I have been reading two very interesting books in the last few weeks, the first one is called ‘Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter’, by Liz Wiseman. It is one of the best and most practical leadership books I have ever read. The second book is ‘The $100 Startup’ by Chris Guillebeau. Also a thought provoking read.
Both of these books have made me think about the problems I would like to try and solve in the future, so I wanted to write some of it down.
When starting with a blank page I always like to think about the ideal ending I would like to work towards. So my dream business would meets as many of these criteria as possible:
Internet App/Software
Clearly I am a really technology junkie, so ideally I would like to find a problem that can be solved by building a web-based application. I would like to follow a lean startup approach to try and solve it.
Skiing
I really love Skiing, so finding a problem in the skiing industry that I could work on would be first prize. I would love to spend at least a few months a year living in a mountain community. Working on a problem within the ski industry would make that really easy.
My dream business would be in the ski industry, then we can spend more time in the mountains.
Learning
I am really passionate about learning. Not, go-to-university-learn-some-academic-stuff type of learning, but a more practical learning. Something like getting people excited about getting better at something to help them improve their lives.
Challenging myself and others
This ties into the learning angle. I love challenging myself to do more, even more than I thought I might be able to do. This is well illustrated in the classic scene in Invictus, where Nelson Mandela challenges Francois Pienaar to figure out how to get the team to achieve more than what they think is possible.
This can easily be applied to working with your own staff inside a business, but is it possible to have this effect on your customers as well?
Customer Experience
I want to be really focussed on customer experience, and make sure the business I build give customers more than they expect. I also think you can change the world with customer experience, so I would like to give that a good go.
Annuity income
The ideal would be to build something that is focussed on providing annuity income. My goal would be to build a business where I could be the owner, but only be the operator/manager as long as it fits in with my personal goals. Thereafter I should be able to easily leave the business without a negative impact on the business, or the cash flow it provides me.
The more of these attributes I can find in my next business the better. My dream business would have them all!