Yesterday David and I had a rather lovely meeting with a gentleman who runs the Law Institute of Victoria’s beautifully organized and rather enticing bookshop on Bourke Street in Melbourne city. Owen Hyde didn’t explain how long he’d been in this role but hearing how he’d been involved with early explorations into taking the bookshop online and how after five long years the movement to online distribution of niche legal content could really be seen to be happening I’d guess it was long enough to be really meaningful.
Owen runs both the real world LIV bookshop and its equally successful online version and because they are so well organized lawyers and those needing access to specific legal content from all over the country, purchase their content with the LIV bookshops. They have become the de facto national legal bookshop – a perfect niche in my opinion.
For me this was a really interesting meeting as I’ve not spent anytime at all in the world of law institute lawyers and all of my dealings with lawyers have been pretty much through the businesses David and I have been involved with and we’ve dealt mainly with commercial lawyers, who while still legal fraternity, are not really hallowed halls and unique precedents and arguments.
As I’ve written in previous blog posts, David and I and our little company Webzing Pty Ltd started a new venture, actually with specialist lawyers, the team at Erskine Rodan & Associates Immigration Lawyers a few months ago. Christine and Erskine Rodan had published in 2009 a unique book that drew on their vast knowledge of and practice in immigration law called Migrating To Australia: A Guidebook, that was one of only a couple of publications targeting the immigration law space.
This wonderful book was available in the Law Institute of Victoria bookshop and as Owen told us it sold really well and they’d sold out. The issue the writers found with the book was that in the area of immigration law there are at least a couple of legislative changes every month and therefore the book fairly quickly became out of date, even though it had been three years in the researching and writing. This issue of losing relevance as soon as there is a significant change to immigration law isn’t one that goes away in this fast-changing area of law, so a solution to this needed to be devised.
In our collaborative venture with the Erskine Rodan & Associates team we’ve completely updated and a 2nd version of the Guidebook and decided to make it available as an e-book, giving us the facility to do a major update and rewrite as soon as the legislative changes start to make the content of the book look out-of-date and out-of-touch. But interestingly in our discussion with Mr Hyde from the LIV Bookshop, there are various really specific areas of the law where the customers really aren’t that worried that the book is out-of-date, that they use it as reference and a kind of text, but that they really like to have access to a hard copy version as well as an e-version.
Which leads us back to the issue of creating a book whose content we know will be out-of-date very soon, printing it on demand, but making sure we keep the customer properly informed via emailed legal updates. Whilst it is early days for Webzing and Erskine Rodan & Associates on this venture, we’re starting to get a bit more clear on how those who want content around immigration law are likely to want to receive it and use it.
Our short journey and interlude at the LIV Bookshop, whereby you can buy a legal reference book which costs you over $500, and those who want and can put to good use the information and content in this book do not hesitate to pay that amount, reminded me that in a really perfect niche the economics are quite different to a mainstream product. With a really important legal tome you may only sell a thousand copies of a version, however 1000 copies at $500 is not a number to sneeze at.
As my life rolls on and so much around me appears to become commoditized I really get interested and excited in those perfect niches where small groups of people congregate, and they congregate around content and ideas that have a really premium value to them. That to me is a perfect niche and I’m looking out for more of those in 2010.
For those of you who are interested in Australian migration law or have someone in your world who needs to get across what’s involved in migrating to Australia, don’t hesitate to refer them to our site www.migrationdigest.com.au. There are two definitive guidebooks available for sale – Migrating to Australia: The Guidebook which is a definitive overview of all bar the tourist visa categories, and Business Skills Migration: The Guidebook a comprehensive guide to migrating to Australia under the business skills and investor visas. You can also sign up for a free weekly digest about all the latest in Australian immigration news and trends at the Migration Digest website.
This blogpost is the transcript of the interview between Fiona Boyd and brand advocate Michel Hogan from Brandology – What to do about the Customerzilla? Read More→
How often is it that your ‘no-brainer’ business or project, goes from being a ‘no-brainer’ to something that requires serious problemsolving and stops looking like being so easy and so much fun?
I’ve never been part of anything that doesn’t have a honeymoon period that ends and as it ends all in a rude kind of rush it turns into what looks like a pile of drudge. And it’s at that point that you have to make a decision as to whether you’re going to stay with it and work through the issues that arise, or whether your time could best be used elsewhere.
Those who roll their sleeves up and stay usually have to do a number of things to get the honeymoon passion back into what they’re doing – in essence you have to fall in love with the business all over again, but this time with some really clear ideas and market intelligence on how it works or doesn’t and a plan of attack that can actually take it somewhere. Read More→
Most of the business people and entrepreneurs I know are really good at solving problems both for the world at large and for other people but aren’t that good at looking after themselves.
It’s been a long held belief of mine, not often put into practice I must admit, that you’re much more effective as a decisionmaker, leader, entrepreneur when you’re fit, healthy and feeling of sound mind.
In the initial rush to startup a new business and I think shrinking also under the weight of this enormous new path you have chosen, one of the first things you may find yourself throwing out the window is your usual exercise activity. If it’s running, gym, swimming whatever, in the throws of the new business you find yourself cutting your timelines very finely looking across every second of the week and dumping activities that aren’t immediately obvious as being useful to getting results right now. Read More→
There are some days when pursuing what appears to be a safe business practice or concept is really little more than recycling something that is known, has worked before but there are no guarantees that it will continue to work going forward.
More interesting for me are those businesses that build on what’s been done in the past, but do it in such a way that they create something quite new. Indeed if you’re breaking new ground you have permission to do things a little more out-of-the-box, the sides of the box have not yet been defined in fact you’re doing the defining as you’re going about things.
While it’s important not to reinvent the wheel, it’s also important to not be too derivative. Technologies and business that build on what’s known but take the opportunity off into a new, hitherto unnoticed direction are those who have the true potential to clean up big in my view.
Dr Terry Cutler in his time as Chairman of Arts Hub, often used to say to me – don’t follow the pack, be the market organiser. Do what you do differently enough that you can enforce a whole new way of looking at things in your market place. Even better, create that marketplace.
Just a little food for thought today. The word innovation is bandied around so often that I fear it sometimes loses its meaning. In my experience, you innovate when you build something new, interesting and useful beyond what is known and expected and accepted as being true.
Innovation can be jiggling old stuff around, but it's more than recycling worn-out concepts
And one more point on innovation. Some friends of the Into the Mountain crew have recently started a new business aggregating the resources and opportunities in the customer service space and they’ve invented a whole new term for what they’re doing. The business is www.clienteerhub.com and hats off to Ray Brown and Matt and Tim McDougall for creating a whole new language and canon around the area of customer service. Redefining something in an existing area in such a way that you unlock it’s real importance and give it the sort of value it should have had in the first place is really, really clever innovation. We wish the clienteerhub team all the best and we’re sure we’ll be talking more about their content and what they’re doing in the near future. For now check out their first clienteerTV interview with Ben Watson, Principal of Enterprise User Experience at Adobe.
Photo: flickr miguelpdl
Why great customer service is not always the bees knees Vidpost
Sunday, July 11th, 2010By · Comments
Michel Hogan from Brandology talks to Fiona Boyd about the importance of a company making promises it knows it can deliver every time. This may mean that you deliver great customer service, or then again, maybe not. Michel Hogan and Fiona Boyd explore some of the things customers expect, and whether these expectations need to be met or not.
Michel Hogan is the founder of brand advocacy Brandology. Michel also shares her big picture thoughts on brand at Brand Alignment and you can read her weekly post called Brand Matters at Smart Company.
This post is the transcript of the videopost Tax Time Housekeeping. Read More→
Phil Grant, Managing Partner at Nexia ASR talks here to Fiona Boyd about how last year’s stimulus package and some of the benefits that business may have taken up, need to be accounted for with tax time imminent. He also gives a wrap on the Henry Review, 2010 Federal Budget and the Cooper Review into superannuation.
Phil Grant from Nexia ASR talks to us regularly about financial and accounting matters and how they affect the entrepreneur. Nexia ASR is a full service boutique accounting firm based in Melbourne, Australia.
This post is the transcript of a video interview between Scott Kilmartin, Ringmaster at Haul and Fiona Boyd - Haul and the eCommerce Journey Part Two Read More→
David and I have worked in online businesses and projects for the best part of 15 years now and coming from arts and media backgrounds we’ve both had somewhat of a bias towards running projects in an egalitarian, collaborative way. For us, this approach hasn’t always been successful and it is indeed cumbersome, takes time and you need to be supremely patient. In the meantime the competition can have the jump on you while you’re still fiddling around trying to get group consensus. Read More→
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