Creative/Generalist

Time, in business, is money. If, like me, you run a low-margin e-commerce business and allow customers to place orders over the phone, you might seriously question whether the cost of employee time spent on taking phone orders is actually compensated by the profits those orders generate, especially when most customer calls seem to go a little something like this…

J (Me): “Good morning, how can I help?”

(The voice on the other end is quiet, wheezy, crackly and nervous – a gentleman of advancing years who may have already had two gin-and-tonics by 11am.)

C(ustomer): “Is that the sausage people?”  

J: “Um, yes, we do sell sausages. How can I help you?”  

C: “Excuse me?”  

J: “How can I help you?”  

C: “Meat stew?”  

J: “HOW CAN I HELP YOU?”  

C: “Oh yes, my wife was on your pages thing last night and she’s asked me to call you to order one of your chorizos ‘cos it’s always quicker to speak to someone isn’t it?.”  

J: “We have 12 different types of chorizos, did she say which one?”  

C: “Say what?”  

J: “Which chorizo, we have 12.”  

C: “Ooh, dunno, better ask ‘er. Give us a second. (A deafening scream causes you to wrench the phone away from your ear). BAAARRRBBARRRAAAAH. BARRRRRRRBBBBSSSSSS. BAARRRRBBBBIE. (A quiet female voice in the distance responds). WHAT BLOODY SAUSAGE DID YOU WANT – THE BLOKE SAYS THEY’VE GOT TWELVE. (Barbara responds). She says it’s the big red one.”  

J: “They’re all big and red I’m afraid.”  

C: “What?”  

J: “That doesn’t help much, I’m going to need more details.”

(Barbara, clearly irate, forces her husband off the phone and takes over.)

C: “Look here. I don’t want any trouble. My son-in-law’s brother’s wife had them on holiday in the Canaries last year and she loved them. You should know which ones I’m talking about.”  

J: “Yes, sorry about that, do you think they might be the small cooking chorizos?”  

C: “Yes, those are the ones.”  

J: “OK. That’s fine. How many do you want?”

(Barbara has passed back to husband.)

C: “Who?”  

J: “How many packs of the chorizo do you want?”  

C: “Yes, chorizo, that’s what she said.”  

J: “HOW MANY?”  

C: “BAAAAARRRRRRRRRBBBBSSS. How many do want? (Barbs’ voice is heard in the background). Enough for 4 people.”  

J: “Well, it depends on whether you’re serving it as a starter or main course. It could be one or two packs.”  

C: “Oh god no, we only want one pack.”  

J: “OK, anything else?”

(Silence on the other end of the line. After 1 or 2 minutes waiting, it is clear that the call has been cut off. After 5 minutes, the customer calls back.)

J: “Hello, how can I help?”  

C: “Who’s that?”  

J: “This is Jonathan – you were talking to me 5 minutes ago.”  

C: “No, I was speaking to a nice young lady.”  

J: “No, you were speaking to me. Would you like to order anything else other than the chorizo?”  

C: “No.”  

J: “OK, that will be £2.99 plus £5.99 delivery.”  

C: “Oh dear. That’s terribly expensive. Can you not deliver it for free?”  

J: “I’m afraid you order is for only £2.99. We couldn’t possibly deliver it for free.”  

C: “Can I get a discount then?”  

J: “No.”  

C: “OK – let’s go ahead.”  

J: “OK – I just need to take your details. Can I have your name please?”  

C: “It’s J F W G Flanarghloughsly-Weinhartstatten”  

J: “Could you spell that?”  

C: “Spelt as said – with a double ‘t’.”  

J: “Sorry, I’m going to need you to spell it.”  

C: “What?”  

J: “Please spell it.”  

C: (Through a crackly line, customer painstakingly spells his name, whilst coughing and spluttering. He forgets where he is and starts over 3 times.)  

J: “Thank you. And your address?”  

C: “It’s in Pontllanfraith near Ystrad Mynach.”  

J: (i resist the strong temptation to gauge my eye out with a biro). “I’m going to need you to spell it please.”  

C: (Another 15 minutes of l’s and y’s, coughing and faults on the line.)  

J: “Thank you. How would you like to pay?”  

C: “Thank you. See you soon.”  

J: “No, I’m going to need you to pay for the order.”  

C: “Right, of course, let me go and get my wallet.”

(I listen to every painful wheeze as the customer retrieves his wallet from the third floor of his mansion and returns to the phone.)

J: “Can I take the card number?”  

C: “Oh the numbers are so damn small, I’m going to need my glasses. Can you just wait a minute.”

(Customer returns, painfully, to the third floor to retrieve his glasses. Ten minutes later he is back on the phone.)

J: “OK, what were those numbers?”  

C: “57 (break and crackle on the line) 743 (crackle) 4 (break) 45 (crackle)”  

J: “I’m sorry. I didn’t get that. Can we try again?”

(After 4 attempts and 15 minutes, I manage to take down all the card details)

J: “I’m sorry, that card has been rejected.”  

C: “That’s impossible, there’s plenty of money in that account. We’re seriously wealthy you know.”  

J: “I’m sure there is, but the bank has rejected it.”  

C: “Oh silly me. There are two cards stuck together here and I’ve given you the security code from another card.”  

J: “OK, so can you give me the correct security code.”  

C: “Damn, these numbers are so small. I’m going to need my other glasses.”

(15 minutes, 3 flights of stairs, wheezing and coughing)

C: “Right, let’s see. Oh bloody hell, they’ve been rubbed off. I can’t read them. This is too much bloody trouble. Can I send you a postal order?”  

J: “No, we stopped accepting them in 1984.”  

C: “What about a cheque?”  

J: “1998”  

C: “Well we’ll just have to leave it then I’m afraid. Your service is disgraceful. Good bye.”

If cultural observation is one of my favourite sports, then there is no better arena than the dining table. 

Travellers' tales are full of eating-related anecdotes. How many times have you heard the story about the visitor who offended his or her host by burping, or not burping, by putting his or her elbows on the table, by arranging cutlery in a cross rather than parallel - the list goes on and the potential pitfalls for the culturally ignorant diner are numerous. 

Eating in Spain, as you can imagine, is steeped in tradition, culture, habit and simple everyday repetition. Even so, the possibilities for causing offence are probably less prominent here in Spain than in other, more sensitive, cultures (unless you should dare start eating before everyone has their food - that's a big faux pas). 

So, rather than an etiquette guide, this is more like a list of observations of the Spanish in their natural habitat - enjoying a good meal with friends and family. They are small, mostly completely insignificant details - points I've picked up on over the years as an Englishman living in Spain. If you're sensitive to national stereotyping and stuff like that, perhaps don't read on - this is lighthearted stuff, meant for a laugh and a bit of discussion. Nothing more.

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I hate to say it, but a lot of the business advice you’re googling for is either outdated, inapplicable – or both.

Let’s face it, there’s too much advice out there these days – and yes, I am only making the problem worse. From your closest network of friends and contacts, to the furthest extremes of the net, your world is most likely populated by gurus who are more than happy to throw a constant stream of wise words your way.

In day-to-day life, choosing which advice to follow is somewhat easier than when it comes to business. Of course, there are hard decisions to be made from time to time, but gut feeling and a strong sense of morality or principle are often enough to get you through. Not so in business. The entrepreneur’s path is continually bisected by a myriad of minute technical decisions that need to be made, all of which have a potentially explosive effect on business? Sell on Amazon, or not? Increase Adwords budget, or decrease? Go with product x, or choose product y. And that’s often where so many people turn to google. Try it now – go to Google, and type in the words ‘should I’ – what suggestions do you get? Currently, for me, it’s

- Should I stay or should I go

- Should I buy an iPad

- Should I text him

- Should I upgrade to Lion

Not that it’s of any relevance, but my advice would be ‘go, yes, no and yes’ respectively.

There’s a lot of people with a lot of doubts out there, but there are more than enough ‘experts’ available to fill the gap. But what do you do when your ‘advice stream’ gets overloaded with repeating, differing and contradictory statements? How do you identify what’s most applicable to you.

I have to constantly remind myself that everyone (including me, of course) writes or speaks from their own perspective born of their own experience married with their own values.

Back when man sat around fires telling stories and eating dinosaurs, the wisdom imparted to younger generations by the elders could pretty much be accepted without question. When food is plentiful, stash some away for winter. Don’t get into fights you can’t win. When faced with bear, run in opposite direction. Life didn’t change much from year to year, and what worked a hundred years before, probably worked a hundred years later.

But now we live in a world that changes at breakneck speed. What’s here today is gone tomorrow. What worked this morning, might not work this afternoon. So beware advice that comes from ‘years of experience’ as we so often hear. It might just be outdated.

This is especially true in the internet era, when business models are being creating destroyed in a continuous, rapidly moving cycle. An entrepreneur might extol the virtues of a model that has worked well for him or her, and you might be tempted to go the same way, but ask yourself first – does this still apply?

If you read, in isolation, some of the ‘first wave’ blogs written by internet entrepreneurs who started before about 2005, you’d be inclined to think that with a little work you could be bringing in $40,000 a month just through blogging. If you read some of the stuff written over the last year or two, you might come to the conclusion that blogging is dead in the water for income generation. Before taking anything you read on the internet to heart, take a look at the post date first. I’m not saying that absolutely all advice has a sell-by date; nor that everything that was written yesterday is more useful than that written a year ago. It just pays to think about the landscape that gave rise to any particular piece, and consider whether it might have changed significantly since then.

Of course, it’s not just the passing of time that gives rise to irrelevancy. An entrepreneur, when giving advice out of experience, speaks from a singular perspective. Perhaps you operate in the same industry, with the same products, even with the same client base. But your business is ultimately yours and represents your unique combination of past decisions and future aspirations. What works for him, may not work for you. In fact, the reverse might be true, it might do your business harm.

At the end of the day, a business, at its core, is just a system to produce profits for its owner(s). Engineers define systems with formulae and algorithms, with their constants and variables. Each unique system is defined and described by a unique formula. When trying to discover the formula that describes a particular system, a good engineer will certainly look to the past and to similar systems and their underlying formulae. But he will realise that the object of his attention is unique, that he must experiment, tweak and iterate in order to discover the inputs and outputs of his system.

Each business is unique, and so is the formula that describes it.  Learn to identify the variables and separate them from the constants, the concepts and ideas that change very little as times passes.  Good customer service, proper branding, effective marketing, solid financial control – these are all concepts that have shaped businesses for decades, if not centuries, and the best advice stands the test of time and applies to the vast majority of businesses.  Variables – the combination of factors that make your business unique, are much more individual and transient.  Only you can find out what particular combination of products works for you, how much you should spend on adwords, whether you should sell on Amazon, Ebay, both or neither.  Searching for advice can help you envisage and set up the system, but the variables that have to be plugged in are yours to discover through experimentation, test, success and failure.

Take what others say with a healthy dose of skepticism. Accept the uniqueness of your business. Accept that what worked for others, even in apparently identical circumstances, won’t necessarily work for you. Experiment and find your own formula.

This is a lighthearted concept introduction and the first in a series of pieces looking at business models in the modern economy and what they mean to potential Non-9-to-5′ers. If you are an expert economist, probably best to look away now.

If you don’t know what a ‘business model’ is, join the club – nobody really does. It’s a concept that entrepreneurs and bank managers toss around casually but when it comes to the crunch, good definitions are hard to come by. That is, unless you’re a business studies professor, in which case you might say something like: “an architecture for the product, service, and information flows, a description of the benefits for the business actors involved, and a description of the sources of revenue” Got that? No? Here’s an easier way to think of it: it’s the answer to the question “How the hell are you going to make money out of that?”. Listen up.

- Hey Bob, I’ve got a brilliant idea.  

- Oh yeah?  

- Yeah, I’m going to set up a car rental agency and undercut everyone else. I’m thinking of charging £25 a day.  

- That sounds like it’d be less than cost. How the hell are you going to make money out of that?  

- Well, you see, I’m going buy loads of brand new vehicles all the time and make people sign a contract with tiny print that says they’ll have to pay £500 for every scratch on the car when they return it. Then I’ll sell the cars for a bit less than I bought them for, leaving me with a fat profit.  

- Nice.

Of course, this entirely fictitious conversation is in no way related to any practices going on in the vehicle renting industry in the UK and has nothing to do with the fact that you can rent a van for £30 a day whereas in Spain it costs £100. Seriously.

So, a business model is best thought of as how an organisation makes money doing what it does. It sometimes helps to think of businesses that look impossible on the surface and dig deeper for examples of clever or innovative business models. Or illegal ones. A knitting materials shop that is still in business today is clearly a front for something sinister.

Now the example I’ve given is clearly highly contrived, and in the old days, the question “How the hell are you going to make money out of that?” was easy to answer. “I’m going to sell it”, was the about the only option.  Most industries ticked along nicely under the assumption they would always be able to make piles of money just selling the product or service they were making or supplying.  Then the internet came along and ripped up the rule book, and the conversations now go:

- Hey Bob, I’ve got a brilliant idea.  

- Oh yeah?  

- You know those lovely wicker baskets I make? Well, I’ve decided to make it into a business.  

- Good for you. How much are you going to sell them for?  

- No, caveman, I’m going to give them away for free.  

- How the hell are you going to make money out of that then?  

- Well, I’m going to weave clues to websites into the fabric of the baskets and set up an online treasure hunt with prizes of holidays to Lanzarote.  Then, I’m going to sell timeshare companies rights to 30 minute sales pitches to the winners once they arrive.”  

- Oh.

In short, people are finding ingenious ways to make money out of virtually anything, including, in many cases, giving it away for free.  Now, I don’t know this for sure, but my feeling is that if walked into Harvard Business School or a board meeting twenty or even ten years ago and propounded this as a vision of the future, they would have sent you away for treatment. Of course, this movement is causing old school businesses to rethink the way they make money as consumers change their habits and their willingness to part with cash in the same way as before. The public face of this is often the music and film industries first trying to sue everyone, and then having to adapt to the market with innovative value propositions, like iTunes or song downloads included with GSM airtime bundles. Other businesses, and their models, will just wilt and die. Blockbuster had stores all over Spain once – now they’re gone.

The point to take away from this is that you don’t need a shop to make money. Even if what you’re selling seems wholly traditional and mundane, with just a a bit of imagination and an observant look around your sector, you can probably come up with a crazy (perhaps even profitable) way of selling it. Just think outside the box a bit.

To get your creative juices flowing, I’ll let you in on an idea I had for[my own company but will almost certainly never do. A note to competitors: if you’re reading, please have a go at this and tell me how you get on.

Right, we sell speciality food, OK? How about we sell that food at cost price (we could even scan and upload purchase invoices to show that we were being honest). This essentially amounts to what creators of knowledge are doing when giving away their product for free. “How the hell are you going to make money out of that then?”, I hear you ask. Well, as standard we’ll do 3-5 day delivery and premium number telephone support. Then we’ll offer yearly ‘Preferred Customer’ subscriptions for £100 which entitle the holder to unlimited 24 hour deliveries and unlimited freephone telephone support.

Novel and 10-years-ago-lock-you-away-in-an-institution business plans are not just for porn hawkers and bloggers, they are for the whole business community – particularly Non-9-to-5′ers who feel that ‘old’ business is inaccessible. Well, here’s your invitation. Try something new. Experiment with novel business models. Then, when people ask “How the hell do you make any money out of that?”, just keep the secret to yourself and lie – tell them you don’t.