When it comes right down to it - it is all about people in business. We use terms like B2B, B2C to signify a customer market but in reality there is no B2B. It is always P2P. People to People. And those people are different than you are in marginal ways or in very significant ways. So we need to understand them. We need to figure out there needs. And they may be totally different than ours. I am amazed by the complexity of human beings. 6.8 billion of us and we are changing every day. This is true as individuals and it is true corporately. Every day we change as individuals for good or ill. Every day the pool of people in our world changes by hundreds of thousands with births and deaths, job changes, location changes and much more. No day is like another with humanity. And in that constant change is the opportunity to try and create a life and make a living. Simple thoughts - complex execution!
Recent stats indicate that more than 50% of new businesses started are done so by women. As a father of two daughters, I am very pleased by this. It means that they will have the potential for opportunity of their own making. Is a business started by women any different than one started by a man? I don't know. I am going to run a poll on my linked in site to get people's take. Are there different goals, different motivations, different ways of doing things? What do you think?
I often think that businesses could be started a lot faster than what they are. But it does take time and for a while you are dancing all alone. And people watch. And you wonder and then the temptation is there to quit. Finally someone joins the dance but others don't seem to follow - a good time to think quitting again. But just maybe it will catch on. Watch the three minute video. There is something to be learned from this about human behavior (and business).
You are a unique human who has a unique compilation of gifts and abilities. There is a good chance you have not fully identified those yet. Many (most?) never do. I am convinced it takes a whole lot of experimenting, challenges, failure, perseverance, desire, collaboration, conflict, frustration, time and energy to figure it out. I do believe there are assessment tools that can be helpful with the identification process as well. Certainly some are much more helpful than others.
This is worth figuring out. Symptoms of not figuring it out are: boredom, frustration, feeling out of place, lots of energy with little results, hating what you do, well we all know what this feels and looks like don't we.
But what if you do figure it out? What if you know what your strengths, gifts and abilities are and you choose to use them and apply them? And what if on the other hand you know what your weaknesses are and you choose to do less of that and let others who are good at it do it? What if you started a business using your strengths? What would that look like? It is no guarantee of success. But it certainly moves you down a path of being more useful to yourself and society. Find your strengths (over the years). Take the risk! We all benefit from you pursuing those and letting others pursue theirs. Take the risk!
So you have a business or are thinking of starting one. Great! It is or will be one of the great challenges in life that you may undertake. As I tell my kids, "keep your thinking cap on!" One way to keep the cap on is to read, read and read some more. There are a lot of smart people out there. Some of them write books and pass on their knowledge and wisdom. And if you buy their books, they write more and pass on more of what they know.
I can't encourage you enough to be a reader. I am amazed on how many business owners never seem to pick up a good book to read. It is their loss and ours. And for some of you, perhaps you should be writing one for the rest of us!
My great, great grandfather immigrated from Sweden to the United States in 1881. He was 35 years old. Like most, he never set foot in Sweden again but carved out a life for he and his family in a new land with new opportunities. No matter if immigration is part of your recent heritage or not, we all are in a sense now carving out our life in a "new land." Things have changed radically in the last two years. Change is now a part of the economic landscape we deal with, today, tomorrow and perhaps the rest of our lives. And this is not slow change. It is fast and accelerating change! Don't just hang on. Somehow we have got to learn to carve out a new life in this new country much like people did before us. Many started businesses when they got here because they were outside of the existing economic system. Such may be the case for you as well.
I attended an event this past weekend called Start-up Weekend. Started by a couple of guys in 2007, it is focused on trying to help people start a company in a weekend. It rolls out like this.... pitch on Friday evening... 8 of 18 pitches were chosen by the total group to move forward. People self selected their teams of interest and then on Saturday worked from 9 to 9 to move the budding companies forward. This continued Sunday until the "companies" then presented at 3:00. Amazing progress was made!
Can you start a business in one weekend? I don't know, but they certainly got close. It is now up to the individuals with the original concept to drive it on forward. The event also had some good speakers, good food and the opportunity to meet some great contacts and network. It was a very busy but useful weekend! Pursue your dreams!!
The February issue of "Wired" magazine is absolutely worth reading with emphasis on the cover story about the "New Industrial Revolution." Written by Chris Anderson, who authored "The Long Tail" and other interesting books (and is Editor of Wired), the article describes the opportunities that exist for someone with a great product idea being able to launch it without the major investment of the past. The last 10 years have laid the social network digital platform. The next 10 years will be using that platform in ways that convert to mass collaboration and creation of new physical products. Great wealth creation has taken place in the cyber world by unleashing the crowd. Anderson's proposition is that we are on the verge of great wealth again being created in the physical world by unleashing the crowd. The foundation is now in place for people to take advantage of it. The foundation is now in place for you to potentially take advantage of it. This phenomena is probably only about three years old or less and brought about because of changing conditions which Anderson describes. A contributing cause was the recent the global meltdown.
For a place like my home state of Michigan, which has lots of creative, technically inclined people who are no longer working at manufacturing companies, this could be a game changer. If you have a product idea, you can design, prototype, manufacture, deliver it in a fraction of the time, at a fraction of the cost and in smaller lot sizes than what existed with the traditional model. Pick up the magazine. Read the article. A new Industrial Revolution is potentially upon us and it will look and feel nothing like the old one.
I would appreciate your comments on here especially if you have read the article. What was your take?
I just had an interesting discussion with a friend of mine about how the Internet changes business (already has so significantly). I am wondering about small town and rural America. How does it survive? There is no doubt that macro changes are happening to those communities. And in spite of optimism, some will never come back. Look at history. Even over the last hundred years there are many "ghost towns" because of changing technology or changing markets. Mines close. Factories close. The train stops going through town. The freeway is put in a mile from town. Things produced are no longer sought after. The list is endless to the constant economic changes that impact the viability of communities. Some communities, of course, become more viable with a change. It is not always a lose.
So how do we survive? I think it comes down to the minds we have been given to come up with new products, services and strategies that are positive for a community. Except for things like the dust bowl or hurricanes (and as we know earthquakes), most of change is human driven. Encarta and Wikipedia wiped out the market for hard cover encyclopedias. Jobs were lost. Craigslist is a deep and ongoing trauma for newspapers. E-mail makes snail mail seem obsolete. Transportation advances changes all the rules. The carnage and reinvention continues. Somewhere in all this change is opportunity. Significant opportunity. I did not state that it would not be painful. Please see past blog on "Failure." But we must move forward - not with blind optimism - but with real innovation. This is true of the urban areas as well as small town, rural America. We live in great and challenging times. Macro changes are occurring. In five years, we are more than likely going to be very amazed on the path we have trod. Keep your thinking cap on!!
Thoughts about entrepreneurship and 2010
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