If you are looking at where small businesses spend their money, the largest part of the pie, by far, goes to salaries:

Can I have some more?

I find myself frequently calling up people and asking for business help. Not only is it an incredibly good way to get advice and a new perspective but it is a great way to build a network.

For the most part people are really pleased to help, especially if i have been referred by someone they respect. Likewise, i get my share of people calling me for advice; i always try and make time to do this and be as helpful as i can. I dont claim to be the greatest expert on how to do this but being on both ends of the give-advise-get-advice conversation, i have some opinions on ground rules:

• Have a purpose – I always have some specific reasons for wanting to talk. There is nothing more annoying than someone you dont know calling and wanting to ramble on about nothing. Let’s face it, you dont know each other and non of us are in the market for new friends in the middle of the work day. Calling with a specific purpose helps me create a good tone for a conversation and lets the person being called shift gears and snap into the conversation they are having with me. Examples: “I’m having problems hiring quality sales people and i know you have built successful sales teams. How do you find good candidates”; “What’s your opinion on business plans. I’m currently raising money, do i need to write a business or will an investment deck be enough”; “What’s your opinion on hiring an good attorney, is it worth splashing out or do i keep it cheap”; and so on. If this goes well I have a good foundation for talking about the more personal stuff like wind surfing or dog-frisbee. I also like to make sure that i can succinctly describe my business and background in 3o seconds. If you need to create an elevator pitch this video is a great starting point (from Adeo Ressi @ Founder Institute).
• Set up a specific time to talk on the phone – I do not call cold, even if I have been introduced over email. The probability that I’m going to get a quality reception is small. Even if the guy answers my call, the chances are that he wont be in a good position to talk anyway (even if he says he is). He’s either just fired someone or he’s just lost his biggest customer. I like to set up some time over email – “Can we talk for 10 minutes if i call you at 10am monday 17th”. I always send a meeting request through Google as well (most the time people do accept it but its still worth it).
• Be respectful of time – If I say that I only want 10 minutes of the guys time, then I stick to it. It builds credibility and creates a good platform for future talks:  ”I said that i’ll only take 10 minutes of your time and we’ve been talking for that long now. Thanks for your help. Do you mind if i occasionally contact you if i have follow up questions”. People will always say if they want to continue.
• DO NOT ASK FOR MONEY THE FIRST TIME - There is nothing worse than the guy who says that he wants your advice and then drops the will-you-fund-me bomb. If you have to ask for money first time around; you better have an iron clad idea. In the rare case that i will be asking for money then i say this prior to the meeting. In my intro email I will say  ”I’m raising money and our mutual friend John says that you might be interested in a business like mine”. You can feel the energy drop out of the call if you spring this one unawares. Let’s face it, nobody is going to invest in someone they dont know anyway. Cultivate the relationship first and then you can ask for money. Another way is to say that you would like some advice on your investment pitch (make sure that you do want advice and you’re not just after money because trust me it’s obvious). This is a dangerous one so use it sparingly.
• Do your homework - Before I talk to someone i like to make sure that i know something about them. Their background, successes, current area of work etc. Not only is it courteous but it gives me an idea of what relevant advice i can seek. linkedIN is great for this, as is a good old Google search.

If you are not calling people for advice regularly then you should be. Every successful person i have met is an expert at this. By putting some thought into all this, you’ll avoid hanging up the phone with that cringing thought “why the f***” did i just say that”. Do not become Mikey…

I have an on going struggle.

In fact, I have a lot of them but one of the main ones is about how to share my time between digging around online, looking at new areas and translating that into specific activity. I’m paranoid about getting analysis paralysis; you know, becoming so insular and heady that trying to start a new business becomes an intellectual frenzy rather than something real life and practical. I got talking to an older successful guy yesterday and he told me he doesn’t use a computer, never has and never will. My God, how does he do business. Simple, the answer is relationships – picking up the phone and talking to someone (such a novel concept).

I just finished reading the auto biography of Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnet bloke from the turn of the nineteenth century. Don t even talk about computers, the guy wore a top hat and tails and used horse power for transportation. And no, he didn’t have a phone. So he did his networking and business face to face. There ‘s a rare concept. I remind myself of this every day. I’m reminding myself of this now because even writing here is making me ansi – it’s 9 am on a wednesday morning and i’m sitting here with a coffee and my dog on my southern wrap round porch stuck in my head writing something nobody else is probably going to read. Go and phone someone!!  If I’m not careful I find myself on the mouse wheel of continually looking at new business ideas (an addiction) and never moving anything forward. Your training gurus would probably tell me to spend more time setting my goals around a specific area and working towards solving problems around them.

True but here’s the deal so pay attention.  I respond well to the randomness of immersing myself in a topic area. There is something organic and essential to letting myself just wander (same reason why people stand memorized in front a weird painting in a museum) . It does something inside. Normally, reading a book or magazine article to focus my efforts on will start the process because reading someone else’s thoughts or experiences normally gets me to come up with my own questions   (I’m currently using the book Wikinomics).  This immersion allows me to become a domain “amateur” (the “expert” part can follow later). By learning just enough to be dangerous, I can create a good platform to speak with some type of authority when evaluating businesses. Most importantly, it lets me come up with the right questions when looking at opportunities. Questions are key to life. If i’m not coming up with the right questions when evaluating a business it normally means i’m not finding an intuitive fit for an area or the people i’m looking to get involved with. No questions = no chemistry = not a good business for me. When I went for lunch yesterday with a couple of Professors from Georgia Tech to talk about an elearning product,  I had a stream of questions – a feeding frenzy. These are good signs.

Here’s my list of things to investigate today. They are mostly based around the online learning and the growth of peer to peer & collaborative learning:

1.    Check out the California open source text book
2.    Set up meetings with the advisors of the elearning service I’m evaluating (face-to-face, very old school).
3.    Research some the collaborative news services out there. How they came to be and what makes them work.

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• Can Computer Nerds Save Journalism? (time.com)
• wikimedia

Why, what about, where and who cares anyway. All these are good questions crammed into a single sentence (i’m sure some literary type can tell me the name for it). I’ve pondered a lot why i dont blog, if i should, what should i write about and who would care about it anyway (and why should i care who anyway). Like anything in life, when something has a purpose and a focus it becomes more meaningful because it has a context that makes it relevant to a given group of people, no matter how small or large. So far i’ve never gotten this raison d’être for writing and much of this has sprung from an acute case of subject idea ADD.  At the end of the day, it comes down to relevance and picking something. I would rather be relevant to just one person by concentrating on just one area than irrelevant to the everyone by rambling all over the place.

So, as much for myself as anyone else (there’s my guaranteed one person at least) i want to talk about what it’s like to go through looking, finding and building a new business. I’ve already had the one smash hit: building and selling a .com in the frenzy of 2000 when Monopoly ceased to become just a board game (see my linkedin for more), almost done it again with a second startup (work in progress at Vocalocity) and had a smattering of other projects (like Fizzbee) but since last October i’ve been full on looking for my next thing. Is it a case of once you’re lucky, twice you’re good (the book)? Hmmm, we’ll see.

Without doubt, starting your own thing is not something conjured out of thin air. The major universal force working against you, is that most good business ideas come out of organic growth and a real life a-ha when doing something while sizing up the fruit in Wholefoods; they are not manufactured synthetically inside our own cerebral boxes. So given that, here’s some of my experiences of trying to do it again. It’s stimulating, frustrating, rewarding, demoralizing and interspersed with moments of utter clarity and complete confusion (sometimes shared between breakfast and lunch); i’m great; i’m crap; this is it, no it’s not. You’ll get the idea and hopefully it’ll be enlightening and maybe useful for the army of others going through the same…

Walking along a beach in Tampa one spring day in 1998 i remember getting so frustrated with the new gadget i was cradling i hurled it in the ocean (i smartly retrieved it racked with non-greenness remorse). The offending article and butt of my malice was one of the first MP3 players called the Rio, made by Diamond and it kept freezing. Yes, it was the size of a frizzby and practically needed a set of wheels for transportation but it did allow me to walk around listening to my newly ‘acquired’ songs complements of Napster. So the Rio was buried at some stage in the graveyard of tech gadgets that didn’t make it. It didn’t help that Diamond was also sued by the record industry.

This Rio - Complete with slim parallel port and optional wheels - not this Rio.

Flash forward to 2003 and “a 1000 songs in your pocket” arrives. The super hero of digital music swings into action to save the world: the iPod. Or to be more accurate the iPod and iTunes side by side. Just 3 years later iPod/iTunes had become a $10 billion juggernaut. So what happened? Well, it’s all about pairs, the ying and yang. The Rio was a Lennon without a McCartney, a bow without an arrow, a Keegan without a Toshac (obscure 70′s soccer analogy. Tip – think Liverpool ). Apple’s genius – beyond flawless design and super hype – was to launch a music player only when they could provide the music that was to play on it as well. Getting that music was no mean feet, i know because I spent a hair pulling 12 months trying to secure the music library’s of the major lables for the company i was at in 2ooo. Apple waited though and made the music library an equal part of the package.

The lesson herein lies and it is something sorely missed by a mirth of companies everyday. Apple recognized that people weren’t looking for a gadget that played MP3 files, they were looking for a way to listen to their music – music they owned legally – when they were on the move (“a 1000 songs in your pocket”). That was need, that was what the customer wanted. Defining a business model  in terms of a customer need, instead of ‘designing a product’ looking for a need, is at the core of all successful businesses.

When Ratan Tata of the Tata Group looked out over the chaotic streets of Mumbai and saw a whole families stacked atop a single moped, he saw a clear need. Provide a small car priced so a family could afford it. The Nano, the worlds cheapest car at $2500, does just that. And the name, well it was nearly called the Pod instead.

The swollen tick comes with a foot pump for inflating

Only if businesses would first state the customer need and then get creative over product design and not the other way around; we’d all save a lot of chaos and wasted money. Ask the wife riding side-saddle on the rear wheel.