Steve Mills - Life, the Universe and the Digital World

SPOKE - A New Model For Online Business

Been a bit quiet on here of late, but I assure you it is not without good reason.

I have been working on a new model of business, one that I am sure you can benefit from. It is a model that some people have been following with great success for decades, but is only coming into mainstream view now as everyone becomes super connected, has instant access to unimaginable resources of knowledge and skill for creating websites and knowledge products online become easier to learn and more widespread.

Hey, and it even has an acronym. SPOKE

The SPOKE system is going to present people with a way of developing sustainable online businesses, that provide long
lasting income (some of it passive) and creating meaningful work. It is about utilizing the skills that you currently have to start to
break the cycle of trading dollars for hours, and which skills that you should be developing to be successful in an ever changing world.
It is about  making the most of this connected, fast paced world that we live in, and using it  to support rather then overwhelm you.

A NEW VIEWPOINT

Over the last few years I have studied and worked closely with many bloggers, entrepreneurs, business managers and internet marketers. I have also lately been doing a lot of work with social media marketing and consulting, as well as studying a lot of material about social networks, the future of the internet and business, entrepreneurship and work.

While doing a review of my business plan last month a number of these pieces started to click together, and a picture began to form out of the confusing puzzle that we call our modern working life. I saw how it was possible to have meaningful work, escape the 9-5 office based - always the same drudgery and also make a decent living. It is like freelancing, contracting or even “making money online” but more then that. I will develop and share the SPOKE system with you over the next few months

REDESIGN TIME

Also I think I need to modernise this blog (once again) and develop it into a world class resource of information. Design for this site is a continual process with me, but inspiration has come in short bursts. While design isn’t everything, it is important that you quickly convey what the site is about and your level of professionalism as soon as people hit the page.

Tags: Business, Connection, Entrepreneur, marketing, online, SPOKE

Retune your information stream

If you are a blogger or internet marketer, you will be only too aware of the overwhelming amount of information that is released every day. It is an endless torrent in which some days you find something of relevance, or a concept that you can apply easily to your business. Other days it feels like you are drowning in a sea of sales pages, marketing hype, time wasting posts and RSS.

 

This saturation of media can be thought of as a stream, a constant input of information that your mind has to process, fit into your current model of the world and make sense of.

To simplify things, we can be seen as a computer that takes inputs from our environment and creates outputs in our actions, words and communication with others. Just like you are what you eat, you are what you read, watch and hear to a large extent.

SHAPE THE INFORMATION STREAM 

In order to succeed in business online, you need to be able to make focussed, clear actions in a defined direction. If you set out to write one concise post every three days, or to write 1000 words on a new book or interactive course then you should be shaping your information stream to help you attain that goal. If not, the sea of competing ideas can easily distract you.

I am not saying that you shouldn’t read some things that are off the topic, but perhaps a good rule of thumb is 80% on topic (for the project that you are currently working on) and 20% other information.

TUNE IN AND TURN ON

An apt analogy would be that of listening to a radio (the old, analogue type, not internet radio) when the dial is a bit off the station. The signal is filled with noise, useless junk information that is stopping you from clearly hearing the message that is supposed to be coming through (or at least that nickelback song they keep playing).

If you tune the radio and get rid of the noise and static (useless information) then the signal (useable & actionable information) becomes clearer.

The best way I know to re-align my information stream with my goals is to go through my automatic information collections (rss feeds, email lists, bookmarks, blogrolls) and optimize them for the market or niche that I am working in.

Sort your RSS so that you are constantly seeing information from the top experts, and not being inundated with useless information or empty hype.

I am currently going through this exercise myself, trimming down my RSS subscriptions to a manageable level, only keeping the ones that have consistently provided me with valuable or interesting content.

Removing those that have failed to deliver gives you space to add new interesting feeds when you see them and not have them get lost in the noise. I have been unsubscribing from mailing lists that never have anything of interest, and only keeping the ones that fill my inbox with useable, relevant information.

Is your business sustainable?

I have been doing a lot of work over the past few months on the business GreenMortgages.com.au. It’s a great business, as it gives environmental organisations a rebate when you get a loan from them. They also help people refinance so that they can green their home with solar power and water saving features. Good worthwhile stuff.

But all of this immersion in the ideas sustainability has got me thinking, where else can the idea of sustainability be applied? Sustainability is a word that doesn’t only apply to the environment, it can also apply to of your family, your working habits, your business. We live in an extremely fast paced and connected society now, and with that increased pace comes the ability to work as long and as hard as we want to. It also allows others to connect with us all of the time, and to place demands on our time and energy when they choose.

I have spoken to a few friends recently who have just moved on from working for companies that demand 80 hours + a week from employees and still ask for more. These are talented guys, creative and hard workers as well. If you look at this situation objectively, there are benefits to the business (increased production, meeting of deadlines) in doing this. But if they choose this course of action there are also consequences. The business starts to burn out their most valuable resource(you would think), their employees. They will take more sick days, they will start doing less then their best. They will start leaving the company.
The work situation is only sustainable if there is a steady stream of young people who are willing to take on those conditions and expectations, until they too are burnt out.

There another way of thinking about sustainability in business as well.

How depended are your revenue streams on the actions of others?
I am not talking about customers, as they are always what a business is ultimately dependent on, I am talking more about channels that customers can access your products and services.

For example, some online business’s rely entirely on Google adsense for revenue. Even if this does work for a time, the problem is that your business becomes reliant on the policies and politics of Google, and their continued support of the program. If Google changes their mind, or decides that they will half the advertising fees that get paid via adsense, then there is not a lot you can do about it. Unless you have an exit strategy or diversified income streams, this single point of failure could spell the end of your viable business in an instant.

This has already happened with EBay sellers in the past year. Businesses sprang up that were 100% reliant on having cheap listings in eBay stores. EBay was allowing anybody to set up an ecommerce presence , and have items on permanent sale for 10 cents listing fee. Seemed to good to be true for those that wanted a cheap, networked way of selling goods. And it was….

As soon as EBay realised that sellers were making a mint while they were making 10 cents an item, the quickly upped the prices. The result, a mass exodus and close down of eBay stores, with sellers moving to other online auction and ecommerce solutions, or consolidating their stores to a smaller size.

You won’t here about this in any of EBay’s online marketing, but if you scroll back through the message boards on MyEbay about 18 months ago, you will see the storm that erupted.

The businesses that thrived during this time were those that had used Ebay to build their own, independent online presence. They had directed the ebay traffic through to their own domains, collected their customer data on an external database to compile mailing lists, and set up their own online stores on their own sites.

I’d love to hear from my readers what people are doing out there to make their businesses more sustainable….

Quick Update From Holidays

Hi All,

Thanks heaps to all of the recent commenters, I really enjoy the thoughtful additions that you have all made to the discussions here.

I am currently enjoying some  R&R, but will be back with my usual frequent posting schedule in a week or so. Please subscribe if you are interested in what I have talked about over the last few weeks, there will be  plenty more articles and discussion like that comming up.

Now you have to excuse me, its time to go for a surf, then spend the afternoon lazing in my hammock.

Steve

5 ways to beat Habit Creep

Hi all, I am busy getting ready to go on holiday for a week and a half down at the beach with my family, so posting may be less frequent for the next 10 days or so as I get a bit of much needed R&R.

I have been thinking over the last few days how easy it is to fall back into bad habits after you make a change, even if it is a change that you really want to make. For instance, at the start of last year I made the commitment to myself to check email only once per day, in order to limit lost time from constantly checking the inbox, and the distraction of answering mail that really, when you think about it could have waited until the evening.

Email, while a fantastic tool, is a real flow killer. What I mean by that is the constant interruptions, the sense of “this is urgent, I must answer now” that most messages have breaks your attention away from the things that you really should be getting done. I used to find myself checking it perhaps 10 times a day, which is not as bad as some people that I know, but when I look at how I want to be living my life, feeling like “I have to check email” is one of the things that I don’t want to have constantly buzzing in the back of my head.

So the year started of well, I would check my email at 9am, and then just leave it for the rest of the day. I am not going to lie to you, at the start it was a painful experience. I thought I was missing out, I thought that life was going to pass me by. The big surprise is that it didn’t. The worlds turned without me pushing send receive every 10 minutes, and I found that I had at least an hour of productive time more during the day. The one thing that I did learn is that even if you make a minor discretion, it’s not worth throwing in the whole process and going back to your old ways.

Habit Creep, where the old habit slowly starts to worm its way back into your life is always going to happen. It can happen easily. First it’s a check in the morning, then one at lunch, and one at night. And that’s fine. But then its also one at morning tea, then at 11am and so on, until before you know you are back hitting send receiver like a rabid monkey. The important thing is that when you become conscious that you have fallen back into an old pattern to not mentally punish yourself or give up. Just start again and continue.

So If I beat the email demon you ask, then why has this been on you mind for the last few days?

Glad you asked, this has been on my mind because I have become aware of a new, more insidious terror that has crept into suck time from my day. The name of this demon is RSS.
I have got into the habit of checking and rechecking RSS feeds, even when I know that they probably haven’t been updated, even when it is distracting me from more important tasks. It has been my mission over the past few weeks to work on some simple tools to beat “Habit Creep”; the following is what has worked for me.

Top 5 ways to beat “Habit Creep”

1. Write down the permanent changes that you want to make and look at the list once per week. I know that this may sound really pedantic or a bit too much trouble for some, but it really does work. An ingrained habit is your automatic response to a situation, and it will take a lot of work to change it.

2. Only make a change if it is reasonable and increases productivity, not to make a point. If checking email 10 times a day is a real necessity then continue on. Only make a change if it will make a real improvement.

3. Cold Turkey doesn’t work for everyone. A conscious decision to slow down or reduce the amount of a habit can work, if you give yourself a daily reminder. Any change is a step in the right direction, and the only person that you need to prove anything to is yourself.

4. Don’t overly chastise yourself for indiscretion. As I said above, you haven’t failed if you make a slip up and go back to old ways. Just take it as a learning experience on the path to the lifestyle that you want and continue from where you left off.

5. Remind yourself of the positives, not the negatives. On your list of permanent changes, write next to each one what the benefit is. The benefit of not continually checking RSS would be at least an hour of extra time a day, time that could be used to get more done, or to knock off from work early and spend time doing what you love