Above is Gary Vaynerchuk talking about Web entrepreneurship (found via Readwriteweb), explaining what PHCC stands for (I guess you could call PHCC his business doctrine). PHCC stands for patience, hustle, content and community.
Patience as in wait for your turn, don't expect overnight success.
Hustle as in be proactive and make your business visible to as many eyeballs as possible.
Content as in the need your product satisfies. Is there a demand on the market, and if so, how is your product solid enough to satisfy that demand?
Community as in get people to know you in person, shake hands, exchange business cards, create an emotional tie with them...
Now I want to do a self-analysis of HyveUp, and evaluate how well I fit those criteria.
I am sure armed with patience. As of today, there isn't much going on in terms of monetization. I do not generate volume so traditional business models are not appliable to my business. For the moment, online, I am the guy who does video for free for seemingly no reason whatsoever. My problem right now is that my blog community is Silicon Valley centered. I interview people that my community already knows from social networking events or past collaborations. I think I will gain traction if my videos traveled a little more abroad.
I hustle, no doubt about that. I send about 200 (personalized) emails a week to web entrepreneurs and tech bloggers to invite them to work with me. Response rates are in the order of 10%. And very few of those responses lead to actual collaborations. That means 90% of lack of interest. Some startup CEO even had the balls once to tell me that I am not an interesting media because of my low traffic. And he was right. He just expressed what everyone keeps silent. It takes a lot of cold blood to keep going when response rates are so low. I'm still there.
Content. Now this one is interesting in my case. I am convinced that the concept of my videos will become a mainstream market for online businesses. A video shows what viewers won't bother to go check out. The Web 2.0 is already a crowded market, and mainstream users are already tired of signing up and trying out hundreds of different Websites. My opinion is that video will help users chose their online services by first checking out a demo video showing the functionality and benefits of a site. So far, I stand alone in terms of focusing exclusively on professionally-edited video demos of Websites.
On the community side of things, I'm so-so. The reason is that I cannot afford to attend all the tech conferences going on in the Silicon Valley. As a consequence, I end up attending just a few, briefly meeting a couple of people who are very often not related to my field. Online, I am super active at getting in touch with multiple bloggers. I positive things up for them by commenting, digging, tweeting and re-blogging their content. What goes around comes around... I hope.
So Gary Vaynerchuk's words are a little confusing for me. By listening to him, I feel like I am in the right tracks, but I am obviously not experiencing Wine Library TV's online success, and there are no signs that indicate I will survive and thrive in the niche I am creating.
In those times of uncertainty, I just repeat to myself those kung fu words of wisdom: practice makes perfect. So I keep practicing, hoping for the best.
