I’m pleased to announce my previous blog post attracted the attention of Sean at Superpages.  She was kind enough to contact me by phone and update the Fresh Tilled Soil Superpages account for free.  We are now officially a Web Design and Marketing firm and no longer sell “top soil” or any other soil for that matter.

Thanks, Sean, for making it happen.

I have an old eBay account which I haven’t used in some time. In an effort to make my contribution to economic stability I decided to log into my account and cancel it. Here’s the problem, it’s been some time since I used the account so need to hit the "lost my password" button. The wall I run up against first is the zip code needed to confirm my identity is not the same as my current zip code. That’s eBay’s first mistake – never use a unique identifier that changes over time or could be misunderstood if your customer’s move. Not to be beaten I looked up my old zip code and plug it in. Still wrong. Hhmm, ok, I’ll try the "still need more help?" link at the bottom of the page. This prompts me for my birth date. Guess what? Apparently I wasn’t born when I thought I was. Here we are at mistake number two – if you’re going to use people’s unique information to identify them then you need to get it right. Finally, out of frustration I click on the "Live Help" button. I’m prompted to enter in more information but when I click on "Send" to start the live chat, I get the useless ‘unavailable’ screen. Why did they ask me to fill out the information when they were unavailable. Nevermind the horrible UI of the ‘unavailable’ page which is clearly being served from a third-party.

In case you’re wondering I have also used the "forgotten" password and "forgotten username" options which apparently will email me the information I need. It’s been over an hour and still no emails. This is such a basic thing to get right from the start. It’s the little things that make people happy, or unhappy. Please don’t ever treat customer service is an after thought. With the power of online reviews you don’t have any other option than being amazingly good at every part of customer service.

A study released by the world famous Kaufmann Foundation for Entrepreneurship has found correlation between education levels and the propensity to start a new business. Here is a segment from the study…

Our survey shows that education provides an advantage in tech entrepreneurship and that most U.S.-born tech founders of technology and engineering companies are middle-aged with sixteen years of work experience before they launch a startup. The twenty-year-old wunderkind is the exception, not the rule. The education a tech founder receives is important in tech entrepreneurship. But, while elite, Ivy-League schools are over-represented in the ranks of U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs and achieve greater business success than others, 92 percent of the U.S.-born tech founders come from other colleges and universities. The biggest difference in business success is between tech founders with terminal bachelor’s degrees and those with terminal high school diplomas. There also are large differences between Michigan, Texas, and Ohio, which rank above average, and Maryland, Indiana, and New York, which are at the bottom. This research raises policy questions on how regions of the country and the country itself can foster greater tech entrepreneurship to boost economic growth. While we do not know how some of the tech founders would have fared had they not obtained higher degrees, the predominance of degree holders suggests that an advanced education has become critical, at least in the sectors covered in our sample. The majority of higher education and graduate degrees in our respondent body fell within tech founders of thirty-five to forty-four years of age.

Recently, I purchased the Book "E-Myth Mastery: The Seven Essential Disciplines for Building a World Class Company.  Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that the book was only broken into 3 parts each just over 2 hours long.  Every other audio book I have purchased in the past breaks the story down into small chapters.  This makes it much easier to listen to the story in multiple sittings.  It surprised me that ITunes would still have a story only broken down into 3 parts, with each section having a long running time.

After realizing my mistake I was worried that I would not be able to get a refund for the story.  Especially after discussing it with my co-workers who made the comment "Good Luck."  I would rather load the story into ITunes manually than try and find what part I was listening to after continuing with the story after an extended absence. 

Luckily for me, Irene from ITunes replied quickly after I sent my e-mail noting my frustration and asking what could be done.  After checking with her supervisors she let me know that I would receive a full refund from ITunes. 

Thank you Apple!!  You didn’t make a little problem a big problem.  Another satisfied customer and a job well done.

There is a lot of life-hack discussion in the book and blog world. It’s not surprising. We’re all looking for ways to get more from our efforts and still have time to stop and smell the roses. Anyone who’s read The 4-Hour Work Week has been filled with the knowledge that Tim Ferriss has won a battle all of us face each day. There is however, an often overlooked part of the sitting-on-a-beach-while-money-pours-in success story.

To get to only working 4 hours a week you have to start with 80 hours a week.

Make no mistake, I love the idea of working 4 hours a week and still making a lot of money. Our business uses all the time-saving techniques we can. As a team we actually work less hours than anyone we know. We take ample vacations, work very reasonable hours and generally manage to even take off a day each week. Many of the ideas out there actually do help to reduce email, meetings and distractions so you can focus on what does produce rewards. There are definitely life-hacks that work but there is not short-cut to the hard work that creates entrepreneurial success. The truth is, if you want to build a great business that throws off cash each day you will need to put in the hours up front.

I’ve been fortunate enough to have been part of 4 startups in the last 12 years. Two of them have been a great success (by both financial and reputation standards) and two of them flopped. The common thread in the two successes has been hard smart work. Not just hard work, but focused, disciplined hard work. Working hard and working smart are not two ends of a spectrum. They need to co-exist. They need your equal attention.

So what is it that requires hard work vs. working smarter? In spite of all the myths, building software does not require your developers to sit chained to their desks for months on end punching out millions of lines of code. Great software can be produced in simple ways and without having to drag a futon into the office. If you’re just a middle-man drop shipping merchandise, like many of the web businesses we read about, then producing product isn’t even on your to-do list. In many of the businesses we see and work with we hardly ever see the product or service eating up time. What requires unadulterated hard work and long hours is sales – at least initially.

At least once a week I get asked how Fresh Tilled Soil manages to produce so many new leads each week with no apparent effort. The answer is in Jim Collins flywheel metaphor. We produce a solid pipeline of sales without breaking our backs because we broke our backs for the first two years setting a flywheel in motion. That flywheel is the referral mechanism that only works if you have it spinning at a solid rate. The only way to get it spinning is to work bloody hard making calls, networking and executing excellent work. There is no life-hack to get around this one. The good news is that once the sales flywheel is in motion it’s very easy to just keep it moving forward each day. The initial effort to get that heavy flywheel moving translates into an inertia that sustains itself with only a small amount of daily effort.

The way we see it is that working hard is a bare minimum to success. Applying "working smart" ideas from the beginning helps make that hard work turn into something even better. If you work hard and work smart, success comes a lot quicker than just doing one of those things.

Over the span of my last few companies I have learnt that managing for success cannot always be learnt from a book. This might seem obvious to some but we all fall back on text book strategies when things get tough. Here are some of the things they don’t teach you at business school:

1. Forgive your enemies: Not every client, employee or vendor is going to love you. Sometimes business relationships don’t work out. There is a tendency to carry anger and bitterness about these relationships. My experience is that letting them go and moving on makes more sense.
2. Let go of clients that drain you: In the same vein, there are some clients that are just so much work you find yourself physically and mentally drained every time you talk to them. In almost all cases it’s best to let them go so you can give your best to the clients that really matter.
3. Focus most of your energy on existing clients: There is a lot of business mythology around the ‘new business sale’. Existing clients are generally much more profitable and easier to grow. Don’t be distracted by aggressive sales strategies that target strangers. Focus on your existing clients and the referrals will follow very soon.
4. Build long term plans with your clients: Your clients actually like it when you plan ahead with them. It gives them the confidence that this is a long term partnership. Take a calendar to your meetings and discuss what seasonal work you can do for them throughout the year.
5. Create learning opportunities for clients: Your clients employ you because you are the expert. Invest time in teaching them what you know and they’ll respect you even more. I’ve heard it said by many a consultant that keeping your clients in the dark is the best way to have them dependent on you. I couldn’t disagree more. Sharing knowledge with your clients raises the quality of the relationship and makes it stronger.

If you’re trying to grow your business you’ll have moments when you don’t know all the answers. Obviously it’s asking the right questions that makes it easier to find the answers. Here area few questions we have been asking ourselves as we grow to the next level.

1. which of our products and/or services offers the most value and differentiation?
2. what are the features of our products and/or services that we can itemize and promote?
3. is our location good for business? (even as a web business this still has bearing on who our customers are and how we interact with them)
4. is the image of our business what it should be?
5. do we have the right mix of people to become a $10million business?
6. are our fees well considered?
7. where do we stand with our marketing? what more can we be doing?

Today is my first day as a bona fide US citizen. The oath ceremony was this morning and apart from being punctuated with crying babies and long wait times it was a moving experience. During the ceremony the official overseeing the event told the story of many immigrants that have come to the US and created great businesses along their way. He remined us that this is probably the only country in the world that allows an immigrant to rise to any position except President (and Vice President). I’m sure there are some that would disagree but there really is a lot of great opportunities in the US. The only really big obstacle to success is hard work and sticking to your dreams. As mushy as that sounds I think it’s true. We’ve always hired people for their work ethics not for their specific skills. Knowledge and skills can be taught but it’s very difficult to nuture a powerful responsible work ethic in adults.

When I came to the US eight years ago I had a small amount in savings and absolutley no connections. Since then I have created three startups that have collectively employed dozens of people and generated millions of dollars in revenue. With one or two exceptions there are very few places in the world where you can arrive empty handed, start a new business and create millions in revenues in just a few short years. We have also invested in several of our clients businesses, one of which is Bobby’s Best, and have recently launched a new business called Fresh Services (which is operating as Best Student Help this summer). Investing and growing businesses in the US is much easier than anywhere else. I wonder how many entrepreneurs here know how luck they are?

What a great place to be an entrepreneur.

Ever wonder what would happen if a corporate committee was left in charge of designing a STOP sign? This might be funnier if it wasn’t so true.

I came across this article in A List Apart that really sums up the positives of working with web prototypes. David Verba keeps the prototype design on center stage where it belongs. Here’s a taste of what he has to say…

Prototypes keep us focused on our actual goal. I’ve seen countless hours spent generating thousands of pages of documentation that were never used. This in itself wouldn’t be so undesirable if we had infinite developer resources. Unfortunately, this is rarely the case, and I’ve often seen features cut from a product launch in favor of generating “better” documentation. With prototypes, the focus is always on the application and making it better, and it’s much easier to stay focused on value to the end user.