Business

6 Lessons We Can Learn From LEGO

August 14, 2015 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Business Lessons

Did you know LEGO almost went bankrupt in the early 2000’s? I first learned about the beloved company’s escape from demise a few months ago, and it blew my mind. None of the friends I told knew about it—even many of the hard core LEGO fans.

David C. Robertson’s stunning book Brick by Brick discussed LEGO’s rise to power, but also its near collapse. How does a company go from decades of profits to near bankruptcy? And how does that same company rise back to the top? LEGO’s story is filled with intriguing twists, turns, and lessons that we can learn from. These are some of the lessons you can learn from LEGO:

#1: Be Customer Driven

LEGO was customer driven for most of its existence, that is, until everything went wrong. LEGO knew its targeted audience consisted of children, but innovations were taking those children away from LEGO. Video games were starting to attract a global audience in the 1990’s, and now millions of children play video games. More time for video games, less time for LEGO.

LEGO did a study that confirmed one-third of children were still loyal to the brand. However, LEGO made the mistake of focusing on getting the two-thirds of children to love the brand. The result was a series of dumbed-down LEGO sets that attempted to get everyone else to like LEGO. The hard-core fans disapproved of the change, and many of them stopped buying sets from the brand they once loved. The dumbed-down LEGO sets were massive failures.

A few bad products cost LEGO millions of dollars and the trust of the retail stores. LEGO Star Wars helped out, but once no new Star Wars movies came out, LEGO found itself in a tight situation. Bionicle, the only massively successful LEGO set of its time, was the only thing keeping the company afloat. Some LEGO executives to this day credit Bionicle to the company’s survival.

One reason LEGO made its big turnaround was because LEGO went back to being customer driven. LEGO now focuses on the 33% when it creates most of its products.

#2: Be Willing To Learn From Your Mistakes

As LEGO approached bankruptcy in the early 2000’s, sets were failing left and right. Money was getting drained out of the company. However, the company looked the other way. LEGO only looked at its success with the Star Wars sets but didn’t take the time to learn from mistakes. When one set failed, little to nothing was done to assess the situation. LEGO needed a completely revamped team and leader to make change.

Not only did LEGO have internal problems, but LEGO was not the nice-and-fuzzy company we know today. Now LEGO invites its fans to contribute with their own creations and suggestions. However, LEGO has been historically known as a company that ignored the fans.

When LEGO started to interact with fans to discover what went wrong with the brand, the company had to take the criticism and learn from the mistakes. The company had to deal with the criticisms of adult fans who felt the brand lost its touch. The change faced opposition from many people in LEGO. A policy that ruled the company for decades (just create and don’t pay much attention to customers’ ideas) suddenly got snapped.

The fans allowed LEGO to discover its mistakes, and then the company went to work fixing the mistakes that it created.

#3: Taking The Same Approach Won’t Get A Different Result

As LEGO approached bankruptcy, employees remained happy. Although that may sound like an optimistic approach, it was too optimistic. Employees continued creating Lego sets and testing their imaginations as if the company was still successful.

They tried crazy ideas and drifted away from the basics. The people working for LEGO were in a balloon of happiness, but that balloon had to get popped for the survival of the company. Either someone within the LEGO team would pop the balloon, or the balloon would pop due to LEGO’s demise.

Jørgen Vig Knudstorp was LEGO’s new leader in 2004, the survive or collapse year. When LEGO finally assessed the problem, many people wanted a quick recovery. They wanted to go from a bankrupt company to reclaiming the #1 spot in one year. This was the same approach LEGO always took: How do we go from where we are now to #1? Knudstorp had other plans. Instead of creating a one year plan that took the company from the bottom to the top, he created a one year survival plan.

The survival plan was designed to reassess the company’s products, spending, and profit. The survival plan also redefined the standard for LEGO sets which ultimately brought them back to the golden path.

#4: Don’t Overextend Yourself

In the late 1990’s, LEGO overextended itself in an attempt to catch up with a world dominated by video games. LEGO explored too many different areas at once and worked on too many innovative ideas. The overextension led to most of these ideas, like Project Darwin which was a complete failure.

One idea LEGO came up with was the initially successful MovieMaker set which featured a camera and software that made it possible to create stop motion LEGO animations. The set came with enough mini figures for creating a stop motion LEGO animation. However, LEGO overextended itself with the MovieMaker sets by creating lower priced sets that neither included the camera nor the software. Those sets missed what made the Studio sets special, and as a result, LEGO’s profit from those sets dropped drastically.

It is okay to create new products and come up with innovative ideas. However, if you overextend yourself and try to accomplish too many goals at the same time, you risk not accomplishing any of those goals and falling a few steps back.

#5: Have Strong Communication With Your Team

There are many words necessary to describe the fall of LEGO. Miscommunication is one of them. LEGO expanded its employee base all around the world in hopes of boosting creativity and making a bigger profit. These people created numerous sets, but due to the miscommunication and stubbornness of LEGO headquarters, many of these LEGO sets never saw the light of day.

LEGO also had several miscommunications when it came to digitizing the brick. Miscommunication is one of the reasons it took LEGO so long to grow its presence on the web. When LEGO fixed its communication issues, LEGO sets and ideas could easily reach headquarters and get approval.

As more people from around the world joined the headquarters of LEGO, the stubbornness of HQ slowly diminished. Now LEGO headquarters pays attention to ideas from all around the world—even the ideas from their own customers (The company went to Adam Reed Tucker, a LEGO fan, for the idea and products of the successful LEGO Architecture series).

Strong communication is essential to the success of any team. Work on ways to strengthen the communication between you and your team so there is no confusion. In addition to bad sets, LEGO’s miscommunication prevented the company from creating a strong, sustainable response.

#6: Build Smarter

When LEGO got past the survival stage, it needed a way to reclaim the #1 spot. Doing the same things that allowed LEGO to survive wouldn’t make the cut. Now, LEGO needed to thrive. LEGO looked towards new horizons and relied customer recommendations and their own creative way of thinking to guide them. LEGO eventually created unprecedented LEGO sets that grabbed the imagination of children and gave adult fans a challenging build (remember that they complained about the dumbed-down sets earlier, so they welcomed the challenge).

It’s not just a matter of building. It’s a matter of building smarter. Look into your market and see what your customers want and then build products and write content that they would appreciate.

In Conclusion

LEGO is one of the most beloved companies in the world with a story of rise to near collapse to rise again. We can learn a lot from LEGO’s journey about the company’s history and how we can grow our businesses.

7 Business Mistakes To Avoid

October 13, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

7 Business Mistakes To Avoid

Millions of startups are created all over the world every year. While each business has its different purpose, most of them are not sticking. In five years, about 90% of those new businesses will go out of business. It is disappointing to see an idea or business come and go. The worst part is that it happens often.

The reason businesses shut down often is not because it does not work. If creating a business did not work, then why are there the Apples and Googles of the world? Why are the 10% successful? The main reason why many businesses collapse is because many people behind the businesses are not business savvy. Many people who create a startup learn about how business works after the startup has already been created.

There are many people who also spend their money foolishly on their business. Just because someone grosses in $300,000 every year from a business does not mean that person is making $300,000 every year. Some people in this position only get the scraps.

Entrepreneurs have made many lessons available through their own trial-and-error experiences. By analyzing other entrepreneurs’ case studies as well as my own experiences, I have been able to come up with a list of seven business mistakes that you need to avoid so your business stays afloat and even makes a profit.

Putting all eggs in one basket. Squidoo’s decline amazed many people around the web. What once got millions of daily visitors now got absorbed by HubPages. At the time, I put all of my eggs into that basket. This forced me to experiment with other ways to make money on the web. Kindle book creation ended up becoming the big one. However, I never put all of my eggs into that basket. I am also utilizing training courses and other options to bring in revenue as well.
Thinking of profit in the wrong way. Sometimes a business is making a lot of money but the CEO is not. There are some businesses that make $1 million every year but have $2 million in expenses. Many people think of profit as the scraps after expenses take place. On the contrary, you should never spend your money if you know you won’t make a profit that way.
Using social media too often. We all use social media, and other people love to use it as much as they can. A big mistake is using social media too often to the point where you are not getting any of your projects done. Social media is a great way to build an audience but not as great of a way to make money.
Not having a vision. Having a vision allows you to identify where you want to be within a certain amount of time. Visions give us realities which may currently seem out of reach, but by striving to achieve your vision, you will take more steps of action to make that vision a reality compared to if you did not take the time to give yourself a vision.
Not analyzing your own statistics. I am analyzing my statistics every day to learn more about my business, visitors, and customers. I discovered that adding a subscription box at the end of all of my blog posts worked very effectively. In fact, it has more than doubled the amount of subscribers I get.
Never starting at all. Many people fear launching their business to the world because of criticism and the need to be perfect. In order to see how far your business will go, you need to start and launch that business first.
Giving up too early. There are plenty of people who were once comfortable with the status quo before they created their businesses. To these people, the status quo offers security. Although gruesome at times, the status quo offers a guaranteed payment for every hour at the end of the day. Businesses do not guarantee any type of revenue. However, if you take the time to create a business and make it work, you will make more money than anyone from the status quo could ever dream of making.

Business is an awesome and dangerous world to be in. By avoiding these mistakes, you will be taking more of the danger out of business, and you will be able to focus on the awesome parts about having a business: you work at your own hours, you love what you do, and you make money too.

What were your thoughts on the list? Do you have an 8th business mistake that people should know about? Please share your thoughts and advice below.

The 5 Pillars Of Successful Blogging

September 13, 2014 by Marc Guberti 2 Comments

The only two things that separates a newbie blogger from an expert blogger is time and knowledge. Bloggers who have been keeping at it for a few years and have an abundance of knowledge about blogging have more successful blogs than the bloggers who just started. It is great for new bloggers to write blog post after blog post, but it is essential for new bloggers to learn as much as they can about blogging. That is why if you are a new blogger, you definitely need to continue reading through this blog post, and if you have been blogging for a while, it is possible for an old dog to learn new tricks. Here are the five pillars of successful blogging:

Write one blog post every day. The more you write, the better you get, and writing every day will give you discipline you need to take blogging to the next level. Writing one blog post every day at the same time will also make more of your readers expect you to publish a blog post at a certain time. That means if you publish a blog post at 9 am Eastern, some of the people on the East coast will be refreshing their email at 8:59 am until your blog post shows up.
Have your blog optimized for subscribers. It’s great to get more visitors, but it is critical to turn those visitors into subscribers. You need to be using the right mailing provider and have plugins on your blog that get attention and email addresses.
Have a product. In order to be successful with a blog, you need to monetize it…and not with ads or affiliate marketing. Although those are two great ways to bring in some income, having your own product allows you to get a bigger chunk of the commission, and the more products you create, the more math stacks in your favor towards your goals. It is mathematically easier for 10 books to bring in $100,000 every year than it is for 1 book to bring in the same amount of revenue.
Grow your social networks. The presence you have on your social networks is powerful. The bigger your audience is (assuming you did not buy followers), the more people you will be able to interact with. Social media is a great place to interact with your readers and engage with them.
Love what you write about. Without this, you will not succeed as a blogger, and there are no questions about it. You need to love what you do to the point where you would continue to enjoy writing about the same topic for many years. Some bloggers have been at it for over 10 years without a loss in enthusiasm.

Those are the five pillars to a successful blog. What are your thoughts on the list, and how have these pillars impacted your blogging? Do you have a 6th pillar that you go by. Please share your thoughts below.

6 Reasons To Start Something

September 4, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Start

There are millions of ideas to choose from, but not all ideas are created equal in terms of their quality and the individual’s willingness to perform the idea. You will come up with many ideas in your lifetime. Some will be incredible while others will not be as good. However, few people are able to identify whether their ideas are good or not. Some people never get to know the truth because they never start while other people start the idea to quickly realize it was a bust. You should know whether you should start or not before you decide to start the idea or trash it. Here are six reasons why you would want to start something:

You are passionate about the idea. This is an idea that you enjoy and think about every night. If you are not passionate about the idea, then there is no point in even starting.
It has potential. Some ideas are clear dead ends, and it is important to avoid these ideas. If you see potential in your idea and believe in that idea, then it is an idea worth pursuing.
You want to start. The only reason you should start an idea is because you want to do so. It is important to start something based on how you feel instead of the opinions of other people around you. In the end, you are implementing the idea, not the people who are telling you what to do.
You are fearful of someone else taking it away from you. This fear will make you admit that your idea is valuable. We only fear losing our most valuable items. Did you lose a toothbrush? Just go to CVS and buy a new, never used toothbrush. It may even be the right move for your hygiene. Losing your smartphone, especially an iPhone, would cause your world to stop. There have been numerous cases when I (and I’m sure I am not the only one) have completely stopped in my tracks because I did not know where my iPhone was and was not sure if I had left it behind at a public place. Luckily, I have never gone through that horrendous experience.
Your idea is a small innovation of a successful idea that worked. In many cases, small innovations work similarly to the ideas they replicate but have an added twist. This aspect is definitely worth looking into because you do not need to create the next world-changing product to come up with a big idea.
Your idea can change the world. If it can change the world, then go for it. However, you need to honestly ask yourself whether this idea can really change the world or not. Do not tell yourself that your idea can change the world just because it is your idea.

If your idea has those reasons behind it, then it is an idea you should start as soon as possible. However, if there are any doubts about your idea, whether that idea is good or not, you are not the right champion to implement that idea. You need to be fully confident in your decision so you remain authentic and turn your ideas into winning products, businesses, and services.

It’s So Much Easier

August 24, 2014 by Marc Guberti 4 Comments

Easy

To watch than do.

To work for someone else than work for yourself.

To walk than run.

To quit than continue.

To continue doing the wrong things than quit.

To settle than thrive.

To get discouraged than feel optimistic.

To take than to give.

To live in despair than in happiness.

To want more than to be grateful for what you already have.

Just because something is easier does not necessarily mean it is better. We are constantly searching for the shortcuts to avoid putting in more time and effort. Taking shortcuts results in the final result not being as good as it could have been.

4 Tips To Becoming An Influencer

August 22, 2014 by Marc Guberti 6 Comments

Influencer

Becoming an influencer allows you to become an important public figure in society. Since one of the human desires is to be and feel important, many people strive to be influencers. However, most people are doing it all wrong, and many of these people have the wrong definition for what an influencer is. An influencer is someone who changes the world, and many people would miss if that influencer went away. Nelson Mandela is someone that millions of people miss, and he changed the world. We now celebrate Mandela Day every year.

Chances are you want to be an influencer too. Whether you become an influencer at Mandela’s level or not, it is important to know how to become an influencer in the first place. In order to become an influencer, here are the four things you need to do:

Identify the audience you want to change. Who is going to benefit from the changes you put in place? You need to choose who you are targeting, and if you choose everyone, then you are really targeting no one.
Money comes second. Alas, everyone ignores this one. Being an influencer is about making a difference and changing the world. It’s not about ending up with some extra green cash in your pocket. If you want to be an influencer, you need to put money second. The money will come eventually, but changing the world needs to be your top priority.
Make it your livelihood. If you are trying to be an influencer and are working at two jobs, things are not going to work out in your favor. In order to be an influencer, you need to focus a majority of your time on changing the world the way you want to.
Get people to know about you. This is where social media is very helpful. You want to interact with the people you are trying to change. The bigger your audience is, the more your message will spread.

You have the power to change the world. YOU have the power to make a difference. By being an influencer, you will be able to change the way many people live their lives. What are your thoughts on these tips and being an influencer?