On Demand Economy
With more people working more hours, consumers are becoming more demanding. I don’t mean that in a bad way, but we’re just too busy to be tied down to a time frame. If you don’t believe me, when was the last time your entire family sat down to a scheduled dinnertime? Instead we’ve become an on demand society and an on demand economy.
So, what does that mean for the entrepreneur of the future? More money, more markets, more customers, more products and more services. But they have to be delivered on demand.
Amazon on Demand
Amazon has been at the forefront of the on demand economy with books for years. You can order movies on demand from your TV. You can order a ride from Uber with your cell phone. And this is going to spread to many other markets. It already is. Consumers want what they want, when they want it. And if you can’t deliver, they will quickly shift to the next person or company who can.
What it means for existing businesses is that they can find new markets. For example, Amazon now has Amazon Mechanical Turks. Just the name conjures up visions of drones punching time clocks like in “Joe Vs.the Volcano”. Or my worst job ever, picking out burnt potato chips off of an assembly line.
AMT is an on demand workforce for any kind of job that requires human intelligence over computers or robots. That means that any entrepreneur will have access to a huge pool of temporary workers without having to hire full-time employees. And what that means is a lower barrier to entry for those who want to start and scale up a business with less capital. And Create for Cash is all about the bootstrapping entrepreneur with less capital.
Old Gatekeeper System Coming Down
I’m happy to see that the old gatekeeper system of the publishing world, record companies, and Hollywood in general are falling by the wayside, making way for new talent who couldn’t get in the door before. Now filmmakers, TV producers, writers, and musicians can take their art straight to the consumer, bypassing the iron gates that would have held them back in the past. And they can compete with the big guys by being in a niche and giving consumers what they want on demand.
This is the same with retail on demand. In the beginning you had to have the capital to rent pricey storefronts, along with all of the permits and regulations that went along with it. Now with ebay and Amazon you can be in business in minutes without the overhead. And you can use drop shipping services like Doba or Wholesale Central instead of having to invest a lot of money in inventory. I used to use drop shipping companies when I first started out as a manufacturer. It was a great way to get a lot of people out selling my product.
With every benefit there comes a downside. When barriers to entry go down, competition goes up. And with more competition, entrepreneurs will have to work overtime to innovate and stand out if they want to compete in the new on demand economy.