So, after discovering about the hype- I’ve been practising the standing desk way of work and yep:
I Love It!
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Tag Archives: startup
#LIIT (Living in Interesting Times)
Times have definitely changed.
From when the next big thing was an automatic gearbox in a car to an app that aims to manipulate your ride.
Our economy is also forcing change in areas that we thought would be consistent forever. A very common one being, currency. At first we had evolved from bartering and developed codified currencies to build a steady platform for economies to exist. But as times went on, currency become merely a concept. The physicality of “money” has diminished. The scope of currency has broadened to such an extent that we now have gift cards as currency, airtime as currency, MXit Moola as currency etc.
As the world further turned around its axis, society realised that the physical nature of money was inefficient, unnecessary and detrimental towards the progress of technology. Thus certain products and services were developed in order to aid to such progress. Making it possible to buy airtime without physically having money or even pay for dinner using your cellphone.
“The times, they are a changing”- Bob Dylan
And as times change, so do our needs. Companies like ZooLoo Concepts, are here to aid, facilitate and guide society into this transition from old to new by providing simple and innovative solutions to complex problems. Problems that are both realised by our target market and those problems that our target market hasn’t yet recognised as actual problems.
We Live in Interesting Times. So let’s get together and develop the fuel that will drive this vehicle of positive change: innovation.
#LIIT
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Office Utopia: Benefits of Working from Home
Courtesy of Kristen Rivoli Interior Designs
Wake up. You take that seemingly long awaited yawn and feel your whole face expand. Tiredly reaching out for your door handle, you manage to open it. You start brewing a replenishing cup of coffee. Still with your eyes half closed, you sluggishly manage to drag your feet about 6-more-feet and eventually sit on your chair. You reach for the power button and… you’re at work.
This is my Utopia. I have always wanted to work from home, since childhood. I could imagine the pleasures of walking around half naked while attending to a business call; or reading up an “important”office document while taking a dump…
These were the thoughts of my curious and insanely ambitious teenage-self. In 2012, I managed to get a job (part-time) as a project manager for a property company wishing to expand- digitally. The projects were not very difficult, this allowed me to work from home; live my dream- it was amazing. That experience became part of the reason why we plan to run ZooLoo Concepts from home like we always have… except this time we plan to make it more official. Yep, soon we’ll be calling on to Bob the Builder for some advice on… hammering nails?
A survey summarized in the Microsoft whitepaper, Work without Walls, puts to light the advantages of working from home from the employee point of view:
10) Environmentally friendly (23%)
9) More time with family (29%)
8) Less stressful environment (38%)
7) Quieter atmosphere (43%)
6) Eliminate long commute (44%)
5) Less distractions (44%)
4) More productive (45%)
3) Avoid traffic (47%)
2) Save gas (55%)
1) Work/home balance (60%)
List adopted from Forbes
The above benefits can also apply to you, as an entrepreneur. The parental factor of improvement in the above list seems to be costs. People would be spending less on time, gas and stress and spend more on family, productivity and feeling good.
Could explain how the late Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were so productive…
Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in the first Apple “office”
Following Through: A lesson in Inertia.
Image courtesy of: RedBalloon Inc
[Funny how “inertia” was derived from the Latin word iners meaning “lazy” ]
The principles of inertia are pretty simple: an object in motion will continue to proceed in that motion until that object is subjected to an external force that interferes with this motion. In other words, if you start implementing a plan right now- that plan will proceed in motion unless an external force interferes. In the life of an entrepreneur, you are faced with a number of external forces just waiting to you slow down. The key, is to just keep doing.
You see, the only way that you can resist an external force from holding you back is to find/create an external force that will, rather, accelerate you forward. This is why no matter what obstacle you stumble upon, no matter how slow things are going, no matter who says what- you need to keep moving forward. Truth be told, there are about a thousand and three of those moments when I feel that I should just chill; “I’ll do it later” and as we all know- later never really comes. Before you know it, you’re bumming on the sofa thinking about what could have been. When this right here moment, is the moment in which you can begin to change ANYTHING and Everything. The only way to truly know how good an idea is and how successful that idea will become is to go through with it.
And don’t just start- finish. Don’t just start designing your dream website, commit to it:
- Purchase a domain and get a good hosting client- this monetary commitment will make you conscious of your commitment. As you keep getting billed- you’ll want to See the results of what you’re paying for.
- Create a Twitter, Facebook and Google+ page for the website
- Start filling it up with valuable content
- Tell your friends/family about it
- Start developing a following
- Begin to workout a business model to monetize the site
- Find the correct funding for such infrastructure.
This list of actions represents only a fraction of all the things you can do to allow your site to progress
So, start moving towards goals and use the accomplishment of these goals as fuel to accelerate you to even greater goals. Let your life become a cycle of improvement: iteration after iteration of progress.
‘Cause once you start moving, there is nothing that’s can stop you…
except YOU.Find out how to create your own “external accelerating force” here.
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the fear of becoming
Time, is a gift. It’s there to bring to our attention: the “limited” moments we get to experience in each life-time. Being that as it may, Time is also a load of bullocks. What does Time mean to you right now? There is the now, the coming and the before. Yes, the Past. One of nature’s biggest repressors.
Why?
Time is also a reference; a reference to an old you the you before this you. The lazy you. The confused you. The loser you. And perhaps, the foolish you. This reference is not really a bad thing; except that if you wish to implement some extremely radical but necessary change in your life- you need to step away from that person. So as to become the person you’ve always wanted to be. Someone who is improved/upgraded/remodeled/renewed… perhaps even: more awake
In the case where you have “failed” in the past, and note that failure is merely another process of success, a point in the other direction (in that: you now know what NOT to do). This failure becomes embedded inside your ‘Time Wallet’ and you are then reminded of this failure. And what does that do? It creates uncertainty and doubts within you. You are now suddenly unsure of your strengths, your abilities and Your Plan. You are now flooded with images of your epic failure and how you felt when things all crashed down on you. You begin to think: “I don’t want that happening to me again! I don’t want to go through that pain again!” But you manage to tell yourself that it will be different this time… Only problem is: you’re only Telling yourself this, when you should be Doing what you’re supposed to do to make it happen differently. You’re not doing it because you still have that little bit of fear developed from past failures.
That fear opens a gap for the one thing that you don’t want back- Old habits.
Now you find yourself back where you came from: planting ass-cheek-molds on the couch continually thinking about what you’re going to do next.
How do you conquer this slacking?
!Take Action!
Use what you’ve learnt through this journey of entrepreneurship to pivot yourself to the Next level. Fear, will always try to meddle in your issues. Get rid of it!
Here’s a couple of things that you could do to allow your seed to become R.IP.E
- Reaffirmation. Review and re-affirm all that you truly desire. Go back to the root; the answer as to why you’re putting yourself through all this anyway. Once you realign yourself with your true goals, targets and aspirations- you will reckon with what it is that you want.
- Intention. This is the most important key to overcoming this fear. You need to have a burning desire to get what you want. You need to clarify, again and again, what you’re willing to give to obtain this desire (hard work, sweat, tears, hours, long-nights, hunger etc). Then carry, within yourself, this burning desire all day every day!
- Planning. You need to make sure that you are sure about the plan that you have set forth. If you get the strong feeling that the plan makes sense and you feel as though you can make it work- stick with it. Constant iterations of the plan before taking the first step wastes a lot of time, especially when this starts becoming an unconscious stalling tactic. This “lost” Time will become what stirs up these doubts and then those become fears and you’re then back where you started. Make sure that the plan makes you Feel good because it is the prominence of this feeling that will determine whether or not you take that first step into the unknown.
- Execution. Now that you have figured out what is you want, you’ve also made sure that this is all that you want (turning that want into a need); you’ve also come-up with a brilliant plan that YOU are satisfied is fool-proof.
Now, all you need to do is do it! Just leap.
All you have to keep doing is feeding this burning desire by repeating the above steps over and over again. The rest is just inertia.
Law II: The alteration of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impress’d; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impress’d.- Issac Newton, first law of motion
Overcome your past doubts and memories of “failure” to finally do away with the Fear of Becoming.
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Learn how to: Delegate and Relegate.
Picture credit: http://www.clipartof.com
Sometimes as entrepreneurs we try too hard.
We are hard on ourselves and we believe that for people to validate us as “proper entrepreneurs” we have to always take the hardest way and try create a smarter way even when the most obvious solution is the only solution.
Yes, it is pretty cool to have a story to share with people where you talk about how hard shit was for you and how you got through all the odds to finally make it. Pretty poetic huh?
But the thing is: there are already so many odds against you as an entrepreneur. Why would you want to add to that burden? It only wastes a lot of valuable time.
Instead of trying to crack your brain about a new way to access your app by adding a specific new button on every cellphone; you could just accept that this idea will never scale and move on to the next problem (hopefully this time with a less ridiculous strategy). This week I’m looking to make another employment. I’m employing a “Route Manager” to help me out with getting some information that will prove too time-consuming and costly for me to do by my own. Of course, I suffer the same “superman-condition” so initially I wanted to get all of this done myself and truly “grind hard”. Then it occurred to me that this would really just be pointless and too much.
I chose to delegate.
On the flip side, however: this is YOUR company, YOUR creation, YOUR initiative- you need to make sure that things are done. That’s the difficulty in being at the head of a certain project. At the end of the day, it’s your vision that you are trying to build and thus getting more people to aid you in achieving this vision. No matter how many people you employ, if you startup fails- it’s all on you. It’s your fault because it is your responsibility as the dreamer to ensure that your dream is secured and realized. So when a team member is not performing or when you feel that he/she is not as passionate about the project as they ought to be: you need to make the executive decision to relegate the team member (drop the team member from the league that is- your dream).
Delegate where you can but always be prepared and willing to relegate where you should.
#ProjectZooloo
This $H!T is SLOWWW!… $abali
Image courtesy of: michou87.blogspot.com
There are those amazing mornings.
You know them! Those mornings when you take a warm shower without any problems with the water temperature and without the soap slipping from your hands. The perfectly scrambled eggs, fresh luscious mushrooms, tomato slices, potato wedges and buttered whole wheat toast.
The mornings when you make your first call and the guy on the other end sounds just as keen to hear more from you as you are to present to him and you immediately get a meeting that is exactly when you hoped it would be. You go to the meeting on that very day, it goes well and you get a lead to another potential meeting that will give you a giant leap closer to where you need to be. You go back home, make a sandwich, grab a beer and give yourself an hour reserved for just being with yourself. These days are great.
Then there are those days when you feel like the whole world is working together to make sure that you are eternally screwed every step of the way. The days when you wake up and the water is not warm any more, the toaster is jacked up and you’ve run out of eggs. You are rushing to a meeting that is meant to put you a step forward but actually ends up fucking up everything and makes the day a complete and utter waste of time. You go home, not in the mood to be making gourmet meals so you succumb to a peanut-butter sandwich and a glass of orange juice…
You’ll always have the ups and the downs, the great days and the 24-hour nightmares but the good news is that: it was always going to be that way and it will always be that way. Those days are the days we use to re-evaluate strategy, the days we learn from our past false assumptions and those days where we can just get back up and push on further. The key lesson to be learnt in these times is the value of patience. When shit is going slow, you need to understand that shit isn’t slow… shit is just slow- now. So you need to remember this, admit it to yourself and go forth knowing that things will change. You just have to learn, build and grow.
Patience is a virtue, it too can be nurtured and made into a constant state of mind.
WaR! – Plan Everything
I once came across a quote that went something along the lines of: “visualizing your goal is realizing your goal” (loosely recalled).
We’re always encouraged to set realistic goals, right? Well, part of dignifying your goal as “realistic” is going through the mental picture of the process you assume/intend to use to realize your goal.
Napoleon Hill mentions this in his formula for rags-to-riches success. He later compiled with this a bunch of success stories that further supported and confirmed this formula, he published this work in a book called: Think and Grow Rich. He delves deep into how you need to have your goal locked inside your mind in such a way that it (your goal) IS real. It needs to be so real to you that you can almost feel the comfort of those RECARO seats in your Audi R8, the warmth beneath your feet from the heated floors in your loft apartment or (even better) you can almost hear the noises buzzing around you on the day that you finally take your startup to the market… get it?
So, if you can imagine yourself in these moments then you’ll probably know how you got there- right? Thus you need to plan how you get to the goal that you wish to accomplish or else you’ll risk being stuck in the “dreamer-complex”. You need to begin to plan your road to success- vividly. By vividly, I mean that you need to “fore-live” every step of your plan in your mind; make it real in your mind; write your plan down to remind yourself of it everyday then make it really real.
Start working towards your “reality”.
Be all about that plan, every step of the way.
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What’s so relevant about being relevant?
Courtesy of: http://www.shareyourride.net/
How relevant is YOUR startup?
Up to this stage I haven’t been completely clear about what ZooLoo is actually all about.
Well, if we were to over simplify our purpose it would be: staying relevant.
Many companies try to tap into a market that has already been tested and defined. They want to do this by creating similar products (as those currently available) and maybe add their own significantly jaw-dropping “spice” to it. This is not a bad thing given that your particular outlook on the line of business is a far more relevant one than your competitors. There is no point in deciding to venture into the expansive bread business but only plan to add one more slice of bread in your brand’s loaf and expect that to set you apart from your competition. Quite frankly, I don’t give a shit if there’s one more slice of bread in the loaf. For starters, I have most of my sandwiches made using an even amount of slices (2, 4, 6… You get the point). So adding 1 more slice of bread will honestly just cause an unnecessary imbalance in my life (wow, that was a petty argument).
How about this, rather make your particular brand of bread have no crust on the edges. Every kid loves it that way. Heck, even I like it better that way- therefore: your “game changer” becomes relevant. Thus, significant.
Reach for a target market that you explicitly understand, delve into the psyche of… Yourself.
That’s what ZooLoo is all about. We are a tri-factor of youthful awesomeness! We understand what our target market (varsity students and young professionals) wants because we are- them. We know what our target market would accept as “cool” because well… We Are Cool.
We are a lifestyle company aimed at creating innovative, relevant and smart solutions for the everyday aspects of Young South African Life. Innovative? My co-founder kicks ass when it comes to creating shit no-one would ever think of doing, not even under the influence of psychedelics! He is a psychedelic.
Relevant? If we want it, you probably want it too or you’ll eventually want it. Our team is so diverse that with only the three of us, we encapsulate the diversity existing within our niche market. Possibly also because we have split personalities (Check out Audio Skillz being his party self).
Smart? We use all the tools available for us in this current technological era. We always think “digital” when we start creating a solution. The Digital Space is where we (the youth) are everyday. Tweeting, messenging, listening to music, Facebooking and watching Gangnam Style on YouTube. So why use a hammer when I can use a nail-gun?
We do everything to ensure that we stay relevant and that we create products and solutions that keep in tune with this aspiration. Being online all the time is key, if you wish to stay in contact with your niche market. Staying in contact IS staying relevant. Once you start riding on the same wave as your market, your business will start encapsulating their needs, their wants and their desires.
Remaining True
Image Courtesy of http://naz1barmitzvah.tumblr.com/
How do you not get caught up in the hype?
How does one ensure that they always remember why they are doing what they are doing. If you started coding that lucrative website for the sole purpose of making the lives of others better, then that should be the only thing that you ever focus your efforts on- in respect to your business. What that entails, however, can sometimes be quite difficult…
Look at a company like Digg, they became internet giants by giving their users the best service possible. Staying focused to their goal but as soon as market shares and short-term profits became factors, they used “bully” tactics like their Brigade to gain more control over their users. What they started to neglect, were the voices of the users and eventually the users were heard- when Digg was sold off for a joke of a price.
Read more on the story here
Staying true to the core value propositions that you offered to your first 1000 users is as important as extending the same courtesy to the 1 000 000th user- because he probably became a user as a result of these values. I feel as though too many entrepreneurs end up falling for the whole corporate illusion than trying to make their user experience better and better and better (or at least keep the users satisfied!!). This unfortunate truth hurts the whole “ecosystem” of entrepreneurship. Because you become the bad potato. Startups that become “suits” end up neglecting their users for profits thus elevating the importance of more money over loyalty to their users. And just as how hyper-imaginatively-ridiculous business models were a trend that hurt the ecosystem (refer to The DotCom Bubble) in the early years of the millennium, selling-out has the potential to do the same.
As entrepreneurs, we’ve always been the dreamers. How about we work hard towards living out our dreams and at the same time respect the art that is entrepreneurship?
Project ZooLoo 