GOOOOOD....

I finally discovered the hidden question that was lodged in my heart. Or, not so much a question, but a doubt. Now, it's re-directing and re-modeling.

The problem is, the original business plans were far too, hum... school oriented. To the degree that they seem like school reports. This isn't due so much to the fact that I am incapable of writing else-wise (as my other project plans are not so school-oriented), but simply the original direction was far too limited under certain strong external influences (aka board). If we continue on this path, we'll not succeed, in fact, we'll have more and more trouble on the way, finding obstacles in every developmental direction. The whole process is wrong, and should be altered and changed.

First.... Products are important, but they are not everything, nor do they need to be the first thing that you are definite about. There's no need to design into the detail, especially if you are the CEO. You give a general direction, then you worry about other things. For example, with our website, it changes day by day, the point isn't building a website, nor the website itself, the point is what service is provided, what's the focus point, what's the killer application? What's the killer idea?! YouTube and Flickr and Wretch, etc all sells "privacy" and "sharing"... it's not their website nor what they use that matters, it is these concepts that really counts.

Second... Any process should start with finding questions, and then you can answer them. You don't ask for answers without letting others know what the questions is, and you don't do that to yourself either. Spend the time to find the questions, and then spend the time to answer them carefully, spend the time talking to people and hearing different opinions, spend the time testing and re-testing your ideas.

Third... Know your market. Market survey doesn't need to wait for your service/product to be complete before it is carried out. In fact, there should be one survey done before you start doing anything. You need to know what's the present status quo of the market you are going into. For example, does everyone love YouTube? Why? What do they want more from it? What do people need? And so on, this way, you won't spend all your time in futile making a product that the market does not want.

Fourth... Know your opponents. Same ideas as above, only deeper. What's the history? What's it about? What's their strategies? Their statistics? These are very important. It's always important to know what you are going against, if just to safe yourself from another futile work period only to find that, damn... my competitor have already been doing that for decades...

Fifth... If the employee doesn't work, change. Maybe in a school club there's the problem of, "but he's my friend." or "but he's her son", etc. Yet, for the well-being of a company, sometimes the actual results are more important. Chose your team carefully and strictly.

Sixth... Depend on no one. This isn't to say no collaboration, it's to say that you don't want to depend everything on someone else. People are not reliable when they don't see the profits, and have not the same passion as yourself for any business. People are not reliable, period. If you want to do something, make sure that you are the one who knows what goes on in it. If you are the boss, you are the only person that cannot be missing from the team, anyone else can be replaced, but not you. If you are over-reliant on your tech-team, allowing them to make most of the decisions, you might end up being the one that's excused from the game instead of them, or you might have problems when they are excused. Power-structure, grrrr.

Seventh... Board is to be respected, but since CEO is the one working onsite... let the CEO decide.

Eighth... this isn't a game, it's a business... it's not school clubs... it's business... no one cares what educational values you have, and no one will take that as the reason to support you. Unless, of course, they are education based organizations.