Business
The Future of Toll Booths
Business is being reshaped online, it has to, the very way of survival is change, it is however, doing a poor job of translating it to traditional business forms. What I call the OLD Business Model still needs to be looked after, but it also needs to be transformed and reshaped to adopt the online mentality if it’s to survive. No longer can we use the phrase, ” we’ve always done it this way”, if someone says it, they should be fired on the spot. It sounds harsh but, if that person has influence, the future of that business is and will be in jeopardy if they stay with that thinking.
Toll Booths are the mechanism for getting paid, online & off, it’s the way of the business world. These toll booths are being reshaped, they are becoming more & more invisible to the consumer. This seamless trend will continue to the point we may not know when we’ve actually paid for anything! The strategic alliances, the partnerships, and the stand-alones must make paying for goods & services effortless in order to make the experience positive. Not unlike the Apple example, iTunes has made buying music almost painless but not completely. You still have to download an application and you still have to have a valid account with a healthy balance in it before you can feel the benefit. Plus, it’s a closed system, you don’t get to touch it, feel it or make changes to it. Still, this toll booth is better than no start to the future of toll booths, and probably one of the best examples to date.
My son recently purchased eye glasses online, it was a great experience, and he saved money to boot! It was a simple three step process, choose your contacts & or designer frames, enter your prescription & customize your order, and then see the savings delivered to your door. It took him less than a week to get his new glasses, he put them on and they were perfect. The company is called Clearly Contacts, a Canadian company that is making it easy to buy glass & contacts, and they accept PayPal as a means of payment! In the future, we will have our eyes tested online so we don’t have to drive to the optometrist to get the prescription.
Soon there will be a secured cookie mechanism, a cert if you will, it will eliminate the actual payment click of the mouse step, it will be similar to the RFID chip. It will be a Secured Digital RFID Cookie that will handle the payment process for you. Of course, you will have to approve it, but as web browsers die, other technologies of viewing websites will make this process even easier.
The current build of toll booth is still too cumbersome, a link to PayPal or another means of making payment needs to be hidden from plain site, making the experience better. The current method makes you feel like you have been violated, or you’ve left the house unlocked, I need to feel things are well looked after, I don’t need to see it. The experience is everything for the user, much like Attention is to the seller. Attention is the new currency for anyone or any business selling products and services online. The problem is, getting that attention is going to get harder and harder, and it’s also going to be extremely difficult to keep that attention. One way of helping the cause, make paying for your products & services as easy as possible. Don’t ask users to fill out a LONG form, requesting name, address, phone numbers and so on, that will be the death of you. Find ways to make the toll booth invisible, and above all, an experience they can’t stop talking about in a positive way.
Where you put the toll booth matters, the experience users have using your site & toll booth will be the difference maker. The future of toll booths? Simple, hide them, embed them, make them work seamlessly online and you will have a winner. Better yet, you’ll get attention, and that means good things for you and your business.
We Need The Small Victories Too
Have you ever found yourself day dreaming, you see some people and they seem to have it all going for them, and they make everything look so easy. We all have people like that in our lives, we see the grass greener in those people, they’re luckier, they get all the breaks, and you don’t. Come on, admit it, you’ve done it, and you’ve probably done that your entire life! I know I have at times, and I’m 52 years old, and have been around a short bit, which means I have probably thought it a million times over the course of my life. There’s a problem with that kind of self talk, many problems actually, far too many and they are far too deep.
Negative self-talk takes us to a place where fear can get a firm grip on us, it can immobilize us, and we start the downward spiral of feeling sorry for ourselves in a heartbeat. You’re probably wondering where I’m going with this, walk with me a bit.
I’ve had many careers, jobs, and have been on my own over the years, and I can tell you that self-talk is critical to your success. I don’t mean getting yourself all jacked up with unrealistic expectations, they will almost always fail, and when things don’t go as planned, you’ll lose your momentum. I didn’t say, don’t have big dreams, that’s not what I’m saying. Big dreams need to be broken down into manageable parts & goals, why, because we need the little victories to keep us going.
Those people in your life, or the ones you might know, aren’t as happy as you think they are, and I’m certain things weren’t as easy as you perceive them to be, they too needed the little victories to get them to where they are today. I struggle daily with not having enough small victories to keep me in a happy place, to keep me motivated, I have to get out of my comfort zone most of the time to get them. I hate that!
I’m willing to wager that when you find yourself having these little envy chats, it’s almost always related to money. I hate money actually, there I’ve said it. Money makes us focus on all the wrong things, it distracts us from whats really important. I’ll let you decide what’s important to you, but what’s important to me is my wife & two boys. I have never heard anyone say on their death bed, I wish I had more money. They will say, and I mean everytime….I wish I had spent more time with _________,you fill in the blank.
So what are those little victories, sometimes we can’t recognize them because we are focusing on the wrong things, or we’re distracted. Most of the time, these little victories are as simple as writing a Blog Post, a chance meeting with someone you never thought you would meet, an opportunity to help someone, it could be a phone call that helps you secure the next project or job. They could be even smaller, telling your wife & kids how much you love them, thank your neighbor for letting you use the lawn mower. But for most of us, it’s usually business related, that’s where the little victories really gets us charged up. Why? Probably because we made money, and we like money. Money is what we measure success by, I think we need to get back to something more valuable for measuring success.
I know in my business, I need to have something positive happen everyday when it comes to cash-flow, when it doesn’t, I start the bad self-talk. We all do it, I’m a failure, what could I have done different, or better? Recognize the questions, we start asking what we did wrong instead of what we did right, and what the next right step should be! One of the problems is, we rely on our own knowledge to solve problems, and you know what? We don’t know, what we don’t know. Success always requires other people, they are the ones who give us perspective and possibly vision. They are also the ones that give us those small victories 9 times out of 10.
I have found over the years, other people helped move me along to the next step, they either encouraged my, gave me an idea, and more importantly, they believed in me. It’s the affirmations, it’s the validation of others that gives us the courage to stand in the gap when times are bad, so we can stand tall with our chin up. Don’t believe me, watch this video and tell me what happens to you while you are watching it.
So, everytime you catch yourself thinking how someone has it better than you, is doing better than you, is smarter than you, STOP IT! Find out what motivates you, and then list the small victories you need from it. Yes, it’s hard work, life is hard work and it sucks, but you are not different than everyone else, why? We all need the small victories too.
Give Away Content & Create Attention
This is a Blog Post is in part about my new book I’m currently writing called, ” The Open & Free Business Model – The Future of Business”. This Blog Posts is also a bit longer than my usual blog posts : )
In fact, I held a workshop for some local business owners and walked them through the process of figuring out what this model might look like for them and their business. One of the harder exercises was looking at their current business and asking a simple question, what is your CORE business about? If I was to ask you, what does your business do, you would most likely tell me the the easiest answer, I’m a…. the highest level snap shot what YOU do, not your business. I’m a technology company might be my answer, that doesn’t really say anything other than I’m into technology. I might ask what that means, I would volunteer a more descriptive answer but still not touching on the core. By the third or fourth time of asking what your business does, I might get to the core of what your business really is about, and what it does day in and day out.
Once I uncovered what your core business is, I might ask what your vision is for your business, and then I most likely would want to know what your mission statement is, and does your staff know it. Much of this is traditional in nature, but it is still important to your online presence as well. The next step most likely would be to ask for the results of a S.W.O.T. Analysis, I think that’s useful information. At this point we could start talking about what kind of content your Blog should consider, after all we know what your core business is now, we can start to build on something here.
Once we’ve gotten this far, we can start listening. Listening for what you might ask, well, we want to know who is talking about your business, if they are talking about your business, and what exactly are they saying. I would recommend spending a considerable amount of time here if your getting alot results in your searches. I would be listening in multiple Social Media Networks, other search engines and so on, you’ll be amazed what you find out.
Another fun project is determining revenue streams, pick the highest-margin, low-investment streams (the low hanging fruit). Then advertise your chosen stream to your captive audience, it’s important to have a captive audience, you want generate much revenue without one. In the end you’ll collect money, deliver the goods, and keep your customers happy. Advertising not @vertising, did you catch that? This topic has many levels and many more choices, but you will have to choose more than one to get attention amongst all the noise.
Distribution is key but has already been taken care of by the Internet, what about mobile apps, iPads, iPhones as a way to get your content out there. iTunes Connect is an option, apply and hold your breath, it takes awhile to get approved.
One of the stumbling blocks is, determining what content should be paid for and what should be free to download or read. I too wrestled with this question, but I found giving away good content created readership and eventually revenue and the bigger more important currency, attention. The world isn’t ready for this shift, in fact, the world hasn’t really arrived online yet! The world we know is willing to pay upfront for the most part, but the world yet to come will not be forced into paying upfront for most information and even some products. I’ve said it here on this blog many times, people will keep looking until they can find what you offer for free. If they don’t find it, then maybe they’ll come back and buy it, but they look first before making that purchase. The term PFE, Proudly Found Elsewhere, coined by Gerd Leonhard, is as real as the nose on your face, so get ready.
Another looming problem is the plethora of bad content, we will have to find better ways of filtering before the bad stuff gets out of the way. Eventually, someone will come up with a great way to filter and even curate your social network meta data, then we’ll have something to really sell. There are a couple of websites that take your Twitter stream and make a daily newspaper out of the hot stuff or trends within your stream. One is called Paper.li and another is The Twitter Tim.es, they look neat but you still can’t do much with it once it’s completed. It would be good if we could customize these newspapers a bit and make them work for us in a commerce kind of way.
The primary purpose of giving away content should be to get attention, build relationships, build trust, and then maybe you can sell something. But be careful, you might get what you wish for, it might not be the kind of attention you were hoping for. The truth is, we all want to be recognized, affirmed and we all want to generate revenue, we want to make money here online so we can do the things our hearts desire keeps searching for. We want to have freedom of choice in a more relevant way, where we get to choose, not what the industrial age has conditioned us into responding to.
The Open & Free Business Model is misunderstood for the most part, it is the future of business, most business owners are not ready for it. Being Open instead of closed is scary for business owners and people in general, we just need more practice before fully embracing it. Using Open Systems like FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and so on are just the beginning to being open, it’s not a place or a thing, it’s a mindset. Being open also means being transparent, willing to let users see and hear more than you have been willing to share in the past. It’s really how you view Open, it’s how you view Free, it’s about how you see what an Open & Free Business Model might look like for you and your business. You may or may not need help with it, there are many around that can help, but very few truly understand what Open & Free Business Model is.
Create compelling content, give some of it away, then look for ways to monetize around that free content. It sounds simple but it’s not, because you have to deliver the goods in such a way it’s brain dead easy for your visitors to get and or buy. If not already, in the future when the other 3 billion people get here, you’ll want to already be in a position of having they’re attention, then it will be a little easier, but just a little. That’s enough for now, go practice, give yourself away and watch your world change before you, eventually it will click with you and you will see a future you haven’t seen before, ever!
If you are doing it, I would love to chat with you and maybe even use your business as an example in my book. You can be a part of my book, go here.
Start Blogging Today
There has never been a better time to be an Entrepreneur, never a better time to be a Blogger, there has never been a better time to be an early adopter. In many respects, if you started your Blog today, you would be an early adopter. Why? Well, there are only 1.8 Billion People on the Internet, not all have a Blog, and there is still another 3 Billion people coming over the next 3 – 5 years. That’s 3 Billion people you will be ahead of when the dam breaks, you’ll be on high ground, ready to serve the other 3 billion yet to come regardless of whether selling a service or product, or if your giving your help away for free. Imagine what a time such as this could do for you & your blog, do you have a Blog, are you thinking of starting one, I would, and I would start right now. But where do you turn for help?
Look no further than a site called Start Blogging Today! The site is all about you and your success as a Blogger, an incredible support team that takes the stress out of wondering what to do next. I charge you to make a good decision and visit Start Blogging Today, get involved with the community and ensure your blogging experience is a positive one. Imagine, help at your finger tips, the kind of help you can’t find anywhere else! A site that provides weekly training and tools for your blogging success.
Start Blogging Today is run by true blogging professionals, Grant Griffiths, founder of the Headway WP blogging theme, and Michael Martine of Remarkablogger. Meet the rest of the team standing by to help you.
Why do I endorse this program? The people, it’s the people behind SBT. They have built a first class how to system for any business professional who’s starting out with a blog, or even for those who’ve been around for a while and want to take their blog to the next level.
Patsi Krakoff a veteran blogging professional herself, interviewed Grant Griffiths and here are a few words from Grant, I share it with you here, taken from Patsi’s blog word for word:
“The thought which became Start Blogging Today came into existence because we saw a need and a desire in a marketplace. Every single day we saw businesses struggling to gain an online presence.
While they could all throw up a simple web site similar to the Yellow Page ad they were running. what they really needed was a way to communicate and engage with their target audience. And we knew blogging was the method they needed to use.
The problem too many businesses, whether they are home based, small or any size, face is that they think they are seeing too many other bloggers. How can they compete and where would they fit in?
What we set out to do with SBT was to provide a framework of 26 core lessons to get them past that unwarranted concern and to learn how a blog and social media can market and promote their business.
The other roadblock to their own online marketing success was their lack of knowledge on how to actually use a blog and blogging platform. SBT deals with this by giving them the tools from day one to get a blog up and going from day one.
From the very beginning of mapping out SBT we wanted to build a community and we feel we have done that with the members’ only forums and the structure of the site. We are even using Twitter and “protecting updates” so members of SBT can use twitter to communicate with us and we can make announcements for them too.
Also included with SBT is a members-only blog category which members will only see when posted. We wanted to show members that all of the tools we were suggesting to them to use could be used and used well.
While our target audience for SBT might be the noob blogger, the newbie or the brand new blogger, it’s good for others as well. The just started, and even the blogger who has been around for a while can use Start Blogging Today to correct their course and kick an existing blog up a notch. We feel any level of blogger can benefit from the core and bonus lessons in SBT.”
THE END
Enough said, whether you’re a veteran blogger or a blogging noobie, or you haven’t considered setting up a blog, before you do anything else right this moment, visit Start Blogging Today right now, get a free report on blogging while your there!
Cable TV going, going GONE!
Today the Internet Wins, our family has decided to cut Cable and get our TV online!!!!!! Yep, that’s $65.40 (CDN) that now goes to something else in our budget, maybe an evening out for dessert and a movie, a date night for sure.
The decision was actually very easy, we had a family meeting with our two boys (19 & 22), they looked at us somewhat bewildered, they almost laughed out loud at us when we asked them if they cared whether we had cable TV or not. Sometimes you get nervous bringing up the topic of dropping something you thought everyone wanted. Our youngest son said, we don’t watch TV, we get what we want online through our Media Center Computers.
That was it! No discussion, no fussing, no justifying why we should have it. So, we cut cable TV from our household and we are now using the Internet for yet one more service. I won’t cover all the services available online, I’ll let you do your own research. The truth is, this is going to happen more and more often over the next couple years. The trends show that 30% of all commerce will be done online in the next 2 – 3 years, including Internet TV.
Just this morning there was an announcement that we will be able to make deposits to bank accounts through a company called Banksimple.net via mobile capabilities. Alex Payne left Twitter to co-found Simplebank, this has huge ramifications to commerce online, I am really interested in this movement and will keep a close eye on this company.
Have you considered cutting Cable TV or any other service you feel you can get on the Internet, we don’t rent movies from the local Video store due to free movies online. It’s a matter of time before Cable TV and or any other service like it has to make serious radical changes to their model of control. Control is dead!
Our household is cable free, now I need to find a new toy : )