You Teck's Blog

Don’t Sell Us a Product, Tell Us a Story

Posted by You Teck - 23/06/11 at 10:06:53 am

I think most of us can personally relate to a situation where we were instantly sold on buying certain products because of a story.

Story delivers a very unique kind of informative experience in the way that a listener wouldn’t probably get turn off even if there is certain amount of hype hidden it.

As opposed to selling via the product itself, story brings a listener into an imaginary space where they are actively participating in the “selling” process as they can better relate to the characters/ideas/products within.

Take for the example of an antique, the higher value ones usually have a background story attached to it. For example:

This piece of antique was on its way to Europe where the merchant ship that was holding it got waylaid during the 16 century naval wars. It was found in a sunken ship somewhere in the south china sea.

Product features are kind of dead (Can still matter to the 5% of the crowd) but they transform into something real and alive when introduced through a story.

So, try using a story to introduce your product/service/idea and see if it makes a difference in getting your point across in the future.

The Thing About Ideas… (Part 2)

Posted by You Teck - 30/05/11 at 12:05:55 am

In the previous post, I spoke about the non-existent value of an idea if it is not follow up with an execution.

An idea is only as good as the execution.

You might probably have come across the above phrase many times and it really isn’t all too hard to understand the intention of the message.

A simple explanation would be an excellent idea is never enough if it is not followed by an excellent execution. An average idea can deliver excellent result if followed by excellent execution while an excellent idea can deliver mediocre result if followed by mediocre execution.

If you got a good idea or maybe just an idea you want to work on, do yourself a favor by picking the best teammates you could ever find. A team of 2 awesome individuals beats a team of 5 mediocre individuals anytime. Baggage are excessive burden and you don’t want them when you are moving uphill.

 

Who Will You Pick?

Posted by You Teck - 29/05/11 at 04:05:53 pm

Say you were having a conversation with someone you just met and you popped the question “So what keeps you busy in your daily life?”

Developer A: I write codes for company xyz…

Developer B: I’m building a kick-ass application with company xyz…

Can you spot the difference in the class of mindset?

Taking into the consideration that both of these developers have the same level of skill, the selection as to which developer I will pick into my team couldn’ t have been more obvious. There is clearly no substitution for working with awesome individuals.

 

The Thing About Ideas… (Part 1)

Posted by You Teck - 19/05/11 at 01:05:38 pm

Ideas are highly contagious and Victor Hugo once said that “Nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come“.  Ideas can be extremely viral and thus powerful but they depend on a single element call execution.

An idea will never become anything more than a thought if you don’t execute it. Having 100 ideas in your head and zero execution will never triumph someone who executed the very 1 idea he/she had. Execution creates an reaction which in turn creates a momentum to bring the idea to realization.

No one talks about the guy who thought of the idea (there could be 100 other people who thought of it as well) but the guy who executed and brought the idea to realization. I have come across many people who have some cool ideas but ultimately never brought them to life.

It’s definitely a great shame because instead of having the opportunity to reap the benefits of a potentially good idea they ended being the one on the sideway saying “Yeah, I thought of that idea way before”.

If you have an idea today which you think is great and it’s within your means to bring it to life, why not give it a go and see where it will lead you to at the end of the day?

Muffins and Business

Posted by You Teck - 16/05/11 at 03:05:05 pm

Muffins are incredibly delicious pastries which can lighten up your day. I know of a particular pastry store (SG, Chinatown Smith street) that sells the kind of muffins that makes you smile after your first bite. It’s my favorite snack store and I will hardly give it a miss if I am feeling hungry or in need of some inspiration.

It was during this conversation I had with my colleague about marketing the muffins that lead me to rethink about building business in a different perspective. While I was deep in thoughts of thinking how to balance the loss of original baker’s muffin tasting against scaling growth through machinery, I was struck by an epiphany.

Having read Small Giants years before I shouldn’t really be fixated on the thought that business has to ultimately scale and grow big. At the end of the day it boils down to the business owner’s objective and the value they intend to deliver to their customers. Take for instance the case of the muffin store owner, there would never be much need to scale her muffin business through machinery if her objective was to design and create fresh made muffins by her own hands.

Certain business models are beyond growing big as that objective does not fit into that their value proposition. More often than not it is more important to figure out the business owner’s #1 objective through it’s proposed value proposition first than to think about scaling the business. If that objective has been met and it has brought joy to the owner, why complicate things by adding more complex equation to the business?

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