BlackMan Time

Archive for the ‘Business’ Category

Very often clients come to me with business ideas and/or projects that are so bad they have no chance or success. Yet, they are willing to spend lots of money on it to make it happen.

In the beginning I use to try and persuade them it wasn’t a good reason then outline my reasons why. They usually proceeded with the idea anyway.

I have not monitored the progress of any these businesses but I put the question to a few people on what they would do if someone came to them with a bad idea.

Responses varied from telling them straight that the idea is bad to allowing them room to make their own mistakes. After all, this last group continued, who are we to say what is going to be successful or not?

Deep Knowledge

This is a valid point. But when it comes to our area of expertise we tend to usually have a deeper knowledge then the average John Public. But such knowledge is still no guarantee of success.

It’s probably best to advise and inform the person their idea is not very good and get them to sign some kind of agreement to absolve you of any blame in case their business goes down.

Some people would just take this person’s money and run, even though they feel the venture will fail, they would still take the money!

What would you do in similar circumstances?

Brace yourself: I feel a Eureka moment coming on! I reckon I’ve found the formula for success! No, seriously! Are you ready to hear it?

Okay then, here it is…

• Find something – a business for instance – that you’re good at that can generate income.
• Do it.
• Keep doing it until other people realise you are really really good at it.
• Charge a reasonable amount for doing it.
• Then keep doing it until you’re rich! You may need to increase price at certain times..
• Think of other ways to do it (diversify!) but keep the same formula that’s made you successful.
• Invest some of the surplus so that it earn you money for no effort on your part!
• Give some of the money to charity or to someone less fortunate than yourself.

That’s it. All I need to do now is to figure out a way to write that in mathematical form and I can laugh all the way to the bank…

In his song which bears the title of today’s blog, late reggae great Peter Tosh foresaw a world where the dollar’s value had fallen so much it was not only weakened but had become insignificant. That day, or at least in part, is currently with us.

But it’s not just the dollar which is taking a beating: it’s all the world’s currencies. It’s interesting to see how structures, empires, personal fortunes and all money-based wealth sytems, are crumbling or being affected as a result.

The media has already coined the phrase “Credit Crunch” to describe the phenomena, making it sound like some delicious French apple, when the bite is far from sweet or tasty.

In America one man who had amassed $850,000 from a $12,000 start up capital, saw the lot disappear so he shot and killed his entire family before turning the gun on himself. Fortunately, his was an isolated case, although many probably had similar ideas.

Salted Kingdom

When money becomes so important that it threatens world economies, lifestyles, survival, social and political freedoms, there is something seriously wrong. But it seems money is only the currency by which we place value on things and if it wasn’t money it would be something else.

Imagine, for instance, salt could be the new currency! People would trade it on the stock exchange. Wages would be paid in it, goods bought and investments financed or secured by it. From this it is easy to see how the same thing currently happening to the dollar, could eventually happen with salt.

There was a time, in fact, when salt was the currency. We had “Salt Wars”, an era which left as its legacy phrases like “not worth his salt” or “worthy of his salt”. These terms recall the Roman practice of giving money for buying salt known as “salarium” from which the word salary derives…

Maybe the problem is just our value system and the need to place such great importance to small things while neglecting or ignoring the bigger ones. For instance there’s enough wealth to end world poverty but don’t expect suffering to end any time soon.

Those who have a fortune want to continue making more and those who have none would like to make a little. These are the dynamics which are the root cause of our current problems.

“Remember the golden rule,” goes an old saying but instead of its original meaning of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” I have another definition! It is “the man with the gold will rule!”

In the world of media, entertainment, politics and in any endeavour where the rich dominates with their vast wealth, the man with gold continues to rule.

This has the added effect of freezing out anyone with inferior gold strength because gold is money, money is power and power sits behind a kingdom.

In Hollywood for instance the power brokers aren’t interested in movies that try to undermine their power structure so you see very little or no accurate cultural representation of certain groups, e.g. Black people, in films.

Even when they try to tell a Black story it will still be told from a perspective where invariably all the unpleasant bits are given a beautification or historical makeover. Groups that represent the gold power interest, e.g. the Jews, get unprecedented leeway to tell and retell their stories more often and as accurately as they wish.

This is just one example of how the man with the gold does rule. There are many others, of course!

Can you think of any?

I hate it when people make you a promise, fail to deliver then instead of taking responsibility for not having delivered try to excuse their failure on anything other than themselves! Their subsequent explanation is usually a source of enjoyment!

They will tell you how this person let them down or they were relying on another person to do a certain thing and they didn’t do it, etc. But, owning a responsibility means that you are (or should be) in control of all the elements or be monitoring them, until you deliver on your original promise.

It’s no good abdicating their responsibility to someone else who is unable to fulfil this request because apart from being certain to fail, it also highlight your impaired judgement and your weakness as a manager.

This is a business concept that also works very well in personal relationships and all other endeavours. But who is really brave enough to use it when people are too afraid of admitting when they are wrong, or have failed or is somehow less than perfect?

At times it’s not that we fail; it’s what we do after failing that counts. While some are dejected after failing, others find a way minimise the effects of failure. They maintain good communications and relations with those who accepted our original promise in good faith only to feel sleighted.

Owning responsibility can be a humbling experience. It is not a time to skulk behind excuses but a desire to act in a way that shows you are willing to assume all blame if something goes wrong and a little of the glory when it goes to plan!

My American stockbroker has finally persuaded me to invest in the Euro! We’re prospecting that the US Dollar will fall on the basis that the American economy is worsening and about to collapse.

It should have been an easy decision to make but I hesitated and procrastinated until the very last minute. It wasn’t because I was afraid of investing.

I just wasn’t sure his projection that the US Dollar will crash and the Euro will rise to a level where I can make a better profit than if I left the money in a bank.

In a way playing the stock market is a bit like betting money that something terrible will happen somewhere and you have an expert in that area advising when is the best time to invest.

Some may say it’s trading in other people’s miseries but betting on the American currency going bad wouldn’t cause me any sleepless nights, particularly since it’s going bad all of its own without my help. It’s called market forces.

Why should I feel guilty about that? Maybe if I make the expected 30% profit I could cry all the way to the bank!

I’m so tired of hearing the phrase: failing to plan is a plan to fail! But, it is appropriate.

Some people are intoxicated with the idea that it is cool not to plan things; that it is somehow ‘better’ and ‘more cosmic’ to let nature takes its course and decide the fate of your progress. When I was young I used to think that too!

Back in day it didn’t seem to matter what I did: everything I touched was a hit. Every business idea I had and executed all made me enough money for me to regard them as success stories. And they were all done without much thought to planning. I acted on instinct and went with what I enjoyed doing.

These days I’m finding it hard to achieve much without a plan. For a start I’ve simply got too many ideas and projects that I’d like to do to fling myself around all of them at once and hope that one will at least become successful. I have learnt that I need to focus, plan, execute, monitor and revaluate.

Although I am creative I still see the need for planning. I don’t think it’s cool at all to fly without a map, even if I think I know the way because the map is there to guide me over unfamiliar territory I may come across.

Just like a business plan, in fact!

Throughout July the face of Norman Washington Manley, one of Jamaica’s national heroes, has been staring at me, without the slightest hint of a smile!

Reason for this is because Manley, who lived July 4, 1893 to September 2, 1969, is this month’s feature face on the stylishly designed and quirkily executed Black Oxford calendar.

Manley, founder of the left-wing People’s National Party, studied law at Jesus College, Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship in 1914.

I’m particularly fund of this calendar because each month it depicts a former Black student who studied at the university and was given to me by Black Oxford founder Pamela Roberts who saw the need to highlight the fact that prominent Black alumni had studied at this institution.

So each month I have a new Black face to look up to! I can’t wait for next month’s entry: Lady Kofowrola Ademola who I’m not familiar with, but the calendar note say she’s Oxford

The account of my current contract is handled by an Englishman with a roughneck East End accent, with a jovial but no-nonsense persona. Let’s call him Yar!

Now, Yar fought tooth and nail to secure me a very lucrative position that came with a quite decent pay cheque each month. It wasn’t much of a fight really because Yar was on good terms with the company. But he had not met any of the people he had been dealing with so I saw an opportunity for him to do so.

It would also be a chance to meet Yar myself since he was good to me. He did well on the deal himself, considering the massive commission he earned! So, I suggested to Yar that he arrange to take the senior management and any of the other contractors he had working for the company, including myself, of course, to lunch.

At first Yar protested that he didn’t have that kind of money, etc. but I persuaded him it was a good opportunity to further curry favour with the management, thereby securing more contracts for himself and bigger commission. Eventually, he went for it and we dined out one sunny day around three weeks ago.

Yar was very professional when we met but since that lunch he has not been in touch once with me. Before the lunch he was phoning me at least once a week to find out how I was getting on and emailed me just as often to do the same.

What happened to Yar, I asked? Was he angry about the lunch? Was he surprised to see that I wasn’t actually white but in fact a Black person of African descent?

To be honest I really don’t know the true reason for his change of attitude and I am going to keep an open mind on it. At this stage nothing surprises me anymore so the possibilities are endless…

What do you think though?

I have to agree with a study that says top airline British Airways loses more bags and operates more delayed flights than any other airline in Europe. The report also said BA had one of the worst records for punctuality with a significant number of flights arriving at least 15 minutes late last year.

This information, released by the Association of European Airlines, also says BA is 50% more likely to lose a bag than the average European airline. This basically means around nine passengers on a typical BA jumbo jet find their bags are missing when they arrive at their destination. Surely this is not good enough…

I have lost baggage on BA twice. In both instances the luggage were found intact and BA did apologise and even upgraded me on the return leg, but by that time my holiday had been ruined because I had no clothes to cover myself with and had to buy new ones, make do with what I had or borrow.

In fact when people asked me about my holidays I used to joke that I went to Jamaica but my luggage went to Miami!

Additionally, I have personal experiences of BA staff being rude and indifferent, at least to non-European passengers like myself and their often crisp and unfriendly manner mask a subtle hint of something – sometimes I call it racism, other times I think discrimination – that never seem to get mentioned in any report or observation. This, and another major reason I will go into a next time, is why I don’t travel on BA any more.

To me BA just stands for ‘Bad Attitude’ and I don't need that from any airline.