Thoughts on Building a Business

If you have anything to do with the internet, you have probably heard of Web 2.0. If you haven't, don't be so hard on yourself - I only heard about it 2 months ago. However, I believe that if you are in business you probably should start to become aware of it and look at ways to use it in your own business.

Web 2.0 is simply the second stage of the internet after Web 1.0. There are numerous definitions out there, but from my research I have clarified it into the following.

Web 1.0 was all about information. People used the Web to research topics or to find businesses etc. As such, business websites only needed to display the products and services they sold and they satisfied most web users.

Web 2.0 is all about connecting people. People now use the web to find other people that they can relate to. As such, Business websites now need more than just their products and services. People want to find out more about the people behind the business before they make a decision to use them. As we use the Web more and more, we need to find people we can trust. So as Business Owners we need to find ways to help these people to trust us.

Web 2.0 includes things such as Blogs, Forums, Youtube, Flickr and Wikipedia to name a few. Even the politicians are starting to use Youtube to try and reach the younger demographic.

So why bother? I would like to leave you with this last little statistic. NEO's accounted for just 24% of the population in 2005, but 54% of the spending. So what is a NEO? That's a topic for another Blog, but what you need to know is that NEO's are a part of the marketplace that loves technology. They use the web daily and they are continually growing in importance to all businesses. So as I said at the beginning, if you are in business you need to start to look at the web for any opportunity.

Click here for a groovy little podcast on Youtube which further explains Web 2.0.

I thought I would talk about myself as a way of explaining what I believe is one of the key differences between successful businesses and ones that just get by. To have a great business, you need to start with the end in mind. You need to have a big Vision of what you want your business to look like and then think about what you need to do to get you there. This way you dictate to the business rather then the other way around.

With Probity Partners my dream is to have Individual Businesses (owned by Probity Partners and Alliance Partners) that specialise in a particular service - all under the one umbrella Company. The umbrella company (Probity Partners) will then take care of all Marketing, Sales and Accounts for these businesses to enable them to focus on what they are good at - the Business Service. Our customers will build a relationship with 1 Business Development Manager who will help them find any Service Provider they need and then oversee it to make sure that they are happy. Our customers will start with using 1 service and after seeing how much better we are, will begin using us more and more. We will become successful by helping other Businesses to get successful. Our individual businesses will be specialists at what they do (not trying to offer more than one service), will live by our values and will work closely with the other Businesses to amplify their service.

So that is the dream. The reality is that at the moment it is just me with a group of Alliance Businesses. This is merely the starting point and I have roughly mapped out a plan on how I will get there. This plan is a living document and is continually being refined. But I never lose my way, because I keep going back to the vision to make sure that I am still heading in the right direction.

So if you haven't got one, get yourself a big vision and start working out how you are going to get there.

I've finally joined the world of Web 2.0 and set up my first Blog. I thought I would be really original and use the title of my old Icon Business Advisors newsletter. Afterall, I felt it pretty well encapsulated what I wanted to achieve with this blog and that is an area for me to record my thoughts and ideas on what it takes to build a business. I felt it was a great time to start this, because at the moment I am living and breathing Probity Partners and am extremely focussed on getting it off the ground and start building it to where I want it to be. So if you are reading this, welcome and I hope I can put enough useful ideas up here to make it worth your while visiting regularly to read the latest posts. To start with I am going to be a little indulgent and talk about Probity Partners and what I want to achieve and then a brief overview of what Web 2.0 is.