PhrasesPeople before profit Relationships before revenue Most ImportantBelieve Know you can do it or don't start. You are competing with someone who believes. Exciting Be excited or don't start. You are competing with someone who is excited. Leader You can't afford to have a majority vote every time a decision needs to be made. You need a leader. - 32:58 stargate.universe.s01e12.720p.bluray-avchd Also ImportantMotivating Leader Listen to your team. Motivate each to be a leader. No Ego Ego kills teams. Skin in the game All your partners must put in their own money to show they are serious Expectations Set expectations. Meet or exceed them. Be accountable. Meetings Be on-time or early to all your meetings, or notify in advance if you will be late or need to reschedule. Respect others' time. DUE - Desire, Urges and EmotionKnow what people want, what is "due" to them. Build a product or service that tugs at those heartstrings. I want cheap plane tickets. I want a game that lets me be king. I want to meet a future wife or husband who will be good to me. And so on. Brand Ambassadors and NamesHelp your users become your brand ambassadors. Create short, memorable names that can become brands. eg: If you are a rental agency, create the "FLOW" plan - for leisure or work People cannot easily describe a concept, but they can same a name to help spread your brand by word-of-mouth. RelationshipsA good reason to buy is "I know you and you will get a cut if I buy from you" This premise is what Amway, ACN and all other multilevel marketing companies are based on. But you don't have to be an MLM to utilize it. Tip: Create an affiliate program in your business where your customers or users can refer their friends and get something of value in exchange. Shares vs. EquityFocus on share value and number of shares, not percentage equity. When you go raise the next round of funding, investors will look at share value and number of shares, not who owns what percentage of the company. LegalNon-compete clauses are not enforceable by any court in North America You cannot contractually bind people after they leave a company. If they try, a simple properly-formatted letter stating the same in legal language ends it. Solicitation is enforceable. Do not take company clients with you. Do not take company employees with you. If they choose to quit to join you on their own after learning you quit, that is okay. If another business offers them a position, that is okay. Question: If you leave, can you approach existing employees to quit? Best Business IdeasBest of One place for the best of everything. Best WoW video, best WoW PvP video, best WoW PvP Rogue video, and so on YouTube Network AttributesFranchise model Others can build their own brand within your structure eg: TGN within BroadbandTV within YouTube Team Expertise to do all necessary aspects of the business Legal, business advisor, and so on Exit GoalsBryan Starbuck, CEO of empower.me, said, "Don't target $20-50MM exit. That is a lifestyle business and no VC will invest in such a business. To really make it worthwhile for investors and potential co-founders/employees, a business needs to target a much larger 100-300MM exit." Set the MoodIn everything you do, set the mood for your audience. Every video, every speech, even every conversation, consciously influence the mood with music, scent, tone of voice, color, environment around you, and so on. You will communicate more effectively! If the mood is right, others are more receptive to agreeing with you and saying "Yes" instead of "No". It is called foreplay, or prelude, or introductions, but it is all the same thing: set the mood before you start. Define the BrandWhat is your flag? Every country has one, every company has one. You need one. If your brand is TGN, answer these questions: What is TGN? What does TGN promise to do? What does TGN promise to never do? Build the TeamWho is your core team that you trust completely? If you are just starting, build that trust. Find at least 1 person and start growing your relationship together. This takes months. Keep adding people to your team. Always be recruiting. Promote the LeaderPick 1 person to be your leader and follow him. Support him. And he supports you. Leadership NotesSpeak with clarity and focus - if you do or say too much, you demotivate and defocus your team Your team acts like you act - you are their role model Your actions create a personal brand in people's minds Time is the one thing you can never get back. You can get money back, not your time. Presentation NotesProblemsMap problems with solutions (Table with Problem Solution Effect columns) Start your presentation with the 3 big problems and how you are solving them Real-world data Always show real screenshots and stats eg: Using our tool, we got 250% more views after optimizing the tags in this way Money How do you make money, how much and what growth Your Company NameUnique If you Google it, you are #1 with sub-links What is it? [your name] is [describe in as a few words as possible] eg: TGN creates careers in video ★ YouTube ★ EDU ★ Livestream ★ TV WAY➚ is a career path in video Details? eg: TGN creates careers in video with high 80% rev share partnerships! We train you and promote your work, but it is up to YOU to learn and grow. The only cost is your time - our service is free. Plug into the friendly community at http://tgn.tv and get started! Partners with content creators ★ Livestream network ★ TV network ★ A career path and educator in video ★ Good examples reddit No other "reddit" companies out there nuxeo #1 with sub-links Iffy eamples TGN https://www.google.ca/search?q=tgn Took us over a year to get #1, and still we don't have the sub-links thegamenet https://www.google.ca/search?q=thegamenet #1, but not for "gamenet" https://www.google.ca/search?q=gamenet Bad examples Windows https://www.google.ca/search?q=windows Microsoft had to compete with all the "glass and windows" companies and still does. Vantage Too many companies start with "Vantage" Even the one we want, Vantage Software, is still not #1 in that search Advice from Successful EntrepreneursHighlights: #1 most important tip: Communication. There is no such thing as over-communication when you are doing a startup Find the fewest possible features that can accomplish your goals. Don't implement more until those are done. Think about the problem you want to solve and ask yourself: “Could I accomplish this on an email list?” Try it. On an email list. Twitter did not start out to solve a problem, but they launched a pretty minimal product. It was engaging because it was super simple to use. Think: Instagram. Stop thinking about the Big Picture. Start creating value now. Wrong things: anything that pushes people to do what you want them to do (i.e. spend more time on your website) Right things: let people do what they want to do where they want to do it (don't try to own your audience, instead integrate with other popular services like Facebook) Only build based on real-world data and user feedback, not personal opinion You don't need a crystal ball to tell you what to do next, you need analytics Is what you are building viable? How many will use it? What we did wrong: kept focusing on (our idea of) the final product and building minimum components of that vision rather than asking what our customers could really use. Picking a co-founder is the same as picking a husband or a wife * Complimentary skills * Can pull their own weight (these are co-founders, not employees) * Good conflict resolution skills (ability to kiss and makeup after the biggest fights you will ever have) * Undying faith in you, the team and what you are doing * Strong personality If you are married, your spouse needs to understand you are bringing in a second (or 3rd) spouse into your life What matters? Not who you are, where you worked or what you did before. Only product/market fit for what you are building. Nothing else Don't read the news. Ignore all that noise. It's just a mass of envy, chatter and FOMO (fear of missing out). Let's get excited and make things. If a competitor raises more money than you, then they are hiring big teams to make mistakes that you can learn from There is 1 thing I have done right that you should also know about: Never give up! Words of WisdomPraise in public, ridicule in private Brand#1 goal for any business: build your brand People need to talk about your brand. Your brand and image must be better than your competition's. TGN is branded as "Gamer TV community" Useful resourcesInvestor FAQHow do you attract business away from competitors? Do you have disruptive technology that will be of value to the end-user? Business plan won't help. Technology lingo is not understood. You must show exactly what you do and how people are using it. A working prototype is best. Value to Users? Value to Partners? Disect our pitch deck! http://see.tgn.tv/tgn-pitch Value propositionSee | Great business ideasAggregate Groupon and over 300 popular deal sites PerksGive people perks they appreciate One-up all your competitor's workplaces (eg Google workplace) Daycare so you can go see your kid during lunch Dry cleaning so you don't have to do it elsewhere Feel the reward constantly Wages and shares become expected soon after awarded Shares are awarded after proving you are irreplaceable -or- If you prove you increase the value the company -or- Do you need your partner? Can you do the business without them? NeedsMailing listwww.mailchimp.com Conduct interviews www.tgnlive.com Put a video on every page www.divinesouls-wiki.com/combos/fighter-combos Create a YouTube channel with playlists www.youtube.com/tgnDivineSouls Ads Cheapen the website, and not very scalable. Better to aim for revenue sharing, and charging for some services.
Good business model: Wordpress Developer subscription wpmudev.org makes the best plug-ins out there and charge a monthly/yearly subscription. You subscribe to them yourself, and what hooked you after just trying it for one month is that you saw that there was constantly new plug-ins being updated, and new stuff slated for the near future - this convinced you to buy a year's subscription.
Once you get a large amount of users of your website/tools, a small percentage of them will pay for the service. Analogy of filling a bathtub: it takes a while to fill it up (get users), but once it fills it will slowly and constantly be overflowing (overflow=cash flow). Use videos Setup a YouTube Channel for the company with playlists
Interviews TGN did a call for interviews at a game convention, and interviewed on video people to talk about their game and their game company. Then you posted these interviews on your site, and they became a huge hit with those that were interviewed, since they also spread it to their network. [I think this is a great idea and it never even occurred to me]
Cross-promoting your other business/sites. You have hundred of videos on your YouTube channel, at the end of each one there are links to "related content", which point to other TGN videos and websites. We could do this to promote our other shader site (Lumnance) from Lollipop and vice-versa. To build up your users: start giving everything away for free, then at a certain date start charging. [I think we will want to keep some simple shaders free all the time, and update with free stuff once in a while, while maintaining a subscription/pro site for all the good stuff] |
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