Guide: Part 2: Exactly how we lose By Johnny Cash on May 26, 2018 | |
The definitive guide to winning & losing in empowr Visit the guide's table of contents here Part 2: Exactly how we lose Welcome back. Thus far, we discussed how citizens winning... ... leads to the empowr economy winning... ... which leads to the coi n winning... ... which loops right back to citizens winning even more... ... and so on and so forth. But, what can go wrong? There are many things that can go wrong. Let’s discuss a few of them so that we’re always thinking and always on the lookout. By using our collective intelligence to not just find ways to accelerate the win... ... but also to identify potholes and problems before we hit them... ... we are also increasing our ultimate speed and chances of winning. Perhaps best said by Andy Grove, co-founder of Intel:  So let's get right to it. What can go wrong?
A1. Our citizens try hard but can’t succeed...
... because our products are not yet good enough. The empowr products, technologies and platform are the enablers of the empowr economy. Without them being good enough yet, citizens would not be able to succeed in empowr. So, we must wond er if our products are good enough, yet. Especially since we know that there is a long list of items such as missing features, and bugs, that are waiting for engineers to get to them. So, before our engineers are able to get to those issues and resolve them all -- AND build all the features you've been asking for... ... is the platform good enough today, to allow our hard working citizens to succeed? Our opinion is that our products ARE good enough today for our citizens to succeed. Why do we think that? Because the products are already well-tested. Sure, there are a lot of improvements that can, should and will be made, including issues and bugs that we’re anxiously wanting to fix. But remember, a bout a year ago, our marketplace and economy were growing at break-neck speed... .... with sales literally doubling month after month... ... with a platform that was not as good as it is today. So, while the marketplace features are nowhere near perfect yet... ... we already have a lot of experience with them and therefore know they are sufficient for the empowr economy to explode once again. Of course we’ll be rushing to further improve the marketplace features. And with everyone’s earnings (coins) going up in value... ... we can have confidence that the economy will want to grow even more quickly than last time... ... which, as reported recently, is already happening. In other words, we already have the technology, platform, logistics, experience and history to know that the empowr economy can and will grow at break-neck speeds. And we are not blind to the fact that we still have a long way to go, to improve everything... ... and, as resources allow, will be doing everything in our power to do so. So what else can go wrong? A2. Our business model is wrong; our economy won’t ignite This is a valid concern. But again, I’ll refer us to back to point 1A, above. We’re in an incredibly unique position of knowing, from experience, that our business model, products and technologies do work. It's rare that a company can predict with accuracy, ahead of time, how it's platform and usership will perform and grow. But we know, since we've had the opportunity to test everything with hundreds of thousands of alpha users last year, as discussed. In addition, ever since we re-introduced bidding into the daily goals, the business model and economy have, in fact, re-ignited and are following the same growth patterns as last year, as recently discussed. A3. Our citizens don't even try In the weeks since we launched the new coin, I have read a small number of comments from people saying that, for example, they don't want to bid. They don't want to offer products and services. They just want to post and share -- and they don't want to share (like) very much. They want to lower the requirements for bidding and sharing but still, of course, want to earn. Therefore, it is a legitimate concern that maybe we are saddled with a community that mostly only wants to "extract value"... ... but is mostly unwilling to contribute to the creation of the value. When I read such comments, this becomes a legitim ate concern in my mind. A community that only wants to extract value but is unwilling to create value is doomed, of course. Despite seeing some of these comments, I believe it is highly unlikely that our citizens won't get to work. Why? Because most of our citizens have already gotten back to work. The statistics coming out of our servers don't lie. Yes, sadly, we seem to have attracted back a few (or attracted some new) citizens that don’t understand some of the basic facts. Some lack particular knowledge, which is understandable and is a big part of why we’re having this discussion today. Again, this small minority of people are communicating their belief and desire that empowr should be a place where everyone is earning... ... but have no or only small required activities that create economic value... ... activities such as bidding, listing and selling. Look: Posting photos, by itself, has virtually zero economic value. Remember, the definition of an economy is: The production, distribution and consumption of goods and services. In empowr, posting and sharing are used as a familiar means to introduce new members to empowr, so t hat the community and processes have time to, little by little, teach them how to actually become productive members of the economy... ... meaning produce (= provide products and services) ... distribute (= share and bid) ... and consume (= purchase). Without our economy and economic activities growing, our coin and our citizens will not succeed. And that’s why we have listing and bidding as part of our daily goals. It is a well-tested (by us) fact that, the lower the requirement to do those things (listing, bidding and selling) the less those things will occur... ... and the slower the empowr economy will build and win.
So, again, while this concern -- that our community won't even try -- should certainly be a concern for most new communi ties...
... in empowr we have had the very good fortune of having a community that has been growing, slowly but surely, over a long period of time. Over those years, with every wave of new citizens, as soon as many found that there wasn't a "get rich quick" opportunity for them in empowr, they departed... ... with only the people staying that were in it for the right reasons and the long haul.
So, over the years, little by little and layer by layer, a strong foundation of the right people has been forming...
... with that foundation today far outweighing, outnumbering and overpowering the folks that lack the knowledge -- the care -- or both -- to understand that there is no such thing as a 'free lunch'. This reminds me of this quote by Thomas Edison's, the inventor of the light bulb, recorded sound, movies, etc:  A4: empowr gets (or is) infested... ... by citizens that lack motivation and/or the will to succeed, and don't get to work... ... specifically people that were given large numbers of founder coins (for free)... ... and these people will just be sitting around, waiting to transfer out al l their founder coins, while letting others do the actual work needed to ignite the virtuous cycle. Rest assured, those that are not doing their part, will not succeed. They will not be transferring out coins. The system will, slowly but surely, gently remove them from the scene until they move on and out. That’s just a fact of life – in empowr -- and every where. Look - there’s simply no magical way for a community and economy to flourish without people being willing to work for it. Yes, we are very fortunate to have this incredible opportunity – this once-in-a-lifetime situation that we all now find ourselves in... ... an opportunity that was created by hard work on the part of thousands that came before us... ... and that was also crea ted by good luck... ... because the world has woken up to the power of one of our inventions (virtual currency)... ... that just happens to be at the center – the core – of so much of all the features we’ve been building.
But we’re not done yet – there’s still much more work to do...
... and so, the people that haven’t gotten to work will, unfortunately, not succeed. But wait. For the people that don’t want to work: Won’t their founder coins and legacy coins continue to vest, so that they can constantly transfer out coins each month? No. As their coins vest – or even before they do -- they’ll be eaten up by the monthly dormant account fee. They will never transfer out a single coin – or use them to shop in the empowr marketplace -- if they are not adding value. That is why we suggested, and the community strongly agreed with, the strategy of placing a fee on dormant accounts. Remember, 1% of founder coins vest monthly. But the dormant account fee is 2.9%. So all the coins (in dormant accounts) that vest monthly, will be eaten up by the dormant account fees before they mature but even before they vest. That means that dormant account won't even be able to shop in the marketplace. So, along with the fact that non-productive people will not be sitting around, doing nothing but taking away from the community's hard work... ... in addition, the people actually doing the work, will be even bigger winners. Why? All of the coins coming ba ck to empowr via the dormant account fees will be added to the mission wheel, and distributed to the people doing their part to build the empowr economy. When will that happen? Immediately. In the coming days, as dormant fees begin to kick in, those coins will automatically go into the mission wheel. More on that in a moment. We want everyone to succeed We want everyone to be productive. It is to everyone's interest that no one becomes dormant. Therefore, we must all do what we can to help educate all our citizens... ... and give them the information that they may be lacking. A lack of information may be a partial cause of some citizens behaving in th e fashion described above when they have such an incredible once-in-a-lifetime opportunity staring them in the face. We will discuss a lot more on what we will do to help and educate them, in a moment. A5. Our coin fails Since we have confidence in the growth of the empowr economy, it follows that the empowr coin will also succeed. And, separately, there are more things we can do to ensure the coin ‘catches fire’ – and does so sooner rather than later. As promised, more on that topic soon. However, there are bad things that can happen to our coin, such as the failure of the Ethereum platform, on which we have chosen to partner with. We believe that it is unlikely that Ethereum as a platform will fail. But regardless, that possibility is one of the reasons that we have chosen to move into cryptocurrency with an ‘off-chain’ and ‘on-chain’ approach... ... meaning that coins are kept off the blockchain (and kept within empowr’s platform) until they are ready to be transferred out. Without boring everyone with too many details, on average Ethereum processes about 750,000 transactions per day. The most transactions the Ethereum platform has ever processed in a single day was 1.35 M (on Jan 4th, 2018). In contrast, empowr processes tens of millions of transactions every single day, and on our highest volume day we have processed well over 100M transactions in a single day – nearly 100 times Ethereum’s best day. So, by keeping most of our transactions off-chain (as in, off of Ethereum) we can grow as much as we need to, without being held back by Ethereum’s growing pains... ... which we can understand and relate to because scalability issues are something that empowr has already spent years working through and overcoming. Keeping most of our transactions off-chain provides m ore time to the Ethereum Foundation to improve its scalability and ability to grow. That strategy also allows us to – if we ever needed to -- more easily move away from Ethereum to another platform, including launching our blockchain as many of you have suggested we should do. To be clear, a complete collapse of Ethereum would not spell disaster for empowr. We are not dependent on Ethereum to function and scale, and can easily move away from their platform thanks to the many years we have spent building, maintaining and scaling up our own co re technologies. A6. Faster, more nimble competitors arise And finally, every technology company is always at risk of not innovating fast enough and being run over by faster, more nimble competitors. There is always a smaller company around the horizon that’s hungrier and able to move faster. In this area, however, we believe our strategy and capability to combat this risk will prove to be very effective, as well as incredibly difficult for other companies to copy. In particular, I am talking about our democratic approach. By not being accountable to Wall Street investors... ... which was incredibly difficult to accomplish as you know – together building a company without taking a single penny from investors.... ... we are now uniquely able to become fully accountable to our citizens... ... which means you -- our community -- will soon have more power to take matters in your own hands every time the company isn’t listening well enough or moving fast enough. That will enable us to be much more effective at constantly re-inventing ourselves in the future -- time and time again – as needed. But we are not fully democratic yet. Which means we are not yet fully exploiting the power of that which we have all paid the price to enable ( = democracy). And that’s why we must commit to moving forward... ... as soon as possible... ... with the next phase of our democratic processes, as discussed earlier this month. More on this topic too, in this guide. On the topic of losing -- that's it. There are many other things that can go wrong, some small and some large, many of which we are focused on, every day and to differi ng degrees. To be clear, there is a much longer list of things that can go wrong. Everything from technical and other challenges that are within our locus of control... ... to outside forces that, at first, might seem beyond our control... ... such as regulatory issues in any country (wher e governments might have a issue with their citizens becoming part of an economy, democracy and/or currency that might be becoming more powerful than that of their own... ... or concerned that their citizens are being lead by leaders (our president, senators and congresspersons) that might be becoming, little by little, more powerful and relevant to their people's lives than their own leaders are... ... there are a good number of understood and not-yet-understood challenges awaiting us.
So how can we be motivated and confident about our success, knowing that there are many challenges and people that will attempt to get in our way? The answer for many of our community members (citizens, success coaches and employees) is: Where There's a Will, There's a Way Also known in empowr as WTAWTAW -- pronounced 'W-Taw-Taw'. WTAWTAW is one of empowr's core values as an organization. Look, as long as we're surrounded by people with strong wills to succeed... ... every time we are confronted by an obstacle, an issue, a new difficulty... ... we will always find a way.
Don't believe me? Just ask anyone that's been in empowr for many years... ... or even as little as 1 year. They will tell you that, somehow, no matter what challenge comes our way, we seem to always find a solution... ... and we then proceed to pay the price to enable the solution - no matter what difficulties that poses. If no such solutions exist, the community dreams them up. It invents what's not yet considered possible. (Don't believe me? Check out the empowr community's patented inventions). If the solutions are expensive, the community pools its resources together. The most recent 'way forward', of course, was the community's discovery and investment into launching our own cryptocurrency coin... ... which was both conceptualized by the empowr community (meaning the idea came from empowr citizens, who first communicated this idea using the blog comments)... ... as well as funded by the community (by citizens and success coaching agreeing to receive no cash outs and empowr's employees agreeing to receive no paychecks during the duration of the process). Each and every time we stare death in the face and come out victorious... ... our will to win grows even stronger. And our mutual respect for each other grows even further. Therefore, the next time an obstacle appears... ... no matter how mighty that obstacle may be -- or may appear to be... ... the chances that we will look it in the eye and not stop working until we defeat it too... ... becomes an even more hardened, solidifed and galvinized 100%. -------------- OK, now that we know what winning -- and losing – look like... ... I know you agree that we must do EVERYTHING in our power to ensure we win. And so, together, with that singular object ive in mind... ... and with all the required background information also now top-of-mind ... ... we are ready to move forward to the second half of our discussion... ... where we’ll look at what few, specific things we can do to signficantly accelerate our speed down the path to our big win.
Next: Part 3: How we accelerate and secure the win
You can also visit the guide's table of contents here (more) ►
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