March 2012

 
 

Dear Member,

You've probably heard of Pinterest, which hit the news last month for being the fastest site to ever reach 10m users, and continues to grow at over 1m new users per month.

Why all the fuss about Pinterest, and what does it mean for your business?

I was asked last year on the Fast Forward Tour where I thought the Internet would move to in the near term. I said it wouldn’t be long before social media moved from conversation and connection to reorganising and recommending. This is because all industries go through cycles, and always in the same order. Knowing this allows you to always be where the waves are rising.

SEASON ONE: SPRING

The first season in every cycle is the ‘Spring’ phase. On the Wealth Dynamics Square, it is always the Creators and Stars who profit during this phase. When the PC industry began in the 1980s, it was the early creators like Apple and Microsoft that took the lead. At the beginning of the Internet, in the 1990s, it was creators like Mark Andreeson who launched Mosaic, one of the first web browsers, that hit the news. At the beginning of Web 2.0, after 2000, it was the platforms with a purpose, like eBay for auctions or MySpace for music that were the first to take off.

SEASON TWO: SUMMER

The second season in every cycle is the ‘Summer’ phase. This is always where the mass market follow the early adopters and communities built around a common platform. In the 1980s, PC manufacturers like Compaq and Dell grew rapidly and Apple fell by the way side as scale beat innovation. This is the season to ‘magnify’, on the right side of the Wealth Dynamics Square.

In the 1990s, the early start-ups on the Internet got swallowed up by the big networks like Compuserve and AOL. These were ‘walled gardens’ that didn’t share their data with the rest of the Internet. In Web 2.0, Facebook and Linkedin are the equivalent of Compuserve and AOL.

SEASON THREE: AUTUMN

The third season in every cycle is the ‘Autumn’ phase. This is always where there is a critical mass in the market who no longer want to be restricted by the walls, and begin to self-organise their own communities out of the chaos of conversation. In this third stage of the PC industry, it was the regional computer superstores and computer magazines that saw the biggest growth. In the early Internet it was when companies like Webvan, boo.com and pets.com, gave the market the way to find the products they wanted organised by their interests.

What about the ‘autumn’ season of Web 2.0? This ‘reorganise and recommend’ phase has hit the headlines last month. Pinterest has been billed as the fastest site to reach 10 million users. It gives users the chance to pin their favourite images and products onto pinboards. It is part of the shift from ‘conversation’ to ‘curation’.

At this early stage, Pinterest already drives more referral traffic to company websites than Google+, LinkedIn and Youtube combined. Pinterest copy-cat sites have already launched that allow users to not just look at products based on what their friends recommend, but to buy them then and there.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN TO YOU?

The days of trying to drive email lists to a landing page to buy something (Spring season) has passed its glory days. The days of trying to attract a social media following (Summer season) is already a sink hole of time (Less than 4% of followers to any Face book fan page even see a posting from that fan page on their wall. The percent of your followers who actually see your tweets on Twitter is even lower). In the next six months, those who have value worth collecting, sharing (and pinning) will grow their attraction far faster.

Within the year, we will all have the ability to easily create our own store front, selling the products we like and recommend to friends and followers. We’ll be able to share our virtual library of books, music selection, gallery of art, favourite products, travel recommendations. We will be able to buy what we like from the collections of those we follow, and we will see more products selling directly via referrals and recommendations.

How you set up yourself to be found in your niche will determine the success you achieve in this next phase.
What comes next? It won’t have escaped your notice that most of the companies I have mentioned above have already disappeared or had to dramatically reinvent themselves. This will be no different for Facebook and LinkedIn, and even the new kids on the block.

WHAT ABOUT SEASON FOUR: WINTER?

The fourth phase, the ‘Winter’ season, is when we move to consolidation. This is the storm, form, norm, perform cycle - create, connect, curate, collate. The PC industry shifted from product to service, when service providers like Salesforce and Google begin taking over from the software and hardware providers, disrupting both. In the early Internet, it was when Paypal, Amazon and Apple made it easy for transactions and micro-payments, changing the pricing of everything.

The fourth phase in Web 2.0 will be when each of us can be our own bank, accepting micro-payments and transacting in multiple currencies (including the ones we create ourselves) anytime, anywhere. We will find ourselves with multiple earning (and spending) opportunities every day.

In the meantime, Internet TV is about to begin in Spring. The Mobile Internet is already in Spring, moving to Summer. Your country is in a season, as is your industry. All these waves simultaneously add up to a perfect storm.

The best action is not to try and make a wave, or to get on one when it's too late. The best action is to surf each waves as it arrives.

Keep Making Magic,

Roger James Hamilton

<< This article is from my latest book, Fast Forward your Business. Now on Kindle - http://amzn.to/FFyB-Kindle >>

Connect with me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/rogerhamilton
Connect with me on Facebook: http://on.fb.me/FBRoger

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Watch: ChangeMakers Forum
Fast Forward your Business, Perth, Australia 2012

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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Fast Forward your Business - Global Tour | Los Angeles 16th June 2012 | Miami 19th June 2012 | London 6th Sept 2012 | Manchester 10th Sept 2012 | Johannesburg 15th Sept 2012 | Cape Town 18th Sept 2012 | Global (Livecast) 4th Dec 2012

Thank you everyone who joined me on my Australia Tour. The tour was a sell-out, and from the forward bookings from the webinar, our global tour looks like its going to be even bigger. This is where I share how to profit in 2012 from the changes around us.

Imagine... you know exactly what the market leaders are up to right now, and what they are planning for 2012 and beyond. You know where and when the next big wave will hit your industry and how to be a part of creating it. Imagine you know what the people behind the scenes (who’s names you don’t know) know and where they’re investing and heading. If that feels like a position you’d like to be in, then I want you to spend a day with you and given that you are a Wealth Dynamics subscriber, you're invited early to come at the super early bird price of just $39.

Here's what you're going to learn at this, follow up from last year, and again totally revealing and fresh event:

  • The latest Top 10 trends that will make or break your business in the next 5 years and how you can tweak what you learned last year or implement from the ground up if this is your first time
  • How to future proof your business for future success and what new driving factors to be conscious of in 2012
  • Immediate steps to profit now from the changes taking place.
  • And as per usual, much much more mind bending insights and distinctions with the Wealth Dynamics Community all the way through the day....

You'll be meeting with some really influential people from all areas of industry in your area who are on similar path to you, people who are focused on making one heck of a difference in their business, the people they work with and the community around them.

Make sure you book yourself in now and secure your place
>> http://on.fb.me/ffybfacebook

Click on the link to see what people have to say about FFyB http://bit.ly/ffybtestimonial


 

Talent Dynamics | Free E guide

Talent Dynamics, our sister company, dedicated to getting large teams and corporates into Flow have revamped their popular Free E guide this month, which we thought you might like to know about.

Getting teams into Flow, increases productivity, business results, the ‘fun factor’ and also lets people feel much more connected to the organisation. Absence decreases. We know of teams in Flow that don’t want to go home at the end of the day!

If you’re a trainer, HR Professional or a business team builder, wanting to know more about what Flow is and how to powerfully create it for business success, then download the Talent Dynamics Free E guide today and we will also send you some other really cool free Flow inspiring goodies as a bonus!

“Our Australian RTO (registered training organisation) has doubled its revenue in the last 6 months. We are on target to quadruple performance in the next 6 months and I’m in the process of recruiting new team members to deal with all the new contracts. My team are having more fun and feeling much more connected to the organisation than ever before. One client alone is set to generate over $1M of additional revenue this year from a one day programme I ran with them”

Click here today to download the Free E guide

For more information on Talent Dynamics and becoming an accredited partner, contact michelle@talent-dynamics.com


 

Fast Forward your Business | eBook

If you have not yet read my new book, Fast Forward your Business, you can learn all about it here http://amzn.to/FFyB-Kindle.

If you have already read it, I would really appreciate a testimonial and your comments on the book on the Amazon page here http://amzn.to/ffybreview


Read: Fast Forward your Business

 

Top 10 Trends in Business - Friction is Fiction, Wave 2

WDeo is our video section, and here is our recommended video to watch this month:

What is this wave?

‘Friction’ is the cost of doing business that slows things down and does not add to the experience of your product. Things like delivery and storage are examples of friction. Making payments are examples of friction. This wave is about how all the most successful companies are using technology to cut out friction altogether, with products becoming cheaper and more instantly available. As friction becomes fiction, Amazon has taken Borders out of business and Apple is taking music companies out of business.

Why is this important to you?

Trainers and speakers are finding less people showing up as those same people can now get access to the same learning online – faster and cheaper. Retailers are attracting less visitors, banks are attracting less customers and service companies are attracting less requests of quotations, as markets flow to alternatives they can access with less friction.

Physical money is also friction. The reason that we are seeing so many Amazon, Apple and eBay millionaires is that all their customers don’t have to fill in their credit card details to buy from them. They just click the button, as Amazon, Apple and eBay already have their credit card details. This means having your store on a frictionless platform will multiply up your sales in ways it can’t if you just have a physical store or a web store where people have to enter payment details.

This means the success of your business now has less to do with how great your product is, and more to do with how easy you make it for customers to sample it, how you design your price points, and how easy it is for people to access what you have to offer.

How fast is this wave coming?

In the short time since this video, Amazon Kindle has launched, Youtube and Amazon have entirely redesigned their home pages for Internet access by mobile and TV, Facebook’s IPO filing sees transactions as a big part of their future revenue, and rumour has it the iPhone 5 out in 2012 will be NFC enabled – (This means it can replace your credit cards and cash as your virtual wallet).

Here is an article that came out today, about how Barclay’s Bank has now made it possible for you to beam money to your friends with your smartphone: bit.ly/wZOttV

By the end of this year, we will be seeing most of us buying without needing to enter our credit card details. In the same way that right now we are buying songs, ebooks and apps for 99c, we will be watching videos, reading articles and buying virtual products from as low as 1c a time within 12 months. We will all find it as easy to create an online mobile store for our customers as setting up a facebook account.

What can you do about it?

There are simple steps you can take to realign your business for this new reality. In the same way that a ship is designed to be frictionless and a house is not, there are ways to streamline your business through your products and promotions. This includes creating a free sample of your offering, setting up a presence on Apple iTunes and Amazon, designing products that your clients can’t help sharing, and a series of simple actions that we will cover in more detail at the Fast Forward event.

Click to Watch >> http://bit.ly/ffybvid2


Watch: Friction is Fiction
Top 10 Trends in Business

 

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