Just letting you know I’ve built a new website where I’m sharing all of my information on building websites, internet marketing and online business.

It’s called eCommerce Economy.

Check it out!

Cheers,

Luke

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Without knowing my background, the person I was talking to said something to the effect of “isn’t poker gambling? you always lose at gambling”. I said “no, in poker you can win because you don’t play against the house, you play against other players.”

She looked at me as if to think I was crazy. She couldn’t get past the concept that gambling isn’t always losing.

The point is this: Thinking something doesn’t make it true. Believing something strongly doesn’t make it true.

Truth lies behind evidence. Truth lies in the facts.

Everyone has things they believe which are wrong. Right people are just better at updating their knowledge when they’re proven wrong. Just look at scientists. A scientist will throw out a lifetimes worth of work with glee if it helped someone else to prove them wrong and further human understanding.

So next time someone tells you something that sounds utterly absurd, just quickly think, “why and how”. Also think about “why and how” you believe the opposite. You never know, you might learn something that’s true.

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Over the last couple of days I’ve been in a bit of a reading frenzy and read 37 Signals’ new book Rework by Jason Friend and David Heinemeier Hanson and “Click” by Ori and Rom Brafman and I thought I’d share a few thoughts with you.

Rework

Rework is a collection of essays on running a business. The main point in the book is “Don’t worry what other people think or do, do what is best and what makes sense”.

I’m a massive fan of 37 Signals and of the ideas they put forward. I totally love what they do and how they write. I think the book is worth the read just to give you some time to think about the way you currently do things.

However, being a huge fan of 37 signals is kind of a bad thing for this book. If you read all the blog posts, there’s not much new material here.

I got two main benefits out of it. Firstly, it’s all collated and in a good format. Secondly, it’s very inspirational. It makes me want to start doing things as soon as I finish the book.

Go read it.

Click

Click is a book about why you instantly click with some people, but can’t do any better than an awkward conversation with other people.

I heard of Click after watching this interview on Mixergy with Ori Brafman (the author).

I liked the way the book was set out (very similar to the format of Malcom Gladwell’s books), and I really liked how the concept of “clicking” was broken down into it’s components. For example, one component of “clicking” with another person is “vulnerability”. When you trust someone with something you could be hurt about, it helps build an instant bond.

The book breaks each component down into a number of examples, and explores each one in detail.

I thought it was an ok book. It wasn’t as captivating or inspiring as Rework, but still worth a read.

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I want one, so I went to an electronics store and asked for one. The shop assistant looked at me like I was weird. They didn’t have them in, and didn’t know when they were getting them in.

So I went to another electronics store. This one, I didn’t get approached by customer service and after looking around for a while, it was apparent that they also didn’t have any iPads.

At this point, I think I must be going crazy and the iPad isn’t released today. So I look on twitter, and there are photos of people getting their iPads in Sydney and Melbourne. So I’m not crazy (well not in this instance anyway).

So now instead of just going into the other electronics stores, I figure I might save myself some time, and call ahead to find out if they have any in. So I called all the other stores that might sell an iPad. KMart said they didn’t have them and didn’t know if they were getting them. The story was the same at Harvey Norman. Big W kept me waiting for ages before giving me the same story.

Then I rang a small store (and approved Apple reseller) Dataparts. I was told they haven’t received any, nor have they heard from Apple when they are getting them. The guy apologised, and offered to take my number and he would call me when he knew more.

Now this incredibly drawn out and boring story has a point.

I’m a customer ready to buy. I’ve made my decision, and I’m just here to make the purchase. I don’t care who I give my money to – the price is the same everywhere.

Harvey Norman, KMart, WOW, Big W, The Good Guys. They all have massive marketing budgets. They have TV ads on all the time. Yet not one of these companies is taking advantage of all the marketing they’re doing. I called them first, but they won’t get the sale.

Dataparts, the small local store, was making a list of people to call back when they get stock in. They’re helping me out by ensuring me that I’ll get an iPad, and they remove the need for me to look around. And obviously, at the same time, they’ve won themselves the sale.

They’re picking the low hanging fruit. Here I am, a customer thats ready to buy, and presumably I’m not the only one (Dataparts told me they would have already sold 30 if they had them in stock). It’s so easy to sell to me, because the last remaining ingredient in the sale is just the stock! The hard part, the decision to buy, was already made. I was low hanging fruit.

Wherever there are big companies that have cracks in their sales funnel the size of the grand canyon, there are opportunities for smaller guys to jump in, and pick the low hanging fruit.

Now if only I could get my hands on an iPad.

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It never made a lot of sense to me but I heard a story the other day that really made me realise how stupid they really are.

My girlfriends cousin, I’ll call her Briony, lives about 5 hours drive from Melbourne, and asked her aunt, who lives in Melbourne, if she could stay at her place for one week in the holidays. So the aunt said yes and went ahead and bought train tickets and organised some things to do, etc.

Then come the day, Briony was getting ready to leave and her little brother spoke up and said he wanted to come as well. The aunt said to her, “You’re too late. If you don’t ask, you don’t get”!

What a thing to say to an 8 year old right?

To me it makes a lot of sense. In life, nobody brings you stuff. In life, nobody reads your mind. In life, if you want something, you have to get it.

“People who ask, don’t get” isn’t only inaccurate, it’s damaging.

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What’s annoying for me is all the political bullshit and finger pointing that is going on. Here some stuff from a news article I read this morning.

1. Legislation that means airlines have to pay for the expenses of disrupted passengers

“Ryanair confirmed this morning that it will comply with EU261 regulations under which EU airlines are required to reimburse the reasonable receipted expenses (as set out in EU261) of disrupted passengers”…

Ryanair would continue its efforts to change “absurd” EU legislation so reimbursements were “limited to the ticket price paid in the same way they are for train, coach and ferry operators”.

Why is there legislation that airlines have to pay for hotel expenses for a delay they have no control in?

2. Airlines want the government to pick up some of the bill

Airlines, many already in difficulties during the downturn, want governments to pick up part of the bill after haemorrhaging money during the crisis.

Why do airlines think the government should pick up the bill? Governments are elected to handle defence, education, etc. What has losses suffered from a volcano erupting got to do with the government picking up the bill for airlines?

3. Insurance companies not paying out

“We took out top-level insurance thinking that whatever happened, we’d be covered,” holidaymaker Andrew Widgery told reporters after disembarking in Portsmouth with his wife and four children.

“But in fact, in this situation when I telephoned our insurance company, they said ‘No, I’m sorry, it’s act of God, natural disaster,’ so we felt very isolated and very on our own.”

Ok so what the hell is happening in the world. Why is everybody trying to shift their losses onto somebody else?

Last I checked, Volcanoes happen naturally. It’s nobodies fault that a volcano erupted and sent ash into the sky.

It’s not the airlines fault that the volcano erupted and that passengers can’t fly. Why should they have to pay the hotel expenses of their passengers? Passengers should eat their part of the (unavoidable and uncontrollable) loss.

It’s not the governments fault that the volcano erupted and that the airlines lost heaps of money. Why should they have to bailout the airlines? Airlines should eat their part of the (unavoidable and uncontrollable) loss.

And the one industry that is meant to bend over and take it in these times is the insurance industry. People get insurance to cover them from stuff like this happening. Why are they not paying out the passengers expenses instead of the airlines?

Insurance companies get away with not covering “acts of god” (What constitutes an act of god? What about if you’re an atheist? Why would god care about causing a volcano to erupt?) because they happen so rarely and everybody understands that if one happens, they just have to eat it. Insurance companies not covering acts of god is wrong. It’s a market failure caused by the infrequency of these types of events.

Everyone hates losing, but I think everyone needs to take a step back and realise that this stuff is unavoidable, nobody is responsible for it, and nobody is responsible for any losses that it caused. The only people that should be paying out money are insurance companies, and instead, they’re the ones keeping it.

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First though, for those who don’t know what Google Wave is, it’s a new app that blends email, instant messaging and document collaboration. Rather than me explain what it is, check out this quick video about it.

When I first got into my Wave account, I was lonely! Once I added some people though it turned out to be pretty cool.

Instant Messaging

We got a 4 way instant messaging conversation going between me and some friends that I’d invited. Before using Wave, I thought that having the letters show up as you type is a bad thing because often you want to change your message half way through. What I found though was that having letters showed up made communication loads faster.

When someone else was typing in a message, I can see where they are heading with their thoughts before they send the message. If I know what they’re going to say, then I can start typing my reply before they’ve finished their message. And because it works both ways, it actually speeds up the conversation considerably.

Group Planning

I also created a Wave to plan for the family holiday coming up next year. I separated the different aspects and then people started replying in different areas of the Wave.

The Wave makes it easy to break up the conversation into multiple points.

Instead of having one long email and having to say “In regards to the location:” at the start of every paragraph, what you’re talking about is obvious based on the place it is in the wave. It’s actually quite easy to talk about where, when and how all at the same time, because each conversation is in a different area.

Collaboration

I started a Wave for one of the quotes I’m working on. For this quote, there are about 10 different items that have to be costed individually.

Again, being able to talk about each individual item separately feels nice and is intuitive.

I can quickly upload relevant files. Though I tried to upload a recording of a meeting but there is a 20mb size limit on files.

Fun

I also started mucking around with the Sudoku gadget. Basically, this allows you to play Sudoku against as many people as you want.

Not a new concept, but definitely novel to try it out.

For the record, I won.

Downsides?

There were a few downsides for me. Firstly, the interface isn’t as smooth as I would like. It feels a little bit like I need to upgrade my computer so that it’s a bit smoother.

Also, the interface isn’t as intuitive as I would’ve thought. For instance, one thing that has bugged me is that when I go into edit mode, I can’t get out of it unless I click on another Wave. There are a few little things like that.

So how will it affect productivity?

For me this is a double edged sword. There are the obvious productivity boosts – I am able to collaborate and communicate much more effectively.

However, I currently turn off all notifications on Outlook so that I’m not distracted when I’m doing a task. What if I’m doing a document in Wave, and I see a response to another Wave come in? It’s so easy to quickly check it – I know I won’t be able to stop myself from having a look.

And what happens when that Wave gracefully turns into an instant messaging conversation? I can see myself spending a lot more time “collaborating”.

My thoughts

Overall I’m really excited about using Wave. It feels much “easier” and I think Google have succeeded in bringing communication to the next level.

I have a few questions that can only be answered as time goes on and Wave actually gets used. For me, I’m interested to see how Wave will improve my workflow.

On a more macro level, I’m interested to see how much Wave is going to take over from email? Or is email and Wave going to coexist for a long time?

In the mean time, I have a few invites left, let me know if you want in!

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1. Access to high speed internet is widespread and increasing
2. Pretty much all laptops these days come with a webcam on them
3. Laptops these days come with a mic on them
4. Live Messenger and all other instant chat programs, and probably even Skype, have one click video calls
5. It takes 5 seconds to setup a video call for the first time, after that it’s just one click

I guess theres a few reasons why they aren’t widespread

1. People sit at their computers in the nude
2. Instant messages are more instant
3. Can feel invasive

With all that said, yesterday I decided to make the switch.

I work very closely with my contracters. I have a designer and a programmer that work from home, and I spend a lot of time on MSN communicating with them. Yesterday I had a new design that needed to be done. It is quite a complex design, and there were quite a few things that needed to be included.

I started out with typing them to him and then realised that this just was going to take ages. I was just about to pick up the phone, when I thought to try a video call. 

Well it was brilliant. I could show some diagrams that the client had drawn up and I could really explain it a lot better and a lot faster.

The brief was done in a quarter of the time it would otherwise take.

It was also a lot clearer what needed to be done.

It was so good, that I’m wondering why this isn’t more widespread.

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The 4-hour work week – Tim Ferris

What it’s about: The 4 hour work week opens up a new perspective on life and work. Tim Ferris recommends streamlining your life, eliminating unnecessary tasks, outsourcing necessary tasks and then travelling the world.

What I got out of this book: The chapter on his business model was the most intriguing to me.
In it he explains his criteria for a business that can run itself (or a musing, as he calls it). He then goes on to explain how to create a product, structure it, advertise it, and make it successfull.

I also really liked the part about virtual assistants, and streamlining tasks such as phone calls, meetings and emails.

What made me wary: Tim makes a lot of assumptions in this book, and every now and then he strikes me as a smart guy who followed his whim who happened to stumble onto a profitable business. I have friends who I would describe the same way that Tim describes himself, and it makes me think that for every guy like Tim who becomes successful by following his whim, there are probably 20 others who think the same way but just couldn’t catch a break.

Web design business kit – Brendon Sinclair

Having forked out the almost $400 AUD and set aside the time to read this book, I can safely say that this is without a doubt the best $400 my business has ever spent. The experience Brendon has that he imparts through this book is absolutely invaluable. Most of it relates to something very simple – how to better serve the customer. Because in the end, that’s what business needs to do!

What I got out of this book: Since reading this book I have setup and documented systems for all the major processes in my business, basing them on the templates in the kit, and editing them to suit my business. That alone is easily worth the money.

This book got me to asking myself questions about the way I do things, and can I do them better. 

What made me wary: Whilst the kit has been updated since it was made in 2004, and although a lot of the information is timeless, parts of the book (especially those directly related to actual website development) is a bit dated and not relevant.

This kit is available from sitepoint, and cost $247 USD. People may also find Brendon’s website, Tailored, interesting.

Bag the elephant! How to win and keep big customers – Steve Kaplan

The title is pretty self explanatory here. The book demonstrated how big customers (elephants) can produce sustained growth for a business.

What I got out of the book: It’s always great to get a perspective from someone who has been very successful. Whilst my business is still too small to directly relate to this book, I did gain a lot of insight as to how big businesses operate and how they can be navigated.

What made me wary: The book was a bit on the dry side, however apart from that I don’t really know enough about the subject to give any meaningful criticisms.

Summary

Those are my book reviews for now, I’ve been reading other books as well, and have still got more books to go through (since uninstalling my computer games I’ve been on a massive read-a-thon), so there’s a pretty good chance I’ll do another of these posts in the future.

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