I'll be Speaking to The Enterprising Moms Network March 15th
One of the things I love to do more than anything else, is hearing about successful people. Better than that, when these successful people come together and build network that supports them in their efforts. In my area there is such a group known as, Fraser Valley Enterprising Moms Network, if you don’t know anything about them, please visit their website. So why am I promoting this group? Two reasons, firstly, they are doing some cool things, with 10 Chapters now up and running, they hold monthly events with guest speakers. Secondly, they invited me to speak!
From the Enterprising Moms Network Site:
EMN offers you a place to come to remind you that you aren’t alone and that it is possible to be a good mom and a good business woman as well.
We combines topics that are relevant to YOU – from business topics such as marketing, budgeting, loan assistance to health concerns, raising children, and relationships.
In addition, we invite dynamic speakers who are leading experts and successful mom entrepreneurs to share their experiences and knowledge with you.
EMN has it all – including invaluable networking opportunities, extensive resources and an online forum for you to access throughout the month.
Join us online or at a chapter meeting in your area today and see why EMN is the place to be for all mom entrepreneurs!
URL: http://www.enterprisingmomsnetwork.com/
If you are Mom and want to be in business, this group of incredible women can help you, and you will soon find you aren’t alone. Be sure to join a Chapter or better yet, start one in your area.
The location: TBA
The World Is Coming – Will You Be Ready?
Back in 1994 the world was on fire for the World Wide Web, thinking then that we have finally found something that was going to change the way we worked and lived. Well, that’s partly true, we can do things we couldn’t do before, but it also didn’t save us time on a personal level. Technology merely allowed us to get more done in a day, we’re still working ridiculous hours each week. What happened, we didn’t see the crash that was coming. Today everyone is embracing Social Media as if it was 1994 all over again, bragging about those organizations that have embraced this environment and are having success. Many think that they have figured it out and will be the example for the rest of us. I believe we are wrong yet once again.
I’m 52 years old, allot has changed in my lifetime alone, Microsoft was birthed the year I graduated, 1975. I remember the introduction of Texas Instruments first handheld calculator, it was clunky and huge just like the first cell phones. Tape recording machines were as big as a suit case, 10 1/2 inch reels of tape spun forever. In the last 5 years, we have almost connected every person in North America via the Internet, 340 Million people use the Internet on this Continent. It’s amazing isn’t it, and yet we still don’t see what’s coming.
In the past 5 years Social Media has made it’s presence known, early adopters tried to tell us about it but we didn’t have time for it. Now we live on FaceBook and others like it, we can connect and talk with anyone who shows up. This phenomenon is also creating challenges for the Corporate world, we are moving away from a business model of control, that scares the daylights out of them. Control implies order, out of control means KAOS!
Today there are 1.7 Billion people on the Internet, that’s 25.6 % of the worlds population. Google is planning to send up 16 Satellites to provide free Internet access to parts of the world not connected today. Imagine if you will, if in the next 3 – 5 years, we were to have 5 Billion people connected on the Internet. How will the Internet look to you then, how are you using it now, will you change what you are doing, and how will we handle the problem of bandwidth? Imagine a day when Internet access is free, or covered in your property taxes. Have you spent time looking ahead, I do, and I can tell you, The world is coming, are you ready, will you be ready?
The Internet is moving away from computers as we know them, everything is going mobile, wireless handheld devices, and in the near future you will spend most of your time in Virtual Reality. The way we do business is changing yet once again, where a conversation is the sell, not the product or service. We are moving into a way of work where collaboration is required to build anything, we will coordinate and cultivate, we will change the way we organize our work. This broadband culture, click to get, access will come before ownership, the value of money will have to be re-determined and so on. We are slowly moving to an Open & Free Business Model, this will be a painful shift, it means the opposite of what we are doing now for the most part. Attention will be the new currency. Trust will be everything.
The World is Coming, Will You Be ready?
Open & FREE is a Business Model
I know your scratching your head wondering what I mean by this, stay with me and let me share some thoughts on the topic. We’ve been and still are under the bondage of control & protectionism, just look at the Newspaper & Music industries as an example. I’m not opposed to the creators, writers and artists from being compensated for their work, I’m suggesting that there is and will be a better ways to ensure that compensation happens.
I’m a firm believer that making content readily available and free will create new ways of monetizing, eventually most will figure out how to monetize around that content. If the music industry is smart, they will make collective agreements with those distributing music now, especially those doing it illegally by today’s laws. Pirates if you will, are not really the enemy, they are however breaking new artists all the time, the music industry benefits while the pirate(s) don’t get paid for finding them. The model is now beginning to reverse and is becoming open, the pirate will still find and break new music while everyone else benefits including the pirate. Collaboration is far better than the closed system of control we have today in the music industry. In Matt Mason’s book The Pirate’s Dilemma: How Youth Culture Is Reinventing Capitalism
You & I won’t tolerate gate keepers and closed systems, you can’t put content behind walls and generate new money, only in an open & free environment will you make new money. Those words are Gerd Leonhard’s , he is a media futurist and his focus is the music industry. From his book called Music 2.0 he makes an interesting statement in the segment called, Access Will Replace Ownership and the Consumer Will Drive the Business:
In three to five years, consumers will have access to “their” music anytime, anywhere, and the physical possession of it will in fact be more of a handicap, or a pastime for collectors. Music will feel (and act) more like water, and music providers will become utilities.
Keep in mind this book was written prior to 2008, it is a collection of essays previously released. I’m not an authority on the music industry, I do however preach his message and see open and free as a sound business model. His new book I have yet to read but you can get it here: Friction is Fiction: The Future of Content, Media & Business
Gary Vaynerchuk has also seen the shift long before it started, he produced 40 minute video’s on Wine Library TV and gave you the content free for 17 months before anyone really knew who he was. How do you think he is doing today, he took the family business from 3 -4 million a year to over 60 million a year doing that show. Today he has a 10 book deal due to the open & free business model, he continues to build his legacy in this new model. His goal is simple, buy the New York Jets NFL team and spend more time with his family. Gary’s message is simple, embrace who you are, your DNA, work hard, work really hard, and never give up on your passion. He doesn’t promise you you’ll make it big, nor does he claim you will be a millionaire, he does however promise, if you do what your passionate about you will win. Winning does not mean lots of money, it may however mean you will enjoy and maybe even love what you do. he preaches his message everywhere and to anyone who will listen, his book hit the New York Top Sellers List and is still available, Crush It!: Why NOW Is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion
There are other examples of this business model working, the true test will be if and more like when Industries see the revenue streams around what they sell, how they look for gaps, create vehicles and harness the power of their audiences.
How will you embrace this new environment of Open & Free as a business model?
If your are interested in coming to one of my Open & Free Business Model Workshops, please email me Here
The Media Has You – We Are All Sheep!
I know you sit in front of the TV shaking your head over some of what you see and hear, the media has you, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. You know something isn’t right but you can’t stop yourself from wondering what’s so terribly wrong. You know you’re being sold but you can’t help but think everything that is presented before you is a good idea and you must have it. It baffles the mind how easily lead we are as a people, how we just bite the cheese in the trap like the mouse.
We wait for and anticipate the big announcements from some of these huge companies as if they were the Messiah! Silicon Valley can’t wait to tease you with another great technology company making the leap from nobody to something larger than life. It’s everywhere, you can’t escape it, the media has us in the palm of their hands. The Media has you, we are all sheep!
The much anticipated announcement by Apple is a prime example of how the whole world stopped, stood up and paid attention to the moment Apple unvieled the iPad. And now we are inundated with reviews, critics, a bazillion blog posts about what’s good and what’s bad about the iPad. Yes, Apple has developed a new product but why are we so hooked on what happens when the rest of the world is struggling, trying to recover from earth quakes and famine. How is it that we can be distracted by something as trivial as an iPad over these other disasters? I’m already tired of hearing about Apple’s iPad, everyone is trying to break the stories.
It’s simple realy, the Media has us all, the chain around the neck being yanked when they need your attention. It’s attention space selling here on the Internet, TV and what have you. That’s the future of who we will be come, attention freaks trying to make a name for ourselves, building a brand, but we still don’t get it, we can’t keep marketing on the Internet by yelling. We pay attention to Apple because we trust their products and services, we pay attention to Microsoft because we trust their products. The challenge is that it’s not free, it’s time consuming and it distracts us from whats important, the tools are not more important than our lives.
What I’m learning from all of this is, there are fewer visionaries and leaders than there are followers, everyone wants to be out front. The 15 minutes of fame the world is selling you is misleading and unhealthy for most of us. This probably won’t change but, the visionaries will see you and take advantage of your vanity as they do today. I know I’m coming off synical, I’m just trying spread some sanity and help you stay focused on what’s truly important.
The world is changing faster than we can possible imagine, we can’t keep up, some of us sheep will slaughtered in the progress and some of us will become famous sheep. The world of free content, freedom of speach, the freedom to be who we are not will transform business, transform the way we do business and how we continue to function in a connected world. We must move into a place where we are not trapped by the media and big business, we must begin to believe in the impossible, what we can not see yet. Look past the iPad, look past Social Media, look past how to make money blogging, stop and look at how we are moving to an unlimited world.
We must become truly revolutionary, revolution is adopting new behaviour. The things we focus on today must change that behaviour, we must break away from old thinking, we must break away from media as we know it or we will continue to be sheep lead astray. Those who figure out that paying with attention is the new advertising will find themselves out in front of the masses. It’s advertising not @vertising!
The Cloud is where the money is, free content is the new content model, we have to figure out how to monetize around it no matter what the media tells you. Break from old methodology, learn to unlearn, look at new trends that are hard to adopt, look at Social Networking, Content Services, Communication, Money and eLearning. But look with fresh eyes and new thinking. Think about who controls what, who the gate keepers are and which ones we have to remove in the world of free. We are entiring into a world where we all will be mobile, everything will be in handheld devices and everything is and will be on the Cloud.
We are constantly being sold down the river, told a story, distracted by what’s important in life, media must change and you must help re-shape it, re-write the books on copyright to usage rights, develop new ways to monetize around your brand, product or service. What will the world look like when more than 6% of the worlds population is on the Internet, what happens when countries like China breakout from behind the wall? The winds of change are blowing, are you building a shelter or a windmill?
Media comes to us in many forms, it’s the music industry, it’s newspapers, it’s books, it’s radio, it’s television and now it’s blogs & people. In the end, nothing happens without people, the power is shifting back to the people, the problem is also with the people, how we think and how we act. The new media will be built on trust, are we trustworthy? The Media’s would have you think you are not smart enough to figure out what they are doing, they talk to you and expect you to follow like sheep. That’s because they are in a state of protectionism, so beware.
The Media has you, we are all sheep!
The Power of FREE
The Internet is filled with places to get free information, free software, free content, it’s all there for the taking. We can click and get whatever we want right? The Internet is a giant copy machine, we copy everything, imagine what would happen if you took the copy function away, you would lose the the listening function. What would happen then, revolt, maybe the hackers would be the politicians? Pirates would rule the Internet world, how would you stop them or should I say us?
Personally, I think most content should and will end up being free on the Internet, we will figure out how to monetize around that free content, we have no choice, it’s going to happen. There will be wars over intellectual rights, copyrights and royalty fights before it’s all said and done. Access will come before ownership. When we see a threat, we default to protectionism, we should be asking the question, how do we go from copyright to usage rights?
There is so much confusion as to where Social Media is taking us, it’s really reshaping Media to where the new sell is the conversation, the non tangible things matter now more than ever, this is a drastic disruption to old thinking. Why is Social Media so powerful, it’s FREE! You can join any number of Social Networks at no cost, build a following, a brand, and hopefully trust. The best thing is to sell something different like, convenience, experience and trust, generate demand, create new innovation and maybe even add value to the orginal.
Most Blogs provide free content, some have communities attached to them where you pay a small fee to be part of, they add value to a need, that’s one way of monetizing around your content. If you are going to be in this space, you have to decide if you’re going to compete.
Linus Torvalds released Linux back in 1991, Slackware was the first distro to be released, it’s a free operating system that has spawned a number companies that have figured out how to monetize something around the Open Source code. Open is good, it stirs the creative juices, it brings about innovation, and takes creativity far beyond any closed system has ever dreamed of going.
The power of free is far reaching, provides a platform to build something far greater than any one person, we must collaborate to build anything of true value in this attention space. Do you think FaceBook won’t make money from the free to join social network? Where you can be connected to thousands of people, business contacts, business owners at no charge. They will, and it will be astounding how much that will be.
Think of all the things you can get it for free, then think of all the content you can’t get for free, what’s important to you in this circle, that’s what you will pay for. But I can promise you this, if you can get for free, you will, even if it means you have to hunt for it. If you create content of any kind, offer it for free, you will harness the power of your audience. You can’t put content behind walls and generate new money, only in the open can you generate new money, and only then you will see the power of free.