I wish someone had told me this early in my life.
There is a gap. That for the first couple of years, that you are making stuff, what you are making isn’t so good. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quiet that good.
The most important, possible thing you could do is; do a lot of work. Do a huge volume of work. Because it’s only by actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap.
This short clip from Ira Glass has changed a lot in my life in terms of what I do and how I accept the one fact that I have long way to achieve my dreams. I must do a lot of work and it will take time!
Your Ideas are some o’l bull Sshh*t.
Back in May 2011, I registered a domain name flippii.com right inside Lagos Resource Centre in Victoria Island during the first Garage48 event in Africa where I and a team of 6 other great guys built a service on top that domain, enabling people share their Ideas. The aim was to get the notion off the heads of people that “an idea is everything” (well, it isn’t).
An interesting part in the Social Network movie; when Winklevoss issue of Mark Zuckerberg stealing their idea of Facebook was addressed by the lawyers, Mark said this:
I think if your clients want to sit on my shoulders and call themselves tall, they have the right to give it a try - but there’s no requirement that I enjoy sitting here listening to people lie. You have part of my attention - you have the minimum amount. The rest of my attention is back at the offices of Facebook, where my colleagues and I are doing things that no one in this room, including and especially your clients, are intellectually or creatively capable of doing.
That’s what I call execution and trust me, it is everything!
Basically, your Idea is some o’l bull shit without execution. So, stop dancing around your ideas. No matter how fantastic you think your idea is, the idea is more likely to change over time. What you should worry about is execution!
Most importantly, you need to stop worrying about people stealing your ideas, there is no obvious way anyone can implement well any idea that you truly gave birth to, even if they do; they will never be able to build as good as you would. They don’t have the blueprints and they can’t have that much passion as you.
Just keep calm and share your ideas; iterate and improve.
Overtime, I grew to understand that sharing my idea is helping me validate my hypothesis and the more of it I do, the more results I gather that will help me in the long run.
If your prototype is 50% done and you decided not to show it to anyone until it’s 80% done, then you will only get the benefit of feedback for the remaining 20%.
Don’t get me wrong; a bad idea with good execution may as well fail. But I am certain a good idea with a bad execution will easily fail and the best way to ensure your idea is not a bad one is by sharing and validating.
Let me know what you think.
PhotoCredit: Fentino
Garden Party - Adam Young
How far should you go?
At some some point in life… you will realize that you have done too much for someone or something, that the only next possible step is to stop; leave them alone and walk away.
It’s not like you’re giving up and it’s not like you shouldn’t try, it’s just that you have to draw the line of determination from desperation. What is truly yours will eventually be and what’s not will never be, no matter how hard you try.
Vertical Video Syndrome - A PSA (by gloveandboots)
If you are serious with your business, start blogging.
I grew to discover that blogging is crucial in every online business, you must blog. It is not a thing of choice. It doesn’t matter the business you are into, you need to have quality interaction with your customers.
Customers buy from people they know and trust and blogging is the best way to let your customers to know you better by writing about your niche market, your business growth, your routines, your quality service, everything. Customers want to know everything about you before they buy and the best way to give them that amount of information is a blog.
Drew McLellan explained it best with his buying equation:
Know + Like + Trust = Buy.
“Until customers Know who you are, Like who you are and Trust you, there will be no purchase. Whether you sell toothbrushes or multi-million dollar medical equipment and everything in between”
I have personally seen how blogging can make people very successful creating audience and trust between their brand and potential customers. Words can be very powerful, they can convince people to buy and I am not saying you should file up a journal of marketing words, I am referring to sincere information that will help your customers or give them a better understand of who you are and what you do.
Leo Widrich of Buffer also wrote about How blogging made Buffer a huge success, I couldn’t agree more to his written facts.
I am not new to blogging, I started blogging since 2008 although I do that casually. But from the lessons learnt in the past few years, I am taking blogging more serious and even my startup now has a blog.
If you are serious about your business and really want to make more sales, you should start a blog. There are a lot free blogging tools you can use out there and it won’t take you 15mintues to setup one. Let me know if you have a blog, if your blog has impact on your business and what you think about blogging in general.
Photo Credits: ecelms
Happiness is what sells your product.
Well the fact is, customers mostly buy for one of the two reasons:
”Either a product makes them feel good“ OR ”It avoids them feeling bad”.
Before you start selling, you need to remember that you are selling to humans and human beings we all know are driven by emotions (at least 99.99% of them). Until you can conquer that emotional berrier, you will find it hard to make a sale.
No matter how educted or experienced, human beings think with their heart when it comes to spending money. The first thing that comes to their mind is “What is in it for me”. They rearely think of all the marketing jargons you pour into their heads, quality, price it all doesn’t matter as much as the satisfaction they get from it.
In 1979, McDonalds introduced a Happy Meal package which rewardes each meal purcahsed by parents with a toy for kids. This made children busy with their new toys and parents the relaxation of a happy meal. Parents loved this, kids did too. It made the customers happy and made McDonalds sell more than it’s competitors.
Gucci, Parada, Louis Vuitton and the rest of the big brands make more sales because they make their customers happy, they make them feel supperior, rich and successful. Going into gadgets, Apple does that too; make customers feel so happy with any of their products than their competitors.
So, it is not just the product that matters. But how your customers feel before and and when they purchase your product.
Let me know what makes you buy products that you buy everyday. Does making you happy have a big impact on your buying habbit?
Photo Credit: Difii
Top10 Tweets and Many Thanks to You.
It was just yesterday, I turned 23 and it was a great day with lots of love from friends and family all around the world. It felt so encouraging how people wished me more success and long life.
Although I could not get any cake to cut or friends to party with, I spent the day speaking with friends over the phone, tweeting and chatting on facebook (usually, i’m permanently offline on Facebook). It didn’t feel like a lonely day at all, despite being a Sunday in a place far from home.
I also recorded a 38sec video for GigaLayer’s new blog which officially got launched the same day (my birthday). It was a great honour!I just thought I should share these 10 lovely tweets I received from friends:
@mukoshy Happy birthday wishes in arrears, man. You’re one of the smartest young men I know.
— Eromo Egbejule (@Helvetika_EE)
Happpppy Birthday my darlin @mukoshy! *hugggggzzZ*
— DAMI OF LAIVE (@AVARIBERRY)
Happy Birthday to @mukoshy of @gigalayer .Young mind with great ideas. Better days ahead for u bro! Kp it up.
— MEDUGU OJOCHIDE (@01KONCEPTZ)
Happy birthday @mukoshy Live long and prosper. Many happy returns
— F (@DoubleEph)
@mukoshy Happy birthday wiz. More achievements ahead.
— Opeyemi Obembe (@kehers)
Happy Birthday to @mukoshy Amazing mind. Do greater things
— Oluseun Onigbinde (@seunonigbinde)
Happy Birthday @mukoshy. Best wishes today and always
— Francisca K Chiedu (@rgu_prescd)
Happy birthday @mukoshy
— Mariri ♥(@suagarlipsy)
Happy birthday @mukoshy best wishes
— Omojuwa (@omojuwa)
Happy Birthday Ahmad @mukoshy , keep doing it big!
— ♠ Ek’ Balam (@Damilare_)
Thank you everyone once again and I love you.
