HBEA – Hot Potato – Delivered to the Hilo Bay Executives Association on Wednesday, May 20th 2009
For many, individual tips to help you with your business are helpful. But how many of you sit around researching business tips regularly? I bet many more of you tend to go with what you know and what has worked in the past. I’m not saying tips aren’t helpful. In fact, my hot potato today is partially about multiplying the effect.
For example, delivering business tips to 50 of us at a time. Would that be better than 35? Or what if we could reach a hundred? Gee, what if we could get our hot potatoes out to entire groups of businesses?
Although we’re a powerful group, reaching our largest trade associations or entire workforces around the island could surely create more change than our small group.
Of course we know this to be quite easy. Many of us are already doing this with our own marketing messages. You just need their email addresses, right? The primary vehicle for reaching large audiences from email blasts and websites have become commonplace. Yes email, the killer app of the nineties is still the killer app for most.
But my business tip for today isn’t about using email. Those days are quickly waning. What I’m talking about is an understanding in the broadest terms of the impact the Internet has had on your business. Consider the role the Internet has played in your business and quality of life.
Now think for a moment where your business would be without the Internet? Without email, without PDFs, without online shopping, without online resumes, forms, banking or websites. Remember the thrill of sending a business proposal using an envelop and a stamp? Remember waiting 2 weeks for a reply. If it was positive and they wanted to learn more you could call them and follow up with a form to fill out and return with their partner or customer information? Does anyone even remember how long these conversations used to take? Does anyone remember when it was most efficient to just fly to meet the person and sign the contract. Of course we do. But the successes of the Internet are closely woven into the fabric of our existence. Do you remember you pants have pockets?
As our own Jeff Gray kindly points out, The Internet now carries more than traffic on your website. The Internet carries your data and your voice communications. Not just time saving but life saving information, every second somewhere. So when Jeff asks folks to join in the Hawaii Island Broadband Revolution, a lot is at stake.
Think of the impact Internet speeds could have on telecommuting from the island. Imagine working anywhere from anywhere. Imagine the impact on families.
Imagine stay at home Moms or Dads working from home instead of paying $300 a month for gas. Imagine these same parents taking care of their keiki and their kupuna instead of hiring professionals to care for their families at $300-$600 per month. Imagine these same parents saving another hundred dollars a month at the grocery just by growing some of their own food. One of my favorites is to think of a 3 day work week. Okay, you get the idea.
Now then, a couple statements to help you glean a tip or two in your business.
Statement #1 – Many consider the Internet to be in it’s infancy but growing quickly. It took television 12 years to get 50 million users. It took Facebook 2 years. The Internet is accelerating. It’s gaining momentum and users every day. It’s still sorting out job descriptions like webmaster, search engine marketer and web designer. It’s still reinventing the way we communicate across cultures across generations and around the world and it’s just a baby. It could even be considered a driving force behind the feelings of millions that we’re heading towards a global consciousness.
After listening to Sir Tim Berners-Lee make his second request in twenty years (his first request was that we all start linking documents on the web), my first bold statement is this.
Of 100% potential, the Internet has only reached 5%. Meaning, I believe the Internet will become at least 90% more effective at solving our world’s problems within twenty years.
Statement #2 – To create a global model for sustainability most experts currently believe our key indicators include food, water, shelter, healthcare and energy availability.
While these may be the current measurements of sustainability, food, water, shelter, heathcare and energy availability will all quickly become mere indications of our ability to effectively harness the Internet.
At Green Collar Technologies we’ve started to help create a global model for sustainability which not only takes into consideration our offline sustainability practices but also our online sustainability. We’re engaging all generations but focusing on the youth to insure this happens at all levels well ahead of the Hawaii 2050 plan.
In these two statements I hope you’ll find a gem of insight you can use in your business. Remember what has worked best for you over the last ten years. Real-time conversations with your customers are happening everywhere from anywhere at once, right now. Carefully consider getting into that conversation and learning how this will impact your business and your community in the next ten years.
I’ll leave you with 2 bold statements from Sir Charles Darwin.
You may have heard this one,
“In the long history of humankind (and animal kind, too) those who learned to collaborate and improvise most effectively have prevailed. ”
And you’ve probably heard this one,
“It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change. “
