I recently launched a new business and it’s been an abject failure. The service I was selling was great and I was sure that customers would absolutely love it but no one has even looked at it. My marketing efforts even went as far as involving some giveaways and I still didn’t get a result…..although the potential customers loved the trinkets.

So my shiny new bird bath is still sitting forlornly outside my study window with not a bird in sight. The birds loved the bread that I put out for them each day. I even placed the enticing morsels ever closer to the bath with the hope that I could watch them splash around on a hot summers day. But my customers have rejected all my efforts…..sigh….

How many of us have launched a new business only to discover that no one is interested in our services or products? With ever increasing frustration we put our hand deeper into our pocket to pull out more cash to throw at the market with the hope that someone will buy.

I hate to say this but someone has bought…..and that’s you. You managed to drink the kool-aid of your own business to the extent you’re no longer listening to your proposed target market. You could keep on shoveling cash out the door or you could do something a little more adventurous…..and that’s pivot.

When a business is in the process of failing, before you run out of cash, you sometimes need to take a close look at what you do and decide to do something else entirely. Maybe it’s completely revamp your product or target an entirely different market or even use your service as a loss leader for a different revenue model.

I’ve met many business people that have either killed a business too early or too late. In many instances, a little creative thinking is all that is required to rescue the situation. Maybe if you’re running a restaurant it’s as simple as taking the food to the people rather than waiting for the people to come to your food.

If you find yourself in a situation where you’re going out the back door then whatever you do, don’t keep on doing the same thing as you’ve always been doing and expect a different result. Pivot and pivot fast!

For me, I’m going to pivot and take the bird bath to my customers by putting it in the middle of the lawn rather than outside my window. With any luck, a few birds will hop in and have a great time. You’d think they’d realized that all of this was for their own benefit……and a little of mine. Wish you me luck!

Have a great weekend.

Michael

Many people have no problem with saying sorry when they’ve done something wrong but refuse to apologize when they firmly believe they're right. They take the stance, that since they’ve done nothing wrong (in their eyes) then why should they say sorry. What this behavior clearly demonstrates is their lack of understanding of the purpose of apologizing.

Saying your sorry has less to do with right and wrong and more to do with hurt feelings. Being right doesn’t mean you haven’t hurt someone else’s feelings and standing on your dignity by not apologizing often just makes the situation worse.

This year I’m coming up to my thirtieth wedding anniversary with the most wonderful, patient and loving lady I could ever dream of spending my life with. Has it all been plain sailing? Heck no! Like any marriage, over the years we’ve had our ups and downs.

I remember one time when I knew that I knew that I was right and yet my wife was in tears in front of me. This was a bazaar situation for a young male who inadvertently poured buckets of gas on his wife's flaming misery by telling her to just “get over it”. It was after a number of these episodes that it dawned on me (with a lot of help from Roselyn) that because I did no wrong didn’t mean I was right.

Sure enough……it happened again. I took the superior position of being “right” and expected Roselyn to realize the error of her feelings. We males can be really dumb sometimes! It took a few minutes for me to work out that I was about to go on the merry-go-round again so this time I decided to step off.

I apologized. Not for anything I’d done wrong but for the fact that I’d hurt her feelings. Something magical happened in that moment…..peace was restored to our relationship.

So many of us are trying to win each and every battle with those that we “love” that we forget we’re actually not at war. A simple heart-felt apology is often all that it takes to restore the relationship and bring a little bit of heaven to your earth.

Like I said, I’m coming up to my thirtieth anniversary this year and when you’ve been around someone that long you learn a lot about them and yourself. It’s been an adventure that has led to a depth of love, respect and appreciation that has far surpassed my expectations when we first got married…..we thought we loved each other then. LOL! That was nothing compared to now.

Learning to say sorry when you’re not at fault is one of the many lessons that my wife and I have both learned over the years. As we look forward to the years ahead I sometimes wonder how we can love each other more than we already do……and then I look at both of our parents who have been married for 50+ years and smile.

If you want to build long last relationships with your loved ones then my advice is to humble yourself to say sorry even when you don’t think you should.

Have a great weekend!

There’s nothing worse than when you feel you’re thrashing. If you’ve never heard of “thrashing” then you’re likely to be one of the few lucky individuals that have never experienced it either. Thrashing happens when you have so much on your plate, you end up jumping from one activity to another and never completing anything.

Thrashing originated as a computer term to describe the hard drive head as it moved across a platter of disks. When users add and delete files, disk fragmentation occurs and the hard drive head has to jump like a jackrabbit all over its surface in order to access a single file. In a non-tech talk.…you hear what sounds like mice scurrying around in your PC.

The technical boffins solved this problem by constantly “defragmenting” the hard drive and rearranging all of the file parts so the hard drive head moved to one spot to pick up the file. We can learn a lot from this approach.

So the other day I found myself on three IM chats, a skype conference call, emails pouring in and a things to do list a mile long.

As an aside, I’ve used the far more sensible metric system all of my life and yet saying my things to do list is a kilometer long just doesn’t sound right. I tip my hat to all of you recalcitrant Americans who insist on still using miles, gallons and ounces rather than kilometers, liters and grams.

I’ve often wondered though how you express thousands of something? Is it kilogallons? Do you ask your local shop for a kilo-ounce of sugar? Then again, you’d probably end up filling up your entire kitchen with that much, so probably not.

So back to my thrashing around skype, IM and emails. After muting the mike on skype (I hope I did anyway) I let out a little scream, smiled and began to politely extricate myself from the myriad of noise that I really didn’t need to be a part of.

That’s the thing. Thrashing normally occurs when you stick your nose into places that it really doesn’t belong. After getting a whiff of what’s there you feel obligated to do something about the problem and clean up the mess. Note to self….other people are quite capable of cleaning up their own messes.

So I looked at my list, had a bit of a delirious chuckle and began removing all those things to do that I didn’t have to really be involved with. In the process I discovered a long last feature of skype…..the away button. It gave me the time to think rather than react.

At the end of my review process I had a more manageable list and I followed my mother’s instructions. For some reason, most mothers are absolute geniuses when it comes to getting stuff done. It’s probably the fact that they have vast amounts of experience ensuring that children are fed, clean and not sticking their little fingers in power sockets. My mother was brilliant at stopping me from doing the latter btw.

What did my mother say? She said, “Get your list together, start one task and don't stop until it’s finished.”

What a brilliant piece of advice! Before computers were invented and hard drive heads weren’t even a technician’s dream my mother solved the problem of thrashing. I sometimes wonder if the techies just sat down with a few mothers we could have had the world of the Jetson’s by now…..what a lost opportunity.

So I did what my mother told me and my MBA be damned. Who needs a master’s in business when you have an expert with a bachelor of common sense to look up to! It was amazingly liberating. Stuff got done, people stopped complaining because I was delayed in finishing a task and I had a smile on my face.

That’s when I realized, that I’d left skype on “away”…..no wonder I’d suddenly gained so much time.

Have a great weekend!

Michael

Last night we invited a couple of friends around for a barbeque. It’s a quintessentially Australian thing to do and no, we didn’t have a shrimp on the barbie (besides, we’d have prawns). I find there’s nothing quite as relaxing as sitting outside watching the sun set while you feel the cool refreshing breeze on your face.

It was then that it hit me….I’ve been blogging for nearly ten years! After checking the whois on whizzbangsblog.com I found the actual ten year anniversary date is the 7^th April! Time flies when you’re having fun!

One of the things I most cherish is hearing from you, the readers of whizzbangsblog. Each comment spurs me on to keep writing and digging into all the possibilities that business and domains represent.

I don’t think I’ve ever asked it before but I would love to hear from you about whether you find the articles helpful, challenging, funny or something else altogether. Also, it would be great if you could let me know which articles you have enjoyed reading the most.

I'm planning on compiling a lot of the comments (assuming I get any) to be part of the anniversary celebrations....so don't be a stranger and let me know what you really think!

Many thanks for being a reader here….

Have a great weekend,

Michael

My wife Roselyn and I have fallen in love with New Zealand and more specifically Queenstown which is situated in the mountains of the South Island. Looking around the incredible vistas is like stepping into The Misty mountains from “The Lord of the Rings” middle earth.....it's stunning.

While walking around the township we discovered a hiking business that takes people on a five day walk from Queenstown, across the mountains and down into Milford Sound. For those of you unfamiliar with Milford Sound, it’s one of the most picturesque, unspoilt places on the Earth with waterfalls cascading thousands of feet into the ocean, wales, dolphins, and soaring mountain ranges. All good!

We’re pretty excited about going on the hike in just under two years’ time (we’re doing a lot of other already planned travel this year) but there’s one problem. We need to get a LOT fitter. To paraphrase Borimir from Lord of the Rings, “One simply does not walk into Milford Sound through the mountains. There’s ups, downs, river crossings and a host of other obstacles in the way.”

So we have a goal…..lose weight (which is a good thing) and get a lot fitter. Goals can be like New Year’s resolutions that are forgotten after the first week or you can choose to take them seriously.

We’ve now bought hiking boots and enough gear to make us feel a little adventurous. Our first hike was a few kilometres in the rain through a fern forest in the hills outside of Melbourne. We’re walking, riding or rowing machining every day to increase our stamina. The goal of the Milford track is inspiring us to get fit (which is always a good thing) and to get healthier.

Like our personal hiking goal every business needs to have goals to strive for. Whether it be the launch of a new product, a financial hurdle to strive for or getting a new client onboard. It’s healthy to have a target that you and your business can be measured against. In fact, I would go as far as to say that a business without a vision/goal is already in a state of decay.

So what’s the goal for your business and are you taking it seriously? Many people have lofty goals but few people actually put legs on them by taking the first steps forward. For Roselyn and I, we’re watching what we eat and doing “stuff”.

It could be that your first step is to pick up the telephone and call a perspective buyer for a domain you own. Whatever it is you need to do I can guarantee that your journey into the unknown will be like Frodo crossing the boundaries of your “Shire” and into the wilds of adventure.

Have a great weekend!