Hop E Works Community

If you want to be an entrepreneur, who better to study than Michael Dell? He is an inspiration to entrepreneurs everywhere. Starting in his college dorm room building computers, his understanding of business has made him an icon of success in the arena of technology businesses.

In two keynote addresses given almost a decade ago, Michael Dell defined three principles or concepts for successful internet businesses. Much of what he suggested is now standard practice and in some cases has been taken further than he probably imagined.

Theses principles are sometimes referred to as the 3 C’s. They are content, commerce and community. Careful study of these three principles can help entrepreneurs, those with home based businesses, and network marketers.

The first of the 3 C’s is content.

How did Michael Dell define content? Listen to the words he uses to define it for the Detroit Economic Club on November 1, 1999, “The first stage of content means providing compelling information. This is how we started our online operations in 1993, when we put our technical databases online for customers to access. It was a relatively simple start, but it showed us the tremendous interest from our customers.”

At the keynote address at the Southwest Government Technology Conference in 2000, he made similar suggestions to the ones he made earlier in that Detroit meeting.

He suggested this: “By content, we mean bringing information online. Anytime you have a form, a manual, or a document, put it online. This is the foundation of any Internet strategy. Once we brought information online, it became clear to us where the opportunities were in the transaction world: simple things like order status and commerce, and we have added more complex things over time. The key, again, is that it is experiential and you learn by doing.”

If you want to be an entrepreneur, what is the content you already have, what content do you need to develop?
Look at your present or future business from the content perspective? Define your content. Learn from those who have created that kind of content. Do what they did to create it.

You need products or services to provide to customers. Make a list of the content they will need to explain, troubleshoot, access, or know about your goods and services. A viable business start-up needs content tied to real-world products or services.

The second of the 3 C’s is commerce.

Read how Mr. Dell defined it in Detroit, “The next stage is commerce, which should be thought of as all transactions, not just buying things over the web. In fact, our first activity in this area had nothing to do with purchasing. It was simply order status.”

A few months later at the conference in the Southwest he reiterated, “The second stage is commerce. You should think of this as any kind of transactions. Our first experiment with transactions really had nothing to do with “commerce.” It was an online order status tool. We knew we were on to something when, in the first week, five thousand customers used this tool — and we didn’t even advertise that it was out there. This formed the foundation of our online sales effort.”

He continued, “Our ultimate goal is to deepen relationships with customers by providing added convenience, efficiency, and cost savings, and a wider array of services. The Internet creates an opportunity to move these key transactions online and drive transaction cost to almost zero.”

Does your commerce process resonate with Michael Dell’s suggestion? Think about the last quote. “The ultimate goal is to deepen relationships.” Commerce aspects may reduce costs and increase efficiency, but with a purpose. The ultimate goal is C # 3 which is community.

How important is community, the third C?

According to Mr. Dell, “The final stage is developing an online community. We are building two-way relationships over the web with both our customers and our suppliers.” – Detroit Economic Club.

He went on to express the goal of “establishing communities of suppliers and end users that share common interests”.

At the later conference in the Southwest he ended by observing, “In summary, the Internet is changing the face of the entire economic and social structure of not only this country but the entire world, and governments have a great opportunity to embrace it. We are seeing a transition from a brick-and-mortar government to an online government. The advantages will include things like velocity, efficiency, and a better customer experience.”

The internet has matured since Michael Dell first talked about the 3 C’s, but as a model they still make sense. If anything, community has become even more important. They are not a grocery list to pick one to keep and one to leave.

Today community is so important that it has ushered in a rebirth of web marketing, often called Web 2.0. It depends on social marketing, blogs, myspace and other elements to build that community. Content and commerce both serve the final C of community. It is in community where loyalities, relationships, and trust are built.

Where there is community there are repeat customers. Community-building is a vital skill to have if you want to be an entrepreneur.

Society is dealing with a problem these days where people can’t get themselves to help other people in their community. Plenty of opportunities exist for everyone to go out and volunteer, but it just doesn’t seem to happen as much as it should. Volunteering should be taught to young kids, so that it is instilled in them from the beginning. All schools should have mandated community service programs that require a minimum dedication of time to good causes by their students.

Despite starting at a young age, adults seem to lose the drive to help others or just can’t seem to find the time. Unfortunately, the issues of family, work and other personal matters might prevent them from taking the time to volunteer. In reality, everyone can find a bit of time to dedicate to a good cause and help someone out. People need to develop a habit of doing this and eventually it will become second nature to them.

It might be surprising to some, but both parties generally benefit from a volunteering relationship. The person being helped clearly gains, but the volunteer also tends to feel satisfaction after donating their time to a good cause. Seeing the happiness in someone’s eyes after you’ve helped them is priceless for a volunteer. The amount of help may not matter as long as you went out of your way to do it.

Friends and family sometimes will even follow people who volunteer and end up volunteering themselves. This can have an exponential effect on society and cause more and more people to help others. There are plenty of options for volunteering and the tools that are currently in place can help facilitate the process even further. As time goes on, hopefully more and more people will realize the importance of dedicating time to volunteer and make their community a lot better.

As a college student who’s dedicated to making the most out of your education, the last thing that you feel like doing on summer break is pursuing more education. After a semester of doing more studying and attending less parties than you anticipated, spending May through August palling around with friends, vacationing and visiting nightspots is the reasonable thing to do. But what if you could spend the summer having fun while pursuing non-academic education. If you’re interested but you’re wondering how much summer fun you’ll have; rest assured, we’re not talking about something that requires study; we’re talking about something that could boost your resume while bringing more excitement to your summer than bar hopping or hitting the beach: performing community service.

At this point, you’re probably wondering how volunteer work could be as fun as how you spent last summer. But we’re not talking about volunteering at a food pantry; we’re talking about community service ideas that will keep you engaged and still allow you to celebrate summer. In addition to needing volunteers in the service areas like food distribution, prepared meals, health care, etc., community service organizations also need volunteers in service areas and geographic locations that aren’t commonly associated with volunteer work. To explain what we mean; below, we list two big ways that service work could make your summer far more interesting than if you didn’t perform it.

Incredible Vacation Opportunities

If you contact a well connected community service organization, you’ll find that there’s a need for service projects and service workers all over the globe, and the news gets better: instead of having to pay thousands of dollars in airfare and travel accommodations, you can get most if not all of your travel costs covered by organizations that donate to worldwide service projects. In addition, you can also start your own fundraising campaign and achieve success by contacting a list of resources provided by a service organization. Have you ever wanted to travel somewhere that’s off the beaten tourist path? By searching out service needs and projects in the country of your choice, chances are that you can take a supremely original vacation for very little money.

Incredible Career Opportunities

Without a degree, you’ll find it hard to get meaningful experience in your field; and without meaningful experience, you’ll find it hard to get a job in your field. While many students think that having a degree means that they’ll get hired after graduation, that’s simply not the case. Employers want experience, and not low-level experience. So, what’s a sophomore or junior to do? If you take advantage of the right volunteer opportunities, you can volunteer for projects that let you use your education in a pivotal role. Offering your time and talents for free means that you won’t be competing for a paid position, which means that you’ll have little competition in the first place.