As a nascent entrepreneur myself, I was interested to find this new nascent entrepreneur website.
The website is work in progress by the sound of it but definitely something I would be interested in joining, if its put together well – I have sign-up for up dates at least.
This link gives a great visual representation of the UK population. It shows male / female numbers, aged 1 – 85years old. Most interestingly, it shows how the profile has changed and will change over time – between the 1970’s until 2080’s !
Having come from an automotive engineering world where simulation has long since been adopted as the way to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs of design and manufacture, it is surprising to discover lower adoption in other sectors, industrial or otherwise.
Recently I took on a new customer who is in the engineering software sales field. They offer solutions to automotive but also in any industrial sector; aerospace, energy, motor sports etc.
This has led me to really think about simulations place and what the benefits really are. Have we all been duped by awesome software sales teams (possibly), or, (as it more probably) does simulation provide a tangible and quantifiable benefit to business capability and therefore its competitive advantage?
The fundamental physics of mechanics, fluids and electrics don’t change so why has there been lower adoption of simulation in other industrial sectors so far?
Its a question I don’t have a definitive answer too, at the moment at least, but its something I am now deeply considering for my new customer.
As ever, I would welcome your comments.
Currently doing some background research. This is a great little animated graph showing population distribution over time, past and present.
It is the eagerly anticipated start to the F1 season and the first race is at Bahrain, somewhere I spent the very early years of my life. This video shows Mark Webber in the RedBull F1 simulator (something not often shown to the public …) driving the new for 2010 circuit layout.
An export led, high technology Britain is the future, recommended by James Dyson. click here for the pdf.
I agree with him actually and hope his requests and recommendations come to pass. We are a country of inventors and the world should benefit more from that. We are also a country of conservative investors, cautious and risk averse so I believe the biggest challenge is cultural – a consumerist service industry has generated an addiction to easy, quick cash and fast returns, who is brave enough to buck this trend?
This is a good article on Marketing perception and its real purpose in a business.
“The aim of marketing is to make selling unnecessary.”
Peter Drucker
Shame the songs not as awesome but video rocks …
I am having a moment of consideration and consolidation. The online marketing consultancy is open for business and the website is getting visitors from around the world everyday.
The open question remains: Which industry sector?
Although now skilled with the tools to work in any business in any industry, people want reassurance you know their industry and have direct experienced their problems.
Otherwise, they may argue, what value can you really bring them? Their perception is maybe you don’t understand what they are going through. Furthermore, to sell consultancy you have to sell either a saving or an increase in revenue. To justify the fee’s you charge, without sector experience, this is almost impossible by any ethical process.
It was through thinking about this sector problem that I took the opportunity to take a step back and evaluate. Consultancy is an industry limited by time and billable hours – I can only be in one place at one time. Furthermore, where is the incentive, past the good hourly rate? Is a consultant just a self-employed manager, rather than a true entrepreneur?
Here is a perspective from an interview with Chris Knight of ezinearticles.com on the subject:
What is the best advice you have for new or future entrepreneurs?
“Do it and stop talking about ‘doing it.” Get into massive action. Learn and read like mad every single day. Listen to your stakeholders and earn their respect by taking an enormous amount of action that proves you heard what they had to say. Create and design a business that allows you to step out of daily operations. If you are running your business, you are a manager and not an entrepreneur. Nothing wrong with being a manager or even an ‘entrepreneurial-spirited manager’, but true entrepreneurs in my mind unlock the creativity and innovation in market potential for their business and industry –they can only do this if they are not involved in daily operations of the business.
For the full article, click here.
I now run a “digital marketing” strategy consultancy. Bit of a mouthful. However, after much debate with learned and not so learned friends and colleagues, that is the term we decided best describes what the business, Entia Limited, does.
I felt a slight irony therefore while having a haircut in the barbers recently. This is a place I have used regularly for years after one day chancing them because I was stuck in traffic and decided I could do with a trim, while the commutes got their acts together.
Barbers are funny places. They are a world away from your posh hair dressers that the girls use, where they somehow manage to spend 3 hours and £100 getting their hair cut, coloured and blow dried. At the barbers you go in, either sit down straight away in the next available chair, or sit on a bench waiting your turn and reading an old classic car magazine.
As they know me in there, the barbers have followed my journey from Engineering, through MBA, fatherhood and now full time business owner. If you’ve ever watched “Desmond’s” its like that, only they are white.
The thing is “digital marketing strategy” doesn’t have a clear meaning to my barber – “Do you mean TVs and stuff?” Websites to them mean nothing either, from their business point of view at least – the barbers is cash only, they have no need for an online booking service and they are not computer savvy (I am not even sure they have a telephone!)
What then, does digital marketing have to offer my barbers? I feel that if I can answer this question, then it will help me understand really what any of this technology has to offer anyone.
Of course the answer is simple, is about value.
If I could show the value of digital marketing to my barbers with demonstrable increases in profits for him and his business, then that would be the start of an interesting conversation.
However, the fundamental point is that my barber really doesn’t want to work any harder, grow the business, hire more staff or buy another shop. His barbers shop, is a kind of lifestyle business and lifestyle businesses are not attractive for investors or digital marketing consultancy’s – there is no win-win, it would appear.
The strategic part therefore is to know the business one is pitching too as well as the technology. My barber had no clue as to how any form if digital marketing could benefit his business. Brainstorming with him, while he had scissors in his hand cutting my hair, was really not the best environment (and potentially dangerous!).
If one is to do this properly, then your digital marketing consultant should know your business inside out and where the win-win’s are. They should know theirs of course too but you want to know what is going to be effective in your industry and not generically.
Searching around my competition it soon become clear that the word strategy is bounded about quite loosely. Just as anyone with a spanner in their hands is an Engineer these days, so, it appears, anyone with a bunch of crude advertising tactics is now a “strategic consultant”.
Business strategy, for me, is about having SMART objectives based on a focused, data-driven objectives that have been derived from sound Market strategy and market validation. In other words, you’ve worked out you can add value and then how, when and where you’ll implement that value. That is what the MBA teaches you – this and how to go about delivering it too.
The challenge for Entia, as I see it, is how to be heard above the spanner wielders and how to find tactful ways of highlighting to customers that they have either been mislead or could really benefit from having a re-think about their business strategy.
But what has digital marketing got to do with business strategy, they may ask??
I am afraid therefore that here be dragons, political in-fighting and general back stabbing; no-one in an organisation wants to be seen to “get it wrong”. Furthermore, less than no-one wants to pay a consultant to tell them this either …
Suggestions on how I tackle this conundrum are welcome … please comment below!
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I am trying to leverage the “link juice” from this blog to use for my digital marketing strategy business called Entia Limited (link also at top of page). If your business needs a digital marketing strategy, an existing website optimised or website hosting, then Entia can help you do it successfully and cost effectively.
