Cold Star Project

The next step for humanity is to become a spacefaring society. What kinds of things should we expect to be necessary as we make that transformation?

The author of blog Crowlspace.com joins us on the Cold Star Project to answer questions about the importance of space exploration, and what our first priority should be in Near Earth activity.

Is it time for creative problem solving in your business? Do you finally want to recover your time and put your finger on the real problem? Talk to us at coldstartech.com

"Extruded Book Product" may be a bad-sounding phrase but it's great business!

Ever heard of The Hardy Boys...Nancy Drew...The Bobsey Twins? These and many more were series produced according to a strict formula for an eager target market of children by an army of ghostwriters. Created by one man over a hundred years ago, the Stratemeyer Syndicate is a model for those wanting to create a scalable content creation business today.

Listen in and discover the elements of Stratemeyer's successful formula and how he created a book empire that lasted well over 85 years.

If you're eager to talk to us and come up with some ideas for creating a similar concept for your business, book a call at coldstartech.com

Information used to be the core deliverable for a consulting company. Companies were paid simply to give advice and make suggestions.

The traditional (billable hour) generalist consulting company is fundamentally inefficient. Too much competition and too many complex problems. You can’t just throw bodies at the problem and figure it out as you go.

Consulting companies are now asked to be execution partners. They are asked to share in the risk of the project.

Consulting companies have to find a profitable way of operating in a new competitive landscape. When information/analysis can no longer be the core deliverable, and hourly-based pricing is incredibly difficult to scale, what should you do?

If there is one specific mechanic that changes all of these dynamics...it is the productized service.

1 - It promises a clear deliverable in advance. The knows what they are buying.

2 - It easier to manage a project than it is to manage billable hours.

The pressure (pain) is found in the daily operations of a consulting company:

- Bad sales calls. Lots of talking. No one buys.

-Custom proposals and RFP process. Constant guesswork on both sides (client/consultant)

-Scope creep. Vague projects get more vague.

-Clients don’t follow directions. They (un)intentionally do things to damage the project.

Have you ever asked "how to turn my service into a product"?

Watch this interview episode of the Cold Star Project with Alzay Calhoun, the Coveted Consultant founder, for answers on how to productize your business to scale.

Is it time to put your finger on the true problem in your business? Get the Red Team: https://www.coldstartech.com/red-team/

Marcel Petitpas, co-founder of Parakeeto, joins us on the Cold Star Project to talk about what happens as you grow your agency and realize the deeper level of tracking you need.

You'll discover all the data you need to see critical agency KPIs are spread out between a bunch of different tools:

- Timesheets in a time tracking tool (Toggl or Harvest)

- Expenses, Payroll, OPEX in accounting (Quickbooks or Xero)

- Budgets & proposals in spreadsheets in google drive

- Resource plans in another tool or spreadsheet

- Sales pipeline in a CRM

- Project status reports in a PM tool

and more.

Trying to bring all this data together in a spreadsheet to calculate Utilization, Profitability, and do any level of forecasting for resources or finances will be a real administrative burden. And the existing tools in the marketplace to help you do so are both expensive and few and far between.

That's where Parakeeto is coming in. All this data needs to be turned into information you can use to make decisions. Not just a dashboard, but a tool you can calculate with after it collects the data. And most importantly, you need to become aware that this problem is going to happen to you as you scale.

Is it time to talk to the experts of scaling from 12 - 500 people at Cold Star? Book a call at www.coldstartech.com

Can't you just "hire a commission salesperson"? What happens when you try to scale your sales team? If it's been All-You so far, the founder acting as the sole salesperson for the business, what challenges will you run into when you try to change that? Jon Paramore is here to answer these questions and show you the missing steps in finding great salespeople.

SCALING YOUR SALES TEAM

Sourcing the right salesperson is not an easy task. Despite many business owners feeling their sense of discernment is good, hiring mismatches often occur when they try to bring in someone for their sales team. Good talkers in interviews frequently do not translate into powerful performers...there's a gap between what the candidate says and what they actually do on the job.

HIRING SALES REPS

Listen in and get a great education on what it takes to attract genuine salespeople who get results for your business.

Is it time to talk to the experts of scaling from 12 - 500 people at Cold Star? Book a call at www.coldstartech.com

The founder of the SaaS Growth Hacks group on Facebook, Aaron Krall, is here to share his definition of Onboarding...and how that process can be used to fuel the growth of your tech firm.

Too many founders operate in isolation, creating a solution for a problem no one else acknowledges. Tech marketing also concentrates on features, which the majority of the buying marketplace does not understand. Aaron shows you how to get a different result by focusing on what your customers are actuall saying--instead of what you believe to be valuable.

SaaS Growth Hacks facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SaaSgrowthhacking/

Is it time to talk to the experts of scaling from 12 - 500 people at Cold Star? Book a call at www.coldstartech.com

"I love the mind mapping idea," is a comment I frequently hear when I'm explaining process mapping to a new audience. But they're not the same thing, and this is my attempt to explain the difference.

To me, mind maps are subjective conceptualizing, creating space to fill in, and finding out what's important to you about a topic. Process mapping is a much more tactical, much more objective step-by-step diagrams of how things actually work in your business.

Is it time to get the process experts at Cold Star Tech working for you? Book a call with us to find out at coldstartech.com

In this solo episode of the Cold Star Project, founder Jason Kanigan explores an example of perverse incentives. The Belgian Congo and atrocities committed there in the name of good accounting are today's topic.

Also covered are modern examples of perverse incentives, and eight points from a Forbes article on how to develop good performance measures that result in behaviors you want. It's all too easy to accidentally create a KPI or measure that results in bad behavior.

Look for the Humans WILL Game episode for the factory production scam example.

Is it time to talk to the experts of scaling from 12 - 500 people at Cold Star? Book a call at www.coldstartech.com

The guy who wrote the book on Infusionsoft, Sales Whisperer Wes Schaeffer, is my guest on the Cold Star Project. "What CRM Should I Get?" is a question we've both heard unrelentingly over the past half-decade. Wes has an answer, and it's not what you think.

Demystifying the selection process is key to your success: don't get sucked in by feature-rich promises of an app you may never appropriately use...but still pay full price for.

Wes' "Process Before Login" video and map:

https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/pbl

Is it time to talk to the experts of scaling from 12 - 500 people at Cold Star? Book a call at www.coldstartech.com

Mikaels Labs founder Harry Kanistik is here on the Cold Star Project to share how machine learning and AI are being used to grow businesses.

"AI" in particular is a buzzword these days and frequently misapplied in the effort to make marketing sound cool. Harry's firm is on a mission to help companies scale with real machine learning and AI solutions, so listen in to hear what those terms really mean.

Is it time to talk to the experts of scaling from 12 - 500 people at Cold Star? Book a call at www.coldstartech.com