Posts Tagged ‘Open & Free Business Model’
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.
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!
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?
Traditional Business Is Still In Denial
Here it is, September 1st, 2010 and two things jumped out at me this morning after reading some business news. Newspapers still think they have something solid going, and Mall’s are still being touted as a good investment. With all the evidence that traditional business is failing in most sectors, those incredibly smart people are making critical errors in judgement.
Yesterday, a company called POSTMEDIA/Network announced that they have a new logo. Now it’s not the logo that has me scratching my head this morning. Former President of Roger’s Paul Godfrey is the President & CEO of Postmedia Network, this group’s list of brands should make you wonder why they continue down the futile path of print. Considering that Newspapers are dropping like flies these days, the predicting doom of book stores and other outbound media, why would you or anyone else invest in this venture? Not one but 11 brands under the Postmedia Network umbrella, all newspapers! They handle the National Post, Times Colonists, The Vancouver Sun, The Province, Calgary Herald, Edmonton Journal, Leader-Post, The StarPheonix, Ottawa Citizen, The Windsor Star and The Gazzette. These are probably the most read newspapers in Canada, and are also failing.
You can find Canadian Newspapers listed in iPad, you can’t read them, the list is of their websites you have to go visit, this will have to change if they want to survive. Newspapers should scrambling to make as many mobile apps as possible, build other ways of generating revenue. The online ad market is staggeringly huge, but for some reason print & TV are merely poking a stick at it. They will all but be forgotten when the other 3 billion people come online in the next 2 -3 years.
Another confusing move this morning, I was actually surprised how I responded when I read that a Mall in Surrey, B.C., Canada was sold for $91 Million, that’s cheap by today’s standards but it still sold. But a mall? Granted this mall is anchored by some heavy weights, SAVE-ON FOODS, Canadian Tire, Staples, Winners, HomeSense, Cactus Club and HSBC, plus 26 other businesses. Back in the 70’s & 80’s, he who owned the channel of distribution, had a secure future, would never be in danger of being out of business. Now, we still need some box stores, we will need warehouses, forklift drivers and so on. But you can also see where most of these mall businesses will either be 100% online or gone.
So the questions begs to be asked, why would you buy a mall? The investment of the land? Maybe. The longevity of these businesses remaining long time anchors in a mall? Maybe, but I doubt it.
These moves in of themselves are not life threatening or even bad for that matter by today’s standards, but in the next 3 – 5 years, I suspect they will be asking themselves what they were thinking.
Consider these two small movements today, and I quote, profits in Canada’s non-residential construction sector will fall to a five-year low this year, that’s according to a report by the Conference Board of Canada. Pre-tax profits for this year in this sector will be 1.2 billion, down from $1.4 billion in 2009, and will not recover to pre-recession levels until 2014, at it’s earliest, it’s survey forecast. If at all I wonder.
In Washington there is more bank demise, the number of problem-ridden US banks rose to the hihest levels in 17 years, just in the second quarter! The number of institutions on its “problem list” rose more than 7 percent in the second quarter.
Traditional business is still in denial, they keep doing business as usual thinking everything will turn out alright. Really? Do you really think things aren’t changing, do you really believe that a global population who screams to be heard, to be served the way they want to be served, they want it to be almost free or extremely low cost, they want it in an Open & Free Business Model. Today’s public will look until they find it the way they want it, no longer can you force people to do it your way big business, you best pay attention, because if you won’t, someone will pay attention and take your business. Wake Up!
On a positive note, today the Bank of Canada interest rate hike has been delayed : )