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Remember the days when your new big idea itched your brain till you told your friends, spouse, confused parents and yourself that you have found the solution to some huge problem faced by half the population of the world? Think how motivated you were then. Ideas bustling, implementation details appearing like spring leaves off every branch in your imagination. A few hours work led to a spreadsheet and if you could just get some support from your geeky friends, it would see green pretty soon.

Why are you still at your same old job? Where did the motivation, the spark go? Several big ideas and many rusting spreadsheets later, has the feeling of vaccuum overcome you? Your startup, my friend, has been captured by the Procrastination Dragon. Like many who were captured before, your startup awaits the hero who would break the shackles and slay the fire breathing, odd smelling procrastination dragon.

Here are a set of weapons you may carry on your brave venture:

Understand Yourself

The best weapon you will ever have against procrastination is knowing and understanding how you work. This self analysis gives you the inner compass which guides you in what steps are required. Every one has their own mount everest to climb and by understanding what makes you tick will help you set up a rewards program for yourself.

Understand Procrastination

“Procrastination is a type of behavior which is characterized by deferment of decisions, actions or tasks to a later time.” There are both psychological and physiological reasons which help this beast raise its head. Fear of failure is a big reason and it makes sense too, but fear of success is also cited as a reason. While the first causes anxiety about rejection, the latter causes worry about setting higher standards than one can maintain. The resulting anxiety and guilt can cause severe mental torture and lead to clinical depression and loss of productivity and self-esteem.

Extinguish the Fire

Entrepreneurship involves the recognition of opportunities (needs, wants, problems and challenges) and the use of resources to implement innovative ideas for new thoughtfully planned ventures. Startups are a lot of knowledge domains and expert tasks all mixed together in an interdependent manner. No wonder its easy for the dragon to start fires where you are not looking. The solution is to plan thoroughly by breaking the startup tasks down according to objectives. Some tasks will be administrative, while others will be regarding marketing etc.

Read the rest …

One must make a habit to learn from whatever experience can be gained during the course of each day. My new employer requires employees to open accounts at the Faysal Bank (this one is located in Garden Town, Lahore). So I made my way there this morning to face customer service hell.

Here are five online business lessons I learned from my visit:

Their business is a privilege

Banks do not open a new account unless you can prove that you are socially acceptable and thus make available a reference who has an account with the same branch. It is just like getting into a club or emailing friends for invites to a particularly hot startup.

Faysal Bank Limited wanted me to deposit Rs. 5,000 in order to open my account. I had a check with me worth many times more than that, and my employer would be depositing a significant amount every month. But thats just not good enough for Faysal bank.

Do not charge for the privilege of gaining your customer’s/client’s business. I do not even prefer to get any more information than their email (for unique id) and password (for access to your system, only if necessary). Allow them to be comfortable, let them in to see what you have to offer. Offer reminders to add to their profile by showing how it will enhance their experience.

Show them the way

I new there was going to be trouble as soon as I became a ping pong ball between two bank employees who could not decide where I should go to get my account opened. I was new in the environment and it was annoying. All I needed was clear direction. If the bank had any sign pointing me to the right person, I would not have felt like leaving.

First time visitors to your online business feel exactly the same. They come with a mix of expectation and curiosity. If you can not show them how to do what they want to achieve in the first few, precious minutes of acquisition, they are going to walk straight out of there by clicking the back button.

Perform A/B, multivariate testing and engage sample of users in pre-launch surveys to see just how they react when the reach your home page. It is going to save you a lot of bad word of mouth later on. Also, do not over burden them with too much information. Introduce and establish your tips / help methodology early on and provide just enough information for them to be productive. Read the rest …

Universal McCann has released it’s latest report on the impact of social media. This version is the biggest in scope yet, covering 17,000 daily / every other day users of internet in 29 countries. Since Pakistan, along with India from our region, is also one of the countries covered by the report, I was more than interested in learning what insights I could gain from it.

I am sure you would be clamoring to go read the report yourself, here are some of the insights I found interesting:

The report deals with 15-64 age group. Interviewees had to use the internet every day / every other day to become part of the Active Internet Universe.

• Internet Penetration amongst all adults in Pakistan is around 7.3% which comes around 12 million Pakistanis (2006 data via internetworldstats.com). Amongst these, around 87,000 are broadband users. Needless to say that these numbers must have upgraded in the ensuing years.

• India is at 5.3% which probably has to do with the fact that they are around a billion people.

• Pakistan contributes around 0.26 million people to the Active Internet Universe. India has 17.8 million.

• Corporate blogs are becoming common, but more people visit personal / friends or friends of friend’s blog.

• Active users tend to read blogs. 76.0% of them in Pakistan. Are we providing them the right content, enough detail/expertise and clear differentiation to be considered a brand.

• Surprisingly 38% also write blogs. No wonder blogger.pk’s blog roll has been gaining height. How is blogging in Urdu going to do here? Do we need Urdu oriented sites / blogs in Pakistan?

• Orkut is still the King in Pakistan. There is no global social platform. Although MySpace beats every one in the aggregate.

• Asian markets beat the crap out of US and Western markets.

• Word of mouth and referral do work in Pakistan as 72% have at least created a profile on a social network.

• 72% Pakistanis upload pictures while 47.7% upload videos. Digital still and video cameras have become more accessible. I think active users in Pakistan are also the kind of savvy, early adopters. Who are they following or listening to? Where is the web analytics that identifies and measures these users? Are our startups getting to them?

• Global trend in watching online video clips resonates strongly in Pakistan too. 85% engage in this activity every day / every other day. No wonder news of possible max out of the internet by 2010 is making rounds these days.

• The most surprising insight from the report is that about 47% of Pakistani users have downloaded a podcast. That seems so counterintuitive due to lack of penetration of broadband services. Does this have a cultural reason?

• Only 35% of Pakistani users subscribe to RSS feeds. Are we failing to convey the benefits or even produce valid content for people to be persuaded into subscribing?

• “The future of marketing is about how you want to be perceived rather than talking about it. Social media gives you this possibility by creating experiences.”

• “Overtime all users will increase the regularity of usage. Every one will become active users, as they have been with television.”