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I read about an interesting experiment conducted by Washington Post. A musician performed at indoor arcade outside the Metro on a typical Friday morning. He looked like a any other street-musician who was simply trying to make some money by playing his violin at the street. However, nobody knew that he is one of the finest classical musicians in the world, who played six classical pieces that morning on his violin which by itself costs more $3 million dollars. During the experiment almost no one stopped by to listen and people just glanced and walked away.

I will try to look at this experiment from the business perspective. Joshua Bell, the famous musician, made $32.17 by playing for 43 minutes outside the Metro. As stated in the article usually when Joshua is performing he makes $1.000 dollars in a minute. It’s obvious that if Joshua Bell was performing at a major hall and everybody knew that it was him playing then he would have made much more money. I guess the lesson here is that the quality of a product doesn’t always add much to the attractiveness of the product. Because people like products in a nicely designed packages. They like things that aren’t only interesting but also look attractive.

There’s also an interesting post about the importance of photos in real estate listings. The idea is that professionally made photos makes the property look more attractive to the potential buyer. Let’s say you’re looking for a house and find two similar houses that fit your requirements. Their “quality” is very similar: both are in a good neighbourhood, have the same amount of bedrooms and so on. The first house has bad looking photos but is on a good price. The second house has lots of professionally made photos and because of that looks very lovely but the price is way higher than the first one’s. Which one would look more attractive to you? To me it would be the second one. Although I know that in terms of “quality” these two houses are almost the same. And the price of the first house is way better. But still the second house would look more attractive to me.

I can’t guarantee if I would have stopped by to listen Joshua Bell playing his violon outside the Metro. Although I would love to go to his concert.

As I can’t guaruantee I wouldn’t buy the second house instead of the first one. Although I would be looking for a wisely-priced house.

I’ve came to a post about the mistakes of starting a small business. Although I don’t entirely agree on all 20 things listed but these are the mistakes that I’ve made:

2. Don’t Incorporate. I would change that to “Don’t incorporate too early”. Most of the time it isn’t a neccesity to incorporate. And you should do it after you see that your idea is bringing you money. Otherwise first incorporating and then seeing that your idea is not working will cost you time and money.

9. Don’ get a business license. The same thing here. This should be one of the last things in your “starting a small business list”. I would advocate to do it only after your first client agrees to pay you money for your service/product.

11. Don’t design a logo and 12. Don’t waste time picking a business name. I know that it’s a very exciting process. I’ve done that myself. Two times. But these are the things that matters least at the start.

18. Don’t tell all of your friends about the business that you’re going to start someday soon. I also know that it’s very exciting to talk about your future business but you should do it only after actually launch your business and have some clients and cash coming in. In that case you won’t look and be the person who talks a lot but does nothing.

It’s very easy to get caught up in such “preparation work” - wasting time picking a business name, incorporating, buying office equipment, writing a business plan and so on. Usually you can survive without doing these things. It’s better to spend that time working on launching your product, executing your idea and getting those first clients. In that case you will improve the chances of success and save some time and money.