Business

If you have a small business or are an entrepreneur, you know how hard it can be to compete in this current marketplace. You need an edge, but it’s hard to know where to go for help. You’re following the crowd, but the crowd seems to be headed for a cliff.

Today, I have some good news.

Daniel Burrus, the author of Flash Foresight, has three great techniques to help you rock your business and do things that no one else is doing.

Yes that’s right!

Instead of following the crowd, you’ll be able to blaze your own path and create products, services, and business relationships that no one else is providing.

Today we’ll look at three techniques that he recommends

Here is how it works…

1. Transform by using technology driven change to your advantage

2. Take your biggest problem and skip it (It’s not the real problem anyway)

3. Go opposite. Look where no one else is looking to find solutions no one else knows about

To get started we’ll look at an example, by taking our Relevant Light Project idea we’ve been working on here at Fire Up Today and run it through these filters.

Let’s start by reviewing our current project idea…

Relevant Light will be a personal development seminar that takes place during a Friday night stage play session and an all day Saturday workshop. It is built around the acronym of LIGHT, Legacy, Impact, Goals, Habits, and Time.

On Friday night, audience members are taken on a journey to the end of their lives, and shown how life choices will affect their Legacy. Through a vivid stage play, taking place in the garage of the deceased, viewers are shown what will endure and what will be thrown away. In an emotional “wheat and chaff” exercise only a few items will remain. These few remnants will outlive their lives.

As the night winds to a close, the garage scene disappears and is replaced on stage with two free standing doors in wooden frames. One says “personal,” the other says “the world.” Above the doors is a sign that says Impossible. The speaker on stage takes a key and tries to open each one. They are locked. He faces the audience and leaves you with a challenge. Come back in the morning with new keys and destinations in mind.

Saturday morning you return. With a cup of coffee and workbook in hand, you get ready to write down your answers, set short and long term goals, create new habits, and schedule your time..

 

So we basically have a personal development seminar that will require quite a few major pieces to pull it all together… Here are the major items…

1. An auditorium to hold the seminar. This can be costly and limits us to one general area for the production.
2. Four actors that will be able to travel where the seminar is being held. Since it is a two day affair, we’ll need to provide meals, and overnight accommodations.
3. Large truck, storage, and a production team to create our stage set. This will include two garage scenes, with boxes, junk, and furniture along with two doors in door frames.
4. Support team to help with organization, marketing, ticket sales, and coordination of the event.
5. Insurance, security, and custodial services.

As you can see from this list, a single seminar will get expensive very quickly. With thousands of dollars in expenses, we’ll need a substantial audience to pull this off.

We can hope for major book sales to drive this seminar, or we can take the three tenets of Flash Foresight and see how they may help us transform this seminar into something better.

Using Daniel’s ideas lets see how this can work

1. Using his tenet of “Skip It,” we look at our biggest problem which is the expense and the size of the seminar. So if we skip it, we can find other alternatives which may cost less.
2. We can examine technology options and see if they might be able to help us.
3. We can “go opposite” and look for alternative solutions that may give us a unique product.

Let’s have some fun and run with this…

Let’s skip the big seminar altogether… This will save us a huge amount of money…

Let’s go opposite and include the technology option by using Video Technology to video tape one event and provide a DVD series that can be played or simulcast to different audiences. This has the following advantages…

1. We can video tape the stage play almost anywhere. We can use real garages and local actors. This will keep our costs low and provide a more realistic experience for our audience. Since the actors can be local we won’t have to provide expensive accommodations and meals.
2. We can package the DVD’s with workbooks that can be sold with a leaders guide. This will give us additional products to sell. This will allow this seminar to be presented all over the country at community centers, churches & business centers. We’ll just need facilitators to put the events together.
3. We can provide our seminar by webcast for customers that want to view this at home. We can also use the latest technology to create interactive textbooks on the iPad using the latest iBooks author program.
4. Using the latest video timeline selection technology, we can view different outcomes to our stage play right from the video screen. This gives us options that would not be available in an on-stage seminar.

As you can see, the sky is the limit here. By using Flash Foresight, we can reduce costs, add additional revenue generating items, and provide a unique and exciting presentation for our audiences. This also provides us with the ability to reach a myriad of audiences that our regular seminar could never reach.

All in all… a win, win, win!

Question: How could you use these techniques to change your business?