Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Tag: business

  • ABC Nightlife: The next wave of smartphones

    ABC Nightlife: The next wave of smartphones

    The world of mobile phones is getting busy again as a whole new range of smartphones appear. Paul Wallbank joined Rod Quinn for ABC Nightlife on October 20 to discuss what the new smartphone wars mean for home and business users.

    We’ll be going to air from 10pm, Eastern Australian time across Australia on ABC Local Radio’s Nightlife to look at the following questions;

    • Why were people disappointed with Apple’s iPhone 4S that was released a few weeks ago?
    • The big competition are the Google Android phones, what are they doing?
    • What’s happened to Nokia? They seemed to have lost their domination.
    • Microsoft were the other big player, what are they doing?
    • How are the smartphones changing business?
    • Shopping centres seem to be jumping on board with various social media checkins. What are those?
    • There’s been a push to online payments, how are the smartphones affecting this?
    • Are smartphones going to be the big buy for Christmas?
    • What are the best plans for consumers and business?
    • How do people deal with telco disputes?

    The podcast from the program is available from at Nightlife website, and some of the information we mentioned can be found here;

    Dealing with Telco complaints

    We’ll be adding more resources in the next few days, the next ABC Nightlife spot is on 23 November and our events page will have more details. If you have any suggestions for future programs or comments on the last show, please let us know as we love your feedback.

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  • The agents of change

    The agents of change

    It’s understandable technologists see technology as driving change. Often it’s true – technologies do build or destroy businesses, alter economies and collapse empires.

    Sometimes though there’s more to change than a new technology changing the economy and while it’s tempting to credit innovations like the web, social media and cloud computing with many of the changes we’re seeing in the world, we have to consider some other factors at work.

    The end of the 40 year credit boom

    In the 1960s, the United States started creating credit to pay for the Vietnam war; they never stopped and after the 2001 recession and terrorist attacks the money supply was kept particularly loose.

    The worldwide credit boom allowed all of us –Greek hairdressers, Irish home borrowers, Australian electronics salesmen, US bankers and pretty well everyone else in the Western world – to live beyond our means.

    In 2008, the start of the Great Recession saw the end of that period and now the economy is deleveraging. Consumers are reluctant to borrow and businesses struggle to find funds to borrow even if they want to.

    Any business plans built on the idea of almost unlimited spending growth are doomed. The era of massive consumer spending growth driven by easy credit is over and the days of expecting a plasma TV in every room are gone.

    The aging population

    An even bigger challenge is that our societies are getting older, the assumption we have an endless supply of cheap labour is being challenged as a global race for talent develops.

    The lazy assumption that economic growth can be driven by building houses and infrastructure to meet increased demands will be found wanting as the Western world’s populations fail to grow at the rates required to power the construction industries.

    Our societies are maturing and increased economic growth and wealth is going to have to come from clever use of our resources.

    Innovations in computers and the Internet – along with other technologies like biotech, clean energy and materials engineering – will help us meet those challenges but they are tools to cope with our transforming societies, not the agents of change themselves.

    Had  tools like social media come along in the 1970s or 80s they probably would have been massive drivers for change, just like the motor car and television were earlier in the 20th Century. In the early 21st Century they have been overtaken by history.

    Smart businesses, along with clever governments and communities, will use tools like social media, local search and cloud computing with the demographic and economic changes, but we shouldn’t think for a minute the underlying challenges will be business as usual.

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  • Do you really want help from the government?

    Do you really want help from the government?

    Pity the public servant who stands up in front of a room and asks a bunch of business owners, executives or managers what they want from government.

    While there will be plenty of comments about improved procurement, less red tape and reduced fees you can be sure there’ll be plenty of demands that the government ought to subsidise something – anything – that business does.

    It’s notable how free enterprise, small government and low taxation loving business people will  drop their copies of Atlas Shrugged and barge their way to the feeding trough and the slightest scent of taxpayer money wafting in their direction.

    But is government money really good for a business? In many cases it isn’t.

    You run a business, not work in a government department

    “Who pays the piper, calls the tune.” The whole idea of running a business is that you are the boss, so why do you want to answer to a government department?

    If you’re self employed or just opened a startup, one of the main reasons for doing so is because you decided you no longer want to work for the man. A government grant may well open up a whole new world of paperwork that leaves you wondering why you ever left the cubicle.

    The dependency culture

    One of the dangers of government funding is if you are successful, you’ll find yourself hooked on it. Quickly you become better at filling in funding applications than delivering products your customers want. The Aussie film industry is a good example of this.

    Governments are behind the innovation curve

    Public servants are not employed to take risks, this is a good thing as it’s our money they are handling.

    Because governments are risk adverse they’ll only recognise an industry – or a problem – long after it has become established.

    If you find you are on the government’s help list, it might be time to consider an exit from a troubled industry.

    Do you really have a business?

    Many new business owners expect the government should do something to assist them in their start up phase. This is a common complaint from under capitalised proprietors.

    Given the massive subsidises given out to the banks and other big corporations since the start of the great recession, this attitude can almost be excused but we can already see how well that strategy works.

    If you really need a subsidy to run your business, then it’s time to consider whether you should be in business at all.

    This isn’t to say all government funding is bad; well thought out programs help viable businesses with things like export assistance, skills development and employing young or disabled workers. There are many of these although the process of identifying what a viable business is usually eliminates the newest and smallest enterprises.

    What is notable with the successful government programs is they address a specific need, they don’t have onerous paperwork and they are no substitute for a healthy, living cashflow and profit.

    Overall though, if you really want government money then take a job with the public service. It’s a lot easier than scrabbling for grants.

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  • Survivor Bias – the danger of learning the wrong lessons

    Survivor Bias – the danger of learning the wrong lessons

    A recent blog post by Chris Guillebeau on his terrrific Art of Non-Conformity site looked at the value of qualifications.

    Chris’ post is a great read and it’s obviously worked for him, though we always should keep in mind with these stories that we’re reading about someone who has managed to make it work.

    We all have a lot to learn from Chris and other success stories however the winners’ tales are only half the story; that for every success who dropped out, started a business or travelled the world and did well there are many more who – for whatever reason – didn’t.

    That’s part of the equation of risk, that for every success there are failures. For risking failure, the successes are rewarded – despite the best efforts of our political and corporate leaders to engineer away the risks and leave only the rewards for those best connected or placed to take them.

    For every winner, it’s also worthwhile listening to those who didn’t quite succeed. The lessons from “failure” are probably stronger and just as enlightening.

    Taking a jump, quitting your job, starting a business, becoming a freelancer or travelling the world isn’t for everybody. Many of us are happy staying in the cubicle or the workshop or the village and leading a comfortable, secure and safe life.

    Societies need a balance of the risk taking adventurers and the anchors of solid, secure working people. Neither is wrong, neither is bad and a balance of the two is essential for a healthy, prosperous and sustainable society.

    It’s not to say we shouldn’t take risks, just understand the dangers are there and your appetite for living with uncertainty before making a big step into business, travel or whatever it is where you see the opportunity.

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  • Do you have customers or just users?

    Do you have customers or just users?

    “I was on your mailing list for general info, for spams and scams etc which were helpful. Suddenly it changed and now the business format is not useful to me” said an lady when unsubscribing from one of my newsletter mailing lists.

    The lady concerned had been on one of the mailing lists for over ten years and, once upon a time, had been a paying customer for my old business, PC Rescue. Although we’d only earned a $100 off her and that was seven years ago.

    While it’s sad to lose a subscriber – you don’t run a service business for twelve years without caring about those who use your services – the question is was the lady really a customer?

    This is an important distinction where many of us are giving away much of our knowledge for free; are our users really customers?

    For the social media and web2.0 sites, this is easy; users are the raw material for their aggregated and segmented data feeds and audience, the customers are the advertisers. This is just a modern twist on the broadcast model that sustained the radio and TV industries for most of the 20th Century.

    Many of those social media platforms aren’t making much money from that data and there’s a good argument those who are have been wildly overvalued by investors.

    The value of user data, whether it’s aggregated or identifiable appears to be nowhere as high as most of us think, unless you intend to rob your users’ bank accounts.

    Overvaluation of your customer, or user, database is a common problem for smaller businesses too. If you’re the local plumber, computer repair guy or coffee shop then the value of any mailing list is probably way overstated – the only metric that ultimately matters to the business is how much money you’re making from the customer.

    If you care about the people that you deal with, this may be a hard reality to face but those who visit your shop, subscribe to your newsletter or download your free e-book aren’t your customers, only those who are prepared to pay are.

    This is something we have to understand in this era of abundant free information and online services. The challenge for most of us is how many users we can convert from being window shoppers and freebie seekers into customers.

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