Over 26 million people visit Craigslist every month and this translates into an estimated $81 million in sales for 2008. Not bad for a small company that’s still private (although eBay now owns 25%). So how does Craigslist do this? I believe a large part is trust. Of course their site is easy to use, free for most postings and quick because of the lack of images. But it’s also trustworthy. Craigslist is the anti-corporation, they are out there to provide a service, not make the most they can off of you and people love that.

So next time you’re thinking of what you can charge your customers, think instead of what you can provide them with. The resulting changes may just create the buzz and goodwill that your company needs to jump sales year after year like Craigslist.

-Craig Sharkton

She markets it at $50 and it’s now carried by 46 worldwide distributors. Last year she sold around 826,000, which would be over $20 million in sales at the wholesale price. So Metrokane built a product into $20 million in sales in seven years off of a “stolen” idea. Just fabulous.

Another genius idea Kane employs is branding similar products at different price levels. The Houdini is a Rabbit knock off that retails for a cheaper price, but it was created by the same company. They knew someone would create a cheaper similar product (like they originally did to the Screwpull) so they acted first, cannibalized a bit of their sales, but gained overall. Genius.

So next time you think you need a great idea try looking through patents that are about to expire and see if you can find some buried gold. You can start by checking out the US Patent and Trademark Office.

-Craig Sharkton

In fact Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, wakes up every morning since he was 17, looks into the mirror and asks himself “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” If he says no too many days in a row he knows he needs to change something (link to full speech at bottom of post).

There’s a ton of ways you can reduce your work load, but I thought I’d list three that successful entrepreneurs used.

1. Leave the employees in charge: Paul Orfalea, the founder of Kinko’s, was expanding his company and kept getting calls about every little decision. Finally, he realized he’d never be able to grow the company if he had to do everything so he left. He jumped in his car and went on a vacation. The first week he said people just said “he’ll come back,” week two was “Oh my, he’s gone.” Then in week three something magical happened. The employee’s handled everything. It took Paul a bit of time when he came back to get over the fact that his employee’s didn’t need him. But he was able to take longer vacations and his employees were empowered, a clear win for everyone.
2. Fire a customer: Tim Ferris ran a nutritional supplement website and was working himself insane. One of the tactics he used to go from working 14 hour days to 4 hours each week was to evaluate his customers. He profiled the most profitable ones, then searched for more of those. He also evaluated his most stressful customers who wasted his time and either stopped calling them or simply fired them. He’d tell them that if they weren’t going to follow his process or respect him to go somewhere else. A bit gutsy, but it worked for him. He’s got a great book out, check it out if you have time – The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich.
   
3. Design a better business model: John Chow is another interesting entrepreneur. He started a tech related blog and quickly realized people were interested in how to make money with blogs. A few years later and presto he writes a couple posts a day for his site johnchow.com and last month brought in over $40,000 in ad revenue. With almost no costs, he’s living the life. He’s totally mobile and although he doesn’t state how much he’s working… I can almost guarantee it’s less than you.

So look in the mirror tomorrow and pretend it’s your last day here. Are you looking forward to the day? If not perhaps it’s time to see if you can reduce the hours you spend working. Start looking for little ways to leverage the internet, your employees or your assets. Hire an outsourcing company. Leave a promising employee in charge for a couple weeks. Redesign your business model.

If you have any tips of your own please leave them as a comment. I’m sure the other business owners are interested to see how you’re getting home early or taking that vacation to Europe.

-Craig Sharkton

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