The Future Of Business – Be Useful
I’m not sure when he said it, but he said it…Chris Brogan made a statement that has stuck with me since I heard him say it, and he said it. He said, and I quote, ” People comeback to things that are useful to them”. Does that resonate with you?
I think Chris even coined the term, “Grow Bigger Ears”. Listen to what people are asking for, that your product or service might solve that problem”. It’s all part of being a Human Business.
I meet with a great many people almost everyday, smart people, and they seem to overlook simple observations, like being useful. Most of us, when we have a problem, tend to complicate things by trying to figure that problem out on our own. But if you were to ASK instead of tell, you might be surprised how quickly the problem goes away. You will notice, if you’re paying attention, you almost always go back to the place or person that was useful in solving past problems. You tend to draw on past experiences and go back to resources you found useful.
Talk about being creatures of habit, a gravity of human behaviour by the way!
Are you, is your business, is what you do, useful? And to whom? Therein Lies the secret sauce, who finds you useful. How can you tell, to be sarcastic, check your bank balance, if it’s healthy, you’ve probably been useful. If you get gobs of website traffic, and a low bounce rate, your site is probably useful. People tend to want two things, a problem solved, or they want to learn something, sometimes both.
Another gravity of human behaviour, almost everyone is an authority on something, we are very, very smart : )
So be useful, and change the world, make it a better place.
If you could help make owengreaves.com more useful, what would that be, what would you recommend? How could I be more useful to you? Go ahead, I can take it, but be respectful and sincere.
Related articles
- The Future Of Business – Means Multiple Revenue Streams (owengreaves.com)
- The forever recession (and the coming revolution) (sethgodin.typepad.com)
- You Have What It Takes (chrisbrogan.com)
- Blog Post #300 Is To All Commentors Here At Owengreaves.com – I Thank You! (owengreaves.com)
7 Truths About Blogging & You
Lately, there have been a number of blog posts floating around on the topic of, well….blogging and traffic. Some claim they blog as an outlet to get stuff off their chest, some just like to write, some are hard core and want people to come clambering to their site so they can eventually sell you something. All are valid reasons to write blog posts, or what is considered blogging. But let’s be honest here, if you tell me you’re writing and don’t care about traffic, I don’t believe you!
TRUTH!
The only reason anyone puts something out on the NET is to get attention, traffic, and readers, saying anything otherwise, you’re not telling the truth, nothing but the truth. Most of us blog because we feel we have control over something, we rarely have control if you have a Boss, period, the Boss has control not you. So that one is out of the way.
PRAISE!
I have come to the conclusion that, we blog with the hopes of something better is going to happen in our lives. Better could be something as simple as having many people come to read your writing, say nice things about it, praise you and your efforts, and even encourage you to write more often. That would be enough for some wouldn’t it?
COMMENTS!
Something changed in the blogosphere over the past couple years me thinks. Commenting on blogs happened more frequently in the past, but today those comments are no longer static, they have become Tweets and Updates on Social Networks. Suddenly, you feel empty, left behind, even forgotten. Frustrated might be a better word, you did nothing wrong, you kept writing and responding to comments, but people stopped leaving comments, and took them elsewhere, thinking you would come along with them. That didn’t happen did it, you didn’t want to go where the comments went, you want to stay at home on your home base, your blog.
BLOGGING!
I write about the Future Of Business as I see it, as my research reveals it to me, and I put it all here on this blog, I like that. I like it when I see the light-bulb come on when you read what I have posted, when you comment and share how you feel about a particular thing I’ve shared. It’s awesome! But do you think blogging is becoming a lost art? There are many new ways to share your thoughts, Google+, Tumblr and so on. These canned, easy to you use systems are making blogging something of a has been, blogging suddenly is becoming hard work. I don’t mind hard work, but I like to work smart too!
The truth is, I see blogging as a great place to build personal brand, even if these other systems are easier, at least here on a self-hosted blog, you can shift gears easily, you don not have the same limitations canned systems have, you can only do what they let you do. And that’s all I’ve got to say about that.
TRAFFIC!
I said it earlier under TRUTH! If you are putting anything out here on the Internet, you are looking for attention, traffic, and to some degree, validation. Why? Because we don’t get it in places we thought we would. Father’s go to their day jobs everyday, the people they work with say how smart he is, or she, only to come home and discover they don’t know anything. The kids think you are old and stupid, could never understand, yadda, yadda, yadda. You know it’s true, your boss thinks you are lazy, or stupid, and so on, even our Mother & Father’s did that, and we can’t figure out why we aren’t happy all the time! What do we do?
We start going to places where people like us, people who want to be with us, who say the most ego stroking great things about us and to us, and we want more of them to come everyday. It’s about traffic baby, and lots of it, especially when they pump you up to a smart, intelligent, good looking person….who wouldn’t! We get attention, and more people come because of that attention, attention brings more people, more traffic. But is that a healthy place to be, getting that kind of attention out of an insecurity, or maybe even a false sense of security.
The truth is, we do things to get attention whether we are aware of it or not, and we want that attention to come in the form of traffic when it comes to our blog, it validates us. It gives us confidence, and that confidence makes us feel incredibly good.
LOVE!
This is the real reason we do what we do on the Internet, in our churches, with our friends, and with each other here online, we want to feel loved. We want to belong to something that validates our feelings and thoughts, and I can tell you this, you will never have success in life or in business without people, like-minded people who love what you do because they to like to do it, they may even want to do it with you. Work together, what a concept!
RISK!
Knowing the TRUTH, getting the PRAISE, getting the COMMENTS, means you continue to do the BLOGGING, to get the TRAFFIC, means you feel the LOVE! We have taken something very intimate, very personal, and handed it over to you on the Internet, we have taken a RISK many of us don’t do with our closest friends. Some of us RISK everything to acquire all the above, with the hopes someone finds value in it, and the best place to put your personal brand is on your Blog. It’s where you feel at home, and I hope you feel at home here on owengreaves.com, I open my home to you, come on in. A RISK worth taking, because you are worth it, even if you feel you aren’t.
The blogosphere is changing, and I hope for the better, afterall, the blogosphere is a very tender place, we are very attached to our personal brand. We want great things from the effort we put into our blogs, and we need to think out loud sometimes, like I am today. I’m here because I believe I have the gift of helps, I only want to help, and if that help provides a living financially, then I know I helped enough people get what they want.
Mostly, I’m here to make you think, to help create new ideas for your business, and those ideas come from knowing what I share here, The Future of Business, what I see and what the world is showing me…I’m just sharing and offering to help. I had to share, why? Because I was thinking again, sorry : )
What do you think, I’m I speaking your truth, or mine only?
MANY BLESSINGS MY FRIENDS!
The Future Of Business – Are You A Multipotentialite?
You might remember I wrote about a young lady named Emilie Wapnick, she has been turning the business world on it’s ear lately, and I highly recommend you listen to her before you go any further:
As you just heard, younger generations want more than the older generations are offering, and more importantly, they don’t want to be catagorized and told what they can and can’t do for a living. recently Emilie released a book for those who have more than one passion, and that is probably all of us. Here book is for Multipotentialites, what does that mean, I’ll let her tell you in her own words a little later. But first, I want you to get her book, it’s called “Renaissance Business – Make Your Multipotentiality Your Day Job”.
Taken From Her Website:
Imagine having a business that allows you to focus on many of your interests and use all of your skills on a regular basis.
In Renaissance Business, you’ll learn to use your multipotentiality so that instead of it being an obstacle to income, it becomes fuel for income.
But first, maybe you can relate to this…
My resume reads like it belongs to ten different people.
The famous and very talented Michael Martine had this to say about her and the new book:
“I wasn’t sure I really believed at first that Emilie had figured out a way to help “scanners” create a single business when they have multiple interests and skills. I just didn’t see how she could pull it off. So I was very pleasantly surprised when I read Renaissance Business: the methods she walks you through step-by-step for creating a single business out of the soup of all your varied skills and interests as a scanner or multipotentialite are, in a word, brilliant. She really has cracked the code. I’ve never seen anything like it. If you’ve felt stuck and dismayed because you feel a conflict between your potential and the need to make a reductive decision, you must have this book.”
– Michael Martine | Remarkablogger.com
Renaissance Business is Designed Specifically for the Multi-Passionate Entrepreneur!
So why did I just share all this, well, I want you to buy her book, I want you to experience a Business Of The Future, for you to learn from Emilie, and I want to help her fulfill one of her passions. Sell Books.
Also, I had the opportunity to speak with her on a Skype call and I want to share it with you. The quality is sketchy but you will find what she has to say helpful and interesting. I hope you can carve out some time to listen to this 25 minute chat.
Podcast With Emilie Wapnick – Enjoy!
[podcast]http://owengreaves.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/emiliewapnickpodcast1.mp3[/podcast]
The Future Of Business – The Future Of Shopping With PayPal
Look at what PayPal is introducing in the future of shopping, when systems of this nature are implemented, over time, it’s usually impossible to go back to old ways of doing things. But it is fun to use new technologies and new ways of getting things done.
Hope you find this interesting, or at least eye opening, would you use PayPal’s new system?
The Future Of Business – The Gravities Of Human Behaviour
I regularly meet individuals who struggle with what I call simple answers to what many feel are complicated questions. I’m no genius here but I do tend to pay attention to human behaviour now and again. In fact, I talk about the gravities of human behaviour in my keynotes and workshops, what are they, what do they say, and how should I react to them, to name a few:
1.) We are creatures of habit.
2.) We always gravitate to what feels good.
3.) We always gravitate to our comfort zones, what’s familiar.
4.) Almost all of us has an opinion and loves to express it.
5.) Most of us don’t like change. But we need it to survive.
If this short list is accurate, why do we struggle with trying to figure out what people want? PR people and Marketer’s frantically try to answer the question of what consumers want every minute of the day. Maybe PR and marketer’s need to get out of the way, maybe, they need to pay more attention to the gravities in human behaviour? Maybe we are trying to complicate things too much, to justify our existence, to justify our rates, to make us feel good because we are so smart, could it be?
The Future Of Business will rely on you recognizing the gravities of human behaviour, they are the simple answers to what appear to be complicated questions.