Blog Post #300 Is To All Commentors Here At Owengreaves.com – I Thank You!
This past week I was wondering what the topic should be for the 300th Blog Post of Owengreaves.com, yes, 300! I was kind of surprised myself, but that’s what a Blog is for, submitting Blog posts. I threw out your way on Twitter, FaceBook, Buzz, MySpace, Google+, a question, what should #300 be about, what problem should I solve, what topic should I cover. I got a number of reposonses, but one jumped out at me, and I shouldn’t be shocked and or surprised at the answer considering who it was from.
You should know I don’t always agree with, but I have huge respect for this man for hundreds of reasons, but I won’t list them now. The person in question suggested I write about you, the commentors of this blog, afterall, it is all about you. You are the reason I even exist as a business, in fact, I learn more from you than you probably ever will from me!
I would love to list every person that left a comment here on owengreaves.com, but that would be the longest blog post in the history of blog posting. I wonder what the world record for blog post length is? I would also love to tell you I thought of this, but I didn’t, Chris Brogan suggested I say thank you to all who commented on this blog. Humbled yet again. And that my friends is called transparency, honesty, and openness. It’s what I write about here, it’s foundational to the Open & Free Business Model, it is the very core of what the Future Of Business needs to be.
Without you, this blog is just another newspaper lying in the trash, just another person standing in the forest screaming at the topic of his/her lungs, and no one hears them. Without you, there is no conversation, no dialogue, no reasoning, no creativity. How could we ever get to know one another’s interests and passions? How would we ever discover the right path to take? I am forever gratefiul you even think of coming to this blog, I would like to believe you are here looking for some nugget or perspective that will help you take another step forward in your business. No matter how big or small your business is, you make a difference, regardless of size or how much money it makes.
Remember back when you used to hangout under the street lamp with your friends, gossiping, chatting, and just hanging out? That’s what we do here, it’s a safe place to hangout, to ask questions, share perspectives, and have meaningful conversations, but mostly, build relationships. This doesn’t happen without you, you are the most important part of why I write!
I won’t lie, there have been many, many times where I almost shut this blog down. At times, it feels like no one cared or was interested in what is found here, or considered the content valuable. And maybe it isn’t on a grand scale, but there are those who are in need of learning, and a new way of thinking, it may be a very small audience, but the Future Of Business matters and it is a new way of thinking. Remember, Mind Set Trumps Skill Set Everytime.
I must confess, you who visits here and shares your thoughts, validates my work. Everything I do here is for you, I only hope it helps you. With that in mind, I hold (not free) workshops locally in my community on the Open & Free Business Model, what it is and what it might look like for your business, and how you might adopt the model. My question to you is this, would this workshop be of interest to you in the form of an online webinar?
So, To All Commentors Of Owengreaves.com – I Thank You, there is no business without you.
My PowerPoint Presentation From The World Futurist Society Conference
Here is a scaled down version of my PowerPoint Presentation I made at the World Futurist Society Conference July 9th in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. I hope to have the audio of my talk in the next few weeks, stay tuned. The conference was great and I made many new friends, I would like to thank WFS for the opportunity to share, and for an awesome time, well done.
Next year the conference will be held in Toronto July 27th – 29th at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel, register now!
You Don’t Need Money To Start A Business
I’m not going to type out a long list of reasons why you don’t need large sums of money or why you need that one BIG client. I’m going to let you watch this encouraging video by Derek Sivers at DerekSivers.org. That’s It!
Creating A #SocialMedia Community? Don’t Follow This Example.
This is a guest post from Brian G. Rice of Rice Team Consulting, he shared his story of an experience he recently had with a Social Media Community. Today we are going back to small town rules, especially within Social Media Networks, you can’t lie, trick or hide anymore, integrity is at risk if you start playing games with people, or don’t provide good service. Someone, like Brian, will start talking about you and your integrity, your businesses reputation begins to tarnish when this happens.
Here is Brians Story.
Last week a message appeared in my LinkedIn inbox from PwC. I was being invited to the PwC Private Business Exchange on LinkedIn. After checking to make sure that the PwC in question was indeed the company formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, I quickly accepted their invitation.
I use social media to market my consulting services. Here is this great big, well respected company giving me the opportunity to present my content to a whole group of business people within the context of borrowed credibility of PwC? You betcha I said yes.
To my mind, the fact that this was a LinkedIn group made it even better.
I have been using LinkedIn for over seven years. LinkedIn was the social media site for business before there really were social media sites. The culture of LinkedIn has always been one of a high signal to noise ratio. From its early days as a resume sharing site, it has been a place where you connect with people who you have actually done some sort of business with.
In terms of business credibility, LinkedIn is the best social media site out there.
So I accepted the invitation, and quickly posted an introduction to myself. Nothing fancy, and nothing long. I suggested that people take a look at my LinkedIn profile, and then I asked a question: What motivates you to hire a consultant? Nothing spammy. No hard sales technique. Just a simple question. I hit send on my post, and I was informed that it would appear shortly after the moderator approved it.
Then I waited. And waited. And waited. And then I was removed from the group.
Before I was able to get to angry about this, I received another note from someone at PwC. Apparently, they had such a large response to their offer that they decided to create a second group for companies with less than 50 employees because they “recognize that entrepreneurs face unique challenges as they grow their business.”
The message, for those not equipped with built-in Marketing-to-English dictionaries, was basically “We don’t want you bothering our big important potential clients.”
I’m not actually writing this post to pick on PwC. I am offering here a cautionary tale: marketing social media is about building relationships. The clear-headed business person in me can see what happened here, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t make me angry. PwC is now in deficit relationship-wise with me, and they are going to have to work to gain back my trust.
First impressions in any relationship are important. PwC is an established, respected company, and they had invited me to join a private business forum! This made a very good first impression. It didn’t matter that I knew I had just been bulk invited to this list. The invite did make me feel important and special.
I’d still feel that way if they had simply done a little research into my company (everything they needed to know is on my LinkedIn profile) and invited me to their “Entrepreneurs Exchange” in the first place. Instead, as I emailed to the forum administrator, I feel like I have been shuffled off to the small kids table. The fact that I have never received a response to that email has only worked to underline this feeling.
If you are going to use social media to market your company, you need to understand that relationships are built on communication.
A short email back to me, sincere and honest in its approach, could have turned my entire attitude around. Even an email disagreeing with me would have been better than nothing. By ignoring me, they have made me feel even less respected than before.
The future of business and marketing is based on relationships. More and more, people are going to buy products and services from people they trust and have a relationship with. Companies like PwC are realising that this shift is occurring, and they are trying to take advantage of it.
But just like real life, the downside of using relationships to market your product or service is that when you make a mistake, you need to work much harder to fix the problem. A single negative “debit” on the relationship balance sheet can wipe out multiple positive “credits”.
As I am finishing this article, I have been waiting over twenty-four hours to have a post approved to the new PwC forum I was invited to. Rationally, I’m sure that the moderator has just been busy. But emotionally? I just can’t help feeling more ignored.
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Do you have any thoughts or comments you wish to leave Brian? Is he over reacting, is he right, what do you think? Feel free to comment here on Owengreaves.com
The Future Of Business – It’s Between Your Ears
I may sound like a broken record here but, the title says it all, the Future Of Business is between your ears. There is so much confusion about how business will be done in the next 5 – 10 years, all you have to do is talk to the under 20 generation (Gen C ) and you will get a glimpse into the future, what they want, how they will go about getting it,and how they will build business.
I recently spoke at The World Futurist Society Conference in Vancouver, B.C., Canada, I opened my talk by letting everyone know, I was only trying to get between their ears, to open their mind. I was blessed to have met one of my online digital mentors, he also took in my session and was a good sport, Glen Hiemstra, I am blessed and honored that you gave me 90 minutes of your time. I can only hope I can return your generosity.
One of the biggest surprises for me was, only 25% at best were using Twitter and other Social Networks, most were using FaceBook though. And this was a Futurist Conference! Did I mention I hate FaceBook? Ya that probably offended someone : ) Why does that seem odd too me? You would think if anyone was going to be leading the way with technology, it would be the majority of this group. This is not to put down the World Futurist Society in any way, it is an observation that I found interesting and somewhat disappointing.
I shared the Open & Free Business Model, much of the content was from my workshops, and I can tell you there was much resistance, but I called them on it. I asked out loud, why are business owners reluctant to give something away content, product or service without payment, why is Free not acceptable, but when another business provides a product or service, they are first in line to get it. Harsh? Maybe. I was merely asking the question why are we like that as business owners, and then turn around and say we want to make the world a better place. The reason most likely is, we all want to make the world a better place based on our terms, not someone else’s.
I provided many examples of how this model might look for them and their business, I was very open & transparent about how I felt, what tools I used, how I make my living, and where I made money, and yet there was still skepticism. Which proves the point, the problem is not how to do something, it’s between the ears, how we think about business, how business has been moving towards free. Free merely means this, free takes you to a place where you can be asked to be paid. The secret ingredients, packaging and giving an experience consumers can’t get anywhere else, even for free. You’ve read that here over and over again, I’ve said it hundreds of times at speaking engagements, but it’s still a challenge for most business owners. My work is geared towards helping you pay attention to what’s going on from a Paradigm Shift, business is going digital faster than you and I can keep up with, at least lift your head up and take notice. In my community, we are probably 18 months behind the rest of the world, that spells tragedy in my books.
When I asked what I see, I always respond with, “I See Dead Businesses”, but it doesn’t have to be that way.
The Open & Free Business Model is more about how you think towards Open & Free, yes there are some common denominators and basic steps to take in your strategy, but it’s how you think mostly, it’s between your ears.
THE GOOD NEWS!
If you need help changing the way you think towards the Future of Business, there is much here on this blog to help you get started, you have to work for it. You could follow me on Twitter & Google+ and various other Social Networks and chat with me, pay attention to the content I share, that’s free! That’s another hot tip, Pay With Attention. Or, you could hire me to come and help you and your organization, to help you prepare for the changes that are already under way. Changes that impact the way you do business in the future.