Abundance and Significance – Making More Money in the Participation Age.

/in /by

For almost 200 years we were in the Industrial Age, followed by four “Ages” in less than 40 years: The Post-Industrial/Service Age. The Technology Age, the very short 5-10 year Information Age, and what some including me are now calling the Participation Age.

The hallmark of the Participation Age is “Sharing”. Shared technologies, shared information, shared resources, and shared participation in developing new products. But most of all the Participation Age is identified by the re-development of the concept of community – people living and working together toward a common goal.

Linux, Druple communities, interactive media, blogs, and social media such as Twitter and Facebook are all examples of shared community. Independent programmers are meeting for a weekend and developing an application in just a few hours together.

The results? A big one is that we are now in the age of Two-Way Marketing. You can no longer afford to have a one-way “push” message. You must be listening as much or more than talking, asking more questions than you answer, and participating with your community in the development of your brand, not telling people what your brand is.

The Age of Participation – Social Entrepreneurship

An even bigger result is that the best companies will be focused on creating abundance and significance for the owner, the employees and the world around them. They will be returning to what we were taught in kindergarten, to re-learn how to share and participate with others in building a better world.

Besides two-way marketing, alert companies will understand that they can no longer afford to be interesting, but that they now must be interested – finding ways to promote the interests of their customers and their community to increase their profits.

It’s not a foo-foo idea anymore; it is becoming a staple of business. Social entrepreneurship is not a fad. It’s a result of living in the age of participation and the information sharing that is possible as a result. And those companies that put the interests of their customers and community first will make more money.

Selling a product or service doesn’t cut it anymore. Last year Wired Magazine ran a cover story on the need for people to reconnect with the concept of “meaning”. In the eighties the bumper sticker was “He who dies with the most toys wins” and in the nineties we got to try it and found it wanting. In the last ten years we have begun to reconnect with the idea that it’s not “He who dies with the most toys wins”, but “He who lives with the most significant goals wins.”

Great companies in the 21st century will move from Survival, through Success to Significance. And they will do so by changing the business mindset from one of scarcity – “I need to get mine first because there is only so much to go around”; to a mindset of abundance – “I will get mine as I help others get theirs.”

Use your business to do more than make money; you’ll make more money if you do. All the best businesses are growing as they give back. It creates the right leadership mindset for a business to grow.

You either live in a world of abundance or a world of scarcity. Whichever one you choose effects every decision you make.

Have a great finish to 2009 and an abundant and significant start to 2010!

Buy my book for a small business owner in Kenya. I’ll take it to them.

/in /by

February 7-20 I will accompany The 1010 Project to Kenya to explore ways to break the cycle of poverty by developing sustainable business models. Brian Rants, the Director of The 1010 Project asked me to work with them to think big and go beyond the typical craft-making and handwork solutions. We’ll be looking for ways to fund real businesses that work for the local economy – it’s an exciting and daunting opportunity.

We’ll be working in the Kibera slum with a population density of 1,250 people per acre. We lived on one acre in Farmington, CT for years, backed up against 75 acres of state forest. Kibera will be a different world. We’ll also meet with some nationally connected business leaders to involve them in the solution.

The size of the problem is overwhelming. Our solution will be simple – change everything; one person and one small business at a time.

What can you do?

Three things:

  1. Sign up for The 1010 Project Newsletter here – and keep updated about our trip and what we plan to do to.
  2. Make a donation to help fund the trip by clicking here. I will be funding my own travel costs; your donations will go to fund the in-country costs of the trip and the travel costs for Brian Rants, The 1010 Project Director, and to support the in-country permanent presence of The 1010 Project headed up by Keith Ives.
  3. Buy a copy of Making Money is Killing Your Business that we can take with us to Kenya and donate to a small business owner. I wrote this book as a comprehensive reference book for starting and running a small business, and I believe the principles work in any culture. It is normally $28.95, but if you want to buy one specifically to send on our trip, we’ll take it with us (it will be shipped in advance), and the cost will be only $15. This will pay for the printing, handling, shipping and for having your name placed in the book (address info will not be provided).

To buy a book to send with us to Kenya and present in your name, go to our pre-order site and click on the Book for Kenya button. We’ll present the book on your behalf to a small business owner in Kenya. We’ll only be able to take 150 books, so please order your Book for Kenya right away.

The #1 Indicator of Success in Early Stage Businesses

/in /by

Move Quickly

Very few business owners expect their business to support them right out of the gate. More often than not, the expectation to receive income from outside the business gives the owner a false sense of security and a lack of real intentionality to build a business. We assume it’s supposed to be this way, and if we look around at other business startups and some of the really awful advice we get, we’re told it could be 18-24 months before the business even breaks even. So we take that 18-24 month window and use every bit of it, burning through outside money like there’s no tomorrow, and feeling just fine about it because it’s supposed to be this way.

A great friend of mine and fellow business advisor in Virginia, Eddie Drescher, told me about one of his clients who had one fitness franchise open and was about to open another. The national franchise had told him it would take 12 months or so to be profitable because that’s how long it took them.

As this client was about to open his second center, he told Eddie about this timeline. Eddie immediately challenged him, saying, “Who made that rule?” After talking through it at length, they decided to shoot for profitability in the first three months. Instead the location turned a profit in its first month, and stayed close to break even in the following few months. Rather than burning cash for 12-18 months because he was “supposed” to, he intended to do something much better much sooner, and did so.

Speed of Execution

I believe strongly that the number one indicator of success in an early stage business is not how good your product is, or how smart your marketing is, or your uniqueness, or your funding, or any of those traditional ideas of what makes for success. The number one indicator of success in early stage business is simply speed of execution.

Think of that successful six figure sales person you know, or that business owner who seems to turn everything they touch to gold. Almost certainly they are people who, when they get an idea, move on it immediately. Most of us spend way too much time thinking, researching, and planning. We would be better off getting a very basic plan in place and acting on it, and perfecting it as we go.

It’s the subject of my next book, but for now I can’t encourage you enough to just get moving! Stop thinking about starting up, and if you’ve started up, stop thinking that it’s supposed to last until the end of your cash, then magically switch over to funding itself.

Get intentional about getting your business through startup as quickly as you can. And whatever stage of business you’re in, keep Speed of Execution as one of your top business principles. You’ll make more money in less time.

Is Your Business Making the Rules for You?

/in /by

He who makes the rules wins. The problem is your business is probably making all the rules for you and beating you up at every turn.

We have it all backwards. We build a business intending to work hard and make money at it, and then we just take whatever lifestyle the business is willing to throw off for us. We live in reaction mode – reacting to everything our business needs us to do in order to make money this month.

Every business should throw off three things for us – time, money and significance. We only expect it to generate money so that’s what it does. But a healthy business grows up and gives us all three.

Let’s get it right. Figure out what your Ideal Lifestyle is and what it will cost you to live there. Then intentionally build your business to produce that lifestyle. Stop taking whatever your business will give you, take control and start making decisions that will bring you time and significance as well as money.

He who makes the rules wins. If you’re in charge then make the rules and build a business that responds to your direction, not the other way around. Do you own your business or does your business own you? Who’s really in charge?

It depends on which one of you is making the rules.