The 50 Minute ISPCON MBA

Few ISPCON speakers challenged themselves to offer so many ideas in so short a time.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [November 2, 2007]

In their ISPCON session, The 50-minute MBA: 50 Ideas in 50 Minutes, Peter Radizeski of Rad-Info (a consultant) and Jack Brandt, business development manager for Register.com, offered far more than 50 ideas, and, frankly, we did not get them all. You should have been there.

But if you weren't here's a sample of those ideas and links and book recommendations we thought you might find useful.

Start with the basics
A lot of advice may sound obvious, but if you don't do what you should, then the advice that tells you to do what you should do is good advice.

Let's start with this one from Radizeski: "if you don't write it down, it's not a plan."

The act of writing down the ideas you're using to run your business forces you to hone and clarify them, and may make you discard a few. The difference between thinking about something and writing it down is the difference between dreaming about it at night and planning to do it the next day.

Radizeski advised attendees to write down your goals and put a date on the statement. Look at it every month or so. "You may not find that you achieve all of them, but you'll achieve some of them," he said.

Here's another piece of obvious advice that may not be easy to take to heart. "Marketing takes time. Your message has to be repeated over 6 to 9 months. Sales take time too. It takes about 7 touches. You want to spend your time well. The key is to disqualify prospects."

Don't try to market to everyone: instead, find a niche, and pursue it relentlessly.

Give and you will receive
Brandt said that he believes in giving. "Be an information source, an infopreneur. Teach classes, run podcasts, conduct surveys, and share valuable resources. When you give, business comes back. Send written and e-mail thank you notes."

Customers should be so happy with you that they'll do your advertising for you (this is called viral marketing and word of mouth and is a concept you may well be familiar with). "If you tell your story well enough, your customer sees themselves as the protagonist in the story," said Radizeski. "Soon they're telling your story to their friends because they are the main character of the story."

Radizeski recommended the work of Tom Peters, who has been writing best sellers about business for 25 years. He also recommend Endless Referrals by Bob Burg.

Brandt said it's important to keep learning. Build an advisory board or think tank, continue your own learning, go back to school, stay in touch with your customers.

So much to do
It's a lot of work. Radizeski recommended David Seah's website as a source of ideas for better time management.

Having trouble prioritizing? Radizeski recommended Eat That Frog! by Brian Tracy. He said that often when we're doing busywork, we're trying to avoid doing something we don't want to do. That thing we're avoiding is distracting us, and we should go ahead and just do it, even if it's as unpleasant as eating a frog.

Lacking motivation? Radizeski recommended finding and describing a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) as described by in his book Good to Great by Jim Collins (sometime coauthor of Tom Peters). For the short version of the book, see this blog post.

Do you know what you do and if so can you say it?
Not describing what you're doing to your employees and customers? Brandt said that press releases can help your company's website get search engine placement and "get everyone organized."

Don't just work on unhappy customers, Brandt added, call your satisfied customers to learn what you're doing right. A few years ago, he talked to one of his larger customers who said that one thing he'd like to be able to do is buy a domain in the morning and another in the afternoon. But a company rule, preventing additional purchases when there was an open invoice, prevented him from doing that. Brandt fixed the problem.

There were more than 50 ideas in this 50 minute presentation, and we did not get them all. Nothing compares to being there, but this article should be useful, perhaps providing 20 ideas in 2.5 minutes?

— End