Posts Tagged ‘Future’
The Future Of Your Business Depends On A Story Shared
I can remember as a young boy, sitting in front of the radio and listening to The Shadow late at night. The story being told in these who done it’s was captivating, and yet frightening at the same time. I mean come on, murder to a young boy in the 1960’s was unheard of in most small towns in Northern British Columbia. It was like pretend death, not real right? There were other programs but The Shadow always had you shivering, hiding under the covers, and making sure the light was on. Just in case you had to run, you had to see where you were going.
Radio was and is still a powerful medium, I know, I spent 15 years doing it. The problem with Radio today though, they almost never tell a story, they just sell, sell, sell. In my previous post I talk about sharing, and it proves my point, sharing the story is much more captivating than trying to sell 100% of the time. Even listening to a Hockey Game live on the radio told a story, the story of the progress each team was making, the ebb & flow, the swing in momentum, the incredible save Cheevers made but you couldn’t see, the announcers had to be masters of telling that story to keep you listening. The same is true with your presence on your Blog or website, personal or business, the story will draw people in, it’s been proven time and again for hundreds if not thousands of years.
The story is the glue, it is the very thing that can act as a magnet to your product, service or information. Find your story and share it, but remember, the story must be true and authentic, not fiction. It’s the REAL part that makes people come back. Making your story real and authentic, makes you and your Blog useful, especially if it solves a problem or informs them. People always comeback to places they find useful, it’s human nature to stick with what and who they trust. So, is your story trust worthy, is it compelling, better yet, is it interesting?
Every business has a story to tell, I would love to hear the story of your business, and does it fit the future business model, the open & free business model. The future of your business depends on your story being shared. Because, when we want innovation, we must focus on open and free thinking, and the storytelling that accompanies it.
Sharing & Entrepreneurial Success
In alittle over a week I’ll be speaking at FRESH! Fraser Valley on this very topic, but I thought I would start sharing some thoughts with you now. If you don’t have your ticket, get one, there are some very special people waiting to meet you, and to share.
Those of you who frequent this Blog know that I preach an Open & Free Business Model, and in case you didn’t know, sharing is the foundation of that model. In fact, I would venture to say that this is what business and individuals need to know to shape their futures. In my opinion, sharing is the single most important thing you can do in business, transparent sharing to be more specific. Many times I have been asked, what kind of sharing should I do? To me, the answer is brain dead simple, apparently it isn’t for most.
So, what should you be sharing? In can be as simple as telling your story, tell the story of how your business or product came to life, let people know that your business is human. Keep it simple, take your readers on a journey about your business. This story is the glue to your business and your entrepreneurial success!
Now there’s more to it than just a one time sharing of that story, continue telling the story, tell it as the story grows and changes over the coming months and even years. Don’t brag or sell, just share. It’s really that simple. Draw people in through your story, your readers or followers will know if you’re genuine or not, they’ll sniff out a sales pitch in a heart beat. But they love a good story, and are looking for someplace to hunker down feel welcomed. The story is part of an equation, it’s part of the inbound marketing equation, it’s part of how business will be done in the next 3 – 5 years, it’s also part of a paradigm shift.
Turning the future into revenue means this, pay special attention to whats happening around you and your business. I’m willing to bet that you see more and more businesses sharing as a major component to their success. These businesses are rebuilding, becoming smaller to be able to move faster and add people without adding overhead. Entrepreneurs are the new BIG business, small is big in this new world of business, and these entrepreneurs know how to make sharing a financial success.
Looking at the bigger picture helps you with what you will share, looking ahead, the future is not a one way street; you can shape it with the right strategies, the right tactics, and the right story to share. The question is never where to start, or what to share, it should be, what’s coming and what effect will it have on my business. That’s one part of the paradigm shift, moving from denial to foresight.
Sharing will attract customers, readers and better yet, friends. It can improve your bottomline, it can increase traffic to your businesses website or Blog, and it will most definitely improve your entrepreneurial success. Just tell the story and watch great things happen.
The Future of Toll Booths
Business is being reshaped online, it has to, the very way of survival is change, it is however, doing a poor job of translating it to traditional business forms. What I call the OLD Business Model still needs to be looked after, but it also needs to be transformed and reshaped to adopt the online mentality if it’s to survive. No longer can we use the phrase, ” we’ve always done it this way”, if someone says it, they should be fired on the spot. It sounds harsh but, if that person has influence, the future of that business is and will be in jeopardy if they stay with that thinking.
Toll Booths are the mechanism for getting paid, online & off, it’s the way of the business world. These toll booths are being reshaped, they are becoming more & more invisible to the consumer. This seamless trend will continue to the point we may not know when we’ve actually paid for anything! The strategic alliances, the partnerships, and the stand-alones must make paying for goods & services effortless in order to make the experience positive. Not unlike the Apple example, iTunes has made buying music almost painless but not completely. You still have to download an application and you still have to have a valid account with a healthy balance in it before you can feel the benefit. Plus, it’s a closed system, you don’t get to touch it, feel it or make changes to it. Still, this toll booth is better than no start to the future of toll booths, and probably one of the best examples to date.
My son recently purchased eye glasses online, it was a great experience, and he saved money to boot! It was a simple three step process, choose your contacts & or designer frames, enter your prescription & customize your order, and then see the savings delivered to your door. It took him less than a week to get his new glasses, he put them on and they were perfect. The company is called Clearly Contacts, a Canadian company that is making it easy to buy glass & contacts, and they accept PayPal as a means of payment! In the future, we will have our eyes tested online so we don’t have to drive to the optometrist to get the prescription.
Soon there will be a secured cookie mechanism, a cert if you will, it will eliminate the actual payment click of the mouse step, it will be similar to the RFID chip. It will be a Secured Digital RFID Cookie that will handle the payment process for you. Of course, you will have to approve it, but as web browsers die, other technologies of viewing websites will make this process even easier.
The current build of toll booth is still too cumbersome, a link to PayPal or another means of making payment needs to be hidden from plain site, making the experience better. The current method makes you feel like you have been violated, or you’ve left the house unlocked, I need to feel things are well looked after, I don’t need to see it. The experience is everything for the user, much like Attention is to the seller. Attention is the new currency for anyone or any business selling products and services online. The problem is, getting that attention is going to get harder and harder, and it’s also going to be extremely difficult to keep that attention. One way of helping the cause, make paying for your products & services as easy as possible. Don’t ask users to fill out a LONG form, requesting name, address, phone numbers and so on, that will be the death of you. Find ways to make the toll booth invisible, and above all, an experience they can’t stop talking about in a positive way.
Where you put the toll booth matters, the experience users have using your site & toll booth will be the difference maker. The future of toll booths? Simple, hide them, embed them, make them work seamlessly online and you will have a winner. Better yet, you’ll get attention, and that means good things for you and your business.
I Invite You To Help Me Write My Next Book!
After great deliberation and deep contemplation, I am going to write a book on the Open & Free Business Model – The Future of Business. I am escaping to the sunny warm, no, HOT climate of the Okanagan in British Columbia for the next 4 days to get started. I don’t know how long it will take but, I would like you to be a part of the journey and my book.
In my mini-workshops I always ask participants what questions haven’t been answered or what else they were hoping to learn. I also have them fill out a Feedback form for the purposes of improving the mini-workshop. Keep in mind, the mini-workshop is only 4 hours long because one can only absorb and retain so much information in one sitting. You do get a workbook to take home, and the content shared is only available via PowerPoint to those who attended the workshops for later review.
Some of the great things I love about holding workshops is, the people’s willingness to dig in, the sharing of ideas, the discussion of possibilities, and the creativity that flows out of each person, it’s far too much excitement to contain. How I’ll be writing this book, I tend to start with the easy stuff first, and then move on to deeper issues and questions, and that’s where you come in. I would like to answer your questions, questions you might have on the Open & Free Business Model, better yet, if you know of good examples of businesses using the model, so I invite you to leave them in the comments for the world to see. OK, you can send your questions via e-mail to if you want to remain anonymous. If you’re not sure what the model is, that’s OK, I’ll be posting more about it as I go along, you can ask me anything related to the topic or what you think the topic is, and I’ll do my best to give you answer.
So what will I cover? Firstly, what the model might look like for you & your business, then I will touch on what I see coming in the next 3 – 5 years, I’ll look at trends and then talk some facts on what’s really going on. Mostly, I will try to give many examples of businesses that are having success with the open & free model, some don’t even know that’s what they are doing! It’s my hope that when you finish reading the book, you will have a better understanding of what the open & free really means, you’ll be able to come up with some creative ideas for your business, and a simple way to implement your ideas. Of course it’s easier said than done, the workshops are the best way to tackle the confusion. So I will try to make the book much like the workshop, so you can do it on your own.
I thank you in advance, please send questions & examples via e-mail at:owen@owengreaves.com
THANKS FOR YOUR WILLINGNESS TO PARTICIPATE, HEY – I’m Writing A Book, Go Figure EH! (Ya I’m Canadian)
Social Networks Are The New Church Of The Future?
Since the birth of the Internet many have been trying to figure out just what it is, how big it is, I mean how big is it in terms of mankind. What is the role the Internet plays in terms of the world, maybe the universe as we know it. The question of what the Internet will look like in 50, 100 years from now looms large and is still is unanswered. The future is much easier to predict over the next 30- 50 years but 100 is a stretch, most likely we have no idea what technology will be like if we even get to live that long. With that in mind, what will Social Networks primary function be in the next 50 years?
Today we are producing content at a rapid pace, and using Social Networks to distribute it, hoping to get attention, and hoping to be recognized for providing good value. Most are trying figure out how to make a living here without the reputation of being unethical, wanting to be an honest business person and still generate income. In Social Networks it appears everyone is helping each other, building one another up, and encouraging each other to keep moving forward and to never give up. In some way these social networks behave like a church, maybe even better than, taking care of each other and speaking positive about all we come in contact with, as if we’ve known each other for years. It’s actually one of things I like about social network environments, it’s humane, it’s not about the system, it’s about people.
Almost everyone is willing to come and be together on Social Networks, see old friends, and meet new ones. It all sounds so wonderful doesn’t it? There is a dark side and we have yet to figure out what exactly it look likes and how to keep in check. I only mention it because we must keep our wits about us while chatting here faceless.
The church of the future will be more online than off, and many of the old guard will fight it, just like the music industry, they’ll fight back and try to keep control. In fact, today a new copyright law was introduced to prevent you, all of us from downloading music. I expect the copyright law will fail just as the previous document. Many question come when the idea of doing church online, sharing the gospel in a digital way. What about denomination, what happens to membership? The concept of broadcasting, streaming church services live online will become common place in the future even with the resistance of today.
The reality is, the church our Mother’s & Father’s attended, that model of church, is no longer working and a new model needs to be introduced. The new model means opening the doors up to the soon to be 5 Billion people that will take up residence here online. It won’t be enough to just stream services, but virtual churches will literally need to transform traditional church so it works online. Then the questions of, would people attend, would virtual churches survive financially? I belive they will, and they will most likely increase giving because they have opened the church doors and seeing that they to have become even more human.
Some say the Internet is evil, it’s the same statement as saying people with guns kill people, the truth is, guns kill people. The motive and heart of the people determine whether that happens or not, but that’s another story.
The Internet is changing our world(s), in such a way many are having a very difficult time trying to understand just what is happening and what it all means in the big picture. I can only say, this change is going to happen and we have to learn how to adopt. The details have yet to be worked out, but the picture is clear, the church will come here whether those today like it or not. The same applies to business owners resisting the reality that the Internet, that their business must be web-centric rather than not.
Will social networks be the new church, will they be accepted, or will they be viewed as outsiders as they are today? I like to think we are all people, we all have the same desires and frankly the same needs. If that is true, then social networks we know today will remain behaving the same way with very little change. That remains to be seen, but I can say without an hesitation, the church will be here doing the good work that they do, and I say AMEN!