Over the last couple weeks we have conducted focus groups and surveys about the Unforgettable Biography and the excercise has proven very useful. We have changed the name and tagline and rebuilt the website, improving it by leaps and bounds in ways that our customers want. The changes are receiving great reviews from our customers so far.

It’s now

www.iMemoryBook.com – collect a book of memories for someone special.

Even though we just released our site, the alexa ranking for today is 60,172, in the top 100,000. I predict this site and product will be a great one for FamilyLearn. Thanks to Paul for teaching me about focus groups.

The 30 Book MBA in entrepreneurship

Here’s a list of personal MBA books that I’m posting so that I make sure I read all the ones I haven’t already. Josh Kaufman: Inside My Bald Head: The Josh Kaufman “Personal MBA” Program

Apparently, Seth Godin, famous for permission marketing, thinks that dedicated reading of 30-40 books and real life experience is more valuable than an MBA. I personally turned down an internship and PhD program and more from Penn State in order to work on FamilyLearn and get real life experience. Hopefully, Seth’s right and I’m learning more this path than I could have the other. I don’t suppose I’ll ever never know. Seth does know (for him at least) because he did both. Whichever path one takes, I believe a life-long love of learning is more important than anything else.

Last night I researched network marketing and direct selling on the Internet and then went to the library to pick up a half a dozen books. I was the very first to check out Creative Memories: The 10 Timeless Principles Behind the Company that Pioneered the Scrapbooking Industry from the Provo Library. They hadn’t even placed it on the shelf. I felt a connection to the book before I even read it last night and this afternoon. Cheryl Lightle and Rhonda Anderson truly had a vision for doing something good for the world. Their mission sounded so similar to FamilyLearn. Starting in 1987 with 2 consultants and no formalized compensation plan, they pioneered the scrap book industry and in 2005 they plan to generate 1/2 billion in sales.

Here’s the book captured:

Purpose: What principles were behind Creative Memories’ success?

Central Message:

1. Operate from least to most.
2. Embrace the abundance mentality.
3. Keep the promise.
4. Make it easy.
5. Communicate clearly and concisely.
6. Protect the relationship.
7. Respect personal choices.
8. Go for the good of the whole.
9. Don’t knee jerk.
10. Ensure sustainability.

Before I give an overview of these, read the beginning of their mission statement:

Creative Memories believes in and teaches the importance of Preserving the Past, Enriching the Present, and Inspiring Hope for the Future.

Sound like the FamilyLearn mission? Because we are a business of people just as they are, I had a lot to learn from Cheryl in this book. Now for an overview for my future reference.

1. Operate from least to most. Cheryl talked mostly about transitioning to technology after 1996. Their first attempt was a total failure and left a bad taste in the consultants mouth for the Internet. They learned to introduce changes slowly and give people time to respond. They really fought the temptation to overhire during the growth of the 1990s and tried to outsource everything. They didn’t want to fire people later.
2. Embrace the abundance mentality. Don’t spend you’re time fretting about the competition! Just make yourself better than the day before. Competition means more recognition in the Industry (of course there was no industry when this company began).
3. Keep the promise. Simply doing what you and your mission and your guiding principles say that you’ll do. At Creative Memories, they have scientists who test and develop new products so that they will be archival quality. They define very carefully what archival quality means. Interestingly, they are 100 % ESOP (employee stock ownership plan) and proud of it. The employee ownership inspires success in the company. They have a “Great Performance” for each person in the organization that defines what the employee-owner can do to ensure the performance of the big picture of the entire company, of the department and of the team. The employees are also encouraged to work on their own albums to have passion for what they are doing.
4. Make it easy. First for consultants to do business with the company, second for customers to do business with consultants and third for employee-owners to perform their job responsibilities. (Interesting that the consultant precedes the customer in this principle) For example, (1) they still spend lots of time on fax and phone orders because not all consultants like the Internet or feel comfortable with it. (2) They changed the packaging just to make it easier for consultants to dispose of it. (3) Resource One is a project to get the consultants onesies for their customers so that they don’t have to break open entire sets. This is not very profitable and a lot of work for the company, but it helps the consultants. (4) BusinessMate is a downline and business management software that they developed especially for team leaders.
5. Communicate clearly and concisely. They explain “why.” They expect clear, concise and frequent communication that expect to be perfect, but they’ll accept excellence.
6. Protect the relationship. This is very important to a direct sales organization. The business is built in relationships. Us, Not Us and THEM In the beginning they sold albums in retail while they were trying to define the business. They soon realized that they had to make a final decision about whether they’d be direct sales or not. It was self-defeating to compete with their distribution channel. This is a decision that we face right now. NOTE: customers make decisions to buy based on the following: (1) If they are treated with respect – 70 percent, (2) If they feel they are under no pressure to buy – 65 percent, (3) If they believe the returns policy and process is fair, (4) If they feel they receive outstanding service – 58 percent. All people related.
7. Respect personal choices. This is important and most manifest in the way the compensate and give bonuses. Today, I read in an presentation encouraging golden handcuffs. The term bothered me a bit but I thought I understood the concept. Make more financial reasons over time that the top people will stay with the organization and continue selling it. Creative Memories doesn’t do golden handcuffs because they prescribe a lifestyle and the company feels that consultants and employee-owners should choose their own lifestyle. I like their style. I learned they use a UniLevel compensation model as described in this presentation.
8. Go for the good of the whole. Sometimes, like when they discontinued their teal binder and many consultants complained, you have to do what’s best for the whole even if it’s difficult. In the case of the teal album, the discontinuance made room for the consultants to have more room in their inventory for more popular products. Only a few thousand out of 60,000 consultants were affected by the move. Give charitably where it will help the most people.
9. Don’t knee jerk. They struggled with this in the beginning as a growing organization. Changes influenced all the consultants and they couldn’t make them too sudden or too often. However, when you make a strategic change with specific objectives in mind, you need to let it runs its course (sometimes taking over a year) to see if it produces the desired effect. Don’t go back on a change prematurely.
10. Ensure sustainability. They have employee-owners work for other direct sales companies to understand and empathize with the consultants. They have executives be Creative Memories consultants to catch the vision themselves. These are good ideas. She also spoke of preparing the company to pass the torch.

Interesting things I noted in the book:

• 75 percent of their job is recognizing the consultants. Recognition as little as a consultant in ink can go a long way.
• They ship to consultants rather than to customers or party hosts.
• (not from the book) They don’t publish their compensation plan on the web for consultants, forcing you to contact a consultant.
• They assign pacing partners to each consultant to be their buddy and hold them accountable share friendly competition with.
• They say “When” rather than “If” when referring to bonuses and awards.
• Don’t say “no” Say what you can do rather than what you can’t. People need alternative solutions. I think about when someone offers me a job I can’t take. Do I refuse or do I refer them someone else I trust?
• They changed their main offices from “Corporate” to “Home” offices. It’s about US. An attempt not to alienate consultants.
• Alan Luce personally trains their employee-owners and is involved with DSA heavily.
• They have their employees do direct sells themselves.

I’ve just finished another book I’m adding to my list of favorites. The Art of The Start by Guy Kawasaki. Guy gets right to the point of what really matters and he’s entertaining.
For example, his chapters end with FAQs and his final FAQ of the final chapter was:
Q. People are always asking me for my expert advice, but it’s interfering with my ability to get my current job done. What should I do?
A. Write a book and tell everyone to buy it.

I laughed and laughed imagining how many ask him for advice.

Well, here’s my attempt at a capture and reference for the future:

Purpose:
How do I get a start up going?

Central Message:
Simply define what it is you’re doing (in less than 10 words) and focus, focus, focus on those things that will propel it forward and cut out anything that won’t. Most importantly, start doing.

Validations:
The art of starting
Things that matter:

1. Make meaning – make the world a better place with your product or service.
2. Make mantra – forget mission statements and take your meaning and make mantra out of it.
3. Get going – create and sell your product or service and don’t spend time on business plans, writing and pitching.
4. Define your business model – create a sustainable business model that’s already been proven.
5. Weave a mat (milestones, assumptions and tasks) – for staying on track when everything goes nuts, which it will.

Excercise: If FamilyLearn didn’t exist the world would be worse off because of family stories lost.
Mantra: The heart of life.
Business Excercise:

1. Calculate your monthly costs to operate your organization.
2. Calculate the gross profit of each unit of your product.
3. Divide the results of step 1 by the results of step 2.
4. Ask a few women if they think you have a chance of selling that many units. If they don’t, you don’t have a business model.

LOL, hilarious but so true.

Most important milestones:

• Complete design specs
• Finish a prototype
• Raise capital
• Ship a testable version to customers
• Ship the final version to customers
• Achieve breakeven

Assumptions:

key metrics
• market size
• gross margin
• sales calls per salesperson
• conversion rates of prospects to customers
• technical support calls per unit shipped
• payment cycle for receivables and payables
• compensation requirements
• prices of parts and supplies
• customer return on investment

Major tasks (not as critical as milstones):

• setting up account and payroll systems
• filing legal documents
• purchasing insurance policies

The art of positioning:

• why the founders started the organization
• why customers should patronize it
• why good people should work at it

What do you do?
FamilyLearn: We help you record and share family stories. (dry, but it’s what we do. I’m sure there’s a better way to say it)

Niche thyself!
Make a name that can be a verb. Google it.
FamilyLearn it. Ok, we blew that one, but oh well.

Don’t start into an auto-biography! Sorry Paul, you were one of my first victims on that one. I’m learning.
10/20/30 Rule
10 slides
20 minutes
30 pt font text

Guy gives a great presentation format:

TO INVESTORS
Slide 1: Title and contact stuff
Slide 2: Pain/ Problem
Slide 3: Solution
Slide 4: Business model
Slide 5: Secret sauce or magic in your product or service
Slide 6: Marketing and sales – how to market without breaking the bank?
Slide 7: Competition
Slide 8: Management team
Slide 9: Financial projections and key metrics
Slide 10: Current status, Accomplishments to date, Timeline, and Use of Funds

TO CUSTOMERS
Slide 1: Title and contact stuff
Slide 2: Pain/ Problem
Slide 3: Solution
Slide 4: Current customers, clarity on the value
Slide 5: Secret sauce or magic in your product or service
Slide 6: Demo
Slide 7: Competition – why you’re good
Slide 8: Management team – make them feel comfortable buying with a start up
Slide 9: Trial period or test installation

TO PARTNERS
Slide 1: Title and contact stuff
Slide 2: Pain/ Problem
Slide 3: Solution
Slide 4: Partnership model
Slide 5: Secret sauce or magic in your product or service
Slide 6: Demo
Slide 7: Competition (optional)
Slide 8: Management team
Slide 9: Next steps

Upon starting, ask:
“How much time may I have?”
“What are the most important things I can communicate to you?” (do as much of this in advance as possible)
“May I quickly go through the presentation and handle questions at the end? However, please feel free to interrupt me if you need to.”

Let them fantasize about the potential of your product or service.
Shut up and take notes, summarize, regurgitate and follow up!

Pitch constantly. Rewrite constantly.

The art of writing a business plan:
You have to have a plan. Focus on the executive summary. Pitch, then plan. Make it just like your pitch.
1. Clean, no more than 20 pages. Less is more.
2. One person should write the entire plan.
3. A staple, no fancy stuff.
4. Financial projections to two pages.
5. Key metrics.
6. Assumptions that drive your financial projections.

The art of bootstrapping:
Manage for cash flow, not profitability. Choose an auto-persuasive product.
Build a bottom up forcast. Each salesperson can make ten sales per day, there are 240 working days…
Ship, then test. Get it to the market.
Forget the proven team and go with energy and inexperience that believes in what you’re doing.
Start as a service business.
Focus on function, not form.
Pick your battles. Make money from your magic. Margins!
Go direct. Stay close to the customer. No multi-tiered stuff. You have to sell, not fill demand.
Position against the leader.
Take the “red pill.” Reality checks. Honesty with yourself.
Get a morpheus. Realist in the organization.
Understaff and outsource.
Build a board.
Sweat the big stuff. Pay for the stuff that matters rather than saving pennies.
Execute.

The art of recruiting:
Hire “A” players.
Hire “infected people”
Ignore irrelevant.
Use all your tools. Board, connections, etc.
Wait to compensate.
Double check your intuition. Would you avoid them when shopping?
Reference check. If they send you to a desk of a secretary, bad sign.

Applications:

Value:
“The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” –Samuel Johnson
Successful businesses and being good to the world are not opposing forces.
“There are few joys greater than helping others.” –Guy
Interesting note, he speaks in the last chapter of theories where there are different “classes” in Heaven.
I wonder if he was thinking of the 3 Degrees of Glory as one of those theories? Maybe I’ll ask him.

One man’s experience with Warren Buffet, the world’s greatest investor.

Apparently, Google is releasing an API for AdWords. This is a big deal. Lots of potential to automate advertising. I foresee many business building up around this API.

I really like what Bob Young is doing with LuLu. It’s an innovative print on demand company. It really opens doors for authors to share their works on a small scale before heading to the offset press. They explicitly call themselves a technology company and NOT a publishing company.

The idea is picking up momentum. I’m seeing many companies popping up with publish on demand businesses. Some of them are rip off companies luring authors who think they’ll get some marketing out of it (they do print books, but they can’t get a book to succeed through their efforts). Others are legitimate

Print on demand has really begun to interest me as we’ve developed our popular Unforgettable Biography giving people a powerful way to write a biography online.

It’s a perfect time to be alive. Even as we developed the product, hard bound books on a small scale became available in Utah and we were one of the company’s first clients.

About a year ago, I heard the founder of www.logoworks.com speak and really liked his business model for logos. He realized that most people pay a designer or firm to do their logo or website and when they don’t like the outcome, the same artist does the second draft. What if you don’t like the artist’s style? It doesn’t matter how many drafts you do.

LogoWorks gives you drafts from different artists with different styles. You choose which style you like. He’s expanding into websites. I’ve used their services for different projects and they’ve always done a good job (I can’t believe they’ve managed to do it for $265).

« go back — keep looking »

About

My name is Neal Harmon and I write here so that I don't forget what I learn. Hopefully, a few others can learn as well. More about what makes Neal tick.

Recently Written

• Dream Work-flow with Sony Digital Paper and CloudHq
• VidAngel – now I can let my kids watch YouTube!
• Kickstarter versus Indiegogo versus Amazon (Lockitron style) – Tracking
• Shopping Cart Abandonment Rate
• Mobile Ecommerce Trends – Less Typing
• True Ventures Founders Camp
• Solved My Problem Rooting a Nook Simple Touch
• Fixing Our Sink
• Interface Android Cell Phone via Amazon Kindle Touch (androidscreencast.jnlp)
• Kyobo Launches a Mirasol Display eReader

Categories

• Business Ideas, Resources, Principles, etc.
• Education and Love for Learning
• Entrepreneurship
• Family Publishing
• Favorite Books
• Free Book Summary – Online
• Freedom, Government, Politics, etc.
• Genealogy to Family History to FamilyLearn
• General
• Home, Family and Church
• Ideas and Thoughts
• Search Engine Marketing
• Technology
• Uncategorized
• Utah Real Estate

Archives

• December 2014
• November 2013
• November 2012
• October 2012
• September 2012
• March 2012
• February 2012
• November 2011
• September 2011
• July 2011
• June 2011
• May 2011
• February 2011
• August 2010
• July 2010
• May 2010
• April 2010
• March 2010
• January 2010
• December 2009
• November 2009
• September 2009
• August 2009
• April 2009
• March 2009
• February 2009
• December 2008
• November 2008
• October 2008
• September 2008
• May 2008
• April 2008
• January 2008
• December 2007
• November 2007
• October 2007
• September 2007
• July 2007
• May 2007
• April 2007
• March 2007
• January 2007
• December 2006
• September 2006
• June 2006
• July 2005
• June 2005
• May 2005
• April 2005
• March 2005
• February 2005
• January 2005
• December 2004
• November 2004
• October 2004
• September 2004
• August 2004
• July 2004
• June 2004
• March 2004

Blogroll

• Ben Crane
• Daniel Harmon
• DearMYRTLE
• Dick Eastman
• Jeffrey Harmon
• John Jonas
• K Satyanarayan
• Mark Cuban
• Michael Eager
• Paul Allen
• Seth Godin

Admin

• Log in
• Wordpress
• XHTML