bwagy

Daily Finance does a bit of a post how the state of play has changed in the last two years: Freelance Nation: Why Permanent Jobs may not come back.

In Micro Businesses I mention that we are finally seeing the shift towards Charles Handy idea of the Doughnut Organisation.

This just reinforces it somewhat.  The shakedown has forced organisations to restructure how they run and it makes sense for them to acquire Freelancers to fill the gaps.  On the flipside Freelancers get greater control, pick their projects and keeps them on their toes.  A win/win.

It is sad that it has come about the way it has (through deep cuts during the recession) but I do think it’s for the best.

The future is in micro (even atomic) businesses…

I had the opportunity to finally meet Chris Guillebeau in person last night.

(He wrote a testimonial for The Best Ideas are Free).

Nevertheless I thought it was long overdue a mention of his post on the $100 Business Case – definitely worth a read, bookmark and subscription to his blog.

As Chris points out (and the 12 Hour Startup does) it’s all about just taking that first step, giving it a shot, then following your feet.

I was quite a curious kid, always asking questions, the ever curious question of WHY?  My first job was classic of this, it was assisting the local fire wood producer, chop up and distribute firewood.

My boss was an aging man, putting in the last few years before retirement, and it was his little one man band.  Our first job was to go out and collect the firewood, he would use the chainsaw to cut trees brought down by flooding.  Firstly he would cut the trees into rounds, my job was to then grab the rounds, put them in a pile.

We would then split the rounds in half, load them on the back of the flatbed truck and take them back to his wood yard.  Back at the yard, unload all the wood, put it in a pile.   The next step was to cut the wood with a log splitter, stack in another pile.

Finally we were ready for orders! Orders were by the cubic metre, and so a certain amount of barrow loads was a cubic metre.  We would then load the truck up an order at a time and deliver it.

It took me all of one day to speak up and go, hang on we are double, triple handling this wood.  Why don’t we split the back of the flatdeck truck in half, then into little stalls, the horizontal sides of the stall being such we could pull them out.

Then we could cut the firewood, split it on location, throw it into the stalls (which could be measured out on a cubic metre basis) then deliver straight to the customer.  We could save sooo much time.  ”No Ben, this is the way I do it”.

This frustrated me to no end, but hey I got $10 for a mornings work and that bought me basketball cards.  I hung in there annoyed at partaking in such an inefficient process, as soon as the opportunity came up I quit my job and moved on.

What I rapidly learned was the concept of idea development, failing fast, modifying and moving on.  It’s no big secret, smart people understand it and embrace it.  Fail fast.  However whilst there is understanding – we fall short of having a mechanism for it.

That’s what the 12 Hour Startup (my first idea in The Best Ideas are Free) is about – formalising a mechanism that allows for remarkable ideas to be shared, tested, proven and ultimately to create significant change.

A simple business hack if you are a bit bored this week.

1) Jump on Alibaba.com.  Find five products you are interested in importing.  Contact each of the suppliers and order a some samples of each.

2) Setup a cheap local adwords campaign for the products you have sourced.  Point them towards a quick page of info about the product (collect emails of interest).

3) Finally once the products arrive, test one of the samples, sell the other on Ebay (or your local equivalent). You should be able to easily sell it for more than the total cost of both units, often making a tidy profit.

(Note: You can stop here, the next step is if you want to build a small business out of it.)

4) Review your adwords / traffic of your test websites.  Which has gained the most interest? Use that data to sell to a local retailer or setup a niche online store selling them.

5) Begin systemising, once you have sold a few start building some systems to automate sales and distribution.  Often you can get dropshippping (manufacturer ships direct to consumer).

Give it a go, have a bit of fun, I have done this every now and again made some good dollars but at the very least you’ll learn something.

(Passionate about local products? Do the reverse help a local manufacturer get their details on Alibaba and help them sell to the world.)

The biggest let down with firms trying to innovate is that they do not create the space for innovation to occur.

What happens when staff have new ideas? Who do they pitch to? Do they know who they should pitch to?

More often than not the ideas get squashed, as they threaten someone else.

To create a culture of innovation, ideas need to be open, shared, spared and rewarded.

Create a space for it to happen, have a Monday Ideas Post, a 12 hour startup day, a huge whiteboard in the middle of headquarters (like Google).

Once you have created that void, people will fill it and surprisingly fast.