FRESH! Fraser Valley Sept 25th, 2010
In just a couple of days you will have the opportunity to meet and hear some budding entrepreneurs in our area at an event called FRESH! Fraser Valley. So mark Septemeber 25th on your calendar and plan to spend the day, it will be one the best investments to learn that you’ve ever made. The Fraser Valley is the eastern corridor of the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada in case you were wondering. This includes the communities of Chilliwack, Abbotsford, Mission, Aldergrove, and Langley.
An incredible line-up of speakers is on the docet, an opportunity to learn and grow through planned workshops is available to you. For a list of speakers and their topics, just go to this link: FRESH! Conference Speakers
Be sure to register, you can do that here: Register for FRESH!
It is with great pleasure to be one of the speakers at this event, I’ll be speaking on why sharing and resources can contribute to entrepreneurial success. I teach and preach the Open & Free Business Model, how to give away content and generate revenue. I know you want to know : )
I look forward to meeting you, and having the opportunity to share how you can give yourself away and increase revenues at the same time. You will also have the opportunity to enjoy informational booths with some of the sharpest entrepreneurs in our area. Come learn and network with like-minded people at FRESH! Fraser Valley.
The Venue:
The Ramada Plaza & Conference Centre
36035 North Parallel Rd. (Whatcom Road Exit on the Trans Canada Highway)
Abbotsford BC, Canada, V3G 2C6
See you there!
Googlemania
Today marks another date on the calendar that Google disrupts everyone’s day to try a new feature. How predictable is it that we just have to try whatever Google puts in front of us? They know everything about us, so they know exactly what they are doing come rollout time.
What you may not have heard though, has nothing to do with Google Instant. Think about all the Meta Data Google has in it’s possession, all that it knows about how you search, how you work and maybe even more about how you live. But what about how you travel?
Google’s purchase of an online travel firm (ITA Software Inc.) is under review, that’s right, did you see that coming? The premise of the review is a concern by the US Justice Department, they are looking at what power Google would have if this sale was to be approved. Apparently, the merger investigation is at an early stage and very little is known about it. The Justice Anti-trust authorities are looking at two potential areas of concern:
And I quote from the Globe & Mail, “whether rivals would continue to have access to ITA’s data and whether Google would unfairly steer web searches to it’s travel services.”
Why yes, yes that would be a concern, but isn’t that free enterprise?
ITA Software is used by flight-comparison sites like Kayak.com, SideStep.com, and Hotwire.com, among others, not too mention Bing as well.
After reading Jeff Jarvis’s book “What Would Google Do?” for the second time, I am not shocked by what Google does, they are a smart innovative company that is forward thinking, and they act on that thinking rather than not. Google already has many at an unfair advantage, not because they are a mean unscrupulous run company, but because they see something all of us don’t.
And as far as Google Instant goes, we are in for some interesting times, the SEO snarky pants will be trying to figure out how to game this new search tool.
That’s what’s on my mind today, what do you think of these two moves?
Open & Free Business Model Workshop – Sept 17th, 2010
COME EXPLORE WHAT IT MEANS TO HAVE BUSINESS FAITH!
The Open & Free Business Model means looking at the world of business as it will be, not as it is.
You can give away content and generate revenue, join me as I walk you through the basic principles of an Open & Free Business Model for your business. I’ll Show you what it might look like for you and your business.
We will look at three main topics:
TRENDS
We’ll look at trends and what’s happening around the world, and how these trends will impact your business online & off. Today there are 2.0 Billion people on the Internet, in the next 3 – 5 years that number will be 5 Billion. How will you get their attention?
THE OPEN & FREE BUSINESS MODEL
This is not a skill set, it’s a paradigm shift and this shift is painful, I’ll layout why and what this model might look like for your business, I’ll also show examples of how businesses are using this model.
BREAKOUT SESSION
By the time we get to this section, you’ll already have some new creative ideas, and ways to increase revenue. We’ll work through how you can build & implement your ideas with your staff.
When the workshop is over you will have a much better view of what’s coming, a framework to help you adapt, plus you will have a simple step by step approach for implementing new revenue streams.
This workshop has been reworked, it’s new & improved, it’s 4 hours (Noon to 4PM) of compelling information that will give you a whole new perspective on your business.
Workshop Discount Rate until Sept 15th, 2010 – $99
Book now and reserve your seat!
For more details and to book your seat, just send an e-mail to: workshop@owengreaves.com
I look forward to working with you,
Owen Greaves
Do You Have Business Faith?
There it is…. the question, do you have business faith? That question leads me to the very core of your fear, the fear of what it means to be Open & Free. It ultimately means, you must trust the people formerly known as consumers. How do you do that, how do you trust people you may never know on a personal level? And what does faith mean to you?
Faith is described in the dictionary, as taken from http://dictionary.reference.com:
1. confidence or trust in a person or thing: faith in another’s ability.
2. belief that is not based on proof: He had faith that the hypothesis would be substantiated by fact.
3. belief in god or in the doctrines or teachings of religion: the firm faith of the Pilgrims.
4. belief in anything, as a code of ethics, standards of merit, etc.: to be of the same faith with someone concerning honesty.
5. a system of religious belief: the Christian faith; the Jewish faith.
6. the obligation of loyalty or fidelity to a person, promise, engagement, etc.: Failure to appear would be breaking faith.
7. the observance of this obligation; fidelity to one’s promise, oath, allegiance, etc.: He was the only one who proved his faith during our recent troubles.
8. Christian Theology . the trust in God and in His promises as made through Christ and the Scriptures by which humans are justified or saved.
The best description of faith (to me) is taken from the Bible: Hebrews 11:1 – Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.
I like that statement on faith for primarily one thing, it means we believe that something good is coming, something good will happen, and we want to hang on to that notion because it actually is a driving force within us.
If you didn’t have faith, why are you in business? You are in the business your in because you have hope, faith for a result better than what you have now. The Open & Free Business Model practices just that, it forces you the business owner to trust people, to have faith not only in them, but in yourself. We have a desired outcome in most everything we do, but we can’t see it physically, we do however see it as a vision, maybe what you might call a dream. My good friend Rick Rake is a dreamer, and he practices dreaming (see his Blog), he can see a better world, a better way, and a better place to be in life, and in business. He says, don’t stop dreaming! I love it, he is always forward thinking. To me, I think, the dream never dies, just the dreamer.
Business faith needs to happen on many levels, you have to risk on those levels, only you can decide what that might be. I encourage you to look deep inside and try to identify what fear is preventing you from having business faith, what is stopping you from trusting people to actually use your product/service. I would suggest to you that fear is root in a lie. Why? Because people are creatures of habit, you already know what they’re going to do and what risk they will take. It’s a calculate risk on your part! You also know, in the future (the next 3 -5 years), those very people will not be forced to do what the business world at large does today, it forces people to pay before getting any value. That’s the old model of business faith, you pay first, then they have faith.
The Open & Free Business Model requires that you have true business faith, that you have confidence in your product or service, that you would even dare to give some of those products and services away for free. This kind of business faith takes a longer span of time to see the results you have hope for, but in the long run, you will get followers of your business, you will get the attention of enough people, that will crystallize what it means to have business faith. Having an Open & Free Business Model = Business Faith.
Are you sure of what you hope for? Are you certain of what you can not see?
If you want to learn more about the Open & Free Business Model, and you live in my area, contact me to attend one of my workshops by e-mailing me at: workshop@owengreaves.com
Paywalls Have Their Place
There has been so much talk about paywalls in the Newspaper industry lately, for the most part they aren’t needed there, but they do have there place in that industry. The issue of paywalls today is not about money, it’s more about control, or the fact of that industry is losing what control it felt it had over you & I.
I preach an Open & Free Business Model, this model does have paywalls, and they are well throughout in placement. As I have said before, Open & Free does not always mean Open & Free.
I would suggest that industries that are trying to maintain control by forcing users to pay first, they consider better less friction type mechanisms. The paywall isn’t going away, it is however going to feel like you’re not paying because it will be seamless in your interaction with that product or service.
Rupert Murdoch is a man born & raised at the beginning of the industrial age, he’s 79 years old, and we shouldn’t be shocked at his narrow view of how newspapers should function on the Internet. It’s not his fault really, he has been conditioned into believing something that is no longer true. The Independent website released an article called, “Has Rupert Murdoch’s paywall gamble paid off?”, yesterday. It’s very well written, and it raises the question again about paywalls and the stand many are taking. Rupert is almost viewed as a criminal for his stand on paywalls, and I don’t see him backing down any time soon. The move to prevent content from being found through search engines has to be suicide. This is not the kind of attention he should want to have, it’s negative, and it eventually will not make money.
Two months ago, he had paywalls erected on The Times & The Sunday Times, which prevents search engines from accessing that content. One of the first things to happen, traffic to the site dropped through the floor. You & I both know that traffic is paramount for any website trying to make a buck. Rupert’s primary concern appears to be about muscle, he stated that newspapers will have less muscle in Internet advertising campaigns than they do in print. That statement alone screams control over what you & I can have access to, and he wants to force you & I to pay for his control. But is it control he wants, or is it meta-data? It is suggested this paywall move is more about gathering consumer information than selling content, what do you think?
In the new business environment of the future, being open & free will bring about better results than Rupert Murdoch is suggesting. There are countless number’s of sites using paywalls, and there even more moving to a open & free business model, and having great success. As I have said before, Open & Free is not a skill set, it’s a paradigm shift, a new way of thinking, a new way of doing business.
The best paywall, one that doesn’t make you work hard to make payment, one that is seamless, and one that doesn’t give you that uneasy feeling of throwing your money away. One of the biggest concerns about open & free, it will raise the level of bad content, that’s going to happen anyway when the other 3 Billion get here online, so get over it.
What are your thoughts on this topic?