Everyone is guilty of looking at an app and saying "Wow that would be easy to build". What we don't see are the 1st release, the revisions, the decisions and the steps it took to mature the app to that state. We especially don't see the sacrifice the builders took to create that app, how many hours did they NOT spend playing with their kids while they were building that app. How many long nights did they put in?

It's easy to judge, easy to say someone got lucky and certainly easier to call someone gifted than to follow their lead and put in the sacrifice to build something special. It's much easier to call someone lucky then to bust your ass when the outcome is questionable.

Last week I was interviewed by Andrew Warner of Mixergy.com, home of the ambitious upstarts and startups.

How The Artsy Fartsy Entrepreneur Behind LessAccounting Is Taking On Quickbooks With Less – with Allan Branch

Business Tips via Mixergy, home of the ambitious upstart!

LessConf3010 will be in Atlanta Georgia, May 21-22, 2010.

LessConf is a conference with talks ranging from startups to design to marketing to business. It's a casual two-day event in Atlanta Georgia with awesome speakers here to inspire you. Each speaker will have a 45 minute talk followed by a 15 minute Q/A session with Steven Bristol.

LessConf3010 Speaker List

1st Day

2nd Day

Forget your logo, that's not your brand.

There's no longer such thing as branding. You can absolutely have a brand, but no one can perform "branding." For the same reason when you build a house they don't call it "housing," they call it roofing, plumbing, flooring etc. A brand has ingredients, many moving parts, which can consist of the following:

• quality of your product or service
• the speed you deliver it
• the support you give your existing customers
• the tone/look/feel of your product and advertising

Your brand is a byproduct of your actions. All these ingredients are equally important as the other. If you have a great support, great speed to deliver and your product is crap then your brand suffers.

And if you think that because you're a service based business this doesn't apply to you? You're wrong, you've got a brand too. How fast do you return emails? How soon do you engaged a potential customer? Do your customers feel like you have their best interest in mind? That's all a part of your brand.

In years past "branding" meant to come up with a logo, business card, letterhead, color guide etc. At that time "branding" was very important, it's what your customers and potential customers would see. But now, we live in dark times, your brand is less about the font on your logo and more about the important things. I know, it's scary to think you can't hire a designer and wham, you're branded. But that doesn't work because building and maintain a brand never stops, it's a constantly changing animal.

There is nothing more vital to your success than your brand. But it's impossible to focus on "branding" you must focus on all the moving pieces, the ingredients of your brand.

Gary Vaynerchuk of http://WineLibrary.tv spoke at LessConf2009 about Crushing it and did an awesome Q&A.

Our surprise guest was Jason Fried of 37signals.com via video chat. Jason talks about the business philosophies of 37signals and other insights into his work day and inspirations.

Allan and I have a friend who is a talented designer. Over the past few years his freelance business has done well. He’s made a solid living even though he hasn’t marketed himself. By “marketed himself” I mean his potential clients have no way to find him and even in the design community hasn’t heard of him. During the past years’ economic bubble this wasn’t a problem because somehow the design projects always found their way to him. Now that the economy has tightened it’s belt his workload has all but dried up, leaving him scrambling for full time or freelance work.

Last week he came to Allan and asked for some work. Unfortunately we currently do not have any projects in the design phase. So Allan suggested using his down time and going into a few popular open source projects and making them beautiful. He argued that he doesn’t have time because he’s spending all his time “trying to get paid”.

This is highly flawed thinking. If you have no work then you have plenty of time. At the very least you should be able to find 2-3 hours a day to contribute to an open source project. Most new business comes from referrals, so becoming the hero of a bunch of developers will likely lead to those developers mentioning your name when they have the chance. This is a great way to get some fairly easy exposure.

Side Note: I might argue that once you have no work that marketing yourself is a bit late and we should all be taking time everyday to network ourselves in some form or fashion.

David Hauser of Grasshopper.com speaks on "How to build a company beyond the start-up stage". Grasshopper.com is a virtual phone system designed for entrepreneurs. Follow David on Twitter at @DH. Also Grasshopper labs just released Chargify, which simplifies recurring billing for Web 2.0 and SaaS companies.

Here's the video David shows at the beginning of his presentation.

Recently I had a conversation with a friend who runs a small web consultancy and is looking for some consulting work. A great website design can help your consulting. But if no one is coming to your site then no one will notice the new design. If your current site is good enough your time is better off networking, blogging, talking to people and helping on open source projects.

My wife has a friend that sells MonaVie, it's a health juice. The company signs up independent distributors. In turn these distributors can setup other independent distributors "under" them, it's a bit of a pyramid scheme/multi-level marketing. These distributors will give you a "free" bottle of the juice, hoping you buy more, if you don't buy more juice they try to charge you for the "free" bottle ($40).

Does a good product really need a sales "scheme" behind it? Yes it does. If your product is just "good" you'll need some clever way to get the word out. However if your product is "great", you do not need a scheme. When was the last time you talked about how awesome Amway products are? Customer, users and clients talk about great experiences and bad experiences. Employ no scheme, just deliver a great product and experience they'll talk about.

My friend Tim Chilcott just moved to New York City and yesterday morning lost his iPhone on the subway. So he tweeted that he lost it, as iPhone users and friends, we all felt his pain. Later that afternoon he tweeted...


...within a few hours his friends on Twitter had donated the money for a new iPhone.

As silly as it sounds, yesterday Tim started a movement; not everyone can start a movement but here's how he did it.

1. Feeling Connected: Possible supporters must feel the victim's pain to be emotionally moved to contribute. Anyone with a cell phone knows, or can imagine how crappy it feels to lose one. Everyone that donated money to Tim's movement feels like they know him, so he's not some stranger asking for money.
2. Make It Easy: You must arm your supporters with the proper tools so they can help. Tim linked us to his paypal account.
3. Empower Supporters: To join your movement people must feel they can directly make a difference. Tim's goal of a new iPhone was seemingly reachable, he wasn't asking for a new car and he doesn't ask for help very often.
4. Show Progress: For your supporters to evangelize to their peers they must feel their contribution is helping the movement reach the goal. Tim tweeted how much money he needed left after each donation. You could track the progress. No one wants a movement they've helped to die before succeeding.
5. Say Thank You: Your supporters are buying on emotion and need to feel appreciated. Tim tweeted a thank you to everyone that supported him.

Tim's movement was successful both because the goal was met, but also because last night I went to bed feeling good that I helped. A successful movement will make the supporters feel great after helping the cause. If you create the right movement your supporters will give you something and feel good about themselves for contributing.

You'd think a health club's best form of advertising would be thin, healthy members but they really don't care about their members' health. In reality if their whole member roster showed up, they wouldn't be able to fit everyone inside the building. Their business model is betting that you don't show up and utilize what you're paying for.

My Dad's friend owns an Outback steakhouse, in the months leading up to Christmas they make 10% of their annual gross revenue by selling gift cards. Even more surprising is that only 35% of these cards are ever used by the recipients. Obviously, the profit margin on gift card sales are huge.

Credit card companies sign you up for a $35.99 per year "credit/id fraud alert" plan and hope you forget about it. You might notice an odd charge on your statement, but you'll probably forget to call and cancel, so they charge you for another year.

These type of businesses get you signed up and then try to keep their billings under your radar. But why? Why can't a gym call if your attendance is lacking and invite you back? Maybe even offer a free trainer for a week. A restaurant should call the recipient of an unused gift card and offer them a free dessert if they use their gift. Why you ask? Showing your customers that they're appreciated and loved is long tail. Keeping them locked in a few more months is a fleeting way to make money.

Every coffee shop I've been to has good coffee. What makes me choose that one place I return to over and over? It's not the coffee.

The direct exchange of coffee for money is how they profit. But their customers aren't choosing them for the coffee, it's something else: Maybe it's the light music or the silence. Maybe the chairs, tables or sofas. Maybe the barrista makes them feel they care or maybe it's just the convenience of your location. Your profit comes from coffee but your selling point isn't the coffee, most coffee shop have good coffee.

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We need your votes to speak at SXSW

Steve and I are hoping to speak SouthbySouthwest (SXSW) 2010. If you haven't heard of this conference you've been living in a cave and let me welcome you to the world outside.

If we're not speaking at SXSW I will blame you personally. :)