Come on, go for it!

For me, motivation in a project comes from seeing things move. I get energy from doing things myself, getting others involved and showing them the work is paying off. When that enthusiasm hits me, I really get stuck in. Right now, it’s Amino’s expert blogs that have fired me up.

You’re hearing a lot from me at the moment and might think I’m sitting by the swimming pool on holiday. But in the summer of 2010, I’m actually working harder than I have since my early entrepreneurial years. I find time for the videos in the car, among other places, where I can’t do much other work anyway.

I do lots of the little things myself

Sometimes I get an idea for a project I really care about while many other people are on holiday. Then the energy hits me. I built the foundation for Amino over an Easter holiday, for example.

I can’t program or do graphics, so I have good people helping with those things. But I do a lot of the other work myself, including small details you might not imagine me sitting there doing.

I do that to understand the project fully, keep it moving and maintain my own motivation. Nothing demotivates me more than sitting waiting for others to finish. So I try to keep myself busy with something I can move forward.

In a phase like that, I delegate as little as I can get away with. That’s still a lot. But I want to be involved in the project myself and feel things happening.

Amino’s expert blogs should be a proper toolbox

For a long time, we’ve had expert bloggers on Amino with their faces down the right-hand side. It hasn’t worked well enough. We haven’t maintained it properly, and some expert bloggers have left because they didn’t think we were taking it seriously enough.

Now I’ve decided it needs to be done properly. We need more expert bloggers, higher quality, a better layout and better marketing. We need to help the bloggers we already have write even better.

What I want Amino to be is a huge toolbox for you. There shouldn’t be a subject within entrepreneurship and business you can’t get help with.

I’m not particularly interested in ordinary business news about who’s gone bankrupt or whether a share has risen a little since yesterday. I want to know how to market effectively on Facebook, sell products in Poland, import more cheaply from China or save money on shipping. How do I get the accounts done well and cheaply? Those are the kinds of concrete questions I want help with.

Experts who explain how to do things

The discussions already provide lots of knowledge. But I also want experts who are really skilled in their fields and can explain a process methodically.

For example, we have Simon, our young expert blogger on Facebook. It’s incredible what he knows. He describes what he’s done to make money and how others can approach it.

Anette Sand explains bookkeeping for small businesses and goes into how to make different things work. We also have Rolf, who writes about sales, and around 25 other talented people. I can’t go through everyone here, but that’s the kind of knowledge I want more of.

Guides, categories and all the details

I’m getting someone to create a good design and finding more expert bloggers who might want to join. At the same time, I’m writing a big guide: How do you write well? How do you become a good blogger? What does Amino expect, what are the rules and what tools can you use?

It needs to provide both help and guidelines. It needs to be laid out as a PDF and sent out. I’ve also created an expert group so I can message everyone at once.

I’m working on the details down the right-hand side of the blog. What should come first? Where should the names go? Should there be an RSS feed, an Atom feed or both? Should we have a tag cloud? And should we call them categories because that’s easier to understand?

I write the text, put things in order and try to motivate the bloggers. It’s lots of small tasks, but together they affect the whole experience.

The content also needs to reach readers

I’ve set up the expert bloggers’ feeds on Facebook so posts appear automatically. Twitter is next, where people should also be able to follow the expert groups.

I’m defining groups on subjects such as sales and marketing, e-commerce and e-business. There will be new categories on Amino where the expert bloggers become visible, and we’re starting to market them.

I’ve also found relevant foreign bloggers and set up feeds that can show their content without implying they’ve joined as our own expert bloggers. That’s another part of the work to bring more knowledge forward.

Precise tasks for the designers and programmers

While working myself, I send tasks on to the designer. I use Jing to show exactly what I mean: This text goes here, this should happen here. It makes changes easier to explain.

I send the programmers ideas about automation. Can a blogger get a reminder if they haven’t posted in two weeks? Can someone who comments get an email when somebody replies to the comment?

All those things are happening at once. And I need to keep the Amino team informed about what I’m doing so they can support it.

Nicolai and Niels help work out which advertisers and sponsors might suit the blogs. Ideally, the project should generate income so it isn’t just an expense.

Henriette and Anja are continually being brought up to speed on how it needs to be maintained. I can’t personally look after 60 to 100 expert blogs in the long term. So the project needs to be handed over gradually and with confidence, so others put their hearts into it too.

Motivation in a project grows when progress becomes visible

I might send 20 to 25 emails a day to different people in the team, sometimes to everyone. They aren’t just tasks. They’re also messages about what’s succeeding.

In a few days, we’ve gained around 50 per cent more page views on the blogs. I mention a previous level of around 2,000 to 2,500 and days with around 3,500 to 3,700. Now I’m hoping we’re approaching 4,000.

It’s important everyone can feel the project moving forward. Jimmy, who does programming, can connect his fix with the improvement we’re seeing. I want him to feel: This is my project too. What I did matters. Also read Min vej som leder about my experiences of motivating a team and creating momentum.

I get so enthusiastic that I start multiplying the numbers into monthly and yearly figures. And I get the calculations muddled and say myself that I’m probably getting them wrong. So don’t use my quick projections as precise results. It’s the direction I’m interested in.

My goal is to reach 10,000 page views a day within a month. I believe in that as I sit here, but it’s a goal, not something we’ve already achieved.

The expert bloggers need to feel my support

I also write directly to the bloggers with tips, ideas and progress. They need to feel things are happening and their work is being seen.

I need to write a newsletter today and will make sure to promote them. Imagine a blogger whose post initially got 300 views, then appears in a newsletter to 20,000 recipients and gets many more readers. In the video, I use an extra 1,500 as an example. That experience can be hugely motivating.

Then they want to write more, and it can become self-reinforcing. More energy, better content, more readers and fresh energy. That’s the kind of spiral I’m trying to start.

An intense period that takes its toll too

It’s the same enthusiasm and energy I built Amino with. It isn’t just leading and delegating from a distance. I’m part of the work myself, right down to tasks others might call small things. I empty and clean the coffee machine too. People need to feel I’m taking part.

My family knows those periods. I tell my wife I’ll be a bit mad for the next month. I might work 16 hours a day and be hard to get close to. I still drop the children off and try to be there, but my thoughts are elsewhere.

When the month is over, I’m completely drained. I describe a racing heart and feeling almost as if I have a stomach ulcer. Then I take a week’s holiday. That’s my own description of the price of the intense period, while also feeling I’ve got the freight train moving at full speed.

When I start a project, one thing counts, and that’s action. If you’re short on energy and motivation, follow along 🙂 Best wishes, Martin