SOPA really stands for “Sabotage Online Partners Act”, where anyone can have anyone else, let’s say from a school or library, upload a copyrighted material and before a site can remove it, report the violation as “Theft of US Property” and have the site shut down from DNS Servers…

Give credit for another move to stifle creativity and the slow the advancement of mankind to a crawl. Everyone complains, except lawyers of course, about the how we have become a litigious society. We laugh at the suit that a thief has brought against the homeowner when he fell and broke his arm while “On the job” stealing from their house.

Well, most of the senators and congressmen either were lawyers, or wanted to be lawyers. So we now have to send them to defend our freedom in being able to share things with friends. When I

SOPA really stands for “Sabotage Online Partners Act”, where anyone can have anyone else, let’s say from a school or library, upload a copyrighted material and before a site can remove it, report the violation of “Theft of US Property” and have the site shut down from DNS Servers…

Give credit for another move to stifle creativity and the advancement of mankind. Everyone complains about the how it was so good in the old days. Well how about now?

When a person starts a business, it’s much like a politician starting a campaign, thinking they will be all things to everyone. You hear something like, “We will offer our widget for the best price and have the best quality and we will be one of the best known and respected brands in the world and Amazon will buy us out within a year…” The truth of the matter is that, it is very hard to achieve all 3, at the same time. You have to be like a cheetah, pick the weakest one in the herd and lock in, while locking out the rest.

Zig Ziglar has a great quote that I will always remember, “Businesses don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan…” This is so true. There’s a popular quote in marketing that says, “Don’t be a ready product looking for a customer.” (or Don’t be a solution, looking for a problem that fits the solution). Most companies that start up, go this route, rather than seeing what pain there is and trying to find a solution to it.

It’s very hard to succeed this way, it’s like trying to thread a needle while you are holding the needle and someone else is holding the thread (oh, and they’re not even looking at the needle). It’s best if you worked in the industry you’re trying to help. This might mean you have gone through some of the pain you’re trying to solve. The next best thing is talking to actual people that might benefit from the idea.

First decide what you want to be known for:

1- Price (We offer the best price and no one can beat us),
2- Quality (We offer the best made product with the highest quality parts), or
3- Brand (We are the leader in our industry, not because we are the cheapest, but we offer solutions that fit certain, sometimes a select, group of people’s needs).

Once this is done the product or service will need to be created or completed using the wisdom of the crowds in that segment. The customers/client will let the company know if they have a need for that product or service eventually anyway. So the customer(s) can do this for you at the beginning, when you have not spent a lot of time and resources, or at the end where you will decide all that sunk cost will truly become a sunk cost.

With the Internet, it’s very easy to get a focus group going, it is even easier to get a customer group going. Take advantage of it. Ask and you shall receive. Don’t do it alone. But start by deciding if you want to be the “Price King”, “No one can match our quality”, or “We have a name that is unmatched in this space”.