Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: business

  • The over reach

    The over reach

    Sometimes we’re on a roll, all is going well, everything we touch is successful and those around us seem not to be able to win a thing.

    Then we over-reach.

    We get smart, we get cocky, we decide one more demand or humiliation will show the other guy just how good we are.

    And everything starts to wrong, because we took things too far. We over-reached

    The greatest asset all of us can have is a little humility and respect.

    Rather than wanting everything, maybe leaving a little bit on the table for the other guy may turn out to be a wise business move.

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  • Is the problem in the cockpit?

    Is the problem in the cockpit?

    In the Daily Reckoning newsletter editor Callum Newman uses Malcolm Gladwell’s description of power relationships to draw a parallel between Korean pilots crashing planes into mountains and the economy, pointing out our politicians are like distracted, doomed aviators ignoring the obvious features they about to collide with.

    Is that fair though? In a plane the passengers are strapped in their seats and have to take their the pilots in trust, in real life we have control — all of our actions affect the vehicle that is our economy.

    Unlike a plane we can jump out and do our own thing, we can refuse to buy one good or service and we can set up a business for ourselves when we see a market that isn’t being serviced.

    Where the analogy does work though is our politicians – and many business leaders – aren’t paying attention to major demographic and economic shifts.

    The question is “why?” Most of these people aren’t stupid and they have access to better information than most of us, which is one of the reasons they are in power.

    Perhaps it’s because we don’t want to hear the truth; that our assumptions about what the state will provide and how our economy is developing are flawed.

    In many ways, particularly in a modern Western democracy, our politician are mirrors of ourselves. They tell is what they think we’d like to hear.

    The problem isn’t in the cockpit, it’s back at the boarding gate where we’re more worried whether we’ll get a packet of nuts than whether we should agree to embark on a rough journey to a destination we don’t expect.

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  • On becoming a Captive Business

    On becoming a Captive Business

    I’ve been writing a lot recently about the risks of businesses aligning their interests too closely with one or another platform, last weekend The China Law Blog discussed the opposite – being a captive customer.

    The term “captive customer” is new to me but it’s a familiar concept; in the IT industry most of us found ourselves hostage to Microsoft’s whims at one time or another and it wasn’t a good place to be.

    Many smaller businesses and consultants fall for the trap of having just one big customer which their income becomes dependent upon.

    While Dan’s point on The China Law Blog is about manufacturing, this risk is becoming even more pressing on the web where there’s a tendency to be captured by one platform or another.

    Sometimes entire industries are captured – the Search Engine Optimisation sector is wholly dependent upon whatever Google chooses to with their search algorithm. To make things worse, no SEO expert knows exactly how Google’s equations actually work.

    We’re seeing the mass media being captured in a number of ways – by granting licenses to Facebook, one suspects unwittingly, or developing content for Apple’s iPad.

    For startups depending upon cloud services or single payment platforms like PayPal there are serious risks as we saw with the co-ordinated takedown of Wikileaks.

    In nature, the animal or plant that depends on one source of food or habitat is at risk from even small changes in their environment. Be careful you aren’t a business dodo.

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  • The battle between the old and the new

    The battle between the old and the new

    “We will build an America where ‘hope’ is a new job with a paycheck, not a faded word on an old bumper sticker” – Mitt Romney, US Republican Presidential candidate

    “What immediate measures can be taken to protect jobs?” – French President Nicolas Sarkozy

    “We want to be countries that made cars” – Kim Carr, Australian Minister for Manufacturing

    Around the world the forces of protectionism are stirring to shield fading industries, businesses and fortunes from economic reality.

    The most immediate target in this battle are the new industries that threaten the old.

    It’s no coincidence US lawmakers want to introduce laws that will cripple the Internet in order to favour music distributors, that the US and New Zealand governments work together to shut down a cloud sharing service or that failing Australian retailers call on their government to change tax rules in order to prop up their fading sales.

    The old industries appear to have the advantage; they are rich, they have political power and – most importantly for politicians – they employ lots of voters.

    We shouldn’t under estimate just how far the managers and owners of the challenged industries will go to protect their failing business models, unwanted product lines and outdated work methods, which isn’t surprising as their wealth and status is built upon them.

    Eventually they will lose, just as the luddites fighting the loom mills and the lords fighting the railway lines did.

    The question for society and individuals is do we want to be part of yesterday’s fading industries or part of tomorrow’s economy.

    We need to let our political leaders know where we’d our societies to go before they make the wrong choices.

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  • Exposure exposed

    Exposure exposed

    A few years back a client of mine was delighted to receive a phone call from a television producer offering exposure for his business on a national TV program.

    The offer was Jeff, who is a builder, would donate his company’s work to a television home improvement show and in return Jeff’s business would get a mention in the credits as well as some coverage in the program.

    Jeff agreed, had new t-shirts for his labourers printed and they did three days work helping celebrity gardeners refurbish a backyard.

    The guys had a ball, the labourers chatted up the presenter and the pretty production assistants and for a day or so Jeff felt like he was in Hollywood.

    A few weeks later the show went to air – there were a couple of glimpses of Jeff’s guys doing stuff and if you were quick with the freeze button you could pick out part of Jeff’s business name and phone number.

    When the show finished, Jeff’s business appeared for a split second which was difficult to read if you were lightning fast with the remote control. Not a great return for several thousand dollars of labour and materials.

    That was an expensive lesson for Jeff.

    Recently I heard of a business that was asked to contribute some of products to a newspaper – they wanted an ongoing commitment that would cost the business quite a bit of money.

    For the newspaper this is a great deal – they tie in a promotion for their readers that costs them nothing. The business is left out of pocket with little upside except for some “exposure” of dubious value.

    We see this repeated every day by dozens of businesses being seduced into offering fat discounts for group buying sites. The salesman’s spiel is that a prominent offer will get exposure on their email that goes out to thousands of people.

    Most of these promises are nonsense; giving away your time or work for free is the most expensive thing a business can do and if it’s going to work it has to be part of a strategic plan.

    It’s been said all publicity is good publicity, but that’s not really true if there’s no return on a substantial effort.

    Blindly giving things away in the hope of getting some free publicity isn’t a good business practice and those who urge you to do so aren’t acting your best interests as Jeff learned.

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