UPDATE: Getting Real --Thinking BIG, Doing BIG and Packaging BIG: Strategies For Entrepreneurs and Emerging Enterprises RIGHT NOW.
05.02.2010 - Douglas Castle
http://aboutdouglascastle.blogspot.com/
05.02.2010 - Douglas Castle
http://aboutdouglascastle.blogspot.com/
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STRATEGY: Thinking BIG, Doing BIG and Packaging BIG: Strategies For Emerging Enterpises RIGHT NOW - Douglas Castle
Note: This briefing was inspired by a series of revelatory discussions which I have recently had with Adam J. Kovitz. Our mutual conclusion: The traditional small business is not where the growth and investment opportunities are going to be. Small business will be outpaced and overrun by Emerging Enterprises.
Dear Members, Readers, Colleagues and Friends:
Welcome to the spellbinding new world of extremes.
Super rich and dirt poor. Above the law, and under its whip. Too big to fail, and too small to survive. Big government and big business doing a great deal of fraternizing -- rather like a mating dance. Tremendous costs (taxes, compliance, systems, employees compensation, heath insurance, liability insurance, bank fees, tight credit, lack of personal services, lack of support...) associated with building a business.
A world of five roads, where you may:
1. Work for the government, or for a government contractor;
2. Work at the uppermost level of a well-entrenched, handful of white-shoe firms that are (hopefully) too big to fail, and interminably eligible for government bail;
3. Live on the dole, on the run, or in proud poverty;
4. Be a trust-fund baby -- go to school, socialize, and deal in abstractions and narcissistic diversions, or;
5. Be an entrepreneur, and the steward of an emerging enterprise.
Small businesses used to provide most of the employment, innovation and investment opportunities in the industrialized nations. But small businesses, like corporate middle management and the economic middle class are largely becoming extinct, with only a few necessary exceptions. Starting a new business is a daunting task, and the odds are against you. Customer loyalty is more difficult than ever to win, and the prevalence of e-commerce and social media have stolen much of the edge that you may once have had because of a great location, a novel product, or a warm, personal relationship with your customers and clients.
There is more mouse-clicking than hand-shaking. Recently Eli Regalado, a colleague and a champion of the notion of collaboration, metioned offhandedly to me, "I'm not worried. You're only one mouse click away." Sometime ago, I was a phone call away, or a visit away.
An entrepreneur invariably feels lonely in the crowd. A seedling business cannot grow if it cannot be watered and properly nurtured. And there is so much sensorial overload through all of the media channels that it has become increasingly difficult to be heard.
My advice --- don't start a business from scratch, with limited resources, and unlimited effort (as I write this, I am actually taking my blood pressure cuff off).
The new entrepreneur must think in a different way and build in a different way. And he or she cannot be a "small biz." I am not talking about a specialized business with a well-defined vertical customer market, or a specialty geographical locus...I am talking about a small business in the traditional, even stereotypical sense.
We must build faster, bigger, more efficiently and more brilliantly than ever before. We do not have the luxury of time, working capital or other advantages -- and with less time and less money, we have to make up the 'shortfall' by being accurate and effective strategists and a collaborators. To make things even tougher, too many service providers are offering all kinds of useful tools (products and services) for free. If we want to be paid for any product or service, we must show exceptional value. We must not only serve a market, but we must differentiate our braned by serving the market in a distinctly different way.
We cannot undertake the construction of an emerging enterprise alone. The rules have changed, and we must understand them and work with them if you aspire to achieve great things.
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Here are two very basic tips with respect to starting and growing an emerging enterprise, both of which I have derived through my analysis of various social and business trends in The Global Futurist:
1) Think big. Don't look at how you'll make a sale, or train an employee, or roll out a new product, or decorate your office, or "spread the word" -- Look at a type of service or product that you wish to provide and identify your customer market and plan to pursue that market on a grand scale. Your plan is to acquire the greatest percentage share of that market and to do so at a profit. Period.
2) Don't reinvent. Cooperate and Collaborate. Find businesses which each contain modules of what you'll need, and partner them together by co-venture or acquisition. For example, if I wish to reach a particular market sector, and I know of a company that sells a product or service which doesn't compete with mine but has an established opt-in subscriber/customer base of 500,000 people, I have identified a prospective ally -- we can help each other. Building an emerging enterprise and a client base "from scratch" is like building with sand and Elmer's glue, while building an emergin enterprise by collaboration and consolidation is the metaphorical equivalent of putting up a pre-fabricated home.
- Douglas Castle
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With the Promise of Even Greater Things to Come,
Adam J. Kovitz and Douglas Castle
The National Networker Companies™
“Empowering Emerging Enterprises”
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