PicoBusiness

Three posts from Seth Godin about marketing, amusingly (and somewhat misleadingly) titled “Squid Soup”

• Part 1
• Part 2
• Part 3

The important points you should take away:

• Marketing is cheaper these days than ever before
• Just because it’s cheaper doesn’t mean people will go for it
• (and this is where Seth makes money) You have to find new ways to offer remarkable things.

Technorati Tags: Marketing, IdeaVirus, Seth Godin, Purple Cow

The default RSS setup for WP 1.5.2 is broken. It took some digging, but I eventually found how to fix it.

1. Find footer.php (probably in wp-content/themes/default/)
2. where it says:

    <a href="feed:<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>">Entries RSS</a>

replace the cryptic text inside the quotes with this:

    your_blog_url/?feed=rss2

3. For example, I replaced it with this:

   http://blog.picobusiness.com/?feed=rss2

4. Reload your site, and click on the Entries RSS link at the bottom of the page. If you get some ugly XML, it’s working!

Technorati Tags: RSS, Wordpress, Fantastico

• It’s Not What You Say…It’s What You Do by Laurence Haughton. - this is a solid book on execution, with lots of good points about measuring things, following up on the measurements so you can actually improve.
• The Big Moo - this is a great book, and I can’t recommend it enough. Buy it, read it. It will inspire, amuse and engage you.

Other good books:

• Rules of the Red Rubber Ball - creative layout and an interesting message, with a strong focus on sports and doing what you love.
• All Marketers Are Liars - A good read. Not as good as The Big Moo, but not bad.

Technorati Tags: books, business, 2005

Set up by the fine people at 800 CEO Read, inBubbleWrap gives away free books every few days. Register and sign up, and you’re on your way!

Technorati Tags: Business, Books, Free

Marketing Malpractice?. Customer Intelligence: customer relationships

“People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill,” wrote Harvard marketing professor Theodore Levitt, apprising us of our “myopia” and unleashing a whole new school of new paradigm thinking. “They want a quarter-inch hole!” Citing the old master, Clayton Christensen (of Harvard Business School), Scott Cook (of Intuit) and Taddy Hall (of the Advertising Research Foundation), encourage us to rethink marketing yet again.

This is a great article on thinking about what someone does, rather than who someone is. If you have customers*, you should be thinking about this.
Read the whole thing..

* - Everyone has customers, even if you don’t directly exchange cash with them.

Hat tip to Tom Peters!

Do one thing every day that scares you.

- Eleanor Roosevelt

Hello, and welcome.

We’re very excited to get this site up and running. There’s still some finishing work to do, but we’re ready to get started!

The goal of this site is to share and build knowledge around starting and maintaining small- and side- businesses. We’ve noticed over the last few years that everyone seems to be getting into the side business game, either for money, fun, knowledge building or to explore new opportunities.

And frankly, there’s never been a better time than now to start a small- or side- business. They’re cheaper to set up than ever, there’s more and better ways to advertise and keep in touch with customers, and there’s huge amounts of knowledge out there. My goal is to make this a site where this knowledge can be shared, for everyone’s benefit.

Right now, we have two parts to the site - this blog, and the Forum. Both will be updated regularly, as new information, opportunities, concerns and news comes along.

Thanks!