?

The founders of Twitter obviously had several other ideas in mind as to what Twitter can be used for. They saw beyond the typical 140 character blab and anticipated celebrities building a following and keeping these “eager fans” updated. They saw Businesses taking advantage of the opportunity to share and showcase their products. They were innovative. The rest is history.

Take a risk

“…he’s gonna have a hard time explaining to Hayley and Laney, these food stamps and this weak sh*t, coz he never risked sh*t. He hoped and he wished it, but it didn’t fall in his lap, so he ain’t even here” – Eminem

Two months ago in donwtown NYC, I overheard some fresh-faced, college students talking about how “awesome” they thought the site textsfromlastnight was. Apparently, one of them had sent in a text he got from his ex-girlfriend two nights prior and luckily it made its way to the site’s homepage. The conversation slowly drifted into a discussion about their own little project they had been working on for a few months. One of them mentioned how it would be absolutely impossible to take on Foursquare, which happened to be their major competitor. He gave several reasons in his attempt to convince his partner to give up on this project and look in a different direction. He said “I am certainly not willing to put all that 10 grand seed money into something that will just fail dude, let’s find something else to do. If someone chooses to invest in us though, then sure, as long as we are not wasting our own money.”. But for the very beautiful girl I was entertaining on the day, I would have turned around, bounce my head around in disgust and told them to “grow some balls”…well maybe not, but you get my point.

If every one starts thinking this way and running away at the first sign of competition, the world we know now will be much different. There’s no way guys like that will make it 2yrs at the helm of any company, if they are even lucky enough to start one. Willingness to take risks has to be a driving force for Entrepreneurs. You have to be prepared to fail in order to succeed. We don’t need to start talking about posthumous stories of Thomas Edison and his lightbulbs, but it is common place, if someone like Ron Conway doesn’t take the risks he takes in investment, he won’t be the man he is today.

So Tolu, what are you saying? Dream big, think deep and lose the fear. What is failure anyway? if it isn’t merely 2 blocks down the road from victory…or so they say.

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Leaguescape, a recently launched poker-modeled Fantasy Sports site is trying to provide the one-stop shop for all things betting on Fantasy Sports. Following the online poker business model, Leaguescape is trying to revolutionize the Fantasy Sports industry as PartyPoker did poker.

In 2003, an accountant from Tennessee turned a $39 investment into $2.5 million. How did he do that? Chris Moneymaker became the first World Series of Poker Champion (WSOP) in tournament history to originally qualify from playing the online version of the game. Moneymaker’s remarkable victory sparked a realization that people could make more money sitting at home and becoming a professional poker player rather than going to work.  In ‘03, there were 839 entrants into the WSOP. In 2004, only one year later, the number tripled to 2,576 and in 2006, the entrant field was over ten times larger at an astonishing number of 8,773.

Likewise, it’s estimated by the Fantasy Sports Trade Association that nearly 30 million people play fantasy sports in North America alone. This figure has been growing at 15% a year and seems to be one big event away from exploding into every living room and office in the US – where fantasy football alone has an estimated $1.1 billion a week in lost productivity for employers. For the fantasy sports industry, these numbers mean big business, as Fantasy Sports is estimated to have a $3–$4 Billion annual economic impact across the sports industry overall. So with a “Moneymaker Effect,” could Fantasy Sports explode even further in the United States and around the world? It’s possible, and it helps that Fantasy Sports are exempt from the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act (UIGEA), as it deems Fantasy Sports a skill game, providing a safe marketplace for Fantasy Sports “betting.” The average Fantasy Sports player spends about $500 a year, and with continued growth and a possible boom, the industry could continue to expand.

Leaguescape gives you ultimate freedom in customizing the leagues size, ensures your league is filled with paid players, and eases payments by digitizing them. Leaguescape also offers unique salary cap daily games where users draft a team within a salary cap and your players compete against another player’s team each day.

Leaguescape completely follows the poker model; meaning they allow play money which can be exchanged for real money, player points, reward systems (which can be exchanged for money), plan to offer rewards for the top performing player per sport, and unique promotions such as their 100% deposit bonus and $10 free signup bonus. Leaguescape believes that Fantasy Sport leagues don’t need to be filled with friends; rather they encourage playing with other unknown players, just as online poker does.

Leaguescape’s business model and fees are structured after online poker as well. A tournament in online poker has a 10% fee associated with the buy-in and it usually lasts 30 minutes to several hours. Leaguescape has the same 10% fee for each wager in its season long games, which last 4-6 months depending on the sport. For daily games, Leaguescape has lowered its fee to just 5%. Leaguescape applies a proven business model to an emerging Fantasy Sports industry; one that could spark an industry revolution.

Leaguescape is on Twitter

Outsourcing is something I do quite abit. I have been an advocate for well over 3 years now and have enjoyed it for the most part. It’s cheap, easy and time efficient. My favorite thing about Outsourcing is the fact that I could have a heap of work to get done before work time the next morning and if I don’t get through it all, I know I can have an assistant somewhere in a different timezone finish it up for me. Take for example the one time we were handling web development, design and branding for a new website and client. I had just started out with Gen Y startup and the section of it that handled website dev/design, so I felt the need to “show the S on my chest”. I didn’t care whatever it took back then and so I hired a team from countries around the world.

The new client had a bad experience with a previous supplier and was out of time, basically needed a turnover in less than 40hrs. I blindly took up the challenge and set out on a journey that I was 100% sure I wouldn’t finish, but the pride and need to make a point made me take it on anyway. I worked endlessly on the project but after a while it was evident I was running low on manpower and strength, that’s when I sent an email to my ever ready asst. in Lahore, Pakistan. It was 2a.m. in Baltimore USA but for him, it was the middle of workday. Suffice to say, somehow the project was done and delivered and the client is still with me till today.

Outsourcing also has it’s bad, actually very bad moments as well. It’s never going to be all rosy if you are into outsourcing some work. For people who are new to Outsourcing and don’t know people/teams you can pick as your partner or outsource team, it could be ridiculously daunting. Many take the decision process lightly and that shouldn’t be the case. It’s actually more important than hiring an in-house team because these are people you don’t know, never seen and have no clue whether their background and experience is only true on paper. You don’t know their style of work and have no control over how they do the work either. A close friend learned the hard way a couple of weeks ago when she picked out a team in India and handed them the reigns on a small project she was working on. She had 3weeks to get it done and so while she worked on the design section, she outsourced some of the dev. It’s been 6 weeks and the development is only 50% done. She lost that client and isn’t sure when the work will be done. Not all outsourced projects end up this way, neither are most of the developers looking for outsourced project, so don’t misconstrue the lesson of this post. You just need to make sure you learn to do the right things when you outsource.

To do List.

1.) Go through a trusted source. Merely doing a Google search of the word “outsource” will give you several articles on where to find great employees in other countries around the world. Elance is especially a huge meeting ground for tech work suppliers and people looking to outsource.

2.) Verify the information they give you. A lot of the people looking to take your work on fake their qualifications and experience. You must verify the information they give you and make sure all that work they claim to have done are actually their hand work. E-mail previous clients, call old employers…anything just to make sure you are not dealing with liars. If they lie about their previous work to win yours, you definitely don’t want them any where near yours.

P.S. A lot of suppliers do this, because most employers fail to verify any past experience.

3.) Keep good contact. Always stay in contact with whomever you do hire. Have skype meetings atleast once a week and build a closer relationship. Exchanging emails alone is never enough. Let them know that you mean business! Set up calls about twice a week or more depending the stage of the project or the amount of work required.

4.) Demand to see updates. This one explains itself. Don’t be led to believe you are closer to the finish line than you actually are. Most people fall victim of this.

In summary, Outsourcing can save you a lot of money and time IF done the right way. So do the right things to enjoy the experience.

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