make it happen

There’s a business model that is emerging and proving itself through some very significant real success stories now, and its exciting because its a way of operating every small business can live by to create significant global impact and success.

I’ve just been listening to Mark Zuckerberg here at the web 2.0 summit, the very young founder of what is emerging as the largest most used by average people social network - facebook. This is a business with some 44 million users and recent valuation of around $12 billion. How did he build it? Without funding, without big business experience, big marketing spend, or a focus on hard selling, instead they did it just by focusing on keeping things real and quietly making it happen. We’ll be talking a lot more about this mode of operating here on Make it Happen, as this is exactly the model we live by and see leading the way for the future of small business. Here’s 5 things Mark talked about that we’re right in line with and we can all benefit from adopting.

1. The world is de-centralizing - Roll with this

Don’t plan around the world being dominated by big players, this is where the world is coming from, not where its heading. It will take time to transition away from industries being controlled by a few big companies to a large amount of small smart businesses, but its moving there and we’ve got global communications, transparency and travel in our hands, use it be part of making this new world, build your positioning strategy around this thinking and everyday, you’ll be find success easier.

2. Focus on a product/customer experience people want, revenue will come

There’s no point in sitting around always bashing out sales forecasts and getting everyone to ‘hit quota’, keep it simple set targets and track your sales, but remember whats really driving your business, a valuable experience that people want. If you’re having to hard sell, then you’ve probably haven’t got your product or customer experience right, so spend time on correcting this, not on pushing sales, the hard sell road on keeps getting harder and takes you further and further away from people and what they really want.

3. Stay close to break-even, keep your burn down

At some point your business has to generate enough profits to justify the cash you’ve had to put into it, so don’t get too far out of sync with capital in and profits out. If you’re pre-profit, stay focused on beak-even, when you make a big outgoing, try and see how you can get a similar amount in, simple stuff, but often overlooked.

4. Recruit through your network - Build a real Team

You know and trust the people you know for a reason, so when it comes to building our your team, use this network, build on relationships you’ve already invested in and are aligned with. In the end it’s common values and thinking that enables a bunch of cool people to pull together into a great team.

5. Build partnerships that don’t require face to face interactions - a scalable business development strategy

You’ll often here people say you’ve got to get face to face and go and see people to really do deals, and there is some reality to this, but don’t make this your core business development strategy, it won’t scale or let you “build your business as you sleep” as I like to say. Facebook has a huge and growing partner network, people all around the world building businesses on the back of them, and they meet or have direct communication with only a very small fraction of them. We’ve got our first round of customers on PlanHQ entirely over the web through low involvement interactions, lots of self help stuff to help people help themselves, but compliment this with getting in front of people, spending time with them, getting real feedback and knowledge and working on larger deals. Get your low involvement business development strategy sorted if you want to scale globally.