Issue 008 – August 15, 2020

I got schooled

Hey friend,

It’s Saturday, it’s Robin from CFD Engine, so it must be OnCFD time.

This week’s email is a diversion into the business of CFD & how I got schooled by my wife & my 11 year-old daughter. Key takeaway: it’s all too easy to make things too difficult.

When I say schooled I don’t mean the home schooling that we’ve been bumbling through since March. No, this week my favourite girls gave me an impromptu business lesson. A lesson so obvious to them (& maybe to you) that I don’t think they even noticed it.

Nevertheless, here are the events that prompted this business epiphany…

“We need more storage” is a regular refrain in our house. To which I usually respond “No, we need less stuff”. Taking that to heart, the girls started a micro clear-out.

In the space of an hour they’d Marie Kondoed a cupboard full of pre-school books, setting aside the ones that sparked joy & dumping the duff ones.

The remainder had their picture taken & were posted to the local “kids tat for sale” group on Facebook – 50p each (or £2 for the special Thomas The Tank Engine one).

Within an hour, someone had messaged wanting to buy almost all of them, they’d agreed a bulk discount via Messenger, settled up online using a link from our banking app & dropped them off when they went for a walk – job done.

What has this got to do with anything?

I think it resonated with me because it illustrated so many of the things that I’m no good at. I can make your racing car go faster, or wrestle snappyHexMesh into submission, or whip your CFD process into shape, but I’m not very good at “the business.” As I’ve said on many occasions, “the CFD is the easy bit” – I wasn’t joking.

Learnings

What exactly did I learn from this “masterclass” in online sales?

Selling stuff online (and we’re all selling online) is only as complicated as you want to make it.

In this case:

  • Find (or create) something you want to sell;
  • Post it somewhere that interested people will see it (preferably people looking to buy stuff);
  • Make it easy for them to buy, including:
    • make it easy to talk to you;
    • make it easy to pay (preferably online);
  • Be flexible, you might learn something about your market.

I knew that it could work like that, it’s just that I usually overthink every stage of it. End result – No sale. My new business mentors just got it done & spent their earnings on ice creams on the way home🍦

Having observed the lesson (& shared the lesson) I’m going to try and act on it. Not just in business, but also in CFD.

“It doesn’t always have to be complicated. Do the best CFD you can, with the resources you have, and go from there.”

Is this something you recognise in your business, or in the CFD/CAE industry in general? What have you done to make things simpler for yourselves or your customers? Drop me a note, I’m eager to learn.

I’ll be back next week with some Docker tips. In the meantime, I’m off to help the girls build a lemonade stand 💵🍋💵

Until next week, stay safe,

Robin