"Less is More" mentality for small business

Monocle is a great source of juicy global nuggets of information... news, commerce, politics... all their stories (at least those that I've reviewed) have a sincere, local feel to them, offering a vivacity and honesty to the people and places they capture.

One of the latest episodes (it's another automatically-updating Podcast subscription of mine) features Bildschone Bucher (forgive the missing umlauts), a small bookshop in Berlin. I've always been fascinated by small bookstores because I never could grasp how they stayed in business. Not having researched the subject all that much, I would occasionally walk/drive by a hole-in-the-wall bookstore and think "Why on Earth would any person in his or her right mind search for and buy books HERE!? The selection is minimal, prices are bound to be higher than the big guys (or the library!), and most often the location isn't prime real estate either..." Well, silly me...

Bildschone Bucher's philosophy is simple... "Whilst everything (major booksellers) are aggregating and getting larger, we are intentionally staying smaller." "Big bookstores want to show more, display more, get you to buy more. People like coming into our bookstore because they don't feel overwhelmed; we aren't pushing anything down their throat, and there is a manageable selection from which to choose. Part of our service to our patrons is choosing a selection of books for them."

Ay, there's the rub. Yet another example of success by staying local, carving out a niche and serving it well.

Bildshone Bucher's decides on what makes its cut based on whether or not the staff "falls in love" with a particular book. By chance, they tend to fall in love primarily with photography books (about 80% of their inventory). Some of the images on their site are dazzling... check it out!

Also interesting to note that the founder had first started his bookselling venture online, with a concept and website called 25 Books. Only after its success did he decide to move the business to a brick and mortar operation as well...

(Updated 3/1/08)
And to FURTHER illustrate the point, I just read one of Guy's posts which I had not seen previously... "If You Want Customers to be Happy, Give Them Less Product Information."

It's a study that showed consumers who were given less information about chocolate and body lotion were able to optimistically use their imaginations to wishfully think and form positive impressions about the products. Whereas, those overloaded with details of the products' chemical composition, preservatives, etc. could not as easily overlook those details.

So, for some products, is consumer ignorance truly bliss?

ANOTHER Fortune Cookie? and some BIG NEWS

So I thought I saved this fortune from yet ANOTHER overly insightful fortune cookie, thus I've waited a few days to make this post in hopes of it turning up. Alas, I'll have to proceed without the photo... believe at your own risk! And for those of you who are wondering - No, I don't eat Asian food that often. It was merely a coincidence -I promise!

Last week I enjoyed a much overdue meeting with my friend Anh Nguyen. He's the type of guy a very level head, and his personality weaves a fine balance between entrepreneurial go-get-em enthusiasm and hard-working conservatism. I worked with Anh to help him open a Quiznos franchise he started and has since sold off, while maintaining his full time career at Deloitte. Every once in a while we bounce new venture ideas off each other. Naturally I was eager to update him on our progress.

We met up for Chinese due to his recent conversion to vegetarianism... a difficult routine to get into for a full-fledged omnivore, but likely a rewarding one once you get over the hump.

Upon opening my fortune cookie on the ride home I remembered the fortune I'd received after lunch with Brandon (full story) and I was hopeful to keep my string of positive, relevant fortunes alive!! I got my wish. It read:

"You will receive some needed support this week. Accept it graciously."

Did we ever!!!!

I'm about ready to burst because I still in good conscience can't quite proclaim our good news YET... but it's like millimeters away and I can't wait for the huge sigh of relief (which will be followed by a tsunami of work...). The bottom line is we secured funding for our first acquisition and I definitely underestimated how difficult that process is. I knew it would be lots of work, but all this projecting and negotiating and justifying and amortizing and present valuing.... all gets a bit tiresome. And I'm confident this was an ~easy deal, in the world of "deals."

Now I have to make sure to "accept it graciously." Heck, I'll do whatever the fortune tells me to do if I keep up this streak!!!!

Are Your Favorite Sites Global Faves Too?

Curious to see how your blog, favorite social network, media source, or company website stacks up in today's growing Internet space? These are two great resources to learn how much traffic the Internet's leading websites (and in fact almost all websites) are garnering.

www.alexa.com

The gold standard of online traffic data. Alexa developed a proprietary ranking system averaging Reach and monthly Page Views - this means a site's rank reflects 1) number of users and 2) number of pages viewed. Read the full explanation: (Alexa Traffic Ranking Definition).

It's got a great feature where you can plot the growth trend for multiple sites to see how they compare to each other. (Notice how I say "growth trend" as opposed to "trend" w/o hesitation. I'd be interested to see some hard data on how many websites/ebusinesses are truly in a "mature" stage of their life cycle. My guess - not many.)

http://www.quantcast.com/

Quantcast uses a much friendlier user interface (in my humble, non IT-background opinion). My favorite feature is the clearly stated Unique Visitor and Unique Page View count, which Alexa does not display in its rankings. Plus, Quantcast's Top 100 U.S. sites provides an interesting 1-line demographic snapshot of the featured sites (Top 100 U.S. sites).

You can also "Quantify" your site/blog by becoming a member, enabling you to view detailed reports of your site's traffic. Of the top 100 sites in the U.S., 7 of them have already done so. I can't vouch for the service b/c I don't use it - my guess is Google Analytics still takes the cake in this arena.

Plus, I just subscribed to Quantify's blog. 90% of the posts are featurettes highlighting a "new addition" to the Quantify family. It's a great way to find some great new sites you might be interested in (although StumbleUpon's definitely a more efficient method to serve this purpose). A couple of recent discoveries:

ICanHasCheezburger.com--- My gut is telling me this site makes (MUCH) more $$ than it should. If that's the case, I can only say one thing (equal to the sentiment I have towards country singers) - good for them.

HairFinder.com --- Ditto above. It's really just a facade site driving traffic to Amazon book sales.
And they get 1.3MM global uniques / month!!! Oh affiliate Marketing, how I love thee!

A Pair of Thoughts on Global Improvement

The following are the type of thoughts you gotta get out of your head somewhere. Thank you blog o' mine for being the convenient ventee that you are.

ACCESSIBILITY

This passage is the result of months of built-up frustration from one of the business world's most well-loved functions - Sales and (the art that is) Cold Calling. Brrr... makes me shiver just thinking about it.... or maybe that's the blust'ry -20F windchill from our ever-lovely MN winter.

In truth, I like cold calling. I've "met" many successful, interesting, high-powered, energetic individuals over the phone. It's a great way to connect with people you'd otherwise have no chance to. And I've actually met some of them - a few of which have evolved into business partners, career counselors, personal advisors, friends, and of course - advertisers (I call more media buyer types in a day than anyone should have to. Ever. They are great people, I just know that a good percentage of the time, they'd rather have a heart-to-heart with a hole in the ground than listen to my 30-second pitch of how I can guarantee them an ROI while helping them grow their business.)

I think the world would be a better place if more intelligent and well-connected people were more accessible.

I can't over-emphasize how many times I have just straight-up been snubbed after a polite and professional series of voicemails/emails, without a single notion of recognizing my existence. And I promise Mr./Mrs. media buyer... you really DO want to hear what I have to say! I wouldn't be wasting my time calling you if I didn't think there was a sincere chance that we might actually mutually benefit from the conversation, right?

Is the problem that today's current channels (telephone, email, IM) don't suffice? Or is the problem that today's Marketers and business leaders don't understand the value of being accessible and connecting with and learning from the people around them?

I guess I need to invent a way for busy people to easily respond to those reaching out to them, and to motivate those busy folks to want to respond.

WOMEN

My addiction to absorbing a few "TED talks" each night before I go to bed continues. I subscribe to their video podcast, so as they release videos from their archive, iTunes conveniently downloads the new ones for me (although some aren't "new," as opposed to "newly released." Whatever - they're new to me!)

Last night I was flipping through the 117 "talks" I have downloaded (no I don't progress through them systematically - how fun is that?), and I came across the following description

"In one of the most beloved talks from TED2007, novelist Isabel Allende talks about writing, women, passion, feminism. She tells the stories of..." and my screen doesn't show any more. Now, the typical, yesterday Kevin Carlow would have read that preview and almost instantaneously continued his perusal. Reason - something about feminists, generally speaking, doesn't sit well with me. Perhaps it's my naivete, but the few that I know are passionate but stubborn and thus (in my eyes) close-minded about a non-feminist point of view. Passion is always refreshing, just listen to the other side too!!

So I watched it, wanting to believe I possessed this "open mind" I was preaching about in my head. What a fantastic idea - I recommend it highly (Isabel Allende: Tales of Passion). She's not an award-winning speaker and her ideas aren't earth-shakingly profound - but Isabel exudes truth, feminine strength, imagination, and not surprisingly, passion. Plus her sense of humor was refreshing and real.

More and more often I find single thoughts, passages, ideas, philosophies, or quotes which strike a particularly strong chord with me. She delivered one such line in mere passing, but it resonated fully. As she was preaching about the benefits of empowering women and unfortunate truths of the poorest and most backward societies that consistently oppress women, she delivered this thoughtful line:

"Men run the world, and look at the mess we have."

Now, I could go for an hour debating all angles of this point. My broad takeaway on this statement is - she's right. Women have been oppressed and disenfranchised since history can remember. Men hold an absurd majority of seats of power: political power, commercial power, military power, religious power, terrorist power, high-technology power, judicial power, law enforcement power ---- all utterly dominated by men. Of course an increasing population of women excel in virtually all categories above, but globally speaking, this number's still a tiny fraction.

If we had true gender equality, with female instincts, intelligences, and intuitions influencing half of the stuff that goes on, the world would be a HUGELY different place. And I might just go as far as Ms. Allende does and say... a better one.

A few blogs I like

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/
If you're into high-tech, Guy Kawasaki's blog opens tiny windows into the world from his evangelical viewpoint. Not as "juicy" as it could be (I bet he meets some really cool people in a given week), but very much worth subscribing to the feed nonetheless.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/
Seth Godin's blog is focused on... well I shouldn't really say it's FOCUSED on anything... He's a Marketing/Technology ideologist and author. His perspective is down to Earth, refreshing, and many of the things he says make me go "ya know, that's a damn good point!" He also points out some cool Internet resources every once in a while.

Another great way to find new blogs is using Google Reader's "Discover" function. It automatically recommends new RSS feeds based on the ones you subscribe to and how often you view them. Plus you can browse for any keyword that interests you (i.e. I typed in "change the world" and boom - Guy's blog won a seat in my Feed Reader).

(And I'm a little partial to this ViciGuy one too!!)