Local relevance. Global excellence.

Why not? Many companies have proved it, and in fact it’s the way that businesses have grown throughout history… starting off small and growing from there by taking a successful formula and replicating it elsewhere.

It’s funny how some people think this doesn’t apply to technology/internet businesses as well. Just have a look at Justin's comment on this previous post – spot on, and sadly where many local investors fall short. Where’s the vision to see what others don’t see?

Incredibly successful businesses are often built on one key element – community.

Just think of a simple example [I’ll borrow here from muti’s functionality a bit, so please forgive me Dave]:

How often do you go around looking for someone who can help you with handyman-type-work at home, or someone to install a pool-net, or possibly even paint and seal your roof [yes, those heavy rains a while ago bring this clearly to mind]? But you don’t want just anyone – you want someone reliable. Where do you go? The yellow pages and local newspapers are littered with names, and more often than not, the one you choose brings along a suitcase full of shoddy service, leaving you wondering why you bothered in the first place.

Enter a community website listing local suppliers [similar to Muti’s listing of posts] and where community members vote suppliers up or down [with more detail as to who voted and why, to maintain integrity], with tags for the different types of services. Surely this would make finding good people for the job much easier? It offers something for everyone:

• for community members, a trustworthy source of reliable local suppliers;
• for suppliers, a good way to leverage word-of-mouth referrals, where good service really does pay off; and
• for the developer, a great way to reach a focused community and a way to earn revenue while doing so [most obvious way is targeted advertising for that community]

Sounds silly and simple, but if you can make this work in one small community [I would love a service like this], who’s to say you couldn’t make it work in 100 small communities, and then 1,000, and then 1,000,000. And in that case, wouldn’t a “small” investment in making the first one work pale in comparison to the potential rewards to be earned from a locally-global business.

So then how can you say you won't invest in a small business without global appeal? Look a bit further!

Locally, relevant.

Globally… excellent!

Getting back to basics - our 2 most important resources

Big picture view here, so bear with me...

Its quite generally accepted that there are two very important resources we have to manage to create a 'successful' [however you define that] business:

1. Time; and
2. Money

Most people understand the concepts of money management and time management. Funny thing is, we tend to approach these totally differently.

I'd just like to suggest that maybe, as different as they are, there is one big similarity we need to consider:

Just quickly on money, it comes down to whether you are spending the money or investing it... [the tree and the fruit... I'll get into this at some stage too as its a wonderful thing to think about] - where spending money is short-term in nature and while it is often necessary, unnecessary spending is not the best use of it. Similarly, investing is for the long-term and with money invested, although you don't see the benefits now, they come along later.

So, I propose that we look at our time in the same way. We each only have 24 hours a day, and we have to use it wisely.

Right,

• 'Spending' time - there are things we need to do daily to keep going, which are not necessarily valuable in the long run but are important.


• 'Investing' time - we have time to use each day to build for the future - we may not see any 'value' for it today, but using the time this way can change our future.

The main question I want to ask is - Are you just spending your time on daily matters, or are you consciously investing some of your time in the future too. If you neglect the second one, you will survive on a day-to-day basis, but things will never seem to get better.

When investing time - choose wisely in whom, in what and where you invest! Like with money, poor investments will not mean anything. But good investments can bring more than you ever dreamed!

So if I can leave you with a thought [call it daily practice for the big game of business], its this - next time you're out and come across a lonely face over the counter at Woolworths, how can you really 'INVEST TIME IN THAT PERSON' rather than just 'spending time paying for your groceries' - both of them take about 3 minutes, but each can have incredibly different results.

And I know there are at least two earth-shatterers in-the-making out there who realise the importance of how time is invested - here are two mind-shifting posts to have a look at:

• Time to rethink what I'm doing here
• The value of time