Misc
I Invite You To Celebrate With Me!
Hi,
I am writing to share and to invite you, invite you to celebrate with me on this date, March 4th, 2001 – it was on this date, I suffered a heart attack, and I am still here ten years later to tell the story. I admit to being a little sensitive today (misty) only because there is still so much to do, and I am still around to do what needs to be done. But most of all, I have you in my life, and that trumps everything else.
So I want you to celebrate with me via digital means, a digital party so to speak, to celebrate that God is not done with me here on this earth, praise the Lord.
Many Blessings, I love you, and I thank you for considering this party on this day.
Owen Greaves
Missing The Bigger Picture – Are You Paying Attention?
I recently had a couple of close friends tell me they didn’t get my blog, they felt it was dribble and wasn’t useful to business people. I was kind of taken by surprise, and yet I wasn’t all that shocked either, mostly because people don’t get me at the best of times. I even felt a little sad and I think I felt sorry for them. Once I picked myself up off the floor and got past the sting, they got me to thinking.
When I started blogging, I spent most of my time talking about nanotechnology, shortly there after I started thinking about the bigger picture of how technology is and will impact society 5, 10, 15, 30 years down the road. How will business look in the next 3 – 5 years, helping business and individuals to create ideas to adopt the future of business. Showing you some trends and the paradigm shift that is taking place, after all, the industrial age is dead right.
I tried to explain to my friends what my blog was about, and they said, “OK, fine but it doesn’t give me answers for today”. I said, ” I’m not giving you answers, my goal and job is to make you think for yourself, to think of your own answers”. I merely want people to think for themselves, but it appears my friends want the answer handed to them on a silver platter. Which means, they are not paying attention to the bigger picture, they are only putting out fires rather than looking ahead. Is that you?
If you don’t pay attention to what’s coming, how and why are you in business? Every business is built on the very fact that there is and will be a future, if that’s true, why are you building a business? As I told my friends, my blog is trying to give you a glimpse of what’s to come, and hopefully, it helps get the creative juices flowing so you will be ready. If you are paying attention. If not, I see dead businesses.
There is much to be learned here on this blog, if you are paying attention. Are you starting to get my message yet?
I have to tell you, after a couple of hours sharing what it is my blog & I do, I wondered how difficult it was for you and others to understand what I’ve been sharing for the past number of years. I’m going to make it simple for you.
START PAYING ATTENTION TO THE BIGGER PICTURE!
Lift your head up and look down the road, start asking questions, start educating yourself because no one is going to do it for you. If I seem a little testy, it’s because I care, I want good things for you, but you have to play your role in this game called life & business.
If you were reading my blog and paying attention, you would know that there are another 3 billion people coming online in the next 2 -3 years, that 60% of all commerce will be done online, and that the industrial age is dead, no really it’s dead. You would also know, that there is an ROI in social media, that the world has gone crazy with being social and mobile, what does all this mean to you and your business? I have only mentioned a few things that should concern you, you should be worried about how this activity will impact your business, and for that matter your day-to-day life.
There, I feel better now. I hope you find at least one thing you can take away from this blog that helps, if not, ask me a question and lets talk about it. Afterall, I’m here to help, I want to help you figure out how to address the changes we are going through right now. It’s painful for some of you, it’s painful for me too.
Happy Blogging and pay attention to what’s going on around you, the world is watching, and the world needs you to be ready.
The Future Of Business – Klout & Influence
Most of you believe that Klout & Influence are important, you want it, and you tend to work towards finding ways to get it. I warn you, be careful what you wish for, you may get it only to find you don’t want it. Everyone, and I mean everyone wants their 15 minutes of fame at some point in their life, it’s part of human behaviour, and especially in affluent countries.
In the future, the next 15 years or so, it is predicted there will be 1 Billion Millionaires in the world, that number isn’t really that impressive because, the population will be over 9 Billion when the time comes. The majority will not be millionaires, it’s just more of what we have today.
In the future of business you will hear a lot about Klout & Influence, social networks are measured with these two terms as a way of determining who’s who. Websites like Klout and others are trying to bring credibility to individuals through mathematical measurements, it’s a digital representation of one’s possible klout & influence, not something human and tangible like integrity. One’s character and integrity should be in the equation somehow, it should be part of Klout & Influence scores in my humble opinion. But how do you measure motive and or doing the right thing, not too mention keeping your word.
Now Klout & Influence are not always related to money, so the number (millionaires) at the top is pretty small. The thing about Klout & Influence is, it wasn’t meant for those who have it. Those who have Klout & Influence are merely stewards of it. It’s really meant for those who don’t have it.
Martin Luther King had Klout & Influence, but he didn’t use it for his own gain, he used it to make the world a better place, more specifically for people that were being exploited, murdered and abused. For all people, not just black people to be blunt. This individual set an example of how Klout & Influence should be exercised, not hoarded and hidden away for private use, it was and is meant to help and serve others who don’t possess Klout & Influence. Unfortunately, we are greedy, we want more, and we want to be the one who says who can have what and when, we want control. I’m not convinced this is going to change anytime soon, it might change shape, but it will still be a problem for mankind for as long as we are on this earth.
Social Networks has brought out the kinder side of the human race for the most part, we genuinely want to help others, sometimes without expecting anything in return, but the dark side lurks. Unfortunately, there will always be those who take advantage of folks trying to make the world a better place.
The Future of Business, and success, will be measured by Klout & Influence, it’s the way we are headed, and it will be difficult to determine the true sense of the word success. It will be misleading at times, but I think it’s personal, we need to figure out how to link Integrity & good character into the equation. To ensure we are dealing with honorable individuals.
Your Klout & Influence should answer one question in your sphere of influence, your immediate world, How Many People Are Better Off Because You Lived?
City Hall Are You Paying Attention?
With the Global population rising to 9 Billion over the next 10 -15 years, some municipalities are still going to shrink, and many will increase beyond it’s ability to provide services. What will City Hall do with it’s collapsing tax basins. A disclaimer, I don’t for a minute claim to understand what it’s like to sit on a City Council. I wouldn’t want the job truth be told, so I’m not saying what they do is easy, anyone can point fingers and complain. We the people have really set City Hall up to fail, but that’s not my point. I am however, praying City hall is paying attention to a trend in our aging population, and business community.
Third world countries will have the most population growth over western countries, but we will eventually reach 9 Billion in the coming decade or so. The current challenge is not with the growth as much as it is with those wondering off to pasture, the baby boomers. The first of the baby boomers will turn 65 this year, but the real challenge is, the tail end of the baby boomers are turning 50 in 2014, and this generation is the largest portion of our population. That means the average age will be 40, the generations to come are unable to replace the boomers in the workforce, we will have to rely on immigration to fill the that gap. That is another topic for another time.
Imagine, today 50% of the population is over the age of 30, it won’t be long before 50% of the population is over 50. This trend will continue because we no linger birth children at the rate we used to, we could birth them fast enough to catchup and solve the problem of an aging world. The numbers alone don’t really show you the problem, it’s not the numbers as much as it is how the generations yet to come think. They won’t value what we value today. If you were to poll the under 20 generation today, they will tell you that ownership is not that important to them. The idea of owning a home, or a car for that matter, is not on the radar screen for most of them. They don’t value ownership the same way people do over the age of 40. What does that mean, less money filling the tax bucket in many municipalities. Is City Hall even looking at that problem?
The under 20 generation and the one’s to follow, will most likely buy into the co-op housing, or shoebox appartments long before owning a house on land. Why, They value lifestyle over workstyle. They are not willing to give up what many of us did to have the lifestyle we have, we traded our time for dollars, we worked to live. The younger generations don’t value work the same way, most people over the age of 40 have their identity wrapped up in what they do for work. Their work validates them, it is who they are, not what they do. Gen C and beyond do not have that conditioning to deal with, creating a different thought process on ownership of home and country.
City Hall also has to deal with another shift, 60% of all commerce is going online, that to may help shrink the tax basin. How? A local bricks & mortar business decides to sell it’s products and services online exclusively. Let’s say they have success. Before you know it, they have shutdown that bricks & mortar location, they discover they don’t even need an office, they’ve put everything out on the cloud, and then run their business by smartphone. How will that impact real estate, (read my thoughts on agents becoming obsolete here) let alone the tax revenues cities rely on. As you can see these shifts in thinking by the generations to come will rewite the rule book in every municipality. Is City Hall paying attention?
While all this is happening, we will have other issues to deal with, water shortages, possible food shortages and so on. We will enter into a society not unlike the one in the movie “The Book Of ELI”, in that movie, we kill (people) for things we throw away today. One man’s garbage is another mans treasure.
I don’t know how our City Hall’s will be able to change the way they think, but I hope they do, our communities depend on it. Protectionism and control are the current model of running a city, I fear that will be the undoing, because my kids kids won’t tolerate it.
This problem of an aging population belongs to all of us, we will have to work hard to maintain the economies and lifestyles we enjoy today here in the western front. What other challenges do you see?
Here It Is – New Years Eve 2010!
I have to admit, the past year had it’s challenges but I was surrounded by amazing people here in my community, and I can’t praise those enough on Twitter. Many of you know I’m a huge Twitter fan, mostly because that’s where I have had the most success in my business, and on a personal note. There isn’t anything really special to say about that, it happens to be the Social Network I leveraged. I could have used others but they just didn’t seem to fit my need for speed : )
Now I’m not one for making New Years Resolutions, you might find that odd coming from a Futurist but, I don’t actually predict the future. If I did, I would be in a different line of work. Alot is going to happen in 2011, the mobile movement is about to explode and cause business to shift yet once again. As I mention in my blog post I wrote back on May 28th, 2010, three things to watch for in 2013, is going to happen much sooner than indicators were showing when I wrote that bitty.
Social Media was on fire in 2008 and is still going to lead the way for the mobile marketplace in 2011, but it’s going to be a growing up phase for many businesses, specially the small business. I’ve said it before, I see dead businesses. The problem isn’t the technology, or the fact we as consumers are buying more and more online, the problem, is how we think! Most business owners think they know what to do in this new marketplace, and some do, but 90% don’t. If they did, there wouldn’t be as many dead businesses on the horizon. Start paying attention to Gen C, ask them what they think and what they want, you will be surprised.
Why will they die? They don’t understand what really has to happen in this Paradigm Shift. There are over a dozen shifts taking place and they are grossly misunderstood by the business community at large.I’m not going to go into details in this blog post but I will in next few weeks, today, I want to celebrate the year that passed and the year that is about to begin.
Social Media is not a Mouse Trap, it’s not meeting strangers, it’s not putting a band aid on a broken business – it’s a complete business reset!
I hope great things happen for you, I’m certain they will if you work smart and stay true to your passion. You will need people around you to help keep you on track, be humble enough to let others help you achieve your goals and dreams. If you do, everyone wins.
I look forward to sharing with you in 2011, and some of you I may get the privilege of working with you, regardless, Happy New Year! Please don’t drink and drive, and make sure you get home safe so you can reach your 2011 goals.
HAPPY NEW YEAR!