Tonight, I am going to stop by New Work City to attend a talk, “Ready for Takeoff: Intro to Your Life as an Independent”.  As an entrepreneur who’s always paved my own way, I’m keen to hear some of the insights from the panelists.

My own experiences have taught me a number of lessons in this arena.  It will take a long time to organize those ideas, perhaps some day.  In the meantime, some of the highlights:

Always Be Networking

Last week, I attended a workshop with some stellar networkers.  The message was clear, but I’ll restate it in my own manner: it’s never too late to start networking.

The relationships you have in the world are very much like a garden.   While seeds are easy to plant, seeing those mature into something beautiful and nourishing takes care and attention.

Make Solutions, Not Problems

We all have a desire to be needed, personally and professionally.  As an independent, you have to see out ways to improve the circumstance for others.  Unfortunately, sometimes we may imply there are issues simply to open a door for ourselves.  It’s best to listen carefully to understand what the problems your potential customer is facing.

Specialize Or Die

It’s wise not to try and boil the ocean.  Figure out one specific area you want to focus on (that may be a subset of your skills, a geographic location, or a niche audience), and go at it full force.

By thinking smaller you’ll get further faster or at least learn that you are going in the wrong direction.

Be Confident, Not Cocky

We’d like to all believe we’re experts at the game.  Usually, though, it takes a lifetime of experience and a bit of reflection to really know what your real expertise is.

Don’t confuse skills with expertise.  All sorts of people have similar skills, but knowing how to ply them for others and the guide the forces at work is what sets the experts apart from the amateurs.I could do this all day, but thought I would get you thinking.
If you’re not sure just what you are an expert at, ask your network.

The battle between free and paid services continues to evolve in new and interesting directions.  Glenn Fleishman has an interesting article out that takes a look at some of the changing economics.

While there are some instances where the company/vendor have purely altruistic goals, the usual, underlying goal is that by offering something for free, some other monetizable action exists.  As a business offer free as a lead-generation tool, focus on filling this pipeline is critical to its success or failure.

Kodak Gallery, once know to us as OFoto, is carving out a new, rather interesting, pathway to revenue:

In the past, photos were stored by Kodak indefinitely at no charge. Now, Kodak has imposed the equivalent of a yearly service fee made through a purchase. Storage is free for 90 days after creation of an account. For accounts with less than 2 GB of stored photos, you must spend at least $4.99 over 12 months; more than 2 GB, $19.99.

Source: TidBITS, “Kodak Gallery Joins Parade of Free with Payment Services“

However, I disagree with Glenn that this is a step towards free.  This is really a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

If you think about the actual economics, what’s happening is we’re making a move towards paid services over free ones.  In this case, we saw a service that was free now having a cost – a declared cost. This differs from before where the photo hosting itself was the loss leader.

Every business that hopes to turn a profit has to recooperate the costs associated with providing its service.  This responsibility is three-fold, of course:

1. To Shareholders – every shareholder in the company has made an investment in the future of the company and cannot provide an infinitely supply of resources to that success
2. To Stakeholders – this includes the employees of the company and the universe of companies that supply services to the company
3. To Customers – most importantly, it’s our inherent responsibility to make sure we persist to continue service to the customer in the method they’re accustomed

Glenn continues on to point out an interesting fact about the economics:

As Web advertising dollars have shrunken from click fatigue and the declining economy, focusing more closely on the most loyal users may shed overhead while increasing ARPU (average revenue per user). A million ad impressions at $10 per thousand views ($10,000) doesn’t add up as fast or come as easily as 1,000 subscribers at $10 per month.

Source: TidBITS, “Kodak Gallery Joins Parade of Free with Payment Services“

Despite the continuing downward pricing trends for storage, cpu capacity, etc. these costs are still not zero and without alternative means to subsidize these sub-systems, growing these features “to scale” quickly becomes non-trivial.

One caveat here, though.  I don’t necessarily mean to equate loyalty with value.  I think that there are a number of different prisms through which we can look our customer-base.  While revenue is definitely a hard metric to avoid, many others come to mind as well.  Will explore those at a later date, though.
For a bit of history, I discussed this topic in September 2005, “The Fine Line Between Free and Profit“

Background

For the past two years, we’ve worked furiously here at Blue Whale Labs with a variety of clients on a variety of topics, from the mundane to the fascinating.  We’ve come to learn a lot about entrepreneurs, but more from interacting with them that by digging deep into the fuel that burns in our own bellies.

“There are no rational entrepreneurs”
David Rose, Angel Investor

Rational, definitely not.  Dreamy, passionate, aspirational, ambitious, insane, even delusional – for sure.  But there’s something special, sexy even, about this combination of traits that keeps your eyes fixated – are we waiting for the fireworks or trainwreck, I’m not sure.

If there’s one trait that can’t be denied, it’s impatience and the general sense of urgency.  This urgency stems from all sorts of places, but there’s at least 2 that prevail:

• Urgency to Survive – in this case, the entrepreneur finds themselves strapped for cash or the other resources to get the wind in their sales and they need to act FASTER
• Urgency to Thrive – in this case, the entrepreneur is aiming for a specific opportunity and time is the only real leverage they perceive

Enter Rapid

Urgency, I’ve found, is the number one reason that bad decisions are made.  Urgency, when pressed to the temples of already exhausted minds, leads to disaster.  Urgency, unfortunately, is not our best ally, but sometimes our best friends are our enemies.

Instead of Urgency, we need to seek out Rapidity.  We live in a world that moves faster and faster.  We have information at our fingertips and networks under our thumbs.  The most interesting personalities to watch today are those wielding the power of one or both.  We envy that focus and clarity, we desire the same in our own lives.

“If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done.”
Bruce Lee

I’m seeing a shift in my own thinking, especially as it concerns how I want to help and work with people going forward.  While in the past, we would toil for extended periods of time over the details of every interaction, I see tremendous merit in quick, swift guidance that cuts like a razor.

Thinking Rapid

There are countless talented individuals that are willing to commit limitless amounts of time to solving and evolving the answers to pressing problems.  We don’t want to be one of them.  We want to do more with less, tactics over strategy, solutions over options.  It’s what we expect from our own team, partners and vendors and the least we can do in return.You know you’re thinking rapid when you already know the problem and can count on your fingers the people who could give you the answers you need.  If your problem takes more than a day to solve, find a smaller problem.

Being Rapid

I’m currently looking for tactical experts – the kind of people that others “ooh and ahh” at when they think to themselves, “If I could just get you to work on this I know all my problems will be solved.”  It doesn’t matter the field, just that you’re expertise is solid, vetted, and available on-demand.

Tactical experts don’t need time to start up or shut down.  They hate working on documentation, avoid phone calls, and resent most face-to-face meetings, except when demanded by the situation.  Tactical experts have tidbits to share, not blogs to write.

If you are one of these people, send me an email at gregarious AT rapidstrategy DOT com.

Staying Rapid

I’m launching a new blog at rapidstrategy.com.  This will be most of our tidbits will get surfaced.  Of course, you might want to follow @rapidstrategy.