Business

Earlier The Better

Garth Beyer

I took the bus today and asked the driver if the bus he was standing by was the bus to Rockford. Without looking at me, he said, “yea, we’re just waiting on a passenger to get seated.” Now I’m on the bus waiting for it to take off and I’m nervous that I’m on the wrong bus. I don’t have trust in the driver.

Not because I think he’s lying but because he didnt’ convince me, he didn’t make it personal, and he didn’t take the time or attention that a passenger (equally, a customer) deserves.

I paid for the ride, but I also paid to be assured I would reach the destination I need to in the time I need to. It just so happens that I wasn’t.

Update: 20 minutes into the ride and he just got on the speaker to make an announcement for where we will be going, thanking us for being passengers, and filling us in on what we need to know while riding (safety procedures).

My question is: why not make the connection before a passenger gets in, not after?

I sat with slight anxiety thinking this may turn into more of an adventure than I had planned. While I have that attitude, many do not. When you have customers paying for you to keep your promise, it’s better to show them that you’re keeping it as early as possible. Saves them worry, anxiety, and nervousness (no matter how little).

 

Stay Positive & If You’re Customer Is Early, You Better Be Too

Garth E. Beyer

What Size Would You Like

Garth Beyer

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I’ve had it with all the different cup size names (e.g., trenti, kid, venti, grande, sixteen, large, extra-large, power, original, regular).

Here’s a quick solution: Let people pick out their cup as they get in line.*

Sometimes being creative is a set-back. It’s fun to make different names for sizes (whether they make sense or not), but not everyone can keep up. If you had the option to appeal to all customers and lose some or appeal to all customers and keep all, it’s clear which is the better choice.

Yet, in an effort to stand out, businesses sacrifice some customers that, if time would be taken, could otherwise be kept. Note, the best kind of creativity is the uncomplicated kind.

 

Stay Positive & Have Fun But Keep It Simple

Garth E. Beyer

*The take-it-too-far part of me would insist that you could give customers markers to color their cups while they wait in line. Have them write their own name on it too. Starbucks never spells it right anyway. (But they do when I say Voldemort. -sigh-) And yes, there will be a line at a place where you don’t have to figure out what cup size to order, ending up feeling like an idiot when you order it wrong.

Photo credit

The Web Does Wonderful Things, But…

Garth Beyer

The web is like a shortcut, a way to streamline any process, a method of simplifying the complex, leaving the hard work still needing to be done.

Anyone can now do anything with the web. I can collect programmers to mimic nearly any site available which makes that site less valuable. It’s a crumbling collection of incredible infrastructure and design.

If a blog, a website, an online service is all that you have to offer, there’s a very low life expectancy for you.

Remember that the hard work can’t be accomplished online. You can get by for a time, but with how swift laypeople are at creating online content, it won’t be long until someone mimics your original idea and adds their human, offline, personal touch to it.

 

Stay Positive & The Web Gives You Freedom, But There’s Still Competition

Garth E. Beyer

Death Of Spectating In Sports

Garth Beyer

Quickly, don’t be confused. I didn’t say death of “spectator sports.”

1010648_10201588067809783_1465580148_nLast night at Miller Park I watched the Brewers shut out the Cubs. Victory for the Brewers meant that the Cubs are officially the worst team in the league right now. Given that they were tied with the Brewers for that title before the game, victory was not as great to the Brewers as, say, it was to the Chicago Blackhawks.

What I realized though, was that the sport itself didn’t make the game. My great experience was not fueled by the talent and flare of the players. Heck, I could have watched a little league baseball game and been more impressed. That aside, place me in any stadium, field, or rink and what makes it remarkable is everyone in the stands.

Previously called “spectators,” that’s a dying phrase in sports.

A spectator is someone who looks on or watches. Simple as that. But when I scan the stands, I don’t see any spectators. (Worth noting, to be a spectator also implies being silent, taking it all in. It’s difficult to be a spectator when you are texting someone the score, high-fiving those behind you, making noise, and shouting “Let’s Go Brewers.”)

What I see is people connecting, relaxing, cheering, and making the most of their ballgame experience, not just the ballgame. “This spectator sport” and “that spectator sport” are simply categories for people to meet up with like-minded people, not to watch players pitch a ball or hit a puck.

The reason for this post is to note that it is easy to turn a business into a baseball game. The part oft forgotten is that you still need to build a stadium that certain types of people go to. This may mean that there’s a seating limit, certain concessions, and a place for people to purchase matching clothes.

The players/clients don’t make the game/business,                                                                          the game/business makes the players/clients.

BallParkFood for thought: Maybe we don’t go to sporting events to watch them play. Maybe they play sports to get us (the audience/fans/families/superfans) to go crazy, interact with each other, and connect on what I consider a personal level.

 

Stay Positive & Take Me Out To The Ball Game

Garth E. Beyer

Strawberry Service

Garth Beyer

Strawberries

I walked by the farmers market today and saw two tables filled perfectly with strawberries. As soon as they sold one (which I ony saw them sell one) they filled the empty space with another carton of strawberries.

This, to me, seems very mechanical, that they were trying to streamline the process of selling strawberries. Where’s the service?

It looked like all they had to offer me were strawberries. No advice. No story behind the berries. No way to connect. Sure, most who want strawberries, just want strawberries. However, when you have five stands to choose from, the friendly looking ones are the most gone to – even if there’s a line.

This stand still sold strawberries, but not as many as other stands. And I guarantee the people they sold the berries to won’t be returning customers.

On an aesthetic note, the table wasn’t appealing. In fact, I sort of felt bad wanting to purchase some strawberries because it would throw things out-of-order. They like everything lined up perfectly. So do I.

But I’ll sacrifice my slight perfectionist attitude if I could make a friend and get strawberries at the same time.

 

Stay Positive & Service Requires More Than Two Movements*

Garth E. Beyer

*If all you expect customers to do is hand money and grab the product. Good luck staying in business.

 

Constitutive Choices

Garth Beyer

With the founding of the Republic, sets of conditions for its future had to be developed. Paul Starr refers to these conditions as “constitutive choices.”

The first of which that was made is what we have simply come to know as the First Amendment, or freedom of speech. However, the constitutive choice Starr mentions is much larger than that as it directly affects the development of newspapers and by extension the postal service. The old ideas of who should and could know what have been thrown out. Now a sovereign land, people needed to know how their state was running, what was occurring in far off areas, and they needed to have a solid way to communicate with each other – quickly.

Starr refers to this transition as “America’s First Information Revolution.” With the support of the Government for the first 40 years, the postal service helped build a knowledge economy. Since postage was cheap, newspapers were cheap, and most other factors of the press were cheap, information was able to be delivered all throughout the states. The expansion of the Post Office closed the information gap between communities and outsiders (country folk). As a result, the public and political lives of the people were able to closely interact with each other. In other words, the mass had access to information and used it.

In addition, the advance in the postal system and the expansion of newspapers helped create a modern census and played a large role in the rise of common schools. With the rise of common schools, literacy would rise and the cycle would be pushed even more. The constitutive choice to build an open source foundation for the Republic lead directly to its next constitutive choice: the creation and establishment of networks.

The invention of the telegraph gave rise to modern technological networks which in turn speed up the connections that now not only people have with each other as a mass, but that states have with their armies, that towns have with their sister merchant communities, that government has with itself and that newspapers have with each other.

However, at a play against the first constitutive choice, the telegraph evolved into a means of centralized control of information. While chiefly used for business, the telegraph service was also the first national monopoly. The reason behind the controlling path that the telegraph grew into is that it began growing without any government regulation. The telegraph was established as a private enterprise and as a result went through a series of competitions: who would control the networks? How would they control it? Luckily these answers were already provided pre-telegraph.

The interesting aspect of the constitutive choices that Starr discusses is that they are cumulative. The telegraph was simply a new technology to place at the front of processes of communication and information that were already developed and established. All in all, the decision to develop the telegraph privately gave America the challenge it needed to strengthen and affirm their constitutive foundations but it also represented America’s choice for future technological advancements. The telegraph was America’s fork in the road, their initial setting of networking structures, and their decision to privatize it was a precedent to broadcasting.

The third constitutive movement Starr discusses is the development of institutions that resulted in real, human, intangible progress. Previously I had mentioned the expansion of public schools with the rise of the Post Office and newspapers. From there, the technological networks that were implemented furthered the expansion of education. From the beginning, it was decided that knowledge, education, research, and information would be a priority (a constitutive movement) for America. While this movement continues today, a prime example in history involves the radio. The National Committee on Education by Radio (NCER) proposed that 15 percent of broadcast channels be reserved for government-chartered educational stations. This movement promoted the diffusion of knowledge. By extension, the mass flow of information, knowledge, and ideas laid the groundwork for further explorations, developments, and innovations. It needs reiteration that the constitutive choices that were made were cumulative and that there is no going back once the choice was made, which only further signifies Americans transformation through communication.

A Simple Answer To Starting A Business At Age 25 Or Not

Garth Beyer

Ironically, the two articles of my young entrepreneurial beat were published on the same day and are equally counter-argumentative. The first article, “Don’t Start A Company Before You’re 25” by Robbie Abed was posted on Technori, where people go to celebrate entrepreneurship. The second article, “Start A Company When You’re 25 – Not When You’re 52,” was submitted on Forbes by Liz Kammel. Just from viewing the titles you can bet they will be butting heads like two entrepreneurial rams during mating season. Mating, of course, with their destiny of either starting a company before the age of 25, or not.

Robbie Abed, the author advocating you not to start a company before you’re 25, understands that every reader of his article is aware of how controversial it is. In fact, within the first line of the article he says, “Yup, this article is controversial.” His writing, from the beginning, taunts you personally. His language and word choice is nearly mirrored to what his reader would be thinking after glancing over the title. However, after his humorous introduction, he begins to attack the point of his article, giving support to those in favor of starting a business before the age of 25. Then, suddenly, his entire voice shifts over to something which should be held with the utmost respect, a voice that radiates wisdom and complete confidence. He boldly notes that “Success does not equal happiness” but “happiness is the new success.”

Instead of defining happiness, which you can rightly agree does not have a definition, Abed talks about his friends. Friends who are not involved in technology or startups at all. Friends that hang out every weekend and have fun. He considers them to be “happy” people. In contrast, he uses himself as an example; that he works too many hours, tries, but can’t take weekends off and is addicted to his kind of success. Quite plainly, he says that being happy and having fun while young is far more important than starting a business and losing the youthful and exciting era of life to the task of building a business. After adding contextual support for the statement, “it’s never too late, but it can be too early,” he offers his closing statement that “when you start your company at 26, you won’t be behind. I promise.”

All that Abed has said is clearly tried and true, however, one specific portion of his take on starting a business at an early age is used as leverage in the other article, “Start A Company When You’re 25 – Not When You’re 52,” by Liz Kammel. Kammel explains how the youthfulness which Abed described is – to Abed’s disappointment – the largest reason to start a business when you’re 25. “At age 25, the sky is the limit,” Kammel says. As you can readily agree with, when you’re young, you can stay up late every night, work as many weekends as you want, and as Kammel most importantly notes, “you have no fear of challenging ‘market standards.’”

As a 20 year old, I can offer even greater support than Kammel offers. When you’re young, you have an extremely low number of responsibilities: one pet, if any, a couple of bills, no kids. When you’re young, you can settle for less: a small place, maybe even just living at home, a part-time job, and of course, ramen noodles.

This free, flexible, full play lifestyle that Abed states is important to happiness is as important in starting a successful business.

The second argument Kammel makes is that a company should be started early and with the support of an older mentor. What she hints at is the inclination for older mentors to help the youth. Naturally, you wouldn’t think a 52-year-old would be working with another 52-year-old on starting a business. The mentor would, as expected, be puzzled as to why another 52-year-old man is asking for advice rather than giving his own to others. It’s a simplistic structure of society – the old help the young.

Kammel makes a strong point that as a young entrepreneur, there are plenty of experienced people you can hand the business off to. While they are taking care of “business,” you’re off starting another one!

Comparing and contrasting the two articles, it seems the better choice – to start a business early or not – comes down to what you have more fun doing on the weekends? Working on a business startup or hanging out at a coffee shop?

Stay Positive & Live On

Garth E. Beyer