Tag Archives: Business

A Solution to the Privacy Puzzle

An Opportunity for People and Businesses

Two days ago, I wrote two sentences about IKEA in a Medium comment. I started to receive IKEA ads on YouTube on another device the same day.

A few days ago, I bought the audiobook The Principles by Ray Dalio from audible.com. After that, YouTube started to recommend me videos by Ray Dalio. Maybe it was just a coincidence or maybe Google detected the receipt from my Gmail account.

YouTube, Medium, and Audible are just recent examples. There are other websites that use this type of practices.

The Feeling of Getting Stalked

When I see connections between unrelated websites, my “lizard brain” freaks out. I have the feeling that I’m stalked.

I feel like a creepy salesperson is watching my moves, notes it somewhere, and tries to use it against me to sell me stuff.

Then, I wonder what else “they” about me. By “they,” I mean all the internet companies who sell data to each other.

The Data Gang

It’s one thing that a website collects data about me. It’s a whole another thing when they “gang up” against me. It feels like all of my data is saved and used in a central database. That practice feels like “the big brother is watching me.”

I know that there isn’t a central database where all the data is collected. However, with all the data brokerage services between websites, this is how it feels likes. Mark Zuckerberg admitted using data brokerage services in his recent hearings and Facebook is not alone in this.

The Benefits of Big Data

Another part of my brain says that I’m worrying for no reason. I have nothing to hide. This type of connected data usage is good for me. It provides me with relevant content, products, and services.

In his recent hearings, Mark Zuckerberg argued that this type of data use is good for small businesses. They can advertise their products and services cheaper. As a result, consumers can buy those products and services cheaper.

The big data makes advertisement and as a result products and services cheaper.

Sure, some of that benefits all of us. There’s an opportunity for all of us. Nothing hold us back from using those services to advertise our own products or services. Some of us could even find ways to use data to build businesses.

Even a blogger or a social media influencer can learn a lot from their stats. I’m not an influencer, but when I dove into my Medium stats, I came up with lessons published in ten blog posts. And this is just the beginning.

The Dark Side of Big Data

The big data is about manipulating people. Data is used to keep us on a website as long as possible, even if it’s against our interests. It’s used to extract as much money as possible out of our pockets. In the worst case, it’s used to manipulate us to vote in a certain way that might not be in our best interests.

Back in the day, I used Amazon’s affiliate links. My goal was to sell personal development books. I recommended the books that added value to my life. I wanted those books to add value to the lives of others as well and get paid in return.

One day, I received an affiliate sales notification. The person I sent to Amazon not only bought the book I recommended, they also bought some bracelets. I felt bad for them.

I felt like I caused someone to waste their money on something they didn’t need. I didn’t sign up to be a cheap bracelet salesman. I signed up to be a book salesman. Amazon converted a book reader into a bracelet shopper.

The Business Model of the Future

I know some of you are worrying about the feasibility of Medium‘s business model. We like Medium, because it doesn’t bombard us with heaps of advertisement. I published a post about a possible monetization scheme for Medium in the past.

Maybe, we are worrying for nothing. Maybe, Medium is already monetizing our data. Maybe, the premium membership is just a façade to answer the question “how do you make money?” I don’t know.

There’s one thing that I’m sure of.

More and more Internet businesses will be based on selling the data of their users to third parties.

It is already a widespread practice and it will spread even more if it is not regulated. European Union is already taking measures against this practice.

Take a Critical Look at Every Device, App, and Tool You Use.

Recently, I received a lot of recommendations for Grammarly.com. Finally, I wanted to give them a try. They have an option to install a plugin to my browser. When I tried to do that, Firefox warned me.

If I installed the plugin, everything that I typed in to my browser would go through that plugin.

I don’t know Grammarly.com that well to trust them with everything I type in to my browser. I didn’t install it.

There’s another tool that I use frequently, the Hemingway App. It’s a literary style checking app. They allow me to copy and paste my text to their online editor. That means I know and I choose which text to send to their service. Why can’t Grammarly.com come up with something similar?

Maybe, the Hemingway App sells my data to third parties as well. I can live with that, because I publish those texts as blog posts. Probably, other parties are going to collect and sell that data anyway.

Think About All the Freemium Tools that You Use.

I use Evernote and Workflowy. Both tools have free versions and paid versions. They appear to make money from their premium subscriptions. Do they sell my data to third parties? I don’t know. I didn’t read their privacy policies.

Google, the Data Giant

It’s obvious that any Google product that you use collects data about you. I use Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, and Google’s search app on iPhone. A lot of people use Android phones and Chrome. Think about all the data collected by all of those apps and phones.

How about Google’s paid services? I pay for Google Drive. Do they treat the privacy of the paid customers differently than the free customers? Probably not.

Maybe, it was a mistake to purchase extra Google Drive space. Maybe, I should have purchased disk space in a service that respected my privacy more.

Using an iPhone is not enough to be tracked by Google. By using Google Maps, I expose myself to their data collection.

In a way that data collection has benefits. It tells me the peak hours in the traffic and in the grocery store. However, I don’t know what else they do with all the data they collect. And Facebook and Google collect a lot of data. Check this Guardian piece for more on this.

How About Messaging Apps?

How does Facebook use the What’s App data? What’s App isn’t a social app where people are willing to share information about themselves publically. It’s a private messaging platform. The data shared over that platform is much more sensitive. How about FaceTime by Apple?

How About Apple and Microsoft?

We don’t expect Apple and Microsoft to collect data about us. After all, we pay a big price for their hardware and software.

Is that so? What kind of data does an iPhone, Microsoft Office, or Windows collect about us? How do they use that data? I don’t know.

I never entered my home or work address or working hours to my iPhone, but it keeps telling me how long it would take me to go to work when I’m about to leave. That feels creepy too.

A Solution Proposal to the Privacy Puzzle

Using only open source software is an option. I don’t know how feasible an option it is.

Another option is to come up with standard privacy certifications. Each certification can denote a different level of privacy. Something like platinum standard, golden standard, and silver standard. Each level would be documented online clearly.

That documentation would have two versions. Something that could be understood by the average person, explained with easy to understand diagrams. And a legal version to be used in the courtroom if it comes to that.

Independent auditors could verify companies for each standard and issue certificates to them. Companies could choose to certify their products or services or not.

If Google and Facebook choose not to certify their products or services, then people would know the level of privacy they get from those products and services.

Eventually, they could come up with products and services at different levels. There could be a free version of Gmail and Google Drive with no privacy certification and premium versions with privacy certifications at different levels.

Conclusion

Like the average tech user, privacy is a big mystery to me. I don’t know what data the software and websites that I use collect from my usage. I don’t know how they use the data they collect from me. There’s one thing that I’m sure of. I feel like being stalked by the big brother.

There is a solution to the privacy puzzle. This solution is at the same time an opportunity for businesses.

Just come up with simple, easy to understand privacy levels and certify products and services with those levels.

That way the users know what they sign up for and businesses can create new revenue from the premium level products and services.

How to Deal with an Overwhelming To-Do List and Overcome Procrastination

I have an LLC, which adds a bunch of administrative tasks on top of my already busy schedule at the start of each quarter. Sometimes, the workload in this period is overwhelming and I am tempted to procrastinate. Today, I want to share how I deal with those feelings of overwhelm and temptations to procrastinate.

The first step to managing a huge to-do list is to divide it into the Eisenhower matrix. In the top left, we have the important and urgent tasks. In the top right, important but not urgent tasks. In the bottom left, urgent but not important. In the bottom right, neither urgent nor important.

The Eisenhower Matrix

Start with the Important and Urgent

Obviously, the administrative tasks are important and urgent at this moment. They receive the highest priority. Since, I publish a blog post every day, that also goes to top left. There are also other tasks and some of them are important, but administrative tasks and writing a blog post have priority over the rest.

I write down every task that I have to do in Evernote. That way, I’m sure that I won’t forget them. However, my focus will be on my important and urgent list until that list is completed. I know that I’ll get back to the rest of the tasks and therefore, I don’t need to worry about them.

Whenever, I feel like doing a task outside of my important and urgent list, I let that urge go. In these busy times, letting go is an important skill I need to exercise.

Avoid the Urges to Procrastinate and Multitasking

Another pitfall during busy times is to start as many tasks as you can. We feel scared when we see all the tasks in our to-do list. In order to deal with that feeling, we start as many tasks as we can. Needless to say, neither starting multiple tasks at a time, nor multitasking improves our productivity. On the contrary, they hurt our productivity.

It doesn’t matter how many tasks you start, neither how many tasks you carry out in parallel. What counts is how many tasks you finish.

Dealing with a huge to-do list is simple. You simply select the most important and urgent task in your to-do list and work on it until it is complete. The best way to finish a task is to work on it exclusively until it is complete.

It is simple, but not easy, because you’ll feel worried about the rest of the tasks. As a result, you might be tempted to jump from task to task without finishing any of them.

Five Tips to Deal with Long To-Do Lists

Whenever you feel those worries and temptations, let them go. First, write all of your tasks down. That gives you the assurance that you’ll return to them later. Second, remind yourself that the best way to complete your to-do list is to focus on a single task at a time.

Assign a duration to your task at hand. Aim to complete the task you are working on within the assigned duration. That way, you’ll know that you’ll have sufficient time for the rest of your to-do list. Moreover, having a deadline for your task will motivate you with a micro-challenge, just like the weekly goals motivate you.

Promise yourself some downtime. If you have a to-do list that looks endless to you, it’s hard to get motivated to start it. As a result, you might end up procrastinating. In order to overcome that feeling, promise yourself some downtime, either in the evening or in the weekend.

Build momentum by completing a task, no matter how small. This might sound contradictory to starting with the most important and urgent task, but it’s a small trick that helps you break the pattern of procrastination. Once you complete a task, you feel motivated to complete even more. The more you accomplish, the more motivated you get to accomplish more.

Conclusion

Sometimes, we are overwhelmed by our long to-do lists. In order to deal with that feeling, we either procrastinate or jump from task to task without completing any of them. There are a few things you can do to overcome the feelings of overwhelm and procrastination.

  • Write down all the tasks that need to be completed.
  • Start with the most important and urgent task at hand.
  • Focus on a single task at a time.
  • Assign a duration to the task and challenge yourself to complete it within that duration.
  • Promise yourself some downtime.
  • If you feel like procrastinating, break that feeling by completing a small task.

How to Deal with the Challenge of Infinite Possibilities when Starting a Business

When you first start a business, there are countless products you can develop. There are countless services you can provide. You can come up with countless product-service combinations.

When you decide on a product, service, or product-service combination, there are countless ways of implementing it. There are numerous platforms, tools, and channels you can use to develop and promote your business.

There are various niches, segments, and audiences you can target. As a result, you have virtually infinite possibilities when you start a business. This might sound like good news, but it has many disadvantages in reality.

Three Disadvantages of Having Infinite Possibilities

First, you might have a difficult time making decisions. You might wonder which product, service, or product-service combination is the best one. You might wonder who your target market is.

You might wonder which tools and platforms you are going to use to develop your business. You might wonder which channels you are going to use to promote your business. As a result, you might end up being paralyzed and not start your business at all.

Second, you might start a business, but you might jump from product to product, service to service, niche to niche, audience to audience, segment to segment, channel to channel, and platform to platform. As a result, you might end up with no results with any of them.

Third, you might look at the infinite possibilities at your disposal, project them to your potential, come up with all kinds of vague goals, and get depressed when you find yourself nowhere near those goals.

If you find yourself in any of those three conditions, this post is written for you. Read it carefully, apply the principles in your business and life, and you will overcome the challenges posed by the infinite possibilities.

This process might not be as fun as jumping from product to product, niche to niche, platform to platform, but it will provide you with a solid framework to make progress toward your goals.

Crystal Clear Goals

The first step is to define a long term goal. What is your long term goal? What do you want to achieve at the end of the next three years or more? Maybe you have a goal that you can achieve in the next three years, five years, ten years, or more. That’s all good.

The catch here is to have a crystal clear goal that any third party could verify.

In order to do that you need two components, a date and another number or numbers.

By when are you going to realize this goal? Three years? Five years? Ten years? More? Just set a deadline for your goal. If you are going to achieve your goal in three years, then your deadline from now is April 2, 2021.

The second component is to attach a number or numbers to your goals. “I want to achieve financial independence by April 2, 2021” is not clear enough.

What does financial independence mean for you? How does it translate to numbers? Does that mean $2M USD in savings? Does that mean $100K USD in annual passive income? How do you define passive income? Do you define it as a four hour working week? Or do you define it as a two hour working day?

You need to define your goals so clear that when another person observes your reality, they could say whether you have achieved your goal or not without a single doubt.

Here’s an example: “I will have a $2M USD in savings, $100K USD in annual income, with 10 hour working weeks, and four weeks annual vacation, by April 2, 2021.” Anyone who looks at that goal and to your life on April 2, 2021 would testify whether you have reached your goal or not. There’s no room for doubt.

Reverse Engineer Your Goals

The second step is to start from that goal and come back in time. What do you need to achieve before that goal, so that you can achieve that long term goal? I explained this process in detail in my post about reverse engineering and scientific method. Don’t worry, it’s not as complicated as it sounds.

Here’s an example: my midterm goal is to have a 100K Medium followers and 20K email newsletter subscribers by July 1, 2019 (15 months). Anyone who looks at my Medium profile or newsletter stats on July 1, 2019 could verify whether I have reached that goal or not. There’s no room for doubt or confusion.

Weekly Goals

Here comes to important part. How does all of that translate to weekly goals? Which goals do you need to achieve by the end of this week to achieve your midterm and long term goals?

In my case, I need to grow my Medium following and newsletter subscriber list by 10% by the end of this week. As I have written in a previous post, the best way to make progress with your startup is to work toward weekly growth goals.

I need to achieve my 10% growth goal every week for the next 15 months to reach my midterm goal. Again, my weekly goal is a crystal clear goal that can be verified by any person who looks at my Medium profile and newsletter stats.

Break It Down As Much As You Want

If three steps are too few for you, you can add more steps in between. You can have a life goal, a decade goal, a five years goal, a three years goal, a year goal, a semester goal, a quarter goal, and a month goal or goals.

There’s nothing wrong with breaking down your goals, but at the end, you need to translate all of that to crystal clear weekly goals and daily action lists.

Daily Action Lists

Your weekly goals are slightly out of your control. For example, I can’t login to the emails of other people and subscribe to my email newsletter or follow myself on Medium. That’s out of my control. However, my daily action list is 100% under my control.

Here’s my daily action list.

  • Publish a blog post
  • Answer emails, Medium responses, blog comments, and tweets.

Weekly Evaluations

On top of my daily action list, I evaluate my weekly results and determine a list of extra actions to take in that week. Here are a few questions I ask myself every week. I believe in asking the right questions achieve goals and to succeed.

  • Did I reach my goal this week?
  • If yes, why?
  • What contributed to my success this week? Do more of this.
  • If not, why not?
  • What prevented me from success this week? Eliminate these.
  • What can I do this week to succeed at the next week’s goal?

How to Clarify Vague Action Lists?

When I go over these questions, I come up with a specific action list for that week. Those action steps are specific. That means any person looking at my work can testify whether I have completed them or not.

If I come up with a vague action step, I translate it to something exact. Let’s say, my action step is “to improve my landing page.” That could mean different things to different people.

If an action step is vague, I ask follow up questions to clarify it. “How can I improve my landing page?” Then, I come up with several answers to those questions.

  • Remove the distracting links from the landing page.
  • Add a few sentences about the no spam and one-click unsubscribe policy.
  • …

Focus, Consistency, Clarity, Motivation, and Accountability

Having crystal clear long term, midterm, and weekly goals and working from a crystal clear daily action lists prevent me from getting lost in infinite possibilities.

At any given moment, I’m crystal clear about my goals and action lists. There’s no confusion. There are no doubts.

Moreover, my weekly goals motivate me to the level of obsession, because that goal is right in front of me. It’s exciting. It’s just around the corner, but still out of my control.

If you add to the mix a mastermind group, I not only get excited about reaching a goal, but I also get excited about having to report to my group.

If you take into account that I don’t have infinite resources, I can’t jump from product to product, niche to niche, or platform to platform, to achieve my weekly goals. One week isn’t that long of a time to experiment with dozens of ideas.

If I have to experiment with a different idea, then I choose one of them and experiment with it in that week. The focus is on getting results, not on jumping from idea to idea.

Conclusion

Having infinite possibilities when starting a business can be a challenge for first time starters. You might wonder which option to choose to start with. You might jump from option to option. Or you might be discouraged by your results when you look at all the options at your disposal.

If you want to deal with all of those challenges, don’t look at all the possibilities at your disposal. Shift your focus from possibilities to crystal clear goals. Clarify your goals by adding deadlines and exact numbers to them.

Reverse engineer your goals from long term goals to weekly goals and daily actions list. Focus on your weekly goals and daily actions lists and you will make progress like you have never made before. On top of that, you won’t be bothered by the challenges of infinite possibilities anymore.

How to Use Reverse Engineering and the Scientific Method to Realize Medium.com’s Business Goals

Reverse engineering and the scientific method are two useful methods to achieve private and professional goals, especially when used in combination with each other. In this post, I’m going to apply this idea to the business goal of Medium.com.

The first step is to define the objective. I’m going to define the objective of Medium.com is to maximize the revenue from premium memberships. This might or might not be their objective. It’s just an assumption I make to demonstrate the idea.

Now, we are going to start from that objective and come backwards step by step. Let’s formulate our challenge as a question and look for answers to the question. Remember, asking the right questions is the first step to success.

What is needed to maximize the revenue from premium memberships?

  • Maximize new subscriptions.
  • Maximize the retention of existing subscribers.

At this moment, we have two branches that we have to work on. Let’s start with the first branch.

What is needed to maximize the new subscriptions?

  • We have to maximize the traffic of Medium.com.
  • We have to maximize the user engagement.
  • We have to create curiosity about the premium content among the existing users.
  • We need an optimal landing page design of the premium content for maximum conversions.

Now, we have four branches for the first branch. Again, we need to work on each branch separately. Let’s work on the second branch.

How can we maximize the user engagement?

  • Feature quality content on the homepage.
  • Feature quality content at the end of the posts.
  • Feature content that keeps the user in Medium.com.
  • Optimize the page design to keep the user in Medium.com.

Let’s continue with the first branch.

How can we feature quality content on the homepage?

  • Hire editors.
  • Feature the most popular posts on the homepage.
  • Create a relevance score between each user and each post. Feature the most relevant posts to each user.

At this moment, I need to test which option would produce the best results. I will divide the user base into three groups and test each hypothesis.

The Metric for User Engagement

The first step to that experiment is to define how I’m going to measure the engagement. In order to do that, I’m going to measure four variables: views, reads, fans, and responses. Before composing my metric, I’ll look into the data to see the number of reads, fans, and responses for each view.

Let’s say, the average user reads the 50%, claps for the 25%, and responds to 10% of the posts they view. In that case, I’ll construct the engagement metric as (#Views + 2 * #Reads + 4 * #Fans + 10 * #Responses). With those weights, I balance each variable based on their importance.

I’ll measure the engagement metric for each group above and see if one group significantly outperforms the other.

A Relevance Score between each User and Post

Featuring the most popular posts on the homepage is a straightforward method. Hiring editors and coming up with a relevance score is rather complicated. Let’s work on the relevance score in this post.

Which variables can we use to create a relevance score?

  • Authors of the posts that the user had a high engagement score before.
  • High engagement scores by other users that follow a similar set of tags as the user.
  • High engagement scores by other users that had high engagement scores on the posts where the user had a high engagement score.

To start with, I could use the same weight for each variable, but eventually, this could be optimized as well.

Processing the Results

Now, all I have to do is to run this experiment for a month and look at the results. Are there significant differences between the results? My hunch is that the second option, featuring the most popular posts on the homepage, would perform the worst.

I think the third option, having a relevance score, would perform the best. Once we find the best performing option, we can continue our experiments.

Once I find the best performing option, I’d serve the best performing option to 90% of the users. I’d try to come up with another option each month and serve the choices of that option to the remaining 10% of the users.

Here, you have to use your creativity to come up with other options. Remember, creativity is finding new relationships in already existing concepts. Then, all you have to do is to test those new options on the 10% of your user base.

Here’s an example. I’d come up with a relevance score between the editors and users. I’d then use that signal in the relevance score between the posts and users. If an editor and a user has a high relevance score, the posts that are selected by that editor will have a high relevance score to that user.

The Big Picture

At this moment, we have a method to create high user engagement, but don’t forget that user engagement is one of the many branches in our tree. There are many other branches we have to work on. So, we need to apply the same reasoning and experiments to the other branches of the tree as well.

Conclusion

We can use the combination of reverse engineering and the scientific method to achieve our private and professional goals. The first step is define a clear objective.

Once we have a clear objective, we will use the questioning process until we have several options that we can act upon immediately. Once we have those options, we can use the scientific method to find the most effective option.

Finding the most effective option is not the end of the work, because we can use our creativity to come up with other options and test them against the best option that we came up with so far.

However, we shouldn’t lose the sight of the big picture and get lost in the details. Usually a business goal can be divided in a tree that consists of multiple branches. We need to optimize each branch of the tree to reach our goal.

How to Build a Business Empire by Connecting the Dots

There’s a common belief that you have to come up with an original idea or invent something new to start a business. Most of us also believe that creativity is creating something out of nothing. Both beliefs are inaccurate and they are keeping us from being creative and starting a business.

As I have explained in a previous post, creativity isn’t creating something out of nothing. Creativity is connecting existing ideas and concepts in a new way. You don’t need to come up with an original idea or invent something new to start a profitable business.

You can use your creativity to market existing products and services to new target groups for different purposes. You can combine existing products and services to come up with new products and services. Steve Jobs and Apple applied this principle and built an $800B+ business empire.

How Did Steve Jobs and Apple Succeed?

Apple successfully targeted general public with their computers, smartphones, and tablets. Before Apple, those products were mostly marketed to businesses.

Apple made those products easier to use for the average consumer. Steve Jobs played a critical role in making Apple’s products easy to use.

I think Steve Jobs could understand the average consumer better than others, because he didn’t have a formal engineering degree. In a way his lack of an engineering degree was critical to the success of Apple.

Improve Already Existing Products or Services

iPod played a critical role in Apple’s success. Before the mp3 players, people used portable cassette and CD players. Those devices could play one album at a time. It was relatively easy to access the album or song you wanted to listen to.

With the mp3 players, you had hundreds of albums and thousands of songs in a device. It was hard to access the album or song you wanted to listen to. Apple and Steve Jobs solved that problem brilliantly with iPod. As a result, they got a huge commercial success with iPod.

Existing Products and Services Marketed to New Consumer Segments

iPod paved the way to iPhone and iPad as a commercially successful mobile device. I think Steve Jobs saw the success of a mobile device with the general public and asked himself the question below. Remember, formulating your challenge as a question is the first step to success.

How can I make a smartphone appeal to the general public?

The answer to that question might be obvious now, but the standard smartphone was much different back then.

The most popular smartphone was BlackBerry. Its screen was only half the size of the device. The remaining half was covered by a physical keyboard. The typical user of a BlackBerry was a business professional. Its main use was business communication.

With iPhone, Apple targeted a new consumer segment for smartphones, general public instead of business professionals. They also defined a new purpose for smartphones, entertainment instead of business communication.

In order to do that, they got rid of the physical keyboard and used a large screen. They developed an operating system that could take advantage of the new setting. They also used a touch screen to avoid the stylus. Once iPhone became a success, iPad was the logical successor.

Conclusion

As Apple and Steve Jobs demonstrated, you don’t need to be a genius inventor to build a business empire. You can combine existing ideas to create new products or services.

You can target new consumer segments with existing products or services. In order to find the solutions to those challenges, formulate your challenges as questions and use your curiosity to find the answers to those questions.

Most First Time Business Founders Ignore These Key Entrepreneurial Skills

Most of the first time business founders start a business, because they fall in love with an idea. They think that their idea will create a huge impact in the world.

Some of them start a business based on their passion. They start a gym, because they like to work out. They start a restaurant, because they like to cook. These are some of the most common pitfalls when starting up a business.

In most cases, first time founders figure out that the marketplace is a beast of its own and it doesn’t react as they expect.

People don’t fill their gym or restaurant, just because the founder is passionate about working out or cooking. People remain indifferent to their business that is based on a brilliant idea.

After a while, those businesses can’t sustain themselves anymore and join the majority of businesses that close down in their first few years.

The Critical Factor in the Success of a Business

The critical factor in the success of a business is not the founder’s passion. It’s not how brilliant the underlying idea is. It is demand.

If there’s demand for what you are offering, you have a business. If there isn’t any, you don’t have a business. It’s as simple as that.

That means you have to validate the demand for your business before starting it. A lot of the first time business founders avoid validating the demand before starting it, because they are afraid that someone would steal their idea.

Before You Start a Business

Most of the time, it’s much cheaper to do a survey about a product or service before starting a fully-fledged business. Another way of validating your idea is to build a simple proof of concept or a minimum viable product and to market it.

Even if you don’t invest any money to build your product, you might end up investing a lot of time in it. Finding out that there’s no demand for your product after a launch can be very disheartening. For that reason, it’s better to test the demand or create it in advance before you even start building the product.

How to Avoid a Flop

Building a premium product is a lot of work and it can end up being an unpaid work if you don’t have the demand first. For that reason, don’t hurry to build and deliver a premium product to the market, because you might end up giving it away for free.

If there’s demand, it will show up in the survey and in your initial marketing efforts. If it doesn’t, it’s a big risk to start a business on that idea, because you have to create demand yourself through marketing in that case. That can be very costly.

One way of finding demand is to research public data such as Google Trends. If you plan to start a content marketing business, you can check the number of followers in certain tags in Medium, which indicate the demand to certain topics.

Once you spot a high demand to a certain product or service, you also need to research the competition. How many other businesses provide products or services in that niche? A high demand, high competition niche can be less profitable than a medium demand, low competition niche.

Finding a profitable niche is a whole different topic. Read the post Value Is in the Intersections of Niches, Sectors, and Markets for more about that topic.

Create Demand in Advance

You can create demand in advance by building an audience via a blog or a vlog. Blogging or vlogging might seem to be a lot of unpaid work, but they create value by building an audience for you, if you avoid some common mistakes.

Building an audience before the product also works as market research. You can see which niches have a higher demand. Your audience might also demand products or services from you that you haven’t thought of before.

When I restarted blogging a few months ago, I used to write about a wide range of topics including finance, investing, and cryptocurrencies. When I looked at my stats, I realized that my posts in those topics didn’t gather as many views as my posts about entrepreneurship. So, I quietly stopped writing posts in those topics, even though they were topics I enjoyed writing about.

Conclusion

Most first time business founders start a business based on their passion or an idea they fall in love with. The success of a business isn’t determined by the passion of the founder or how brilliant an idea is. It’s determined by demand.

Detecting demand, testing demand cheaply in the marketplace, and creating demand in advance are entrepreneurial skills that are critical to business success.

How to Make Your Side Project Succeed

I have been working on several side projects on and off since my graduate studies ten years ago. I have mostly worked on blogs, but I also developed language training websites, stock market technical analysis software, and online time management and life planning courses.

In this post, I’m going to share some of the lessons I have learned from these side projects.

We all have time.

We all have time in our daily lives. The question is what we do with it.

I have wasted some serious time on social media, watching YouTube, and hanging out. I have also invested some serious time on my side projects. If I could go back in time, I would minimize the first and maximize the second.

When I look back at the last 20 years of my life, it’s not the time that I have wasted that gives me satisfaction and fulfillment. It’s the time that I have used constructively that gives me satisfaction and fulfillment.

Those little time wasting temptations leave me with an empty feeling afterwards.

For your own emotional well being, do yourself a favor and do something useful with your spare time.

Consistency

In order to create something useful and get some benefits from your side projects, you need to invest at least one hour every day. There’s no way around that.

If you look at your daily schedule carefully, you can carve out at least one hour of uninterrupted working time.

Once you get into the habit of working on your side project every day, it gets easier. You even miss it if you don’t work on it for a day or two.

Nowadays, I feel anxious if I don’t do something useful for too long. It feels like I’m wasting my precious time even if I don’t do anything useful for an afternoon on a weekend day. I feel like, I have to go back to work.

Accountability

The best way to cultivate consistency is to create some kind of accountability to others. You show up every working day at your job because you’re accountable to your boss.

You might slack off on your side project, if you aren’t accountable to anyone. That’s why I made a commitment to publish a blog post per day. I don’t have the luxury to slack off, because everyone would see that I do so.

Accountability is rather difficult with side projects where you don’t report to someone every day. You can overcome that obstacle, by creating an online mastermind group and posting in bullet points what you have done that day.

Sustainability

It is inevitable that you run out of your initial enthusiasm. If you’re investing money into your side project, you might also run out of funds. In either case, it’s important to take into account the sustainability of your side project.

You need to find ways to stay in the game until the payoff day and go through those dips. That is achieved by motivating yourself with extremely close targets. At this moment, I track weekly follower and subscriber growth goals to achieve that.

Focus on What Matters

In order to keep your side project sustainable, you need to focus on a few action items that serve your targets and let go of everything else. With your limited resources, you don’t have the time or money to invest in nice to have features.

If an idea doesn’t directly serve your target, let it go, no matter how fancy it is. That’s a great lesson to run a business. It’s a lesson that you learn from a side project, because you usually have the time and money to implement those fancy ideas when you’re running a business full time.

My Lean Working Routine

In my current project, I focus on the following tasks to reach my 10% weekly follower and subscriber growth target.

  • Publish a blog post every day.
  • Send an email newsletter every week.
  • Interact with my readers via comments, emails, Medium responses, and Twitter.
  • Interact with my mastermind group.
  • Make a single strategic change on my website every week.

That’s an extremely lean to-do list, if you take into account all the things you can do with a blog.

Determine the Most Strategic Change at a Given Time

I choose a strategic change based on my target, my Google Analytics, and heatmap.me results.

After failing my weekly email newsletter subscriber growth target, I checked the heat map of the landing page. I realized that some people clicked the links around the subscription box.

I removed the links around the subscription box and added a line about the no spam and one-click unsubscribe policy. That was all the changes I made in a single week.

How to Use Analytics Data

You can spend a lot of time looking at data from your email newsletter, Google Analytics, and heat maps, but it comes down to what you do with that data. Is your data actionable?

At a certain point, I realized that the page that was clicked the most as the second page was a category page. When I went to that page, I realized that it wasn’t optimal and had some bugs in it. I optimized it and removed the bugs. That way, I lose less visitors on those category pages.

Another simple change I made was to use smaller versions of the pictures in my blog posts instead of the medium sized ones. I got that tip from Google’s Test My Site tool.

This all comes down to resource allocation.

If I can do one strategic change per week what would it be?

I try to find the answer to that question every week and execute it in the weekend when I have more time. That question is a lesson learned from working on side projects, but it will serve you well in your full time business as well.

Conclusion

If you look at your daily life carefully, you’ll figure out that you have at least one hour that you can use productively on a side project.

The secret to succeed on a side project is to work on it consistently, every day for at least one hour. The best way to motivate yourself to do that is to create some accountability to others. If you don’t post every day, create an online mastermind group to do that.

Sustainability is a great lesson that side projects teach us that we can use in our full time businesses as well. It comes down to focusing on what matters and letting go of everything else.

How to Motivate Yourself to the Level of Obsession

No, this isn’t another “find your why” post.

Simon Sinek made the question “why?” popular like it was never before. People working as employees in corporations needed that type of question to get motivated.

Employees were only provided with “how.” Their managers figured out the process for them and all they had to do was to carry out well-defined processes. Over time that type of work could demotivate employees. Knowing why they did what they did could motivate the employees.

Entrepreneurs need a different type of motivation to go through their dips when their enthusiasm fades and to stay in the game until the payoff day.

Entrepreneurs Don’t Need Why. They Know Why.

Entrepreneurs are a different breed as I discuss in the post Entrepreneurs Beware of the Employee Mindset. They have different goals and needs.

The question “why” isn’t that relevant to entrepreneurs. They already have their “why” to start with. Some of them are motivated by money and the lifestyle and the things they could afford with it.

Some of them are motivated by power and some of them by freedom. Some of them are motivated by seeing their ideas realized in the world and some of them by getting things done. The more things they get done, the more motivated they get.

Entrepreneurs Need to Know What.

The question “what?” is more relevant to entrepreneurs, because they don’t have a boss telling them what to do and how to do it. They have to figure it out by themselves.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you might think you have an answer to the question “what,” but do you really have one? Do you really know where you are going to in the long term? Do you really have crystal clear goals?

If you have them, the answers to those questions might be more than enough to motivate you. If you don’t have them, no “why” could save you.

What, Why, How Are Connected to Each Other.

Let’s say you have a long term goal and you ask the question “how am I going to achieve my long term goal?” The answer becomes your short term “what.” Or in other words, “what is my short term goal?”

When you look at your why, or “why you’re doing what you’re doing,” you realize that, you do it, because it serves your long term goal.

The “why” of your short term goals are the “what” of your long term goals. The “how” of your long term goals are the “what” of your short term goals.

Once you know your “what,” you can figure out your “how.” If you want to start a content marketing business, you can decide on your medium, by figuring out what your project, who your target audience, and what your talents are.

Knowing your what can help you eliminate everything that doesn’t serve your what.

What Questions Result in Action, Why Questions in Philosophizing.

I like the “what” question much more than the “why” question. The “why” question results in endless philosophizing. The “what” question on the other hand results in crystal clear action plans. That is what we need as entrepreneurs.

How to Get Obsessed with Your Work like a Gambling Addict?

When I look at my own work, nothing motivates me as much as weekly goals and daily action plans. My weekly goal is 10% follower and subscriber growth.

I know that my weekly goal serves my long term goal. As long as I can accomplish my weekly goal, I’m good in the long term.

However, having a short term goal like a weekly goal is way more motivating than having a longer term goal. It is something close to me, yet slightly out of my reach. I have to reach out to it. I have to extend myself.

My weekly goal isn’t fully under my control. That’s what excites me. That partially within my control, partially outside of my control gets my juices flowing. It’s like a game of chance that also requires skill, like poker.

Every day, I come up with an action plan to realize that weekly goal. That action plan consists of steps that are completely under my control to reach a goal that is slightly outside of my control, but so close.

If I focused on a long term goal, I wouldn’t be this motivated. It’s the fact that the target is just in front of me that motivates me so much.

Conclusion

If your goal is too far in the future, break it down by asking yourself “what do I need to accomplish this week to realize my long term goal?”

Make sure your weekly goal is slightly outside of your control. You can work towards it, but you can’t determine the result 100% by yourself.

That would motivate you much more than philosophizing on your why for hours.

This Simple Practice Will Multiply Your Knowledge and Creative Ideas

When I first read the personal development classic Think and Grow Rich more than a decade ago, I was impressed by most of the ideas in the book except two.

With my hardcore, scientific education background, no one could convince me of the metaphysical concepts explained in Think and Grow Rich.

The second idea I wasn’t impressed by was the idea of a mastermind group. I was an introvert computer programmer, who wanted to be left alone.

I couldn’t see myself as a member of a group of like-minded people with similar goals, discussing their progress in regular meetings, no matter how beneficial such a group and meetings were. I had no idea how to find such a group to start with.

After more than a decade of industry experience, I have changed. I became more extroverted and more convinced of the benefits of a mastermind group.

So much so, that I have written a post about the mastermind principle as the practice that could make the difference between success and failure.

“If I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!” Rocky Balboa

I know that the most introverted, tech startup founders wouldn’t like the idea of a mastermind group. They would think that it’s a waste of time. They wouldn’t like to hang out with other people. That’s the definition of being an introvert. Hold on for a second if you fall into that category.

Tech people hate meetings for a good reason. Majority of meetings are hijacked by extroverted people who don’t know how to stop talking once they start. However, a mastermind group doesn’t need to turn into a typical meeting. There are more efficient ways of facilitating a mastermind group using technology.

I’m going to share a way of facilitating a mastermind group that would convince even the most introverted people. We have been applying this method for more than a week.

I’m enjoying my mastermind group and benefit from it very much. But before I explain the method, let me explain the benefits I get from my mastermind group first.

Motivation

Throughout the years, I realized that I’m more motivated when I work with other people. When I’m reporting to my colleagues or a boss, I feel accountable to them. That motivates me to work harder and go more aggressively after results.

When I work on a project by myself, I don’t have that type of accountability. As a result, my motivation dips when my initial enthusiasm fades. I have already discussed different ways of going through such a dip before. With a mastermind group, I can avoid such a dip altogether.

Feedback

We humans are extremely capable beings, but at the same time, we all have our irrational sides. We know some of our irrationalities, but we also have our blind spots. Our blind spots are our irrational sides that we aren’t aware of. We need to invite and welcome feedback to become aware of our blind spots.

A mastermind group is a great way to receive feedback on our progress. They are there to cheer us up, when we fail to achieve our goals. At the same time, they are there to point it out when we are being delusional.

Ideas and Knowledge

A mastermind group is a great platform to exchange ideas and knowledge. It’s an idea and knowledge multiplier. You immediately multiply your ideas and knowledge with the number of people in your group.

Sure, you still have to implement those ideas and to apply that knowledge, but it’s definitely much better than being limited to your own ideas and knowledge.

When you have a challenge, simply formulate your challenge as a question and ask your mastermind group. Remember, asking the right questions is the first step to success.

A Mastermind Group without Meetings

In our mastermind group, we are with three people. We have the same goal, which is success in online business. We are from different countries. We are even from different sides of the world. There are twelve hours of time difference between some of us.

We haven’t met in person. We haven’t even talked over phone. Yet, we are providing great value to each other. We are cheering each other up when we fail to achieve our goals. We report our goals and progress to each other.

We provide feedback to each other and exchange ideas and knowledge. We do all of that in our own pace, anytime, anywhere we want. How do we do that? We do that with a Facebook group.

Facebook Closed & Secret Groups

I have been a member of closed Facebook groups in the past and I knew that it was a good platform to host a mastermind group.

Posting, commenting, archiving, and searching capabilities of Facebook groups are just fine for the purpose of our group. With the secret group option, our discussions remain private and we are not bothered by other people.

So far, we have shared our long term goals and how we want to get there. I have also reported my first week’s progress. The feedback, ideas, and knowledge shared in this group are phenomenal.

How to Create Your Own Mastermind Group

Here’s how we created our own mastermind group. One of the members posted a valuable tip as a response to one of my Medium posts. We exchanged a few responses and direct messages on Medium and Twitter.

One of us asked the other, if they wanted to participate in such a group. The response was positive, and we started the secret Facebook group. Then, I did the same with the third member and they accepted as well.

How to Find Members for Your Mastermind Group

The idea is to look for people online who are more or less on your level. Reach out to them with a valuable comment. If they respond, introduce them the mastermind idea and invite them to your group.

Don’t take it personal if they don’t accept or not respond to your invitation. That’s fine. You’re just a stranger to them at this moment. Just carry on. Reach out to the next person and ask them. I’d keep the group limited to four to six people, but it’s up to you with how many people you want to work with.

Once you have created the group, then it’s all about exchanging value with each other. Do your best to share the most valuable feedback, ideas, and knowledge you can and they’ll do the same with you. As a result, all of you will benefit from the process.

Conclusion

A mastermind group is a great way to exchange feedback, ideas, and knowledge among people with similar goals.

It increases your motivation by holding you accountable to your group members. They cheer you up when you fail and point out your blind spots.

You don’t have to meet with your group members to facilitate a mastermind group. You don’t even have to know each other in person. You can use the closed or secret Facebook groups to facilitate your mastermind group.

If you don’t know any people to join your mastermind group, simply look for people with similar goals on social media. Reach out to them with a valuable comment and invite them to your group.

Do your best to provide value to your group members and they’ll return the favor. As a result, everybody will benefit from the practice and you’ll make leaps toward your goals.

Value Is in the Intersections of Niches, Sectors, and Markets

When you first start a business or a website, the first obstacle you come across is competition. Choose any niche, sector, or market and you will see that it is already crowded with other businesses or websites. How are you going to deal with that?

One option you have is to focus on a subset of a niche. For example, the topic business is a large niche. A subset of the business niche is marketing. A subset of the marketing niche is blogging.

Another option you have is to combine two ideas. As I have explained in a previous post, creativity isn’t creating something out of nothing. It is finding new relationships between already existing concepts.

Combine Existing Concepts

You can apply the same principle to business. Steemit is an example of combining two existing concepts into a new business. It combines social media and cryptocurrency.

You can also take a niche and target an audience that isn’t targeted often when addressing that niche. For example, business advice for retired people. Retired people have the time and some of them are well off financially. They can make use of their time to start a business as a hobby.

Fitness Advice for Busy Professionals

Another example is fitness advice for busy professionals. When I look at fitness advice online, I have the feeling that it’s targeting Mr. Olympia competitors. Needless to say that 99.99% of the people who are looking for fitness advice online don’t consider participating at Mr. Olympia, ever.

Some of that audience is busy professionals who are well off financially, but they don’t have the time to go through long, frequent workouts. They also don’t have a lot of time to prepare healthy food. Neither do they have the time to go through all the fitness videos on YouTube.

So, that’s a great opportunity for an online entrepreneur that can provide appropriate fitness advice to busy professionals in a written form.

Combine Formats As Well

In my previous post, I have recommended to choose between vlogging and blogging, according to your skills, your project, and your audience. Vlogging seems to be the correct medium for fitness, but blogging is more appropriate for busy professionals, because they don’t have the time to watch videos.

So, how are you going to decide between vlogging and blogging? You can use your creativity again and combine them. You can write introductory blog posts and you can include videos that show the mechanics of the exercises and quick food preparation tips.

Conclusion

When you have a difficult time finding yourself a place in a crowded niche, you need to carve out a niche for yourself. You can do that by focusing on a subset of a niche, by combining two existing concepts, or by targeting an audience that isn’t targeted often in your niche.