...a thought struck me last night....

[wynn]

Or look at Peter Carruthers

Adrian with your IT knowledge, perhaps a greatly improved web site with a targeted marketing drive will require no selling and it would be international orders that may be the 'phillup' you need (because you can charge more???).
An investment in Carruthers course may be the answer?

[adrianh]

We've been developing a suite of products in conjunction with a customer. The lady really knows what she wants and she knows the industry. She is a very open minded person and she gave us a general idea of what she wants to put into the market. I left my graphic designer to run with the ideas as she sees fit and I handled all the technical stuff. I also got my hands dirty with a bit of lateral thinking and conceptualized an idea. Once I made the product and showed the graphic designer she gave it the much needed artistic touch. Anyhow, we presented our designs and stuff to the lady this morning and she now thinks that we are the bees knees. The three of us spent a couple of hours talking thorough the products, prices, packaging, distribution and everything else and she even ordered my great idea without asking how much it would cost. She showed us another range of products that she wants us to make and we talked thought that too. Ok, so this is where we're at, we manufacture the products, provide her with the package insert, plastic packets and even the display units. She then gets her rep to go all over the country and market the products. We set it up in such a way that the buyer is forced to buy a full set including the display unit with their first purchase and they will then have to buy at least 10 replacement items at a time. The aim is to stop people from wasting our time with ordering bits n bobs. The products are really good, not because I did the technical bit but because all three of us worked on them together. The products will be sold into sewing shops, material shops and craft shops. Each start up order is worth about R3K to us with ongoing replacement and additions to the range. The lady placed an order for R5K this morning and also offered to pay for all our development time ,which is great, my graphic designer deserves a bonus every month because she has an absolute natural feel for art and what it takes to make things beautiful (Her degree in fine arts also helps) I am going to give her 10% commission on top of her salary on all sales generated from products that she has an artistic hand in. I'm simply too doff to make things beautiful and I need to make sure that she is happy because the future of the business depends on our synergetic working relationship.

To top it all off the lady gave me the contact details of her freelance rep (she even contacted the rep to introduce us). The rep covers all the shops that we would like to get all our other products into....

...so...this was a good day and the future looks very very bright....Those guys at Aston Martin must start polishing my pearl white Vanquish Volante ... and I suppose she would want a Porsche GT3 RS, her being German and all

[Dave A]

There's nothing quite like synergy to achieve great results, seemingly effortlessly.

[Justloadit]

Glad to hear things are shaping up. I think you are beginning to get a successful team together.

I was thinking yesterday about the past and present, where in the past it seemed that we made money with out much effort, and today it is such a battle to stay afloat, and then I realised that the difference between then and now, is that we have lost the group effort, the team that worked together on R & D, the team of semi skilled but knowledgeable people we had around us. It seems that these teams have all broken up and a few of the team are trying to build a new team while being an entrepreneur or trying to make his own business, but what is lacking is the semi skilled support, and the current unskilled labour who simply demands and demands and has really not much to offer.

[adrianh]

Glad to hear things are shaping up. I think you are beginning to get a successful team together.

I was thinking yesterday about the past and present, where in the past it seemed that we made money with out much effort, and today it is such a battle to stay afloat, and then I realised that the difference between then and now, is that we have lost the group effort, the team that worked together on R & D, the team of semi skilled but knowledgeable people we had around us. It seems that these teams have all broken up and a few of the team are trying to build a new team while being an entrepreneur or trying to make his own business, but what is lacking is the semi skilled support, and the current unskilled labour who simply demands and demands and has really not much to offer.

I think there is more to it. To me the issue is that people specialize too quickly and as such demand high salaries and clearly defined jobs right at the outset. Even though you put an account, an engineer and the best sales person together you don't have a business. Each one knows exactly how to do their own job and demand to be paid well to do it but they are unable to cross the boundaries into each others domains and as such are unable to toss ideas around. I personally think that too much individual specialization at the outset is counter productive. None of the people in my business are locked into a particular speciality, I try anything and mess around with it till it works or proves to be non-viable. My graphic designer is very similar, she is happy to get her hands dirty, to try ideas and to evolve those ideas into different directions. The same goes for my customer, she comes up with the general ideas to suit her market and the three of us thrash it out and try to evolve the ideas.

Another point is that we are all in it to make money and each of us know that we bring overlapping talents to the table. Yes I suppose each of us could make a bit of money but our synchronicity is clearly a case of the whole being much bigger than the sum of the parts. A business can be likened to an orchestra, yes you can make music with 1 violin rather than 10 and yes you can do without a piano but there is a point where the orchestra simply has too few instruments to be meaningful. When an orchestra has such a small number of performers they each need to be able to play various instruments simultaneously or they need to create artificial instruments using synthesizers. In start up business the same applies, you have to be multi-skilled, be able to multi-task, to cover each others shortcomings and also to utilize shortcut methods to deal with tasks that need to be done but that the team is unable to do. In our world this simply does not happen (easily) because each player only plays their one instrument and demands a high salary and a perfect music score.... Start up business doesn't work that way. With regard to unskilled labour; the problem is that they demand the salary of a trained violinist when they stand around and tap the triangle 3 times in the entire performance. They do not understand that the triangle is needed to play the symphony but they simply cannot be paid as much as the violinist. What happens is that the triangle players are replaced with synthesizers and although the symphony might sound a little bit different to a highly trained ear the music still goes on, the violinist makes good money for having put in the training and the triangle players now sit on the street wishing that they accepted their small role in the orchestra!

We all have a role to play and we all have the ability to make money, it is a matter of doing whatever it takes to slowly building the orchestra together using our collective overlapping talents!

[Newretailer]

I agree with what you say. I also think something else that is vital is to recognise your staff's strengths and weaknesses and make sure you utilise them for what they are good at. I have found I have far happier staff that way and the output is better quality.

[adrianh]

When I was in IT many years ago we had a meeting to discuss the way the implementation of a system had gone. Lots of talk and then one of the senior programmers said something to another senior that I will never forget:

"It's wonderful that companies like this hire people like you. Then they get to hire people like me to fix all the $h1t you make"

...my kinda witty comment!