On several occasions I have had the opportunity to catch the late night talk show, Late Night with Conan O’Brian. One of the skits they do is called, “In the Year 2000″ in which several of the stars and maybe a guest puts on funny collars and shine lights up on their face to give a mystical futuristic effect in which they give offbeat prophetic statements about the the future like,

“The hyphen will be replaced by the dash, and the dash will be replacedby the hyphen. No one will notice.”

Well it’s supposed to be the “future” but it’s called the year “2000.” Which of the writing was 8 years ago but It’s more of another way to tell jokes with a play on words and is sort of a homage to all the crazy optimistic futuristic predictions that were made during the sixties and time of the space race where things like space colonies, flying cars and jet packs. Well those things have not come to fruition at least not in as the way imagined for the general public or in the way they were illustrated. However in the 1967 film, 1999 A.D. they did hit kind of close to the mark in regards to what we know today as the Internet and more specifically e-mail and the World Wide Web.

One thing that is kind of funny about the above video is that while it hits pretty close to the mark on you can definitely see they were thinking in the context of their “present day”. Multiple tiny screens instead of a windows-like graphical interface on one computer screen, knobs and dials instead software controls and images of paper receipts instead of text being rendered as part of a web page. It’s very hard to predict the future of technology no more than 2 years in the future. In the year 2000 I would have had a hard time imaging touch and motion sensitive interfaces like the Nintentdo Wii or Apple’s iPhone but the reason they are popular and came about was people want to interact naturally. Let’s do something crazy. In 5 years (2013) we will probably see many changes in technology especially in the worlds of energy, transportation and mobile computing. What do you see in that short time? What can you or your business do to think forward without being restricted to what is the “normal” way of doing things now while at the same time not being so bizarre or financially impractical? What unique products or services do you think we could offer in 5 years?

In case you haven’t noticed we have entered a “new age” of consumer computing is the last couple of years. One of the mobile devices getting the most press coverage is Apple’s iPhone. Yes, a majority of business users still use Blackberry’s but let’s focus on the consumer and I am really going to stress the word consumer as a potential buyer and not the other meaning of a “non business” user.

Last week I stopped by our local Barnes and Noble in Greenville,SC to look for a reference book that would help me get a better grasp of a piece of software I recently bought, Final Cut Express. I found the book I was looking for, Final Cut Express 4 - Movie Making for Everyone by Diane Weynand. However while in the store I did something Barnes and Noble would hate. I pulled out my iPhone, brought up Amazon.com and typed in the book’s ISBN’s number and discovered I could get the book for $15 dollars cheaper than if I had bought it that day at Barnes and Noble. Now to be fair if I had needed the book that day I would have bought it at Barnes and Noble because $15 was not going to effect my budget on the project if it had needed to be done quicker but Barnes and Noble did lose a sale.

Are you aware that many of your potential customers are carrying around devices such as this and they don’t even have to use your wi-fi (Barnes and Noble does offer wi-fi for a price but I accessed this information over the cellular network just fine.)

Do you have a ‘brick and mortar” store, are you doing everything you can to accommodate comparison shoppers? Are your customers and potential clients restricted to sitting in from of a computer or reading a brochure to learn about your business or are you giving them an option to listen to your marketing message via a podcast they can take with them? Are you prepared to match sale prices? If you do are you advertising it? If you can’t match the offers at online places like Amazon are you prepared to explain the benefits of ordering from you? I don’t care if you are a fan of Apple and the iPhone or not it will have an impact on your business.

We are in the process of removing our “land line” telephone from our telecommunications package. We are keeping the number but moving it to a cell phone for the time being. Two reasons for making this move is as follows;

• Saving Money - We discovered we could save at least 60 dollars a month by moving the phone number from a “land line” to a cell phone
• The only call we have received on the landline are from telemarketers or family members and as time as gone on family members have been calling us on a separate cell accounts anyway.
• We have transitioned to an online fax service - better deal. We receive a pdf like file and we don’t have to waste paper or ink rolls or deal with a bulky fax machine

All that being said, their is still a habit of coming home to see if they are any messages on the land line and now we have both wall units and portable phones in the house that will not be used but I still have a desire to still have a “base unit” to come home to. What would I like? Perhaps I shouldn’t even be posting this but are phone companies loosing out with the mass exodus from land line accounts to cell phones? Is their still a use for having a communications line that is more likely to stay on when other things get knocked off? I could care less about using a “land line” to make calls with. For the most part I have used it for listening to messages or as a backup number. Instead of a clunky wall receiver I would love to have something that looks like an iPhone except wall mounted where I could check “visual voice mail” and also control things like home security and have access to cameras outside. I feel like I’m compromising to a degree in getting rid of the land line but I would love to see more innovative ideas for good replacement. Yes, I realize they are home control devices for media and security but none quite are a solid replacement.

In the meantime I will be searching for the “next generation” of “land line” - no, it’s not the cell phone although for a lot of people it’s good enough. What are your thoughts? Could we develop solutions for such a niche? Maybe I’m not aware of such a product, if that is the case I lot of other people are not as well. Share what you know in the comments.

Recently we announced that Harmonious New Media was our official slogan or company mantra. I’m excited to say that we have also registered the domain, harmoniousnewmedia.com and looking forward to doing great things with it. Initially we are using it as a redirect to this web site. We are exploring other ideas as well.

This may seem like a crazy question to ask in what many perceive to be tough economic times but seriously is your business smaller than it should be? Are you afraid to let it grow because you’re not sure you can afford employees? Are you doing a lot of the work yourself or between you and one or two other business partners - i.e. the stereotypical “mom and pop?”

Every business starts off somewhere. Most of the time it’s the vision of a one person or a few partners and while not everyone can be a large “enterprise” all too often small businesses stay “too small” and are tied too closely to the owner. This may be fine for the owner as he or she is comfortable with the work load and income stream but I have learned from watching some situations with other companies keeping a business too small or all the tasks tied to one person can be a disservice to both family and customers.

If you are a small business owner and have a family along with a loyal customer base would everyone be taken care of if something happened to you? Even if you had a business partner be it a spouse, other family member or a business associate or friend would they know how to take care of things and keep the business running?

I know it can be hard for a business to grow for financial reasons but all to often it’s more a matter of comfort and resistance to change or dare I say fear of added responsibility. I urge you to think about going to the “next level” but instead of being overwhelmed by large steps like;

• Larger office space
• More computers
• Full-time employees
• Other large equipment investments

Instead of thinking about the large hurdles consider the following options;

• virtual “office space” through web services like Basecamp or Highrise or literally office space you can rent where you share conference rooms, Internet connections, etc. with other small businesses
• Outsource those jobs to services that specialize in such things. For example we recently signed up with a local service that does a lot of our administration, billing and other jobs that we can do but it’s not our area of expertise. This frees us up to do more production work as well as sales.
• Rent equipment instead of buying it unless you need the tools on a day to day basis.
• You may be be very skilled and have a lot of your business secrets in your head but unless someone else knows all the procedures your best assets may die with you. Consider crafting an easy to understand manual. Hire a good technical writer if you have to. (we can help with this)
• Before going the route of hiring full-time employees consider hiring freelancers who can telecommute and work with their own equipment be it a computer or other tools.

Other than the funds needed to buy new equipment or hire new people what is your greatest challenge to growing your business to a point where it will survive if you are not around anymore?