This weeks Typical Business podcast theme is - Farming is for suckers. More importantly, are you a farmer, an artisan or are you effectively running your business?
Now before you think - hang on, farmers are hard working honest people doing it tough! I know, I know... The reference is specifically in relation to a group of people that played the online game 'World of Warcraft'. In this podcast episode we break down what farmers did, and just why they were referred to as suckers. More importantly, we're going to take a closer look at those farmers and see if you can identify with any of them.
This weeks snippets;
My Favorite Tools In My Toolkit - Project Bubble
Project Bubble is a cloud based software solution for project management that helps me track projects and gets things done. It has a terrific user interface that allows for drag and drop management, user assignment to each task and a quick visual guide with stoplights - Green, Amber and Red.
Each task can have sub-tasks which are used as a check-list. You can add comments, tags and notes to each task which is great for later reference.
Plus, this is in the cloud, meaning anywhere you have Internet access, you can use Project Bubble. Perfect for when you may travel, as your projects can simply run without delays.
This week’s Book Review; Platform – by Michael Hyatt
This is a fantastic down to earth guide that will help you understand the steps you need to consider if you’re going to launch your own platform. Your platform could be; business coaching, how to knit kids clothes, children’s story books, make up professionals, moonshiners – whatever.
If you're looking for a general business book, this isn't it. But if you're wanting to build your own platform to promote your passion, then I don't think you could have a better start than with this book.
My rating: 5/5 stars for anyone wanting to launch their own platform
Main Podcast - Farming Is For Suckers!
World of Warcraft is a virtual world but has a lot of similarities to the real world we live in. It has an economy. People buy and sell. People craft. People do quests together and raid and form guilds. There are different ranks or social classes within guilds.
A FARMER;
What is a farmer? A farmer is someone who would spend time in the virtual world, running around collecting raw materials that could be used to fashion items using crafting.
They would gather say ’20 thistle leaves’ and then sell a stack of 20 thistle leaves on the auction house for a price.
In my analogy today, these farmers represent employees. They do the mundane tasks for minimum wages.
ARTISANS / CRAFTERS;
The people that would buy those items were artisans/crafters. The idea being that the crafters would craft a new item, and then use it themselves or on-sell it at the auction house.
Most crafters would actually do the whole process – they’d farm the materials, then craft a new item (say a weapon) and then sell that weapon on the auction house.
The problem being, a lot of crafters would sell the new weapon at the same combined price of all the materials or worse – LESS than the cost to put all the items together.
These represent a lot of solo-prenuers today or sole traders. They tend to do everything and often cut their prices making minimum profit.
BUSINESS OWNERS;
Finally, there were the really profitable artisans/crafters. Those that NEVER spent time farming. Instead, they would buy the materials from the farmers, then craft rare items and sell them for double or triple the cost to produce the items – making a clear profit.
