GoodBuzz App - Blog

Online Contests for Social Medias Marketing – FREE

Nov
29

By

Alternatives to Rafflecopter

Category: customer relationship Tags: , , , Leave a Comment

Since the last upgrade of their service, Rafflecopter, the bloggers’ favorite contest and giveaway tool, has severely damaged their relationship with their customers. Their new program is not only very buggy, but the introduction of new features and the premium account was done in a very un-professional and childish way.

The truth is that Rafflecopter has been supported by a community of bloggers from the very beginning. People have been very patient with the founders, and helped the team fix the numerous bugs in the first version of the program. But now, most of the early adopters and fans has lost faith in the team integrity and professionalism, and started looking for more reliable and professional products.

Rafflecopter ruined their customers ThanksGiving and Holidays Promotions

Here are few comments from disappointed customers:

“It was really silly to do this right before the holiday weekend – why not a month ago? Anyways I just spent 30 minutes fixing all my “blog comment” areas, and I dont know why but I can’t do anything while I am in IE….so I switched to Chrome and it worked…… sigh – Last thing I wanted to be doing today!”

“Guys, it is absolutely Un-Friendly, Un-Professional to do what you’ve done to all of us. We are the people you came to to help you to grow, to fix all bugs, to do campaigns for you. And now what? You’ve just turned your backs on All of us? And with this mess before huge campaigns and promos and giveaways and Thanksgiving, you decided to push it forward at no announcement to your fans and followers?
How can that happen?
Why did it happen?
You tossed all your friends up in the air without providing a safe landing to them.
What would you call that?”

“it would be great if you announce the updates beforhand – I run a giveaway just now and the link I´ve used doesn´t work anymore:( I came to know this from other people – late late :( (((((((((((“

“Yikes! I agree with the others…this was a HORRIBLE time to roll this new update out. We are all cranking out holiday giveaways left and right and we can’t afford for them to be screwed up like they are now. PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE put the instructions back in our giveaways for leaving a blog post comment! I just entered several giveaways that required a comment for the mandatory entry and I had no idea what the blogger wanted to see in the comment. I love Rafflecopter and you guys have always been great with customer service, but this is BAD.”

“NOT happy with this at all. WHY is the oh viral option only for businesses?! Bloggers are 98% of your business… the bigger WE get, the more we need YOU… And no paypal option? Shame on you!”

“Horrible call on the timing of this roll out. And the lack of proactive communication to your existing users indicates to me that maybe you have your sights set on a new target market? Because this is a great way to piss off and lose your current customers.”

“I finally just went and did mine in Giveaway Tools. It is alot faster and smoother. I am not waiting on these people. He kept asking me if I had emptied my cookies and then asked me to change browser. I did all those and still did not help.”

Before writing this post, I wanted to give a test to the claims, and I tried to enter the Rafflecopter own promotion at their new home page, But I can’t do that properly and got this bug “Null” displayed on my screen.

 

Until most of these bugs get fixed, You should stay away from Rafflecopter or remove their widget from your blog.

Alternative to Rafflecopter

There are many tools online to organize contests. Most of them are similar to Goodbuzz, and can be equally capable in helping you manage your online contests. Here are few of them:

- Strutta.com
- Wildfireapp.com
- Contestmachine.com
- Giveawaytools.com
- Punchtab.com

You can all give them a trial, however if you want to go with the most simple, and the most focused on marketing results, you might give your preference to Goodbuzz. Typically, any user of Goodbuzz widget would get 30% to 50% traffic increase to his/her website in less than 30 days.

The main value of Goodbuzz is that it makes it easier for small business and event organizers to create and run a giveaway. The widget manages everything for the advertiser, from participants registration to the prize claiming. The pages are clean. The advertiser has access to all participants contacts, and also real time statistics about sharing and participation. The advertiser could also customize in advance what people will share on social medias making the impact of their campaign more powerful.

Here are some feedback we have received from our users.

“We have evidenced that GoodBuzz Share to Win solution yields 7 times more Sharing activity compared to traditional Tweet and Like this Buttons.
In addition, a single Share via GoodBuzz yields 11 Visits to our web site. We have found that integrating GoodBuzz campaign as an integral part of web site user experience is the Best way to deploy social media sharing in a fun and intuitive, and most rewarding way.”

Testimonial from Joiku.com – they have ran about 8 promotions with Goodbuzz: http://www.joiku.com/share-to-win

I did see about a 30% increase in page views and visitors, but I didn’t promote it as fiercely as I should have.  I was really just giving Goodbuzz a test run to see if it would be good to use for one of my clients.
Thanks so much!

Testimonial from Christa Wojciechowski – webbella.com
twitter.com/webbella
facebook.com/webbella

Oct
15

By

Giveaways for startup companies

Category: Online contest Tags: , , , Leave a Comment

You have worked hard and now have your startup ready to roll but how do you get the word out?  Techcrunch ignores your press release. Mashable doesn’t care about Your Crappy, Unknown, Money starving Startup. You don’t have any connections that can get you covered on the large tech blogs. After you have sent your tweets, Facebook status updates and emailed your friends and contacts, you still can’t get enough attention to build momentum for your product.

If you are a startup and you can’t get the attention of the mainstream medias and journalists, you should look for new avenues and ideas for your promotion. Why not to try contests and giveaways?

Why contests and giveaways?

First, because they are proven marketing tactics to build a brand and attract customers attention with a minimum budget. Big companies use a lot of giveaways, contests and promotions, because they know from practice that these tactics are not online effective but they work almost all the time.

Second, because giveaways are very powerful engagement tool. Contrary to “pay per click” or “display advertisement”, contests involve your target market group into your marketing process. People will give you permission to ask them to do some tasks: like to answer a survey question, to post a comment, to select their favorite product, to spread your message on social medias, etc.

Third, contests and giveaways are long term investment. You get people contacts, and you can follow up with them, provide them use useful content or further engage them with new contests.

There are few steps to follow to organize a successful giveaway contest: select your prize carefully, promote your contest at the right place, and make sure you introduce some surprise or challenge into your contest to improve participants engagement.

 

 

Oct
9

By

How to Launch your Startup with a Giveaway Campaign

Category: Beginners Guide, Business Strategy, Online contest Tags: , , , 1 Comment

You are a startup, and you have just released a new product, and you would like to let a maximum of people to know there is something new and valuable in the marketplace. After you have sent your tweets, Facebook status updates and emailed your friends and contacts, you still don’t notice anything great happening. Your website traffic gets back to 20 unique visits a day, and Techcrunch/Mashable never answered your message.

It’s time to think about some proven ways to get more people into your website at a low cost your unfunded startup could afford, and also something you can have control over: Giveaways Contests

Giveaways Contests are one of the most effective way to entice people to do something for you. Here are few steps you can follow to promote your startup with a giveaway Campaign.

What is a giveaway?

A giveaway is a marketing tactic where something is given away for free. Companies often use giveaways to spread the word about their products, to make their brand more memorable in customers’ minds, or to get people to try something new in the hopes that they will continue to buy the product.

Big companies know well how effective giveaways campaigns are, and do thousands of giveaways campaigns a year. Small businesses still have to grasp  the concept and use it to their advantage, like the big guys!

Define your target audience

The first step in your overall effort is to define precisely your target audience, or the very people you want to attract to your giveaway promotion. Don’t write “I want to reach students”, but “I want to reach students who are interested into become entrepreneurs”.

Select your prize

A good definition of our audience will help you know what kind prize to attach to your promotion. Women with a newborn would love to receive a huge discount on pampers diapers, or will fiercely compete to win “1 year Free supply of pampers diapers delivered to their door”. Startup founders will fiercely compete to win a $1000 Facebook ads credits or Google Adwords credits.

Chose your price regarding the intrinsic motivation of your target audience, and keep in mind to select a prize that could be somehow related to your brand.

A caution here. It’ll be inefficient to use your own startup product for a giveaway when no one knows about you, or your brand is not strong enough to entice a lot of people.

Use an online tool to organize your contests

There are many tools online to organize contests. Most of them are similar to Goodbuzz, and can be equally capable in helping you manage your online contests. Here are few of them:

- Strutta.com
- Wildfireapp.com
- Rafflecopter.com
- Contestmachine.com
- Giveawaytools.com

You can all give them a trial, however if you want to go with the most simple, and the most focused on marketing results, you might give your preference to Goodbuzz. Typically, any user of Goodbuzz widget would get 30% to 50% traffic increase to his/her website in less than 30 days.

The main value of Goodbuzz is that it makes it easier for small business and event organizers to create and run a giveaway. The widget manages everything for the advertiser, from participants registration to the prize claiming. The pages are clean. The advertiser has access to all participants contacts, and also real time statistics about sharing and participation. The advertiser could also customize in advance what people will share on social medias making the impact of their campaign more powerful.

Here are some feedback we have received from our users.

“We have evidenced that GoodBuzz Share to Win solution yields 7 times more Sharing activity compared to traditional Tweet and Like this Buttons.
In addition, a single Share via GoodBuzz yields 11 Visits to our web site. We have found that integrating GoodBuzz campaign as an integral part of web site user experience is the Best way to deploy social media sharing in a fun and intuitive, and most rewarding way.”

Testimonial from Joiku.com – they have ran about 8 promotions with Goodbuzz: http://www.joiku.com/share-to-win

I did see about a 30% increase in page views and visitors, but I didn’t promote it as fiercely as I should have.  I was really just giving Goodbuzz a test run to see if it would be good to use for one of my clients.
Thanks so much!

Testimonial from Christa Wojciechowski – webbella.com
twitter.com/webbella
facebook.com/webbella 

4. Promote your contests

Even if your promotion prize is very attractive, you still need to spend some time and resource to promote it:

  • Post the promotion on your blog
  • Insert a link to the promotion page into your newsletters
  • Advertise the promotion using your current advertising channels: adwords, facebook ads, linkedin ads, banners, sponsorship, PR, twitter, etc.

Remember, don’t post your giveaways contest on contests directories or contests aggregation portals. You’ll get lot of entries but mainly from “professional” freebies seekers. They are not interested in your business. They use automated tools to enter hundreds of contest daily, and they will unsubscribe from your list instantly afterward. They want only your prize, and don’t care about who you are, and what your business is all about.

5. Monitor your progress toward your goals

The goal for a giveaway contest could be branding, list building, community engagement or publicity. Your giveaways tools should be able to help you get an instant idea of how your promotion is doing, eventually contact your best evangelists or supporters who would give you additional feedback about your brand and products.

Here is a typical dashboard we provide for Goodbuzz users:

6. Contact the winner and deliver your prize

You should build trust in your brand by delivering the prize you’ve promised to the winners. Announcing the winner could be the moment you chose to get your news in front of all the participants into your contest. Eventually, you can take a shortcut to give a discount to non-winners, and announce upcoming events or products.

7. Keep in on touch, but don’t spam

Once you have build a mailing list or get followers from your promotion, make sure you keep in touch with your new contacts. Engage them with new contests, and provide them information that might enhance your brand.

If you have any question, or need help to create and run a giveaway contest, you can contact me at mk@goodbuzz.org

Sep
27

By

How to chose a Prize for your giveaway Contest?

Category: Online contest Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

Online contests are one of the most effective way to grab people attention and get them to do something you desire.

On the Internet people are used to get things for free. Therefore big companies have designed huge incentives system to attract people to their stores and make them buy things they want, sometime even when people don’t really need those stuff.

The moment you’ve decided to organize a contest, the most challenging part of the process is deciding what prize to use. The easiest answer will be, let use an iPad or an iPhone. This is the wrong thing to do. Using a prize that is not related to your business category, or could hardly be associated with your brand, will completely jeopardize your efforts.

I’ve seen so many online contests and giveaway contests that I can say that the best way to chose a prize for your contest is to give away something from your store, something you sell, or manufacture.

  • If you are an event organizer, give away tickets to an upcoming event.
  • If you are an artist give away a special pass or an exclusive access to your new album or video, or a VIP access to your lodge during your concert.
  • If you are etsy seller, give away few handmade crafts from your store. etc.
  • if you are graphic designer, give away free banner design or free website review, etc.

Sometime, giving away something from your store won’t be the best tactic. You can use a highly attractive prize to entice a specific target group like pregnant women, college students, or African-Americans into your mailing list, but first using a product that is not your own. This kind of campaign could be done when you want to reach out to people who are not currently your clients or you intend to serve with a new product.

The main takeaway from this article is that you have to be tactical in selecting your prize. Use prize from your own store or product/service lines if you want to engage your current customers or visitors of your website. However, you might feel free to use attractive prize to engage strangers or new prospects who won’t respond to you otherwise.

To conclude, Here are few ideas of prizes you can think of.

  • Exclusive access or pass to very high profile events
  • Something very expensive or with lifetime value: like a home, a car, a carbon or titanium road bike,  etc.
  • Money: in form of cash or Store gift like (Amazon gift card, Apple store gift card, etc.),
  • Discount or Free credits for highly demanded items,
  • Newly released products,
  • Free publicity, free website/blog review, free consultation, etc.

Sep
26

By

How to organize a giveaway contest with great results?

Category: Social Medias Tags: , , , , , , Leave a Comment

On the internet people like to get or win something for free. There is even a huge web economy around the concept of free called the freemium model. Successful companies such as Dropbox, LinkedIn, and Skype built their business by giving away their products and services for free to build a customer base.

How can you leverage the Internet users addiction to “free” to build your business? The most simple and easiest way is to entice them with something valuable they can win while entering a giveaway contest.

Here is how you can do that to get great marketing results:

1. Identify your target group

If you are in B2B, your target group will be business professionals whose motivation will be to learn more about current trends that might affect their business, attend events where they could network with peers, market their business in industry newspaper, access new projects, generate leads, etc.

If you are in B2C, your target group might be a niche or mainstream customers. Mainstream consumers are more attracted by fashionable and trendy objects or events, and you must be able to easily trigger their interest with something that is still hot in the news, a new product release, a VIP seat at Madonna concert in their city, etc.

The moment you clearly identify your target group, you are now ready to move to the next step which is to select the prize your want to use in your contest.

2. Select your Prize

Selecting the wrong prize for your contest might totally ruin your effort. Consequently, this steps is one of the most challenging for Contests organizers. Here are few ideas that could help:

  • Exclusive access or pass to very high profile events
  • Something very expensive or with lifetime value: like a home, a car, a carbon or titanium road bike,  etc.
  • Money: in form of cash or Store gift like (Amazon gift card, Apple store gift card, etc.),
  • Discount or Free credits for highly demanded items,
  • Newly released products,
  • Free publicity, free website/blog review, free consultation, etc.

Once you made up your mind, you still can test the idea with few colleagues or few members of your target group. If you can, you can organize a brainstorming or an online poll where people would express their preferences.

3. Select a giveaway tool to organize the contest

There are many tools online to organize contests. Most of them are similar to Goodbuzz, and can be equally capable in helping you manage your online contests. Here are few of them:

- Strutta.com
- Wildfireapp.com
- Rafflecopter.com
- Contestmachine.com
- Giveawaytools.com

You can all give them a trial, however if you want to go with the most simple, and the most focused on marketing results, you might give your preference to Goodbuzz. Typically, any user of Goodbuzz widget would get 30% to 50% traffic increase to his/her website in less than 30 days.

The main value of Goodbuzz is that it makes it easier for small business and event organizers to create and run a giveaway. The widget manages everything for the advertiser, from participants registration to the prize claiming. The pages are clean. The advertiser has access to all participants contacts, and also real time statistics about sharing and participation. The advertiser could also customize in advance what people will share on social medias making the impact of their campaign more powerful.

Here are some feedback we have received from our users.

“We have evidenced that GoodBuzz Share to Win solution yields 7 times more Sharing activity compared to traditional Tweet and Like this Buttons.
In addition, a single Share via GoodBuzz yields 11 Visits to our web site. We have found that integrating GoodBuzz campaign as an integral part of web site user experience is the Best way to deploy social media sharing in a fun and intuitive, and most rewarding way.”

Testimonial from Joiku.com – they have ran about 8 promotions with Goodbuzz: http://www.joiku.com/share-to-win

I did see about a 30% increase in page views and visitors, but I didn’t promote it as fiercely as I should have.  I was really just giving Goodbuzz a test run to see if it would be good to use for one of my clients.
Thanks so much!

Testimonial from Christa Wojciechowski – webbella.com
twitter.com/webbella
facebook.com/webbella 

 

4. Promote your contests

Even if your promotion prize is very attractive, you still need to spend some time and resource to promote it:

  • Post the promotion on your blog
  • Insert a link to the promotion page into your newsletters
  • Advertise the promotion using your current advertising channels: adwords, facebook ads, linkedin ads, banners, sponsorship, PR, twitter, etc.

Remember, don’t post your giveaways contest on contests directories or contests aggregation portals. You’ll get lot of entries but mainly from “professional” freebees seekers. They are not interested in your business. They use automated tools to enter hundreds of contest daily, and they will unsubscribe from your list instantly afterward. They want only your prize, and don’t care about who you are, and what your business is all about.

5. Monitor your progress toward your goals

The goal for a giveaway contest could be branding, list building, community engagement or publicity. Your giveaways tools should be able to help you get an instant idea of how your promotion is doing, eventually contact your best evangelists or supporters who would give you additional feedback about your brand and products.

Here is a typical dashboard we provide for Goodbuzz users:

6. Contact the winner and deliver your prize

You should build trust in your brand by delivering the prize you’ve promised to the winners. Announcing the winner could be the moment you chose to get your news in front of all the participants into your contest. Eventually, you can take a shortcut to give a discount to non-winners, and announce upcoming events or products.

7. Keep in on touch, but don’t spam

Once you have build a mailing list or get followers from your promotion, make sure you keep in touch with your new contacts. Engage them with new contests, and provide them information that might enhance your brand.

If you have any question, or need help to create and run a giveaway contest, you can contact me at mk@goodbuzz.org

Jul
18

By

I love Yahoo, Again

Category: Business Strategy Tags: , , , Leave a Comment

By hiring Marissa Mayer, a 6 months pregnant woman, as his new CEO, Yahoo made history.

I remember few years ago, recruiters were asking female candidates if they plan to have baby in some time, meaning we hate women who would get pregnant. Now, a Fortune 500 company hired a 6 months pregnant woman as CEO.

This is historic, like the election of an African-American as president of the United States. It’s also a victory for women in the corporate world.

Marissa Mayer

Jul
5

By

Lipcandie.com is giving away a Kozmetics Gift Package(including 3 Lip Candies of your choice) worth $250.00!

Category: Referral Requests Tags: Leave a Comment

Our friends at http://www.lipcandie.com are giving away a Kozmetics Gift Package (including 3 Lip Candies of your choice) worth $250.00!

ENTER BELOW TO WIN

Jul
3

By

Top 50 books that Radically change Capitalism

Category: Business Strategy Tags: , , , , Leave a Comment

A crowd-sourced list of 50 books that capture the spirit of breakthrough capitalism

by John Elkington is Executive Chairman of Volans, co-founder of SustainAbility, blogs at www.johnelkington.com. His latest book, The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier, is launched on 29 May

Books

1. Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty, by Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo,

 

2. What’s Mine Is Yours: How Collaborative Consumption Is Changing the Way We Live, by Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers

 

3. Every Nation for Itself: Winners and Losers in a G-Zero World, by Ian Bremmer

 

4. World on the Edge: How to Prevent Environmental and Economic Collapse, by Lester Brown

 

5. Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steve Kotler

 

6. The Zeronauts: Breaking the Sustainability Barrier, by John Elkington

 

7. The Great Disruption: Why the Climate Crisis Will Bring on the End of Shopping and the Birth of a New World, by Paul Gilding

 

8. Prosperity Without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet, by Tim Jackson

 

9. Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era, by Amory Lovins

 

10. Why the West Rules—For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal About the Future, by Ian Morris

 

11. The Courageous State: Rethinking Economics, Society and the Role of Government, by Richard Murphy

 

12. Economyths: Ten Ways That Economics Gets It Wrong, by David Orrell

 

13. 2052: A Global Forecast for the Next Forty Years, by Jørgen Randers

 

Breakthrough longlist

14. Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: How Interface Proved that You Can Build a Successful Business Without Destroying the Planet, by Ray Anderson

15. Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity, by Katherine Boo

16. The Sixth Wave, by James Bradfield Moody and Bianca Nogrady

17. Screw Business as Usual, by Richard Branson

18. Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things, by Michael Braungart and William McDonough

19. 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, by Ha–Joon Chang

20. The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, by Tyler Cowen

21. The Economics of Enough: How to Run the Economy as if the Future Matters, by Diane Coyle

22. Megachange: The World in 2050, from The Economist

23. Zeitoun, by Dave Eggers

24. The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, by Lisa Gansky

25. Stumbling on Happiness, by Daniel Gilbert

26. Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

27. Assault on Reason, by Al Gore

28. Debt: The First 5000 Years, by David Graeber

29. The New Capitalist Manifesto: Building a Disruptively Better Business, by Umair Haque

30. Blessed Unrest: How the Largest Movement in the World Came Into Being – and Why No One Saw It Coming, by Paul Hawken

31. Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution, by Paul Hawken, Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins

32. Where Do Good Ideas Come From? The Natural History of Innovation, by Steven Johnson

33. Who Cares Wins: Why Good Business is Better Business, by David Jones

34. Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman

35. Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100, by Michio Kaku

36. What Technology Wants, by Kevin Kelly

37. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, by Naomi Klein

38. Creativity: How Creativity Works, by Jonah Lehrer

39. Fixing the Game: Bubbles, Crashes, and What Capitalism Can Learn from the NFL, by Roger Martin

40. Chandran Nair, Consumptionomics: Asia’s Role in Reshaping Capitalism and Saving the Planet, see here

41. Merchants of Doubt, by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway

42. Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, see here

43. Design Can Change the World, by Emily Pilloton

44. The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power Is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World, by Jeremy Rifkin

45. The Leaderless Revolution: How Ordinary People Will Take Power and Change Politics in the 21st Century, by Carne Ross

46. Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who Stole the World, by Nicholas Shaxson

47. Macrowikinomics, by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams

48. When a Billion Chinese Jump: Voices from the Frontline of Climate Change, by Jonathan Watts

49. Imagine Design Create, edited by Tom Wujec

50. Tide Players: The Movers and Shakers of a Rising China, Jianying Zha

Jun
27

By

How Great Leaders Make Their Own Luck

Category: leadership, Life Success Tags: , Leave a Comment

Choice to be great

Jim Collins On Great By Choice

by Dan Schawbel on Forbes Magazine

Dan Schawbel, recognized as a “personal branding guru” by The New York Times, is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, a full-service personal branding agency. Dan is the author of Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future, the founder of the Personal Branding Blog, and publisher of Personal Branding Magazine. He has worked with companies such as Google, Time Warner, Symantec, IBM, EMC, and CitiGroup.

What types of unstable environments do leaders face today that they didn’t have to worry about years ago?

My coauthor Morten Hansen and I believe that uncertainty, punctuated by episodes of chaos, characterize most of human history; it is a very normal state. Today, the relentless march of technological disruption, the increasingly global nature of competition, and the instantaneous flow of information all contribute to instability. But the forms of turbulence are less important than the fact that we will likely live with uncertainty and chaos for the rest of our lives. This is neither good nor bad; it just is. In fact, it comes with substantial opportunity—environments characterized by turbulent disruption can go hand-in-hand with extraordinary growth, as we saw in the rise of the technology sector. There will be some very big winners (and lots of carnage) along the way.

Can you name two companies that have flourished during these uncertain times?

Our research lens is to examine historical eras of great corporate performance, not to pick current company success stories. Two fascinating cases from the research study are Southwest Airlines and Stryker. Southwest beat the general stock market by 63 times from 1972 to 2002, and Stryker beat the general market by 28 times from 1977 to 2002. We cannot predict with certainty which companies will deliver similarly astounding results in the coming decades; but we can learn from the historical development of these and other companies in our research, so that leaders can increase the chances that their own companies will thrive in the coming chaos and uncertainty.

After years of research for your book, what result surprised you the most?

The mixture of creativity, discipline and paranoia needed to thrive. The 10X winners (those who beat their industry indexes by ten times or more) didn’t generally out-innovate everyone else; they combined creativity with discipline so that the discipline amplified the creativity rather than destroying it, all the while remaining productively paranoid so as to stay alive in the face of big, unexpected shocks. Hand in hand with this is that the leaders who led successfully in the face of turbulent disruption and rapid change were not generally more visionary, more risk-taking, or more blessed by luck than their direct comparisons.

Should smart companies take bigger risks during economic uncertainty/turmoil or make safe bets? Why or why not?

Neither . . . or both, depending on how you look at it. The whole idea is to place concentrated bets, but only after gaining empirical validation that the bet will likely succeed. Those who place big bets without empirical validation—what we call firing an uncalibrated cannonball before firing bullets to validate a concept—are taking excess and unnecessary risks. It’s about first firing bullets to gain empirical validation, then firing a cannonball. This allows you to get the exponential results of concentrated bets, while also bounding your risk. When you engage in inherently risk-oriented activities, such as entrepreneurship, the key is to bound and manage the risks, to achieve BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals) and to stay above the Death Line. Never forget, the only mistakes you can learn from are the ones you survive.

You and Morten found that a rapidly changing world full of big fast-moving forces does not necessarily call for speed of action and reaction, can you explain?

We found that 10Xers recognize changes and threats early (due largely to their productive paranoia), but then take the time available—whether that be short or long—to make rigorous decisions and take disciplined action. The key question is not “should we go fast or slow?” but “How much time do we have before the risk profile changes?” They go slow when they can, fast when they must. If they have time, they’re comfortable letting events unfold, while preparing to act decisively when the time comes. One of the most dangerous false beliefs is that you are either the quick or the dead. Sometimes the quick are the dead.

« Older Posts