Scarcity, Abundance, Solving the worlds greatest challenges

It appears to me that scarcity is only really a problem of access. There is abundance all around us, yet some can access it and some can’t and it’s a universal law of nature that we’re shifting. Example: drought in the cape right next to an ocean.. it seems crazy that so much water is right there. We can look at it, surf it, swim in it, taste it.. yet, the ground within meters of it thirsts for it. A beggar at a traffic light touches a lamborghini as it pulls up.. yet he can’t access that wealth. We produce enough food to feed the whole world population, yet we still have people dying of hunger while others die of obesity. The sun produces abundant, free energy, yet we experience electricity deficiency and continue to burn fossil fuels at alarming rates. When we solve the accessibility problems, that’s when we change the world.

How do we solve them? Peter Diamandis has a few ideas on this: http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_diamandis_abundance_is_our_future

Technology is continuing to become the resource liberating tool and as we develop technologies on the exponential curve, accessibility is becoming less and less of a problem.

But there’s a pattern I’m beginning to see emerge in fast growth businesses. Here are some of the characters of the businesses that are gaining massive traction in very short amounts of time:

1. Look for abundance currently untapped — where there is great excess supply of something that requires very little energy input to create massive results. Think Airbnb. They saw an abundance of rooms. They’re worth more than the Hilton Hotel group at over $20billion and they don’t own any property! They created a platform that created accessibility to people looking for good, value-for-money accommodation and people with excess capacity of space in their homes and connected them via the platform. Fucking brilliant. There are more examples out there, and timing can play a part. Airbnb’s growth was boosted by the global financial crisis and people simply needing to create extra income out of their homes. Uber is another great example. A global people transportation business worth more than Delta airlines and they don’t own any vehicles.
2. Ride a long term trend. Example: Real estate investment. Long term averages in the USA show house price growth to average over 9% per year, even taking corrections in the market into account. I’m talking 50 year averages here. But, there are ways to invest in real estate to beat the averages and create a much more sustainable, long term, economically resilient portfolio. Multi-family real estate is one of those trends. Fundamentals are simple — people still need a place to live, no matter what their income, what their businesses do or what their jobs do. This means, tenants will always be plentiful especially in sectors where the trends are in your favour, like urban multifamily apartment blocks. These continue to perform and produce income for investors, no matter what the economic times are doing because they’re riding multiple trends simultaneously. The movement of millenials into urban environments where a live/work/play lifestyle is easy. They don’t want to own assets, to rental suits them. They want to move around easily, so 1 year lease terms with simple break clauses suits their lifestyle. Walking distance to restaurants, work etc. is a massive plus point. Amenities like pools and an onsite gym are great, especially if a millenial doesn’t have to look after it himself! All these trends show that over the long term, multifamily real estate investment will beat the averages, especially in gateway cities.
3. People are social animals. When we look back at the initial uptake of the internet, many had this vision they could work from home all the time. Never have to rock up at an office for a meeting, just Skype or log into a webinar. It all sounded wonderful.. yet, all the big tech companies like Facebook, Google and Amazon have massive, very advanced work communities they’ve built to bring people together to feed off each others energy and creativity. Now that the tech is strong and stable enough for us to be able to work from anywhere, anytime, we still choose to work together in an office-like environment. That’s because, in general, people like hanging out with other people, and ideas grow in these environments. Tapping into abundance requires us to share our ideas as fast as possible, and the best way to do that is still in person. When we start looking at the development in augmented reality and virtual reality, when they solve the actual problem which in my opinion is personal proximity, and make that lifelike, then maybe we’d be able to pull off the work from anywhere scenario. Until then, being in the same space is still the best way to tap into abundance.
4. Stop learning and start doing. Those that are tapping the abundance gong are constantly learning, but by doing and interacting with other people doing, more than trying to gain formal education in any one thing. Cross pollination of ideas is happening more and more and following a formal education path is going to set any entrepreneur back, as those doing will be so far ahead of the curve when the learner decides to get busy that they’ll never catch up. Think.. the hare can never catch the tortoise. Furthermore, those that want to thrive in an abundant universe are figuring out this one thing: Coaches, mentors and other successful people are there to guide you, but only you will be able to bring your creation to life, and at some point, you’ve got to leave the teachers behind and walk your path alone and have faith that your intuition will bear fruit. You can never lose though! You either succeed, or you learn something.
5. Intention and fail fast. We read a lot about this stuff in blogs, but here’s my take on it. A simple formula to ensure you either succeed or fail fast. It’s called the 60/30/200% rule. For any new idea, if you can’t bring it to market fast and test it out, you will get left behind by someone else doing something the same, similar or better than you. This means you need a formula to build on ideas and let them go fast enough to allow you space to work on the next one to increase your probability of success. This is the 60/30/200% rule. 60 days development. 30 Days launch. 200% return on investment. This time in cash. If it doesn’t make 200% in the first 30 days, can it and move onto the next idea. This creates so much focus that your chances of succeeding are much greater than trying to develop something to perfection before launch. Also, it gives you fast user feedback, where you can enhance your product quickly to suit market demands. On top of this, if you can prove actual, real world results of a 200% return on investment from the idea, you can get VC capital much easier. It also creates an environment with very specific criteria that force you to do things well, do them quickly, measure them properly and make money from it immediately and then fail at it quickly if it’s not working. Do 10 of those and you’ll know what fail fast really means. (This rule courtesy Dr Hannes Dreyer)

Abundance is all around us, and creating the accessibility to it means we approach the problems of the world from a much different mindset. It seems far easier to think about a big problem we face as the human race as simply a technological accessibility problem than facing a big problem that’s never been solved before thinking you’ll change the world. Also, it allows for incremental wins that add up. Elon Musk wants to put humans on Mars and other planets, but he needed to get a rocket to space first. Then get someone to pay him to do that.. enter NASA and the international space station. Now he’s got a billion dollar space business with mega-clients providing cashflow to keep the innovation going to get him to Mars. His incremental wins are massive, but his goal is massive. Think along those lines when building something and abundance is yours for the taking... and the sharing.