The whole point of you starting a business was to get in control of your life, to do something that you’re passionate about. It wasn’t about the money, but about being able to do what you love. What did the heck happen?
Empowered teams have increased levels of responsibility and authority over the work that they do, giving them the autonomy to plan and manage work, make their own decisions and solve their own problems responsibilities that are traditionally owned by the team leader.
As someone who leads a team, you’ll be used to being the decision-maker, problem-solver, planner, manager, and instructor.
In short, you’re normally the one whos in control.
It means handing over much of this control, along with many associated responsibilities, to your team.
Its quite the opposite of your team needs you more than ever! You may have handed over a great deal of control, but you’re still ultimately responsible for the work of the team.
Just because you’ve given power to others doesn’t mean that you’ve lost it yourself.
You’re still the one who defines the goals and boundaries, and your team will still look to you for support, guidance, and encouragement.
The 10 steps can help you to better empower your team members.
I wasn’t able to go to the Echelon event. But, I was following the whole action via Twitter. One of the key takeaways from the blog posts I read and the tweets I read was Fake the Chicken!.
quotable @erenbali @udemy: “Q: how 2 solve chicken/egg problem 4 marketplaces? A: Fake The Chicken.” (manufacture liquidity) #Echelon2014
— Dave McClure (@davemcclure) June 10, 2014
You won’t know that feeling of that you missed something really important from a guru when he’s in town. Ever since I missed Echelon I felt like that after I missed Eren Balis talk.
Suddenly this popped in from fi.co. The video from Echelon. Immediately started watching. And, here are few notes that I have gathered from Eren Balis talk.
The different aspects that you will have to decide when you start a marketplace business is shown in the below slide about the service chain of your marketplace business:
Service Chain for Marketplaces
Connect Supply & Demand How are you going to connect your buyers to your sellers?
Discovery How the buyers are gonna find you?
Discovery How the sellers are gonna find you?
Pricing How are you gonna price the products? Set by the sellers / centralized
Service / Product What kinda product are you gonna sell?
Customer Experience Is the whole process of connecting buyers and sellers visible to the buyers & sellers (decentralized) or its just automatic (centralized)?
Support Who provides support? The seller or the marketplace?
If you still don’t resonate, the below provides you with an example of a decentralized and a centralized marketplace.
If you say that your company is a Uber for X then you are centralized.
If you say you are a Craigslist for X then you are decentralized.
Simple!!
Centralization vs Decentralization
Getting the Initial Traction:
Chicken And Egg
Question: Whos your chicken and whos your egg?
It depends on a marketplace to marketplace. In udemys case, the speaker says that they faked the courses to attract customers. They put their team and investors to work i.e. to prepare faked courses to put up on udemy. Well, it’s not really fake. They delivered and showcased the value of their platform through these.
Liquidity is the most important thing
Yeah! Liquidity is the most important thing. Get money in As Soon As Possible. The udemy team started selling paid courses! Not free courses!
On a side-note: Free is no more a model to validate your business. You have to get people to pay money. That’s how you validate!
So, how do you get money in your pocket?
Do things that don’t scale
That’s a quote from Paul Graham which is worth a 100 billion dollars! Do Things That Don’t Scale!
How do you do that? You will call and talk to customers to buy from you, give them gifts, give them free credits for the money they spend with you.
All these are not scalable (i.e. you will be losing money/time doing such stuff), but it helps you build up your initial customer base. You will also learn a lot of stuff doing this. Stuff like what your customers are really looking for. And a ton of ideas for future marketing.
Achieving Early Growth:
Focus on Segment
Focus on a segment and then expand. Be known for one little thing. You can expand later. The beach-head, the niche, the low hanging fruits or whatever you call it. Uber did this with Luxury cars. They were known for Luxury cars and then recently they are stepping into cheap taxis as well.
Early Growth Ideas
So, now its time to build your marketplace business with an advantage. Don’t have an idea yet, look below:
The Spawn of Craiglist
This post is about how to manage your deadlines better and not slip your delivery time.
There are various tips and tricks to help you better manage your deadline:
Set the deadline first and then decide how you will achieve it. This approach is great when choices are abundant and projects could go on indefinitely.
If you are attempting something new, test out smaller versions of a project to help you decide on a final deadline. Write a 10-page e-book before your 300-page novel or try to increase your income by 10% before aiming to double it.
Find the Weak Link
Figure out what could ruin your plans and accomplish it first. Knowing the unknown can help you format your deadlines.
Robots can work without sleep, relaxation or distractions. You aren’t a robot. Don’t schedule your deadline with the expectation you can work sixteen hour days to complete it. Death marches aren’t healthy.
Get a realistic picture of people working with you. Giving impossible deadlines to contractors or employees will only build resentment.
If you use a backward planning model, you need to constantly be updating plans to fit your deadline. This means making cuts, additions or refinements to the project will fit into the expected timeframe.
“Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created.” – Albert Einstein
Specify the problem and the desired outcome (Think divergently and then convergently Focus to define the problem)
Use How to. method prepare multiple problem definitions starts with How to Make leading how-tos
eg.
How to make me lose weight?
By eating less
How to make me eat less?
By taking fewer calories
How to make me take fewer calories?
Well better exercise more
How to make me exercise more?
Go to the gym!
Search for ideas, solutions, options (Think divergently list as many options as possible brainstorm)
Two methods to search for ideas/solutions:
i) Associate to a superhero (eg. Spiderman)
a) Derive the superheroes characteristics (Brainstorm)
b) Associate the superheroes characteristics to the context of the problem
ii) Reverse the problem eg. How to make me fat?
a) Derive ways to reverse the problem / make the problem worse eg. Eat more cheesecake
b) Reverse and associate the ways to worsen the problem of finding solutions for the actual problem eg. Stop eating cheesecakes
Weigh, Judge, Evaluate each alternative option (Converge)
Commit to a solution and implement it
I recently took training on taming your EQ / Emotional Quotient at my workplace. This article is some of the notes/lessons learned from the training. It really was an insightful training.
Questions to ask yourself:
Emotions in facial expressions only last for .5 seconds. Learn to read them. If you don’t react to other people’s emotions that doesn’t make you a good communicator!
Value others emotions, and how to transform them by using the below technique:
VET – Validate, Explore, Transform.
Ask questions to drive other emotions to positivity.
Validate, ask questions to drive them towards fearlessness rather than being blunt and saying (it’s just a cockroach) vs say (why are you afraid? …. Why do feel scared about that? … etc.)
