The #1 Business Opportunity for you in 2010 is the business of YOU.  As we enter this new decade, the only way YOU will be able to achieve a sustainable level of success is to embrace the convergence of technology, social media and your domain expertise.  So whether you want to pursue opportunity #3 or opportunity #8, you must understand how to operate your business in the new world.  How do the external factors that are influencing global business change impact how YOU will drive success in the 21st century differently than previous generations achieved success three decades earlier? 

As my friend and colleague, George Benckenstein points out in his post, Welcome to Our Flat World, we now live in a world without barriers.  George says “So why do we call it a “Flat World?”  The world is being referred as a flat world, thanks to Tom Friedman’s  book The World Is Flat. The world is now so well connected with the ubiquity of technology in all areas which gives you, me, all of us, the power to collaborate, coordinate, produce and distribute seamlessly across borders, and cultural and language divides. In a flat world, everything of value is now connected — no more barriers.”  You see my friends, if you want your business to be successful, YOU must learn how to compete in this new world.  With opportunity #1, I try to focus on the critical elements that will help you prepare for success, no matter what opportunity YOU choose to grab! 

Discover Your Strengths

First and foremost, if you are going to pursue any business opportunity it is imperative that you either align your skill-set with the critical path elements of the opportunity or acquire the skill-set that aligns (whether it’s you or someone you hire).  For example, you can’t start an accounting practice without understanding accounting.  By understanding what your strengths are, you’ll be in a better position to understand where your domain expertise can be best applied. 

Should you only focus on your strengths, what about your weaknesses?  We all need to understand what we are good at and where we need help.  I am a strong believer that greater success can be achieved by fine tuning your strengths and leveraging a team to cover your weaknesses, as opposed to spending a significant amount time plugging the holes that are our weaknesses.  If we tried to plug the holes, we’d never get anything done.  Don’t get me wrong, some weaknesses prohibit progress on anything and in some cases, too much of any strength is not a good thing, so there are some weaknesses that must be addressed, but in the grand scheme of spending time on developing strengths or plugging holes, I’d recommend discovering your strengths and mastering them!

So, how do YOU discover your strengths?  The opportunities are unlimited!  Here are my favorite discovery paths:

1. Now, Discover Your Strengths  :  This is a book by Marcus Buckingham that further influenced the aforementioned thoughts I shared about strengths and weaknesses.  It fully describes 34 positive personality themes the two have formulated (such as Achiever, Developer, Learner, and Maximizer) and explains how to build a “strengths-based organization” by capitalizing on the fact that such traits are already present among those within it.

2. Personality Test

   • Birkman Method :  The Birkman Method® is not simply a personality assessment. Instead, it is a powerful tool to gain critical answers to how we lead, learn, think, decide and relate to othersThe Birkman® creates a four-dimensional portrait of individuals and team members within organizations by outlining their interests and goals, operating styles, motivational needs and behavior under stress, all of which are factors that impact individual, team and organization-wide productivity.

   • Myers-Brigg:  The Myers-Brigg Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is a psychometric questionnaire designed to measure psychological preferences in how people perceive the world and make decisions

   • Emotional Intelligence Test :  Emotional Intelligence (EI) describes the ability, capacity, skill or, in the case of the trait EI model, a self-perceived ability, to identify, assess, and manage the emotions of one’s self, of others, and of groups.  Different models have been proposed for the definition of EI and disagreement exists as to how the term should be used. Despite these disagreements, which are often highly technical, the ability EI and trait EI models (but not the mixed models) enjoy support in the literature and have successful applications in different domains.

3. Informal Survey of Peers: Find 10 people that you trust who know you well enough to answer the question and ask them to identify 2-3 strengths that are your best attributes and 2-3 things you can improve to be more successful.  Don’t forget to include yourself, you know what comes easy to you and is difficult for others.  And you also know the things you don’t do well or procrastinate to do – areas you can improve.

After you’ve gone through one of the methods to discover your strengths, think about the things you like that leverage this strength or think about the things you’d do for free if you were financially independent.  For example, if your strengths are that you are good at helping others see the big picture or if you’ve been told that you are inspirational and you like to talk – maybe you should consider teaching or writing a book and getting on the speaking circuit.  The point is that you have to find, create or develop the natural alignment between your opportunities and your strengths.  Once you get a handle on this component of the convergence you need to understand how technology is influencing the space you want to conquer.

Technology is the Competition

I once told a very successful sales consultant of an enterprise-sized business services company, “Your biggest competition in the next 3 – 5 years will be technology”.  Given my age, his lack of knowledge about me and his level of success, he totally dismissed the perspective.  Sure enough, 6 years later, internal (back-office) and external (customer facing) technology have become the dominant focus of the company’s growth path.  Unfortunately, the work to turn their ship around didn’t start 6 years ago.  The point isn’t that I was right, the real issue is that you MUST assess and anticipate the trends of the external environment and build them into your long-range plan.  If you just focus on profiting this year, you’ll find yourself losing market share or for a startup, never gaining traction.

So, I say to you today – based on the trends occurring in every industry across the globe, if you don’t assess and anticipate how technology is changing or shaping the industry you choose to operate within, your competitor will.  And when that happens, you won’t be competing against the company, you’ll be competing against his technology.  Why? Because the competitor’s technology will be systematic, scalable and provide the business with operating leverage which enables reduced operating costs and more competitive pricing to the customer, while still achieving highly profitable margins, thus killing your business – regardless of your domain expertise.

I recently had an opportunity to assess a transactional business services industry where the two dominant players have controlled the industry for decades.  Within the past 10 years, the advent of technology has revolutionized this industry, allowing hundreds of startups to essentially change the operational paradigm of the industry.  By leveraging technology, the new players were able to lower their operating cost by 50-80% thus, allowing them to reduce their price by 20-30% and still enjoy profit margins at 20-30% above the industry average.  These businesses have created a unique niche within highly competitive environment, where they are competing in a way that makes the competition irrelevant.  How did these startups create a blue ocean in their industry and how do you find a blue ocean within your industry?  YOU must first understand the flat world, best outlined by Thomas Friedman in his 21st century manifest, The World is Flat. 

After gaining an understanding of the flat world, the best-selling strategy book, Blue Ocean Strategy  can help you work through practical methods and exercises that enable implementation of true impact-riveting strategy to take your business to the next level.  The aim of Blue Ocean Strategy is not to out-perform the competition in the existing industry, but to create new market space or a blue ocean, thereby making the competition irrelevant.

You might be saying to me, look – all I want to do is open a McDonald’s franchise or start a tutoring business, why do I need all of this stuff.  Well, did you know that there are some fast-food franchises out there that have someone in India or China taking the orders for $8/day as opposed to $8 an hour!  If you were the franchise owner, wouldn’t you at least want to know what’s out there?  For the tutoring startup, did you know that the fastest growing education service in the world is online tutoring, where the student is in the US and the tutor isn’t, he/she is in China/India and has mastered the English language (so there’s little to no dialect issue).  The point isn’t that these businesses won’t be successful unless they adopt the aforementioned practices, it’s that you need to do the research to figure out how you’ll compete against them, thus where is your blue ocean.

Join the Conversation

Last, but definitely not least, you need to engage what will become the most important shift in marketing within the last 100 years – Social Media.  I say “will become” only because the naysayers, the pundits and the traditional media kings want you to believe social media is a fad, so I guess you can say they are from Missouri – History will have to show them!

Social media enables the kind of 1-to-1 marketing that was the only way to do business 100 years ago, but this time around the 1-to-1 relationship can be global.  Now you can connect to anyone in the world in a scalable, systematic and effective way.  For a marketer, it’s about as close to the Holy Grail as you can get.  Social media has ushered us in to the trust economy, where you do business with the people you trust.  So how do you build trust?  You have to join the conversation!  How?  Let me count the ways:

1. Join LinkedIn : the premier professional network.  Go to the Q&A and engage by answering questions that fit your domain expertise.

2. Join Facebook : the ultimate social network.  At a minimum, Facebook will allow you to keep up with what’s going on out there.

3. Join Twitter : the status update network.  Learn how Dell earned $3mm in revenue.

4. Join your local and national industry trade association:  By engaging in the previous three opportunities, you are on path to gain rock star status within your industry.

5. Start a blog :  This path can lead to a great deal of trust building because your “fans” can build a direct path to listen to what you have to say.  If done properly, it is not unrealistic for you to carve out a niche within your space within 18-24 months.  Be persistent, consistent and relevant with your post.

I could give you the top 20 things to do, but then you wouldn’t do anything.  Once you conquer these, you can find the others on your own.  The key is to leverage these channels in an offline and online manner to create a voice – a voice that people learn to trust, engage and look to for advice, direction and perspective. 

You’ve probably heard of multi-level marketing and you probably have a negative connotation of the pratice.  The reality is that if you allow currency to equal trust, when you layer your business model on top of successful social media you essentially build a multi-level marketing network, referred to as your social network.  In this case, you aren’t selling products to your down-line (social network), you are providing them with value (your perspective) and receiving trust (the currency) in return.  As the trust builds, your network builds and when someone within the network needs something that you can provide, you’ll be in the right place, at the right time with the right level of influence to satisfy their need.  YOU didn’t sell anything.  In the world of social networking, your product or service is irrelevant, you’re in the trust-building business!

Now YOU understand how to conquer the convergence of your domain expertise, technology and social media to benefit whatever business opportunity you choose to pursue.  Good Luck and stay connected.  I hope you’ve enjoyed this 10 part-series on 2010 business opportunities and that you’ve been able to extract value from my perspectives.  I am looking forward to a great 2010 for me and for YOU!  Enjoy!

If you missed the other nine opportunities, here they are: Ten – Entertainment, Nine – Franchises, Eight – Home Schooling, Seven – Digital Signage, Six – Baby Boomers, Five – Business Process Improvement, Four – International Trade, Three – The Power of Green and Two – Texas.

The Art of War, which was written during the 6th century BC by Sun Tzu, is all about strategy, which I love.   Wikipedia describes the Art of War as “one of the oldest and most successful books on military strategy in the world. It has had a huge influence on Eastern military thinking, business tactics, and beyond. Sun Tzu recognized the importance of positioning in strategy and that position is affected both by objective conditions in the physical environment and the subjective opinions of competitive actors in that environment. He taught that strategy was not planning in the sense of working through a to-do list, but rather that it requires quick and appropriate responses to changing conditions. Planning works in a controlled environment, but in a competitive environment, competing plans collide, creating unexpected situations.”

Simliar to that reality TV show – Survivor, Sun Tzu teaches how to out think, out wit and completely overpower your opposition through precise execution.  You can apply his leadership lessons with employees, business competition, corporate ladder competition, general decision making and even in competitive activities such as playing poker.  Sun Tzu promotes doing the unexpected when it’s least expected and doing exactly what’s expected without restraint when you have the most leverage.  Most people like to pull back when they have the advantage, not Sun Tzu.  As a military general and leader of people, he promotes weakness as a strategic tactic; however, showing weakness as a deceptive strategy to get the enemy to base his strategy on your weakness is exactly what Sun Tzu would do.  I could go on for hours…the next time you want a good leadership book, take a break from the 2009 model of “the new, new thing” and pick up The Art of War.  Make sure it’s an original translation….

Other “Art of” books, websites and videos influenced by Sun Tzu and the Art of War:

Art of War By Sun Tzu

The Art Of The Deal

The Art Of Profitability

The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened …

The Art of Unix Programming

The Art of Computer Programming

The Art of the Possible

The Art of Grantsmanship

The Art of Writing Proposals: Some Candid Suggestions for …

How to Change the World: The Art of Schmoozing

The Art of Manliness

The Art of the Mix

The Art of Shaving

The Art Of Innovation

The Art of Deception: Controlling the Human …

While the DFJ team provide a superb outline of what your slide by slide deck should look like,  I really like the evaluation criteria within the guide.  Most VC’s are evaluating your presentation based on the following criteria (as outlined on slide 3 of the Presentation Guide):

1. Overall concept and business model
2. Technology and proof that it works
3. Product/service, its benefits and what problem it solves 
4. Market size, characteristics, participants and dynamics
5. Need and demand in the marketplace for your product/service 
6. Target customers and proof they will buy the product/service
7. Plan for making customers aware of and able to buy product 
8. Competition and how you intend to stay ahead of them 
9. Management team and their qualifications for success 
10. Projected financial results of the Company 
11. Capital required and its intended uses 
12. Potential exit strategy (liquidity event) for investors

Key Points: Management team, large and growing market, and competitive advantage are the three key decision points.

By using the aforementioned steps as your so-what litmus test to the content within each slide, you’ll be better positioned to land the deal/investment/recruit that’s needed to achieve your goal.

 Enjoy!

In this segment of the series, I want to share a great entrepreneur pitch template from the friendly guys at DFJ Mercury in Houston, Texas.  DFJ is an early stage VC firm , meaning they listen to a lot of companies who have not raised any money and in some cases don’t have a product or a business plan .    As a result of their specialty, these guys see thousands of busniess plans and listen to hundreds of pitches annually, so they are experts of a well organized pitch.  Let’s take a look at the DFJ Presentation Guide:

One of the most compelling aruguements Koegel makes in his book is the value of communication and interpersonal skills.  For a new entrepreneur these skill are invaluable…let me repeat – INVALUABLE.  If new entrepreneurs have any intention of trying to convince their financiers that they have the skill set to manage the company, one of the founders MUST have the communication and interpersonal skills to make the pitch.  The way the financiers look at it, if you have the skills to convince them without a doubt, you may have the skills to convince employees, customers, vendors/suppliers and other stakeholders.

As a result, I’ve tried to compile a few tools that can help entrepreneurs prepare for the pitch.  The first in a three part series on being a better presenter is about Koegel’s aforementioned book.  In “The Exceptional Presenter”, Koegel offers up six characteristics for presenters to “own the room”.  The characteristics form the acronym – OPEN UP, where Koegel helps presenters understand the internal and external components of exceptional presenting:

O = Organized: They look poised, polished and sound prepared

P = Passionate: They have had one too many sipps of their own KoolAid!  Not only do they believe what they are telling you and they try to make you believe it, but they try to make you feel it.  They keep your attention

E = Engaging: Extraordinary presenters are engaging and they keep your attention.  Koegel points out that everyone wanders, but the best presenters keep you coming back to them as opposed those that lose you within the first 5 minutes and you never return until their done.

N = Natural: You’ve seem them, they make it look effortless.  This really is the summary of all the other characteristics because you can only look like a natural when all the other characteristics are moving in harmony.

U = Understand Your Audience: Gain the necessary information to convince your audience that you understand them, their needs and how you can add value (in whatever format you need to do so)

P = Practice: Practice, practice, practice.  Koegel recommends that you practice everytime you speak.  Most personality test try to figure out how you react under pressure.  When you practice enough, your natural behavior under pressure will be as a natural presenter.

Here is a YouTube video from Koegel: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAd_ScIl0Yw

The next part will refer you to tools designed to help with the structure of your pitchth.  As a good friend of mine says, Stay tuned…

Entrepreneurs, especially those who are bootstrapped, must make tough choices and participate in difficult conversations if they hope to succeed.  However, it always helps when you can use a model that provides the framework and structure to apply sound logic to that tough conversation.  If you are the one with the idea or if you hold one of the critical keys to success, you don’t want to blow the deal up before it gets started, but you also don’t want the deal to be unfair.  This tool gives you the framework to SPEAK NOW, so you don’t regret not speaking up later…because when it comes to money, we’re all sensible and logical right!

Okay, here is the tool: Founder’s Equity Tool

The best part about the tool is that it allows the user to account for the different critical components of the business by allocating a  value to each component (see the first part in the table below).  The next piece of the tool weighs each component through multiple considerations applied to each person’s involvement to ultimately come up with a value that should be representative of each person’s equity.  This prevents the founder who came up with the “original idea” or the developer who wrote a major piece of the code from trying to take the lion’s share of the equity.  While I don’t totally agree with the categories provided in the tool,  it’s an alternative with a logical approach.  If you don’t like the default categories you can always just come up with your own.  Enjoy!

Eydahz will be all about me sharing new ideas I’ve come across through various channels, telling you what I think about them and solicting your feedback so I can continue to learn from you.  I believe in the wisdom of crowds, although, I am not easily swayed and I love healthy debate & constructive conflict, so again, we should have a lot of fun!

Before I really understood the passion I have for entrepreneurship and how to channel my energy and talent, I wanted to be a billionaire (back in the early 90’s).   Although I continue to aspire for financial independence, my personal mission is much more aligned with creating a legacy of educating, empowering and enabling entrepreneurs.  I invite you to peek in on my journey, share your thoughts or ideas and hopefully take or learn something along the way.

-Heath