There is a new shift in business. It’s due to an emerging attitude toward shopping and life,  called minimalism.Starting before the recession but picking up speed quickly throughout it and afterward, the new consumer is buying less. When they do buy, they look for high quality products and only purchase what they really need.

How does this affect you as a business owner?

If you haven’t already, pare down your offerings to what is most needed and strive to offer the best available. This is important for both services and products. There is a glut in the market when it comes to many products and often what one company offers is not really much different than what many others have. You will need to think long and hard on how your business can do more for customers than what others can.

Price is only one part of the equation. Cheaper is not necessarily better as consumers are often suspicious of the lowest or lower price. Always charge what you or your product is worth. Specify how, by choosing you, your customer has made the best choice. Information is powerful and if it isn’t easily found, your customer might just move on to the next company. Think of what you would like to know if you were making a purchasing decision.

Pre-recession type shopping is not likely to return and the days of shop ‘til you drop are gone, except for those who didn’t learn their lesson the first time around. After all, how many belongings do you really need? The new consumer is buying experiences, not things and if your company is not in the business of providing this, how can it be changed to attract this new type of customer?

Responding to the new reality is not easy for most business owners. They’re used to putting the advertising out there and having shoppers flock to them. They were used to having services that were needed but as most start to curb their spending they are mindful to purchase only the essentials and as they start to conserve over worries of job loss or upcoming retirement, the effect on small business is starting to be felt. The new consumer is more demanding. They have started to feel a disconnection with others, mostly due to the overuse of digital technology and they are relying on businesses to provide them with something other than high tech toys.

Your business ideas and the way you run your business will also have to change. Make sure your customers know that you are aware of their needs and their desire for quality at a decent price. Decide if you really need to offer all of the extras with their bells and whistles or just provide the most important feature. Your products and services should make your customers feel happy with their choices. They should feel connected with something more natural, not necessarily “green”, which has been overdone but a simpler, healthier way of doing things.

Adapt your approach to your customers and find out which services and products they are willing to pay more for and concentrate on providing the highest quality that you can. While people still want more, the definition of what that “more” is, has changed. Rather than having more things, your customers are interested in having more time to spend with their families and friends or on hobbies. They are redesigning their lives around what is most important to them and realize that owning things doesn’t rate very high on the importance scale. They have made the wise decision to focus on what is really important to them, a life of depth, meaning and fulfillment.

© Chris Draper, DemGen Inc. 2013

Image copyright Krystle Draper

I watched this video and it really struck me – have we lost our people skills? We spend so much time with our face focused on a phone or tablet or computer that we are losing something that is critical to our personal and business lives – face to face interaction!

I am not someone who spends tons of time on my phone.  Sure I text and respond to emails, but I don’t use data or Wifi and I rarely take pictures or videos.

This video made me think of the other night with a group of friends in our TV room…  The adults were chatting and we had the hockey game on the TV.  The young adults were talking also and often checking their phones.  As the night wore on, the young adults all ended up playing games on their phones (I guess we bored them lol). They seemed quite content to be near each other and not have to talk – which really isn’t a bad thing. It is nice sometimes to know you can sit near a friend or loved one and not have to communicate, just be close!

Technology has allowed us the opportunity to communicate around the world in seconds (I can BBM my brother in Ireland and we connect as if he is next door!), we can capture moments that might have been lost while we got our camera ready, it does keep us connected – I’m just thinking we can connect in person more often!

All of this takes me back to a few years ago, I was working away and my son came over to talk to me, I kept typing and answered him with a generic response that was sooo obvious I had not truly been listening and he knew it – from that strong lesson, I do my utmost to be in the moment, listening, and making eye contact.

My family knows also that if I am typing away, to let me finish so I can give them my full attention. How many times have you tried to multi-task with your phone while in the company of friends, family, co-workers? I would ask that you consider putting away the technology and talking, laughing, sharing, taking in information – truly be engaged with the people around you… Those moments can be gone so quickly, embrace them and get back to your phone AFTER you have connected! I know I can always improve and my goal is to check my phone less and give genuine attention more.

© Pamela Christie, DemGen Inc. 2013

I’m an entrepreneur and always have been.  Though I’ve also worked for large, international corporations and associations, it was never really a fit.  I work at a faster pace than most…

Working in offices showed me how much time the typical ‘worker’ wastes per day.  It frustrated me that many of my colleagues were being paid big bucks to basically kill time.  It always felt like I was the only one really working!

Don’t get me wrong, I feel every company I’ve worked with was great.  My work life has been a series of amazing gigs I never knew existed.  (‘Leap and the net will appear.’)

I’ve also owned my own business for over a decade.  There have been many big successes, but I could never fully take the leap on that front because working as a ‘one man show’ always brings headaches.  It’s impossible to do it all yourself.

Fast forward to today, and I feel like I have found my true place in the universe!  Working with DemGen has allowed my entrepreneurial spirit to flourish…  The team I work with runs at my pace!  And to me, that’s a really big deal.

Beyond business activity, I’m also blessed and thankful to be working with some of the best people I’ve ever met…

Our Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Gary Evans.  I love his ability to make me laugh and the fact that I keep learning more about his fancy skills and background, even 3 years after joining this team!  There’s a reason his Discovery Calls tend to turn into love fests and he has so many ‘fans’.

(I could go on, but there are too many people other than our founders to mention.)

I may be the Director of Marketing here at DemGen, but for this post, I’m not trying to market anything.  This is my true story.

We’re here to help and every entrepreneur needs support, but you need to find what’s right for YOU.  I have, and it makes every day better than the last.  I wish the same to you!

I’m sharing because I believe everyone deserves to be surrounded by an amazing team.  It’s what you need to succeed.  Life is short!  Follow your dreams and make sure those around you are helping you excel.  Everything you imagine is possible.  Make it so.

Stay great today and every day…

© Tamara Smith, DemGen Inc. 2013

Most businesses and business owners emphasize productivity and how much each employee can accomplish in an hour, a day, a week, etc. Numerous articles are written about improving our productivity: doing more and completing more in less time than before.

Productivity:

1. The quality of being productive.

2. Economics The rate at which goods or services are produced especially output per unit of labor.

3. Ecology The rate at which radiant energy is used by producers to form organic substances as food for consumers.

We are a nation of consumers and spenders; always accumulating, making lists, multi-tasking, managing to fit in just one more activity. We are also a nation of the very stressed, forever dwelling on media driven fears and our worries that we may be the next to lose our jobs, that the relatively stable economy will drop out from under us as we sleep and we’ll be left juggling even more tasks than we already are juggling.

We have somehow failed to make a routine or ritual out of our work days. We push ourselves, afraid we’ll miss out on our “passion”, our “purpose”; afraid to appear undriven, unmotivated or unambitious, while at the same time we are unable to relax. That’s a lot of “uns”, all in the name of productivity.

In some countries, the word productivity will give you a blank look or a shake of the head with a pitying smile as they look upon us, thinking we are rather naive and wondering why we are unable to understand that doing your job and doing it well is only one part of our lives, not the whole thing. Your job or business is something you do or have so you can live your life.

The ability to put your work day into perspective is something well worth learning, not only to avoid stress but also so we realize that in order to give something our full attention, each part of our day and all parts of our lives need to be separate and focused upon, given our full attention. At the back of our minds, it shouldn’t always be about our job or our business. Our job or business is not who we are.

This is how the whole myth of productivity was born, due to our inability to concentrate or focus on one thing at a time and to take on our professions as our meaning in life. We think that if we spend all of our time working or talking about working that we are somehow busier than others and spending our time more wisely.

We have learned to value quantity over quality, instead of expecting the best. Experience should have taught us that we can’t do everything. Looking at productivity from its outcome, backwards to where it all begins, you can see where it all falls apart. The push to do more and in a lesser amount of time has actually cut down on our effectiveness, instead of increasing it.

Learning to do things differently will mean taking responsibility for only our own tasks and letting others take care of theirs. This is where a smart business owner looks around and decides that there are some things they just don’t want to do. Letting go of having to take care of everything causes fear in a lot of us. We are so used to being in control that allowing others to take over some of the work raises worries of failure.

Looking at the benefits, to both your business and your health, can help you finally make the decision that the productivity in your business is not all about you. It’s about learning to loosen the reins, enjoy working on what you really like to spend your time on and hiring the best to do the rest.

Changing the way you think from always having to be in control to taking care of just your part of things can actually improve the success of your business and allow you to look at it in a fresh, new way. There are no definite rules in business. Take a risk and invent your own.

© Chris Draper, DemGen Inc. 2013

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