Let's Help Him Come Up With A Working Solution!

Pulling Together On An Idea

Let's test our leadership skills.  One of the best ways to see how well we lead others is to respectfully jump into a situation and offer some valuable advice that will help a small business owner develop a pattern of solutions that will help his business model make a significant, relevant and worthwhile change.  Can we chime in and do this for him, respectfully?

Let's give it a whirl?

Here's the deal.  I have a male business associate that I met nearly 15 years ago.  He has dabbled with several small business attempts.  He loves technology and has a gift in that field of expertise.  He has an above average understanding of the workings of the industry.  He is self-taught in the work he performs.  He has always wanted to manage his own business model.  He is what I would call a 79%'er.  That means he truly gets about 79% of what needs to be done to successfully operate a growing successful business model.

There are three major components that make up the core of duties that a small business must learn to play very well.  The first component is accounting, the numbers.  The second component is the love, knowledge and marketable understanding of the product.  The third and last component is the successful marketing of the whole business effort.  The successful management of these three components make up the critical duties that help a business model win consistently.

With this in mind, let's examine the challenge this small business owner is facing.  Keep in mind, he is a regular reader of this blog.  Let's remain respectful, please.  There are 21,000 of you blog readers out there right now.  I think it is about time we solicit some of your best practices advice on some of these challenging issues small business is facing.  This is a guy I know can win in business.  He has some very acute skills that are good for making it happen.  The other day I was coming out of my doctors office after a diabetes review and check up on my progress.  He and I crossed paths at that time and chatted in the parking lot about a few things.  Mostly we spent time catching up with each others lives.  I have not had a long conversation with him for several months.  It was good to get caught up.

During that conversation he posed a serious question to me.  He wanted to know if I would be interested in helping him build a new business model he was currently setting up.  He was nine/tenths done with the model set up.  He felt it was time to go out and sell its services to the general public.  He wanted to know what would be the best way to finish the model design and get the word out about the services it will provide.

Isn't this exactly the same challenge we all have on building up our business models?  How do we finalize the package we operate and how do we get the word out about how good it is for the end user to enjoy?  Is that not what all small business owners are trying to do?  I think that is the last and steepest hurdle all of us face.  How do we get this thing going in the best growing direction?  How do we attract consumers to pay what we need them to pay?  How do we get the money thing to work?  How do we get enough consumer activity to help us pay our effort bills and leave us with a little left over money that we can call profits?  Is that not what small business owners do?

I think that is the deal.  That is how all small business challenges work.  We may color the process differently, we may arrange our models to tilt one way or the other, but in the end, this is exactly what we must learn how to do consistently...profit.

Here was what he described he was trying to do in his new business model.  It also led him to ask for my advice on how to do the next steps.

Helping Hands

He has purchased hundreds of URL's in small marketing regions.  He owns and has the ability to use those technology locations to gather specific data base information from each of those physical regions.  His desire is to produce a collecting place at each of those technology locations that specifically covers the physical region where it is located.  He wants to use those technology URL's to gather data about what kinds of services and products are willing to be shared at nominal or no cost to those who need to use these items but cannot monetarily afford to manage that use right now.  In other words, taking those with plenty to offer their services and goods to those who have little.  He wants to build regional business models that have a uniform place to collect location specific data to assist those who prefer to offer their surplus energy and goods to those who need this kind of help as a bridge to complete the opportunity of sharing and to make this effort become a reality.

His idea is to develop a recognizable source that is region specific where people in need can find items and assistance they cannot afford to purchase right now that will be supplied by those who have a surplus and are willing to share.  Kind of a mix of an online Goodwill and the blend of an EBay for less.  A robin-hood affair, without the stealing from the rich.

He is all set to go, has connected with some church environments to make this physically possible and is ready to get the word out about building this model.  His question to me was, would you help me sell it to the general public?  He asked me, how would get the word out?

Here was my first answer, which was truly a question.  What is your revenue source?  How do you plan to make money doing this?  Where's the money happen?  None of this stuff will happen for free.  Get serious.

His immediate reply, what do you suggest?

After a bit of ego banter between us, we started to work on solution desires.  I recommended that he go study how co-operatives work.  I think he could develop a 'command central' co-operative that works to set-up many regional URL's for this to take place in multiple locations.  Develop a written plan to guide how these units work.  Design the system of guidance so it can become easily duplicated.  Have each specific URL funnel a tiny portion of its monetary movements through the 'central bank' as a membership fee.  Then do the appropriate accounting to properly manage those funds in the 'central bank' to help market and grow the program.  Help each URL develop a plan to arrange for its own separate funding.  Money will be necessary.  It will help to grease all of the working parts and functions.  It is part of the necessary requirements that will help to make the model sustain itself long term.

He wanted to get together to talk about this idea in more depth.  As we parted to go our ways, I turned to suggest that he could even arrange for the labor to manage the goods movements in the specific locations much the same way, through a co-operative membership fee waived by hourly contributions.  Set up some legal way to process in-kind labor fees.  Something like eight hours of work is equivalent to one quarter of membership fees.

We went our ways.

He called my cell phone later that day.  He was more motivated than before.  He was excited to learn that there may be some creative ways to make this next step happen.  He wanted to get together, immediately.  My plate is currently full.  I have too many things going on right now to take on another one and do any of them justice.  I told him to call me when I return from a short vacation with my kids and we will set up a time to get together and find what he should be doing next.  I then suggested to him that he should go read about co-operatives and how they might be used to help him build this model.  That is when I decided to turn the challenge over to all of you.

I know we have some talented people out there who have faced this kind of arrangement in their own business walk and some of them have discovered some nice solutions.  I open this post up to those of you who have some workable ideas.  Chime in and share with him what you have experienced.  He reads this blog regularly.  He will see what you say.  He will see how you share.  He will recognize your leadership.  It will provide all of us a good learning experience.

I think his idea has merit.  I know there are a lot of methods already in place to supply this kind of activity to the market place.  However, I do not see a specific model that is region sensitive, service and product linked and designed to handle the economical stress that many families are facing today.  I like his market approach.  It would be a good thing to make something like this happen well.  I like it.

Let's see what we can do.

It is open for challenge of thought.

Until next time...