bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

We now have connectivity virtually 100% integrated into our lives.

Through wifi, 3g, broadband we can connect for the most part of our day.

We have seen the rise of I want Sandy, the personal assisant bot.

However I think this is just the start, how about:

• Sending a dm / txt of each item of food you consume, then get a weekly summary or calorie intake, spikes, drops, improvements.
• Same with exercise.
• Reminder services already exist (with Sandy) but how about people assistants, ie ‘can you ring me on the 30th to remind me to do my gst return’.
• Research, can you research Jesse James and give me a 2 minute rundown of him, in time for my meeting.  (Tremendously helpful for when meeting a new company or networking)
• Share all this with your friends / family.

This would be absolutely fantastic and be of huge huge value to small groups.

Project Management, running virtual organisations, charity groups.

This would be the step between basecamp and real life.

Absolute magic! Can we do it now? Yes we can.  Just need someone to do it for us…..

(btw is this the Twitter monetisation play? Possibly).

I was reading this brilliant article on Yoshiro Nakamatsu, Japanese Inventor.

A modern day Nikola Tesla.

This paragraph struck out to me:

“The key to successful innovation, according to Nakamatsu, is “freedom of intelligence.” By this he means working with no strings attached. Nakamatsu says he has never sought funding from any person, company or government and prefers to develop and produce his own inventions. “If you ask or borrow money from other people, you cannot keep freedom of intelligence,” he says simply.”

This freedom, opens up the potential to anything you can dream of.

Seth Godin says the same on his blog, he doesn’t work for anyone, or allow comments as that may impair him.

Really he wants to unleash the possibilities.

It was on this point I wanted to say this blog has no strings attached.

This isn’t here to push products out there.

It’s to provide an outlet to get ideas out there.

Like Seth I had no comments, but opened it up, to let you guys talk.

As honestly (if you know me well) I do what I want anyway. No strings attached.

Google is a multi billion dollar company by wrapping up two inefficiencies, search and advertising.

They shifted the market from an inefficient state to a much more efficient one.

Others would be Youtube, Ebay, iTunes.

First step is to identify ‘hidden inefficiencies’, in that they exist, yet a solution hasn’t been made yet.

Then to build a business around solving it.

We all hear about ideas that are so simple but the opportunity was missed as we aren’t involved in that niche industry.

So my idea is for a business to simply spend all its time aggregating these inefficiencies and present them to entrepreneurs to solve, thus taking the information market for these from inefficient to efficient.

Imagine though, being able to have access to 1000 industry wide problems in 1000 totally different industries.

I wonder how much overlay there are between them, so you could solve many issues at once.  

(and think about how much it would improve each of these industries)

Now that would be awesome! Don’t you think?

It’s true.

Really You can do what YOU want.

But chances are it’s you holding yourself back?

Your saying no it’s not Ben, it’s this and this.  A lot will say time.  A lot will say money.

Stop making excuses.  You can make time.  Start with 5 minutes a day.  Work up to 60 minutes.

Look at how you can reduce the time for other tasks, do you really need to do so and so.

Believe me you can find enough time to start doing what you really love.

Secondly money, it can be a barrier, but its not infallible.

For under $100 you can:

• Write a book via self publishing
• Drive your favourite super car
• Learn how to fly a plane 
• Start your own online tv show

The barriers to virtually everything are getting destroyed, the chances for excuses are getting less and less.

If there is something you really want to do it, bite the bullet and jump in the deep end, do not let yourself or others talk you out of it.

I think we are at a tipping point.

Where all these contextual factors, tip the scales, in favour of Micro Businesses.

Kind of like Small is the New Big.

So what am I talking about? I believe the future is in micro niches, dominated by micro businesses, run by 1 or maybe 2/3 people.

It fits in with a few other trends I have noticed:

• Desire of Gen Y to ‘do what you want‘
• Bootstrapping startups
• Lower technology costs, meaning you can start a business for nothing that can scale 
• Handys Doughnut Organisation discussions (shift to project work)
• Current financial crisis forcing all businesses to remain agile.
• Slashies trend, where people hold many roles teacher by day dj at night
• 12 Hour Startup (great way to stimulate innovation)

The idea of micro businesses;

• Small businesses designed to be agile
• Garner enough income to live off but big upside potential
• People will typically have at least 1, but be involved in 3-4.

A bookstore with a difference.

Mix traditional bookstore + Amazon = a bookstore for the 21st century.

Normal bookstore. 

Build an online store (or co-brand Amazon) using recommendations & reviews off Amazon for use IN the store.

Consumers are not stupid, they know they can get books online cheaper, we go to the bookstore for the experience and we want it now (not in 2-3 days).

If that’s what we want why not enrich that experience?

Provide recommendations and honest reviews of the books, provided by customers.

You can then model purchases, and when someone purchases one book give them an instant 20% off certificate to buy another one, or to give to their friends.

You can see that bookstores are far from reaching their potential.  

What else would you do?

(I’m thinking blogs, communities, facebook, online ordering)

Why do I have Monday Ideas Post?

Firstly it fulfills my criteria of being, short, snappy digestible bites that make you think.

It has a dual edge though.

As an entrepreneur (or just someone that questions everything?) I come up with ideas all the time, as I’m sure a lot of my readers do or at least someone you know.

Quite often we will hold these ideas close to heart, not express them, only to regret it.

Or we lose focus with every new idea.

This is the dual edge, Monday Ideas Post also let’s me have an outlet for ideas I come up with so I can remain focused but also as an opportunity for discussion.

It’s about making you think just as much as its about making me think.

So

What outlet do you have? How do you get ideas out there? What do you do to find out if your idea is rubbish so you can remain focused or move onto the next great thing? 

(Hint: like any muscle, the more you exercise this part of your brain, the better you will get at it)

I read a lot of books but almost never upload a review.

Why bother uploading a book review? It’s trapped in their system forever.

If your really passionate about a book forget writing a review.

What I suggest is you create a manifesto sharing the best parts of the book, your commentary, or some insights.

Give people a taste of what the book provides.

Sell them by helping them (giving them an inside look) and giving them a taste.

I thought, the best way to do this, is by showing you.

So I have prepared a manifesto on, Business Stripped Bare by Richard Branson.

You can download it here (if your having trouble downloading) or view below (best viewed fullscreen).

If you enjoy it, print it out, share with your friends and grab the book.

Makes sense huh? have a book of your own? Trying to convince a friend to read this great book you love?

Make a short manifesto, sell by showing, and help your idea spread.

Are you planning ahead? or trying to build / create something new?

Quite often during this process.  I will say stop.

Take a step back.

Take an overview.

What happens next? What are the next steps?

Are we doing the best thing to make that happen? yes / no?

How can we make sure Step 1, sets up Step 2 and 3 (all in light of the bigger picture).

For example, I am doing a joint venture to do a series of workshops.

We wanted our selling point, so I took a step back and said, What is the conversation that’s going on in our target’s mind?

What are they going to say to their boss that makes them say yes I will pay for that.

Stop. Take a step back.  Think two steps forward.

In this day and age you should be doing what you want.

“do what I want”

Life is so much more rewarding when you are doing what you love, what your passion is, whatever it is that makes your heart soar.

It’s much easier to motivate yourself, create a balanced life and hard work pays off in magnitudes.

Given recent economic changes, now is the best time to get into doing what you love, as weaker competitors will be knocked out of the market thus leaving room for you to dominate.

So if not now, when?

(if you don’t think this has anything to do with marketing, think again, the bigger picture is coming soon)

I have been thinking a lot about Twitter and the communications channel it provides.

A few points:

• Captive audience (9 – 5 office audience)
• Short, sharp, snappy messages
• Low interaction cost
• Anonymity & transparency (for those who operate under their name)
• High authenticity

So what services would then bode well under these conditions? Quite a lot, Competitions, Market Research, News…here’s one I have been chewing on:

Fitness Plan

Offer a free fitness plan, where you have a trainer, throughout the week putting out exercises you can do in your office (or from your desk).  

Imagine engaging several hundred local people to do the same exercise at the same time and report back (kind of flashmobbing but in the office).  

Keeping fit is a big problem for office workers.  You can then engage with the audience and help them keep fit.  

Monetisation models are numerous: upselling, selling gear, consultations, build a community, sponsorship. 

Take it further, exercises to reduce Occupational Overuse Syndrome (oos), dietary?

Oh and you can use it as a feedback tool to find out immediately the difficulties your market are having and help them. (Help me help you)

Giving groups of things a wrapping adds value.

Some example wrapping:

Collaborate and create an advertising company representing many blogs.  Individually they have no value.  As a collective they do.

Represent a collective of shops to negotiate better rates as a whole rather than individually

Bring a whole lot of friends together and work together.

Wrapping things up and giving them new meaning establishes value and shifts the perspective, the conversation that’s going on in your market’s mind.

What can you wrap up in your market?

Think Orange County Choppers

You get to see the whole process from:

• Product Research
• Idea creation
• Mock ups
• Final product

You get to capture the whole story of this bike. 

They don’t need to market the bikes, they have already done it through the tv show.

The only question for fans is how much?

How can you involve your customers in the process? 

And secondly

How can you involve just not 1 customer but potentially thousands of customers? through a blog or video or crowdsourcing or….

Flick Pro / Basecamp / Hosting / Skype credit.

They are all very fragmented.

Payment & bundling is still very standardised I think there is a huge gap for innovation.  

Especially when the internal processes at internet companies are much more flexible.

Why doesn’t someone bundle services into packs resulting in 5%, 10% or 20% savings per month.

Say:

• A freelancers pack: Solo Basecamp + Amazon s3 + Hosting acccount
• Small business pack: Basecamp + Hosting + Yammer

You get the idea.  There is a lot of overlay of some services.  Why not reward those customers.

Take it a step further.

Build a platform so I can make my own bundle.  

Save some dollars.  

Let me share it on my blog and with my friends / family / networks and others can sign up to it.  

Imagine if Michael Arrington had his own personal plan on his blog.  I’m sure hundred’s would buy it.

I am roughly half way through my September blog challenge.  To post each and every business day.

The reason being a lot of gem’s in my catalog were being pushed back each week.

Suprisingly (and yet not at the same time) I have the same problem.

I have made a commitment to engage and dedicate more time to providing content.

It has spiralled.  Now I have more gems and to be honest.  I think they may never see the light of day.

They are great but not great enough when it comes to the crunch.

That is the key.

When the cut comes to the chase, ideas can be great, but are they great enough?

You decide.

Rather than put ideas out there that are great, I’d rather keep to the ones that are great enough.