improve core expand expertise

It seems that we have no choice now: we must run faster and smarter to survive. Business is bad for almost everyone. Study what businesses are thriving now more than ever. What is it they are providing? To whom? In what manner?

We can learn from the luckiest, toughest, and brightest gals and guys in business. The new environment was heralded by the web wonders, blog giants, and social media mavericks. When you see a mainstream cable TV news operation incorporate blogs, Facebook, and Twitter, you see the global shift in consciousness and marketing.

Just as the web revolution was underway, with the rise of individual voice, universal free expression, transparency policy, we media, and other cataclysmic upheavals, the old guard collapsed of its own colossal greed and lawlessness.

Perhaps this is how they'll get rid of money and financial systems as we once knew them, replacing them with digital records and chip implants.

What can we do?

Improve your core attributes and skills. Increasingly differentiate your products and company by out-thinking your competitors. In other words, become the customer. Don't observe them like a zoo-keeper. Unite your mind with their reality. Get to know user frustrations. Don't fear criticism or hostility. Learn from them.

Improve core.

Expand expertise.

From the position not of your mission statement or marketing plan, but rather from walking in the shoes of actual customers. Do whatever it takes to identify unmet needs and unfulfilled dreams. Examine harshly what others take for granted.

Master aspects of your field that will make you more valuable. Learn about things that you always felt you "don't need to know". If it's relevant to what you do, or relevant to your customers, then start learning more about it.

People will still buy things, they're just going to be slower, more selective, and more informed when they buy.

What are you doing to be the one they decide upon?