What is the opportunity that you find yourself in today? What people did you meet to get here? What are you going to do to create more such opportunities?

I am on my way to Ft. Lauderdale to meet with my EO Insignia Forum. My close friend Joe has a place there, so we are going to spend some time at his condo. I really enjoy going to meet up with my EO friends and spending time with them. It is always a very stimulating and worthwhile experience.

I come away with a greater connection and understanding for their struggles and successes, as each one walks their own path. It opens me up to what life has to offer and awakens me to my limited perspective when the diversity of these successful entrepreneurs come together to share their minds, experiences, and visions.

You rarely understand the true power of these interactions in those specific moments. I have witnessed not only the financial but also the immense emotional impact of these exchanges. The emotional benefits of not feeling alone when leading a company is very comforting, and I look forward to spending time with these dynamic people.

Last week, my local EO Forum participated in a Forum boost. We brought in a forum trainer who exposed ways to share and go deeper with your forum mates. Sharing very personal things, like those that you may not even tell your spouse, is very powerful and humbling to the participants.

I once read that the two things that will impact your life the most are the books you read and the people you meet. My life experiences allow me to see the power and reality of that statement in action.

Think about this example. Joe has hired a personal trainer, Jess, to be with him for a month to focus on healthy habits in nutrition, cardio, weight training, and overall healthy balance. Jess lives in New Jersey. A mutual friend introduced her to Joe, and because of this new connection with him, she made a decision to leave her home and travel with us. This will have her meeting new people, experiencing new situations, making new connections, and opening doors to new opportunities. Who knows what this one connection and one decision could mean for the many forks that will appear in her life and where they will take her?

Do you seek situations to meet, learn, and grow with other people? What are the opportunities there?

Think about that!  If you had access to 4 billion customers, how would that impact your marketing, your strategy, your vision, your opportunities, and your profit potential?  Well it’s coming, and I see it happening right before my eyes.

Let me back up for a moment and give you some perspective.  As I write this, I am at my office in Pondicherry, India.  I started Efficience with my partners April and Rich back in 2004 and came to India shortly after to set up the office.  We started with one full time team member and one intern and then quickly added five more.  We have now grown to 40 bright, enthusiastic, hardworking men and women.   

When I started coming to India, none of the team members had cell phones.  Cell service existed here, but the phones were expensive, and most didn’t see the value in having one. This continued for a few years.  Now all our team members, from the lowest to the highest paid, have cell phones.  At this point, eight of them have smartphones, and I see the rest upgrading in a year or so.  I can see this new global customer base growing right before my eyes.

You may remember reading the Software Monster blog I wrote about how new software applications, Software as a Service (SaaS) tools, and apps are eating up the legacy business of a huge number of mainstream industries.  This was based on an article that Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape, wrote in the Wall Street Journal.  Now, he has another article out that deals with the expansive opportunity that putting a handheld computer or communication tool connected to the entire world is offering by bringing customers to your doorstep.

In a CNet article called Marc Andreessen Predications for 2012, Marc discusses how smartphones are now in the hands of about 2 billion people in the developed world, and in three to five years they will be in the hands of 6 billion.  Can you imagine what to do with 4 BILLION New Customers?  I have been advocating the power of connectivity since the early ‘90s, and this adds an exponential growth factor to that, which compounds the potential.  If you read any futurist thinkers like Ray Kurzweil, it looks like we are much closer to that Singularity moment.  You can check out his book here.

Marc ends the article with how opportunities and growth wrap around smartphones saying, “Local merchants, like local restaurant owners, are going to have a smartphone app they can use to dial up customers on demand. Whether that’s from Groupon or Foursquare — any of these companies can do that. A lot of small business owners are going to start running their businesses from their smartphones.”

Your marketplace is not your backyard anymore; it’s not even your country.  We recently launched a requirements gathering tool called Sluice, and it gets 60% of its sign-ups from outside the US.  I can already envision all kinds of great opportunities with this mobile expansion, and we are moving our company in that direction for the potential it offers.  What are you doing to go after the soon-to-be total of 6 billion new customers?

Last week, I traveled to Dallas, TX for a guys’ weekend with my son Tony, his close friend Steven, and my brother Mark. While there, we also attended the Bills vs. Cowboys football game. Having grown up in Rochester, NY, I am a Bills fan, which is often difficult to endure. That weekend was no exception. Even after a great start to the season, the Bills lost 44 to 7. Other than that, we had a great time, and the Cowboys’ stadium is off the charts!

You seem to open your eyes more to what is around you when you’re in a new environment, so being a bit more observant, I watched the nonstop mobile usage around me. These observations made me want to share some recent research that has been released. Based on the research and my own thoughts, mobile devices are becoming a powerful force in our lives.

As we went to restaurants, the social watering holes, the tailgate party, and even in the stadium, I noticed how many people were using their mobile devices to stay in touch, update Facebook and Twitter, and take pictures to upload or send out to everyone. Sitting in Cracker Barrel next to a table filled with the 60 plus crowd waiting on their food, I watched all of them tapping away, or reading what was on their phones. This is universal and will expand as speed increases and apps are introduced, making our lives easier as well as more resourceful and connected.

In a previous blog, I discussed the research of Mary Meeker, a leader in mobile technology research. She released new data at the Web 2.0 Summitrecently, and it showed the continued surge of mobile usage, traffic, and e-commerce.

In the area of e-commerce, she discussed how eBay’s mobile sales have reached $4-billion, Paypal has hit $3-billion, Amazon has made $2-billion, and Square is at $1-billion. All had big increases with Square up 20,000% year over year growth! From what I observed, it is just going to continue to be off the charts!

Meeker explained that over the past year, the use of mobile search has increased four times, and the mobile app and advertising revenue combined has been growing at 153% annual compound rate since 2008. At that time, the revenue was at $700-million, and now it has hit $12-billion! This is amazing growth!

For internet services like Pandora, Twitter, and Facebook, a large portion of their traffic is from mobile devices. Actually, for Pandora and Twitter, the majority of their traffic is mobile with Pandora generating 65% of traffic and Twitter gaining 55% of traffic this way. Approximately 33% of Facebook traffic comes from mobile devices, and it is increasing dramatically.

This all means we are entering a world much different from where we have been, and it is changing fast. We will be doing so much more on our mobile devices, and this will drive how we work and play. How does this affect you and your business? Can you improve your service to allow easier access to your products and services over mobile devices?

As I contemplated these questions over the weekend, I had an idea dealing with mobile devices and connecting people that has been brewing for awhile now, but it was solidified in Dallas. What ideas do you have to connect people, share information, or simplify things? The next Gates, Jobs, or Zuckerberg is brewing and will show up soon. Why not you?

Facebook is. This valuation comes from the power of connecting…not just people, but things. When connectivity is increased, value goes up exponentially.

Out of Control, and then in 1999 came the book New Rules for the New Economy both by Kevin Kelly. From Out of Control came the understanding that networks with high degrees of feedback create collective intelligence (more on this subject soon). This is what led me to the crazy idea of starting a mutual fund run by the shareholders called the iFund. We started in 2001, right at the beginning of that nasty down turn in the market and it never took off. An idea before its time, I believe, and we closed down when we sold off IPS Funds.

Awhile back, I shared that we were working with a door-opening company called Kopp Consulting. Caryn Kopp and her team assist other companies in finding new clients by having a team of former senior management professionals use Kopp’s secret sauce to get you appointments and allow you to do your thing.  What an informative experience!  Working with Kopp helped us design and focus our message to best tailor it to our core clients, and they helped us connect with even more clients and businesses.

How do they do it?  I am not privy to all their tricks of the trade, but I know they are paid to get appointments, and they do.  They know what to say to get past the screeners and to get appointments set.  They helped us gain access to numerous companies that we had not been involved with before.

I just came across an article shared on LinkedIn that suggests you should have people for cultivating leads, a separate team for closing the sales, and then another group to service them. Having professionals with strengths in different areas of the sales cycle is supported in this article.  To read it, click here.

The main objective of any business is to connect with the people who have the problem that their business’ product or service can solve.  This is the life blood of any company.  It keeps everyone employed, keeps bills paid, and with the right strategy and management, keeps profits flowing to expand and help even more people.

Yes your heard that right Occupy Wall-Streeters.  Most companies want to help others.  If they didn’t help their customers, people would not buy what they have to offer.  Living in a free county, and I hope it stays that way, no one is forced to spend their money with a company.  In fact, some companies have people so excited to spend their money there that they will stand in line for quite a while.  Think Apple, Starbucks, and that popular restaurant that you go to when another nearby sits empty.

The goal for any businesses is to keep their customers happy, so they not only keep coming back for more but also tell others.  When your company is newer, is not well known, or hasn’t gone viral, firms like Kopp can be just what is needed to get you in the door.

What an interesting week!  Last week, I traveled to New York City to participate in the Entrepreneurs’ Organization Injected Campus event, which brings the regional EO Forums together.  We met in lower Manhattan to be close to the New York Stock Exchange.

This year during our event, the NYSE opening bell was rung by InvenSense, a company that makes the motion possible in the Wii and in smartphones.  InvenSense was launching their IPO and was going public.  I had always wanted to be there in person to see the opening bell, but it also made me think of my own dream of being up there to ring the bell with the IPO launch of my own company.  That evening, it felt a little closer as my friends on the Global EO Board got to be on stage and ring the closing bell!  WOW!  Click here to see the video I took of the opening bell.

Along with going to the Stock Exchange, we enjoyed a wonderful evening dining and socializing at the Harvard Club in Times Square.  We also heard from three great speakers and spent time with EO members that have really invested time and resources into the Entrepreneurs’ Organization, thus getting a lot in return.  This entire event was extra special! 

Matthew Kelly spoke to us at the NYSE for one of the events.  He does business consulting and wrote the book The Dream Manager.”  His talk resonated deeply with me, so I wanted to share it with you.  Matthew told a story about one time when he was playing golf.  One of the guys he was playing with seemed really down, and when Matthew asked him about it, he mentioned he was having business problems.  After digging, Matthew finally got him to reveal that he has a janitorial company with more than 400% turnover.  This man was spending all his time hiring people and had no time to work on business strategy.

Matthew inquired, “Have you asked the employees what is the problem?”  The man had not and wondered if they would even know, so Matthew said, “Let’s find out.”  They conducted a survey and realized that transportation was the main problem.  They decided to get buses to help the employees, and the business changed significantly.  The turnover rate dropped to just over 200%, so they did the survey again.  This time, they discovered the employees had dreams and desires.  They decided if the employees were helped to realize these dreams, then their respect and loyalty to the company would grow.

They hired a full time dream manager to discuss dreams with the employees.  The dream manager assisted them in creating plans and processes to put them on the path to realizing their small near-term dreams, such as purchasing a laptop or planning a vacation.  Additionally, He helped them work towards their long term dreams of buying a house or getting the proper education toward a new career. 

This approach resonated with me because I am of the type that is always strategizing about working towards the things that make the future better.  I have often asked my team what it is that they are working for and want to have in their lives as they increase their incomes.  It is astounding how the culture of a company can change and how your employees’ perception and loyalty toward their employer improves!

I am working toward my dream of building a company that can go IPO.  What are you doing to invest in the lives and dreams of those around you?