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Entrepreneur: Know The Game Your Are Playing

Guna — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 16:08:52 +0000

Cover of the book mentioned

I am sure all of you know that in every junction, the decisions you make is essential to the success of your business. You have to make the right decisions to compete with other businesses; you have to make the right decisions to make it through the initial startup stage. You have to know the game you are playing…

Are you playing the right game?

How do you know you are playing the right game? Are you successful with your business and are you satisfied with where you are? Do you know what you need to do so you can be successful with your business? Do you know whom you need to friend with and whom you need to strategize against? Like I said in my opening paragraph, these are all the questions that go through the minds of a typical Executive or a Manager on a daily basis. You need to know at all times, if you change the way you provide a service or if you add an incentive for the customer, how will that change your game and how will it change the game for the market participants. Now who are the market participants? These are your suppliers, competitors, customers and affiliates.

I recommend you read the book “The Right Game – Use Game Theory to Shape Strategy” by Adam M. Brandenburger and Barry J. Nalebuff. The Game Theory explains the importance of focusing on others. In this book, the author uses game theory to explain and map the interdependencies among the participants in your marketplace. It is important for you to understand who is playing the game with you and what values they add to the game. If you have all of that figured out, you should be able to make strategic moves that will benefit you or even the whole industry.

For example, let’s say you operate a blog. Your blog provides information on all of the new movies as they are released. It is an established blog and you are able to get in front of the line to get real-time interview with the stars. However, there are about 5 other sites that do the same thing. One day you woke up and decided you want to change the game. You want to gain a higher market share and provide more information. So you take the steps to understand the current marketplace. You spend time understanding the value provided by other sites. You spend time understanding the audience. You spend time understanding the success rate of getting an interview with a star.

Once you have all of this information in front of you, you can use Game Theory to map it all out. You can give points to each possible move. Your moves can be to go aggressive or try to partner with other sites. Your aggressive move can be something like offering an incentive for your customer such as free movie passes or coup0ns for snacks. You can also give your customers access to live interviews. Introduce something that will put your competitors at a disadvantage. Before you do this, you need to figure out how they will react to this. Are your competitors large enough to provide the same kind of incentives? In your mapping exercise, you need to map all possible scenarios so you can figure out the best move that will either place you in a better position than where you are today or it will place the hold industry in a better position. You probably won’t want to make a move that will hurt your business.

Once you map it all out, you should be able to decide which move will make you even more successful. This sort of exercise is much better than holding status quo. As an Executive or a Manager, you need to always think about this. You need to know the game you are playing and you need to know what moves you have in your fingertips at all times.

You should read my previous post on “getting to know your competitions.” This story should help you identify your opponents well.

Please let me know if you have any views on this. Thank you.

Blogging: Why Your Blog Will Fail

Guna — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:23:54 +0000

Now that you are here and reading my post, I am sure your blog will not be one of them that fails. However, please don’t take this comment lightly. As everything in life, you have to work for it and you’ve got to rise above your competitions.

I will give you $100 US if you guess how many blogs are out there on the internet and how many new blogs are started on a daily basis. I would say there are millions of blogs out there and hundreds if not thousands of blogs emerge daily. Now, many of these blogs go unnoticed. No one hear about it and not many cares about it. However, many people will continue to try and they will continue to copy what others are doing. Of course, they will fail and move on because only a handful will survive to be successful.

Now, how do you become a successful blogger and how do you make sure your blog is successful? Well the number one recipe for blogs to be successful is to communicate with your audience.

You need to learn to write for your audience rather than writing for the sake of writing articles. Many people put together a Wordpresss blog overnight. Then they are excited about their new blog because they too believe they will be able to make the six figure income that many bloggers enjoy.

First of all, when you start a blog, please do not dream that you are about to make a six figure income right away. If it is that easy, then every blogger will be successful. I will be honest with you. I do not make much money with my blog and I am not aiming to make a six figure from this website in the short term. As I mention in my profile, this blog is to pass my time by helping others. I am making enough to pay my bills – which is really important for sustainability. You need to make enough to maintain your blog for a long time so you can improve it on a regular basis. When you maintain it for a long time and provide value added content for your audience, you will eventually make it work…

Going back to communications, you must know your audience and you must learn to communicate with your audience from the beginning. If you don’t learn to interact with your first few visitors, there is no point in continuing your blog because you do not know how to keep those visitors on your site. Don’t forget to read my previous blog post on “getting to know your visitors.”

Blogging: How To Communicate With Your Visitors?

Now picture this. You are in a football stadium and you are one of the 30,000 visitors that day. You start screaming about your new blog and start talking about your ideas and what you have to share. The person next to you start copying you and start talking about his/her website. Imagine now that the third, the fourth and everyone else next to you start doing the same thing. Now imagine more than 30% or about 10,000 fans in the stadium start to shout about their blog and their ideas. It wouldn’t make much sense to the other 70% of the audience would it? They will probably go crazy and won’t believe any one of you. They will probably start ignoring you and they will probably never want to see you again… Well it is no different on the internet. Many people are just shouting out what they have to say instead of speaking to their audience.

Now imagine that you are still in that stadium and the game won’t be over for another 2 hours. So you sit back and do some homework for 10 minutes. You first decide what you want to talk about and then you decide whom you want to talk to. All those 30% of the people are still shouting but you decided to talk directly to a few people around you and start offering them some assistance. They are now engaged. They are listening to you. They want to provide you with some feedback and contribute to your success. Now few people about 50 feet from you see a group gathering around you, so they make their way over to you… your fans are just growing because you are building a momentum and you are not just speaking, you are speaking to those people around you… before you know it, you will have hundreds of people around you compared to your counterparts who continues to shout without any results.

Well in the blogging world, this scenario holds. You will have to understand your business and then you need to know what you are offering to people. Once you have figured this out, try to leverage it by working with your audience. Talk to them individually or as a group. Gain an audience at a time and eventually you will be successful.

I would love to get your feedback on this story. I would love to know how you are doing with your blog (if you are a blogger). I would like to share your stories with my readers. Thank you in advance.

Entrepreneurs: Believe It or Not, You Are Always Right

Guna — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 20:29:05 +0000

This is something that has been on my mind for the last few weeks as I personally am preparing to make a few changes in my life. More details to come in a few weeks but today I want to tell you all that you are always right. To quote a famous quote, “whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right”, said Henry Ford. Henry was right and many people continue to refer to what he had to say.

Somehow you always seems know to do the right thing, to make the right decision or to make the right move that will shape your path to a successful future. As an entrepreneur, you need to belief in yourself. You need to believe that you are always right. You need to believe that if you make a decision, good or bad, it will always enhance your life. There is no such thing as going back in life; everything you do, good or bad, is always moving you forward.

Changing your mindset to believe in yourself will have a significant impact on achieving your goals. According to many psychologists, we act and perform based on our beliefs. Therefore, it is true that if you think positive all the time, your life will be much better.

However, even with all of these studies and reports, many people continue to fail everyday. They fail because they misguide their inner beliefs; they doubt themselves. Doubting your own inner feelings and thoughts will always misguide you and make you a failure.

For example, if you think something is not possible or it is beyond your ability, then you are not going to spend all of your energy and time to make it successful. You will hesitate to commit your time, your money and your knowledge. Many people think they are too weak to be successful like other well known successful people like Steve Jobs at Apple Computer.

Since we are speaking about Steve Jobs, I want to let you know that I still listen to what Steve has to tell the Graduating Students at Stanford University on June 12, 2005. Anytime you are on a crossroad and is having a hard time making a decision, just listen to his speech. Steve told the graduating class three stories from his life. I suggest you listen to it if you haven’t already.

It is time for you to change your mindset if feel like you are not making any progress in life. If you are doing the same thing over and over again, then nothing is going to happen. So here is what you need to do:

develop your goal – where do you want to see yourself in 3 years?
map out an action plan to get there – whom do you need to talk to and what do you need to do to get there?
do a reality check on your beliefs. Do you believe that you can achieve that goal? Then believe that you will be successful in every one of the actions you’ve outlined on step 2.
so from today, start thinking positively about all of this and go for it. Never settle for a “no” or never settle when you fail until you reach your end goal. You will be successful.

I hope this short posting helps you become successful. I hope you will start trusting yourself, your guts, your inner thoughts and your feelings. You can master your own dreams – go get them…

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