* Go through your contracts with your current clients so that you can ensure their loyalty for 2015
When you look towards the future, you want to look with confidence and plan for success. Reflect on 2014, plan for 2015 and prepare for an exciting and successful year!
All the best -
TABITHA JEAN NAYLOR
Editor & Publisher
What's the Difference Between Success and Failure? TIME.
By Michael I. Kaplan
The truth is successful people fail much more often than those who are not successful. However, unlike those who try and fail – then subsequently give up without ever trying again – successful people overcome those failures with renewed determination until they finally realize their dream.
For this reason, believing successful people have a magic recipe for success that also immunizes them from failure is an outright lie. Once I prove this, and I will, please put this lie at the top of your “Things to Forget List” forever.
When it comes to the subject of success and failure, humanity in general tends to be a fair weather friend. When you tell someone your dreams they might say “You have no chance to succeed.” If you do fail the first time out they’ll say “I told you so.”
When your perseverance pays off and you finally succeed they’ll probably say “I knew you could do it” – then promptly forget all the previous failures that brought you to this point.
One of the fundamental philosophies underlying this mindset is the belief that life should somehow be easy. Typically, when a person says a particular task is going to be too difficult, what they are actually saying is “the task is going to be too difficult for me,” thus elevating difficult to impossible.
If you believe a task is too difficult, my first question to you would be, “Did you think it would be easy?” You might respond with, “No, but I didn’t think it would be this difficult.”
Now the truth comes out; you thought it would be easier. Had you predicted the task at hand would be difficult – but the reward would be worth the effort – you would be right on track.
At this juncture I feel compelled to admit to you just how much I hate the word “failure,” especially in light of the words’ contemporary usage. In my experience – and the point I try to make to those who use the word “failure” so freely – a failure constitutes an absolute loss from which no further action follows, and from which nothing can be learned.
Attempting to jump the Grand Canyon in your family vehicle would fit neatly into this category: zoom, whoosh, splat and done. You failed.
However, if you unsuccessfully attempt a task but still manage to gain valuable insight and knowledge, and then apply that knowledge to your next endeavor, can you honestly say the first attempt was a complete failure?
To a fault, those who have pursued their dreams and won will tell you they learned as much from their “failures” as they did from their victories. To illustrate this point, consider the following examples:
1. Bill Gates: Launched his first start-up, Traf-O-Data, in 1972 to automate the transfer of data collected from roadway traffic counters to transportation engineers. Great concept but it failed miserably. Gates and his partner Paul Allen learned from the experience and created Microsoft. The rest is history.
2. James Dyson: The brilliant inventor of cutting-edge vacuum cleaners spent 15 years creating 5,127 prototypes before coming up with a marketable product ... all while his wife gave art lessons to keep food on the table and a roof over their heads. All failed the test until # 5,128. Dyson, now a billionaire many times over, never lost sight of the dream.
3. Steve Jobs: Remember when this computer guru launched the "LISA"? Most people don't. It's sales performance was so abysmal it got Jobs fired from the very company he founded. He launched another company: NeXT. It failed as well due to hardware issues, but the software division was bought by Apple and Jobs started back at ground zero. His motto was "failure is feedback," which is why history will remember Steve Jobs as the genius he truly was.
If you take some time to research the back-story of those you consider to be successful, you’ll undoubtedly find a reoccurring theme: many were homeless, bankrupt and suffered a number of “failures” before finally achieving their dream.
The difference between success and failure is only a matter of where on the timeline you decide to stop trying.
About the Author
Michael Kaplan is a military veteran, serial entrepreneur and author. If you enjoyed this article, see his most recent book: The Prior-Service Entrepreneur: Providing Military Veterans with the Competitive Skills to Start a Successful Business. You're invited to connect with Michael on Twitter and Facebook as well.
How to Explain a Complex Product Quickly & Effectively
By Tom Cox
What Does it Do Exactly?
As the world grows more and more complex, so too do the products and services we use. At a fundamental level, very few humans understand how our modern world works. What makes a plane fly? How does WiFi work? Where does plastic come from? Where is the Internet?
Anytime we are exposed to a category-defining product, we inherently have difficulty understanding what it is and why it is valuable, let alone how it works.
In 2011, I had the task of explaining a product that had no category before it existed. This product combined several very large, very expensive products into one box. But it also created a connection between the device and an Internet-based remote monitoring software suite. Beyond that, it included step-by-step instructions for novice technicians to conduct tasks normally done by seasoned engineers. And finally, it used a smartphone for the user interface. All of this in one box – and being presented to an industry that abhors change.
The mistake I made was trying to explain ALL of it at once whenever I evangelized the product.
Think about how Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. He explained to the audience that Apple was introducing three new revolutionary products:
A widescreen iPod with touchscreen controls
A cellular phone
Breakthrough Internet communications device
Steve explained the iPhone in a way that people at the time could grasp. It was one device that combined three new products. He put a lot of effort in building analogies to existing technologies, and then slowly, carefully explained the most important new characteristics.
In fact, the iPhone had more than 100 new features and capabilities that were never mentioned during his demonstration. But people eventually figured them out once they had the iPhone in their hands.
Six Tips For Explaining Complex Products
Getting your audience to buy in to your vision for a product is the most important task you have as a founder or product manager. Here are some tips on how you can explain your complex product to customers, investors, and co-workers.
1. Start With Your Vision
When you evangelize to an audience, always start with your vision. Explain why you created it – what gap it fills, what it does like nothing else, and why customers would miss it once they have it.
You want your audience to understand the purpose of your product. Start with Why, and then take them through the How and the What. This way they’ll immediately know the problem you’re solving so they can put context around what it does and how it works. A great book to help with this concept is Start With Why by Simon Senek. His book is a core pillar in my philosophy of how product evangelism should work.
2. Put Yourself In Your Audience’s Place
The worst thing you can do is lose your audience during your explanation. Think about someone walking you through a product or technology you’ve never seen before. Imagine someone explaining to you how Warp Drive engines from Star Trek worked The best way for you to learn would be through analogy.
As an exercise, imagine how you would explain how television works to someone from Medieval times. You’d have to explain elect
ricity, radio signals, cameras, microphones, and so on. What analogies could you use from their era – from their understanding of the world?
Remember they are likely hearing something they’ve never heard before, and they’re probably skeptical of your claims. They’ll wonder why it was never done this way before. They’ll want you to reassure them this product is a better way to do things, and that you know what you’re talking about.
3. Walk Your Audience Through The Story
Take your time walking your audience through the product. One mistake I see a lot of product evangelists make – the same one I used to make – is they get so used to talking about their product they forget that most of the folks they meet have no context for the product.
As evangelists talk more and more about our product, they start making assumptions that their audience understands industry jargon, acronyms, and concepts that are linked in the product that may not have been linked before. For example, the product I mentioned above combined multiple test and measurement devices, remote monitoring, and training workflows into one product. I should have started with one of the features and key in on that, then tell the rest of the story after that concept was understood.
Take your audience step-by-step through the story. Show them one part of what your product does. Then once they’re comfortable with that, move them to the next part.
4. Go Slow
Give your audience time to process, understand and digest what you are telling them. Evangelists are naturally excited when they talk about their product. And when we’re excited, we tend to talk fast because we want to get all of it out.
You will lose your audience if you go too fast. If they miss an important point because they’re still processing the last point, they might give up on understanding the concept. So give them time to think about what you’re saying.
5. Use Analogies Carefully
I once heard someone explain a product they were building as “Facebook minus Twitter with a bit of Instagram and Snapchat.” I had no idea what they were talking about. When you use an analogy, use one at a time, and make sure it’s a solid logical connection. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat all do a lot of things. Which components were relevant in this analogy?
One of the products I evangelize now is called Gigabit Passive Optical Networking, or GPON. Without explaining how it works, I focus on creating an analogy.
“It’s as fast as Google Fiber, half the cost of Cisco, and 1000x more reliable than Comcast.”
For people in the telecommunications industry, they know all three of these references – Google Fiber, Cisco and Comcast. In one sentence I get the message across in a way the audience can quickly understand by drawing on existing examples.
6. Create World-Class Demonstrations & Explanation Videos
“A picture is worth a thousand words, but knowing the most important 20 words is worth a thousand dollars”
The fastest and most compelling way to get someone to understand your product is to show them what it can do for them. The products that are adopted the fastest are the ones that are most easily understood. This is true for complex products as well. A well-done demonstration along with a high-quality explanation video are ways to absolutely nail home the point.
Show the top three things your product does in your video or demo, and let the audience explore what else can be done on their own.
About the Author
Tom Cox is the founder of Soldier to Startup - a resource for veterans wanting to learn how to start and run their own businesses. He studied Nuclear Engineering at the University of Maryland, has an MBA from Georgia State University, and served with honor in the US Army for 6 years as a Combat Medic and Satellite Controller. Tom worked in the Intelligence community and Satellite industry for 10 years before starting and running his first startup for 4 years. He’s now hooked on entrepreneurship and is currently involved in multiple startups and businesses. You can find his website at www.soldiertostartup.com.
How to Know If Your Prospecting Email Message is Effective
By Jill Konrath
Successful Startup 101 Magazine - Issue 10 Page 2