Think It - Business from Anywhere

The internet has made many things possible including online business, work from home, online banking, to name a few. In the recent past online was considered a niche. But the Covid-19 pandemic made it to the mainstream. Now we see many of the businesses shifting to online processes. Thanks to the Metaverse, soon we shall be hanging out with friends, participating in  business meetings, attending seminars.and doing a host of other unimaginable things in a virtual reality. Online business has provided many opportunities to the youth. It offers to earn passive income without quitting the regular on-site work and also saves us from the confines of an office, saves us from the heft of a boring & dull commute for hours besides many other benefits. We can work from home or from anywhere. We can be digital nomads - working, doing business, making money from any place.

It needs a little investment but a unique idea or doing something differently. Jack Trout has put it more powerfully, he says, ‘to survive in this hyper competitive environment, it is not sufficient to excel in low cost, customer oriented or quality which established players can do better than you. You have to differentiate. You have to give your customers a compelling reason to buy your product instead of your competitors’. He summed it up as “To differentiate or To Die”. 

The first thing you need to do is to generate an idea. The big question is ‘where do ideas come from?’ Ideas come from discussion with friends, business people and also looking around and observing deeply ‘what is happening’. 

Thinking how you can create something new or how you can re-imagine the old processes e.g. Amazon thought of selling books online, AirBnB thought of hotel reservation online, Uber thought of online taxi-hiring-service. Early on Amazon never stocked books, and just placed the product on its website and bought from the publishers and sold to its customers. AirBnB did not have any property but used the internet to offer vast choices of home away from home and Uber without having any vehicle used the internet to offer commuting from home to a specific destination. In all these cases, the companies re-imagined the old processes and created something new. Steven Johnson has answered this question in his book “Where good ideas come from - The Natural History of Innovation”. He has also proposed seven questions format to develop good ideas.

A bit of planning before beginning your journey is helpful in achieving your desired results. It’s just like having at hand Google Maps that shows the path to your destination, a guide that keeps you on the right way. Alex Ostarwalder has developed an excellent resource known as Business Model canvas (BMC). The BMC helps you generate your business model and let you know your strengths and weaknesses viz-a-viz competitors. It also lets you know that your business story is good enough for your customers and you are able to make some profit from it. 

You have a good idea and you have also created your business model and now comes the hardest part to arrange the necessary finances to get going. Without finance no idea, even the best, can be materialised. Not many entrepreneurs are lucky enough to get the required finance at the right time. 

Here, the concept of Bootstrapping helps to solve many early stage financial problems. It is like running a business with zero inventory in a Just-In Time system: it reveals hidden problems and forces the company to solve them. Too much money also has its problems as one entrepreneur remarked that “if we had more money, we would have made more mistakes.” Amar Bhide has excellent advice on Bootstrapping. He says, ‘improvise at every stage, go for free resources or use resources in a clever way to avoid disruptions’. 

Internet is full of many business services with freemium model i-e, offering limited services free and offering full services with subscription. Early on use these free services like Google which offers free storage, free Youtube Channel, free email service, free online meeting service, free Office Tools like Docs to write, Sheets to make projections, Slides to make presentations.

At a minimum level all you need is a Laptop, Mobile Phone and most importantly, an idea.. a good idea to do Business from Anywhere. Good Luck with that!