Theatre production

As I've mentioned previously, I am going to produce a theatre show in Camden, North London next year.  Theatre is almost always a collaborative process.  Improvised theatre, which is the nature of this show, always is.

'Playing nicely with others' will be one of my big challenges for 2009.

Everyone's having my career but me

An old friend of mine has recently decided to 'go it alone' and start his own consulting business. He's already had a hugely successful career over twenty years culminating in running one of Australia's largest marketing research firms. Now, after a six-month sabbatical, he's going to start all over again.

Once upon a time my heart would've leapt at the news. Another smart, experienced and articulate mate to bounce around ideas, to celebrate the wins and laugh off the losses. Now I'm not so sure. What if he surpasses in two years what I've built over twenty? I'm wary of a mindset that an acting buddy once described to me as:-

Everyone's having my career but me

I think that a big part of healthily working for yourself means avoiding Gore Vidal's curse ("Every time a friend succeeds I die a little inside").

I need to be secure enough in my own achievements to be able to genuinely celebrate his. What manner of friend am I otherwise?

Off to Sydney

Today my wife and I leave for three weeks in Australia.  We're girding our loins for a flight that's near enough to 24 hours but at the other end is family and friends, sunshine and laughter.

2008 was a great year for my business, both consulting and comedy and I have huge plans for 2009 so the break is both warranted and needed.

But what sort of break?

My clients have been warned to expect as much as a 12-hour response time to emails and to avoid unscheduled phone calls wherever possible.  This is as much as I can offer myself without stressing that my business will suffer.

Headcount = 1 means I actually relax more when I can check emails than when I leave the BlackBerry at home.

Showing up

Woody Allen, the patron saint of all cerebral comics, once said: -

"80% of success is just showing up" 

Earlier this week I was scheduled to meet with another comic about a 2009 project.  Fifteen minutes before we were due to meet he sent me a text message citing problems with an ex-girlfriend to cancel the meeting.  This is a talented and funny guy who has committed to a career in stand-up comedy.  In other words, this is what he does for a living.

Maybe he was telling the truth or perhaps he had more 'professional' reasons for ditching our meeting but didn't want to hurt my feelings.  Either way he didn't seem to approach the appointment as part of the job.

If your impulse towards self-employment is driven by a desire to blur the lines between work and hobby then you're probably better off treating everything with the seriousness of work.

Future-proofing 2

I've heard nothing further following a meeting ten days ago when I was asked to guarantee the validity of my current thinking for a period of 10+ years.  At the time I made no promises and I'm still happy that I took that option.

Right now I'm finding that people who should have a 12-18 month focus (ie sales managers) are making sage predictions about their needs in 2018.  Perhaps it's because the spectre of the billions wasted in obsolete IT investments has gotten into the water supply and in these straitened times waste is unforgivable.

Most of my pharma clients have an annual staff turnover within the team of about 15%.  Anything under that makes you a genius sales manager.  So even if you're very, very good at staff retention you'll still have no more than 1 in 5 of your team members in ten years.  Any investment in training needs to account for this as well as the fact that the individuals within the team will change and grow as well.  And one of the quickest ways to raise that turnover is to insist that intelligent, productive people undertake useless training that vaguely promises to address a need that may or may not arise over the next decade.

I'm not suggesting that an organisation doesn't need a ten-year horizon but it also needs a one-year one.

At the Palais de Pomme

I am a late convert to Mac products.  For years I eschewed the opportunity to self-brand as 'creative' because of the many, seemingly deliberate, trade-offs that Apple puts in opposition to businesslike seriousness.

About eighteen months ago I relented and bought a MacBook Pro.  I've been living with the trade-off ever since.  I use the MS Entourage suite because the Apple Mail programme won't deliver the formal style of emails that my clients expect.  Similarly, I have yet to properly resolve the conflict between the industry standard Adobe Acrobat and a continual default to Apple's Preview. Nevertheless I am happy and I admit that my heart does lift a little every time I use something like the Dashboard function.  Like I said, I'm a convert.

On Friday I went into Apple's flagship store on Regent Street and bought Time Capsule.  I haven't been 100% comfortable with my backing up and it simply isn't professional for me to have any doubt in my mind about data retrieval and the product came highly recommended.  Back at home I realised that I needed to upgrade my Operating System from 'Tiger' to 'Leopard' so I went back into town this morning and bought the upgrade.

Over two visits to the store I spoke to five different staff members.  All were young, polite and extremely enthusiastic about Apple products.  They each took the opportunity to tell me how cool the product was that I was buying.  But not one of them asked me what I used my computer for.

The store represents a genuine triumph of branding over salesmanship and I feel that my business is a little more exposed each time I shop there. 

A project for 2009

I have just committed to devising, directing and producing a theatre show in London next year.  The prospect is more than a little scary because it's years since I've produced anything theatrical and never in London, which is probably the most competitive live entertainment market in the world.

There are no half-measures with producing.  You either commit to it fully, by which I mean emotionally, financially and in every other way, or you don't bother.  I have a theatre booked for three weeks March-April and I also plan to be in Edinburgh for all of August.

One effect of this is that the amount of time that I can devote to consultancy in 2009 is already seven weeks less than my clients might imagine.  But if I don't afford the theatre project equal priority in the diary then I will fail.

The unavoidable boss

I was socialising with friends yesterday afternoon when all six of us were simultaneously struck down by the 'Sunday night blues'.  Conversation turned to the week ahead, in particular, to the compensating factor of having a boss away from the office for a few days.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a few 'boss-free' days is good for stress-levels and therefore productivity and that this is true irrespective of whether that boss is 'good', 'bad', hard', 'soft' or whatever.

My boss is never out of the office.  He always knows where I am and whether or not I've completed every task on my To Do List.  He also knows whether or not I did the work properly or just went through the motions.  In fact, there's no pleasing my boss.

I suppose this is why I'm still in business.

Future-proofing: the search for definite solutions to undefined problems

Yesterday I was invited to pitch to a new client.  The opportunity arose because a woman I've worked with previously has just joined the company.  So I arrived knowing that my bona fides were already established and, because my contact has an intimate knowledge of what I do, I assumed I was in the room because of an identified need that I might be able to address.

I was half-right.

Everyone agreed that they had an immediate need for the sort of training that I offer but it wasn't enough.  Another larger, unarticulated issue loomed over the meeting and I struggled to identify it before we wrapped up.  What they were looking for was a promise that my current products would help their sales teams succeed in ten years time regardless of any and all changes to the market, sales environment, team configuration or product mix.  They wanted me to promise that my work was future-proof.

The best I could do was offer to work with them to define all these longer-term issues and then explore solutions.  Perhaps some adaptation of what I currently offer will be what's needed but right now I don't know enough to make that promise.  As I left it was clear that this wasn't what they wanted to hear.

Maybe the next supplier they see will be confident enough to promise them what they need.  Or maybe he'll just all the right noises in order to get his foot in the door.

I'm not sure if I won or lost yesterday.

Commodified creativity

Recently I have done a few stand-up shows outside of London.  Typically this means a car journey to East Grinstead or Taunton or wherever with other acts who are appearing on the same bill.  Often the first time you meet another comic is on this drive out of town.

As it is not the 'done thing' to discuss the actual content of your set off-stage, you can spend hours in a car with another comic without gaining the slightest idea about the nature of his act; in fact until one of you takes the stage there is every chance that your jokes could be as good as identical.  And given that many newer comedians draw their comic inspiration from similar sources this happens more often than might be supposed.

There is an exquisite, creeping sense of horror in being a hundred miles from home and hearing the act before you tilling a comedy field that you consider your own.  It is both debatable and irrelevant as to whether it's better that the other guy gets laughs or not.  Either way the audience has already gone where you planned to lead it and you will be seen as derivative.  As I've said before, this all happens because promoters rarely care what any individual act actually says; only that the combined length of their sets lasts the time the venue was promised.

This 'commodification of creativity' leads some performers to make strange, even extreme choices to ensure that they are seen as original.  At the very least it forces a comic to have more than the minimum of material on any given night.

Momentum

In his book Good to Great Jim Collins describes it as the flywheel effect.  You know that moment when it suddenly feels like you're pushing against an open door, when you're pleasantly reminded that the customer doesn't need your permission to get excited about what you do?

Customers have been talking about me behind my back and it feels good.

This is not a hobby

I've had a frustrating few weeks in that my To Do list appears to be lengthening.  The underlying reason for this is positive: clients requesting meetings and suchlike.  What this means is that time that I had mentally allocated to some of my less urgent tasks has gone missing.

Working for yourself is not a hobby.  If I can't maintain the discipline to push ahead on multiple fronts then I might as well go back to working for someone else.

2009

We are going home to Australia for December for our first summer Christmas since 2004.  And on Wednesday a client confirmed a job to be staged in mid-January 2009, a week or so after we get back to London.  Knowing that I'm back in productive (paid) work so soon in the New Year makes the prospect of the break all that much sweeter.

Peripheral signals

This week I am starting work with a new client in a new country, something that is always exciting.  Like most consultants I book my own travel but leave accommodation arrangements to the client as this saves me having to understand the geography of a strange city.

Having the client book the hotel also affords a subtle little window on how the project is being positioned internally:-

Better hotel = better positioning

I don't really care where I sleep so long as the room is clean, quiet and secure.  However, because accommodation is one of those little decisions that is often made at quite a high level within a company, I will get that sinking feeling if I'm put up in a 3-star in the wrong part of town.  If the client is trying to claw back a few euros on accommodation before the job has even started then my value proposition is under question.

I accept that I might be being paranoid.  Maybe no one ever stays anywhere above 3-star, in which case my fears are unfounded.  If not, then a very negative signal about the project is being communicated to the broader organisation in a very public way.

Peripheral signals like this are obviously an imperfect guide but still they have some value.

Cashflow

Despite what I wrote a few weeks ago, the credit crunch is now having an effect on my business.  Clients are taking longer and longer to pay me and using the gamut of institutional half-truths to explain the delay.  For example, after a delay of a few weeks two separate clients have asked me to resubmit invoices for completed work quoting Purchase Order numbers that are mysteriously yet to be generated.  And on several occasions I've been told that my (approved) invoice got into the system just after the deadline for the next payment cycle.

Even so I'm better off than my larger competitors as I carry few overheads and employ no staff.  So long as I can make the rent and pay the grocery bill I'm okay.  If I did have staff I'd be obliged to pay them every week and by now I'd be deep into an overdraft and so at the mercy of my bank.  Every pundit emphasises the fact that the banks' smaller customers won't be getting any love any time soon.

As it is my company doesn't have an overdraft facility.  In a previous existence I learnt that once a business has access to credit it takes a lot of discipline not to become reliant on it.  Famously Microsoft has always self-funded and keeps sufficient cash reserves to operate for an entire year without revenue (currently around $20 billion USD).

It's a pretty exciting time to be running a debt-free business.

Silence

There is no better way to sell something than for the customer sell it to himself.  But this will never happen if the seller never shuts up.  Like stand-up comics, salespeople shouldn't ever be afraid of a little silence.

Just a thought.

The juggle

If you're a client of mine then you're the most important thing in my world.  Every last one of you.

A key reason for going with a smaller supplier is that the service should always be better.  It is beholden upon me to be more attentive, more flexible and, well, friendlier than larger competitors.  This is especially true with face-to-face meetings early on in the relationship.

Right now I have two potential new clients (one in the UK, the other in Europe) who have both requested high-level, multiperson meetings before December.  Ignoring those dates where I have other commitments I'm only left with 17 days between now and November 30.

There is an art to drafting the email that implies: -

(a) My diary is entirely at your disposal so take as long you need... 

But also: -

(b) Not really, so hurry up

My solution was to choose the client that I think is more likely to move quicker (based on the size of the meeting more than anything else).  I emailed only her offering the choice of all 17 days.  Happily I got a rapid response so could then immediately give the other client any of the other 16.

Reading back on this it seems like common sense but years ago I learnt the lesson the hard way when (my only) two potential clients insisted on a meeting on the same day.  That cost me 50% of my customer base.

Relief

As I mentioned in a recent post, I've just come off a very busy period with lots of travel.  I've been really looking forward to getting some time to myself to recharge, to think about the bigger picture and so on.

But...

I am at heart a freelancer.  This means I am continually plagued by the thought that the last job I did is the last one I'll ever do and the ever-darker forebodings of the financial press haven't helped my mood in the slightest.  So to say I was relieved when an email hit my BlackBerry last night confirming a large, interesting project that will run until mid-January is an understatement of the first order.

Being self-employed means continual, low-level anxiety about where the next job is coming from.  Even if it's entirely subliminal I suppose that buried somewhere in my fee structure is the cost of that anxiety.

What are you?

There's no doubt now that times are going to get a lot tougher over the coming few years and finding a place in the new world order will be no easy thing.  For example, how many of my clients will be arguing hard for an 'external consultants budget' next year?

I'm thinking that some rebranding might be a place to start; am I better off describing myself as: -

Global Marketing Consultant

or: -

a freelance sales trainer?

Whatever it is, I am acutely aware that my biggest competitor is now the guy inside the client organisation desperate to make himself indispensable in the shadow of another restructuring.

Failure is an orphan

On Facebook today and this advert came up on a side panel.

I know nothing at all about the Alchemy Network group and I'm sure that in amongst the 5 amazing, information packed days are some really valuable insights.   My issue is with Selling Point 2: -

You will receive 12 months network support at NO cost  

Whatever this is, it won't be as good as it sounds.  I know that a lot of people like the idea of self-employment but because going out on your own is a daunting prospect they'd welcome some help along the way.  We all need friends, right?

The truth is that if my business is failing then I can't see your 'network support' providing any meaningful help.  It doesn't sound like you'll find me solid clients or arrange a competitive loan in a cashflow crisis or help with filing the tax return.  And if I'm flourishing then you'll want me for marketing purposes more than I'll need you.

They say that 'success has a hundred fathers but failure is an orphan'.  Why should I pay you to share (only) in my upside?

Second acts

I have always been plagued by F. Scott Fitzgerald's observation that: -

'There are no second acts in American lives'

To me it sets out a particular challenge: how can you be successful at first one thing and then another in a single lifetime?

I'm talking about bona fide success here; not the mid-ranking executive who also sails competitively on the weekends or the lawyers who drop out and open that nice little B&B on the coast; not the sideline interest or the retreat from the world.  I'm talking about building some remarkable career then stopping.  Starting over from scratch and becoming remarkable again in some new way.

My travel schedule has settled down for the moment so I have two full weeks at home.  The plan is to spend the time fleshing out some 'Next Act' ideas; another book and a different type of performance project.

If not now then when?

Presentation as ordeal

This week I was at a sales meeting and shared the stage with the client's new marketing director.  It was a fractious affair, due mostly to the fact that Marketing had seen fit to change the overall strategy without sufficient consultation with Sales (according to Sales at least).  The day morphed into one of those classic Sales versus Marketing scraps where every possible cliche was trotted out: -

• The 'ivory tower' or 'the trenches'
• Next month's budget or long-term success
• Day-to-day thinking or over-the-horizon vision
• The need for a cohesive positioning or doing whatever it takes to get the sale

I'd had peripheral involvement in the decision to change the strategy and believed that the underlying logic was sound.  Still, the sales team was unconvinced.

The Marketing Director had confided in me beforehand that for him sessions like this one were about survival and nothing else, so when he stood up to speak the smell of fear was palpable.  He spoke quickly and made no eye-contact with any of the fourteen or so sales managers in the room.   Upon finishing he made to leave without Q&A but the sales guys were having none of it.  Someone raised a hand, asked a reasonable question and that was that.  Hunting as a pack the audience brutalised him for the next 45 minutes.

Did he survive?  Sort of.

But what's the point?  This guy has a strategy that I know he believes in and yet when placed in a room of the very people he depends on to enact that strategy his only thought is 'survival'.  I suppose he left with his reputation intact (if diminished) but he hadn't done a thing to persuade his colleagues to do something he knows they must be doing to ensure everyone's long-term success.

I suppose that the 'survival' analogy comes from media politics.  You agree to an interview with a Barbara Walters or a Jeremy Paxman because 'you should', it's how the game is played and so on.  Yet once in the chair all you think about is getting out alive.

I can't speak for politicians but I know too many marketers who've watched too much West Wing and so see sales conferences in the same way.  A chance to speak to the sales guys en masse is a 100% good thing.  If you're not attempting to use  the forum to excite and persuade and motivate then why are you even in your job?

Of course, as an 'external' my world is starker: if all I do is survive a session then I ain't going to be invited back.

Off to Korea

I leave for Korea this afternoon.  I'll get to Seoul on Tuesday night and begin work on Wednesday morning.  All my documents are translated, printed and waiting at the hotel.  The interpreter has been briefed and I'll meet her upon arrival.  The pre-work is done and delivery awaits.

I hope that I've accounted for the differences so I can focus on enjoying the similarities.

Train-the-Trainer 2

Train-the-Trainer projects are an inevitable part of my world because my clients are mostly large enough to have their own training departments.  This is an obvious point of tension and begs the question: what is the ideal relationship between the company-employed trainer and the external consultant?

As the external supplier, it is all too tempting to position myself as the genuine expert, an original thinker with a breadth of experience that affords insight to which a workaday wage-slave isn't privy.  And in the past I've made the mistake of behaving as I was the 'A' team (if only because that's how the senior client team described me) and paid the price.

This is what I've learned: -

The internal training department will always be cheaper than me, more in tune with company politics than me and will be around to promote or destroy my project long after I've been paid.  If I care about the long-term health of my brand then I need these people far more than they need me.

It never hurts to tell them as much.  There will be enough whisperings in their collective ear saying that my presence is an indictment on their ability without me adding to any sense insecurity.  Wherever possible Train-the-Trainer programmes should be positioned as meetings of equals rather than 'watch and learn' sessions.

Establishing a partnership of sorts with internal trainers is not always easy or even possible.  But a good start to is park your ego at the door.

A system that encourages bad behaviour

I flew home to London from Paris yesterday.

British Airways being British Airways we'd been put on a bus to get from the terminal to the actual aircraft.  Me being me I'd let other people off the bus first, so I was the last passenger to board the (full) plane.

I was sitting in row 11, not at the front and not at the back and as I'd only been away overnight I just had the one carry-on bag.  Of course there was no room remaining in the overhead compartments near row 11.  Without a hint of an apology the cabin attendant told me that I had to find space further down the plane, somewhere near row 18.  Now I'm faced with a choice: either I acquiesce (which means I'll be going against the flow to get my bag and pretty much be the last person off the flight) or I make a fuss.

So without actually raising my voice I make my displeasure known.  This isn't right.  Why should I potentially be the last person off the flight if I'm sitting in row 11?  I turn my problem into the BA guy's problem.  He reads the situation pretty well.  He offers to stow the bag himself and bring it back to row 11 after we land.  I can virtually hear the thoughts of my fellow passengers: -

"Pushy bloody Australian."

At Heathrow the cabin attendant is as good as his word, he brings me back my bag and I'm happy.  Another passenger, who was obviously told the same thing as me when boarding, then asks that his bag be retrieved as well.  It's too late: the seatbeat light is off, the aisles are suddenly full of passengers and he has to wait.

I don't like being that person.  I hate having to make a fuss.  I hate the whole idea that it's the 'squeaky wheel that gets the grease'.  That if I don't behave badly and turn my problem into someone else's then I lose.

Systems that reward bad behaviour should be avoided.  Unfortunately air travel is full of them.

Rent-seeking

I am sitting in an airport having just left a 'wrap-up' meeting at the conclusion of a very successful project.  The client was effusive and immediately looking for new areas where we can work together.  The problem is that the two projects where they next need external help don't match my skill set.  I have three choices: -

1. Take on a project and convince myself that I'll learn quickly enough to deliver what they need
2. Take on a project and find a 3rd-Party supplier who will deliver the work to the client but on my behalf
3. Explain that their needs fall outside of my competencies and decline the work
   

As tempting as the alternatives are I chose option 3.  My personal brand is too valuable for me to try and improvise my way through a major project (option 1.)

It is option 2. that I want to explore here.  If I really have my client's best interests at heart then I will either say nothing at all or I'll put him in touch with the right people and then get out of the way (which is what I did).

Still the temptation to manipulate proceedings so that everything goes through me is strong; if I bring buyers and sellers together then why shouldn't I get a piece of the action?  This is what agents do for a living right?  Essentially it's a version of what David Ricardo described as rent-seeking: -

The extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity

I am not saying that this is a bad thing per se, it just doesn't fit my business model.  I am no good at turning up to meetings where I don't have a specific role, which is what agents essentially do.  Also, I want my value proposition to be based on what I know rather than who.  Finally, it would place my reputation for quality entirely in the hands of others.

Some would say that I'm possibly 'leaving money on the table' but at least I know my personal brand is protected and that is worth a lot more to me in the longer term.

The financial firestorm

Each off us is going to have clients citing 'financial meltdown' as the reason to pull back from projects.  Despite working with the pharmaceutical industry, a sector mostly governed by different market forces, I have already had 1-2 clients make noises to this effect.

As ever, Seth Grodin says it better than me.

Train-the-Trainer 1

Train-the-Trainer sounds like such a simple, logical idea: -

Because of language issues or the overall scale of the project or whatever, doesn't it make sense for you to just transfer the skills to deliver the programme to our people and we'll take it from there?

It's very hard to argue against this logic yet it has some wide-ranging implications for my business that I sometimes struggle to fully appreciate.  Perhaps its because of my background as a performer that I am most comfortable delivering my stuff directly to the end user.  My job is to facilitate behavioural change and it's easier to do when I can look in the eyes of the person whose behaviour is meant to change.

The usual analogy for Train-the-Trainer projects is that of the children's party game 'Chinese Whispers' (aka 'Telephone') and it's hard to dispute.  Information mutates as it passes along a chain and the longer the chain the greater the mutation.  As the supplier of the original content I find myself trying to second guess a raft of possible issues faced by a deliverer who isn't me.  This 'second guessing' must account for an astonishingly wide set of variables: -

• Does that person share the underlying values assumed by the programme?
• How competent is the trainer as a presenter?  As a facilitator of discussion?
• My programmes always feature drama-based elements.  Will the trainer enthusiastically embrace, half-heartedly attempt or drop them altogether? 
• Can I assume that the programme will be given the right amount of time?  Will my room layout and other staging requirements be adhered to?  Will the handouts be properly prepared?
• How hard will the trainer fight to ensure that these project parameters are in place?

The integrity of my programme can be compromised in many ways and I have to do what I can protect my creation.  My first instinct is to proliferate documentation; try to anticipate every possible problem and script a remedy.  The obvious problem here is that I'm assuming that the trainer in question even cares enough to read my carefully constructed notes.  Another unhealthy byproduct is that my value proposition is now attached to what I write rather than what I say aloud or even what I think.

A better solution is to engender an attitude.   Instead of offering a set of mechanical solutions, if I can instill a passionate belief in the programme then the trainer is much more likely to allocate enough preparation time to deliver it well and also to fight to ensure that parameters such as programme length are kept.

I do this by investing heavily in my own branding throughout the Train-the-Trainer.  I need to endow my work with as much value as I can so that the participants leave knowing that I'm trusting them with something precious to me.  At the close I openly admit that I'm like a nervous parent sending a child out into the world for the first time and that I need each of them to do the right thing by my brand.

Always endowing our ideas with value is a big step towards ensuring that they are treated with respect.

Interpreters

In my last post I owned up to being 'depressingly monolingual'.  I envy anyone who speaks multiple languages and deeply regret not studying harder in Latin and French classes at high school.

It is remarkably easy to thrive in a global consulting environment speaking only English.  I make all the typical tourists' effort of learning 'please', 'thank you', 'hello', 'yes' and 'no'.  As most of my clients have a stated policy that all multinational meetings are conducted in 'business English' this is rightly recognised as a pretty minimalist courtesy.

However, when I'm working with sales representatives I sometimes come up against a genuine language barrier.  Salespeople conduct their calls in local language and often only the ambitious bother learning English.  This is more likely to be the case in the major northern Asian countries, China, Japan and South Korea.  In such circumstances I have to work with an interpreter.  A piece of advice: -

Be cognizant of the interpreter's fatigue level and manage it

This is blindingly obvious when you think about it because interpreting is such an exhausting job.  Everyone else in the room is speaking freely (and quickly) in their native language and the interpreter has to continuously rearticulate every thought as eloquently as he can.  And because interpreters are meant to be unobstrusive they are often instinctively 'low status' personalities (see previous posts), but this also means he'll never interrupt the flow of conversation to say he needs a break.  

A bilingual trainee in Beijing put it like this: "As the day went on he got worse and worse at translating your jokes."

All of the usual rules about managing fatigue (ie introduce new concepts as early in the day as possible) apply, only more so.  Keep a close eye on your interpreter from lunchtime onwards and if he looks tired assume he is and call a break.  Don't bother asking him directly because he'll most likely wave you away and soldier on to the overall detriment of your session.

Translation services

Over the coming weeks I am delivering facilitated workshops to non-English speaking teams in Italy, Germany, France, Spain and Korea.  As such I have recently spent a lot of time working with translation services getting my documents rewritten in the local language.  I find this work quite boring and very time-consuming.  It also presents some quite specific challenges.

Timelines

Translation forces me to focus on supporting documentation ahead of actual delivery requirements (ie my facilitated workshop).  This disrupts my 'project rhythm'; that internalised sequence of tasks that experience has taught me must each be completed a certain number of days ahead of the delivery date.

Furthermore, as a small-shop consultant I pride myself on flexibility, being able to nimbly adjust to last minute changes from the client more easily than my larger competitors.  Translation timelines threaten this flexibility and therefore my competitive edge feels reduced.

Who To Use

There is massive variability in the quality of translation services both between countries and within a given market.  Cost is only a rough indicator of quality at best.  Being depressingly monolingual means I can't assess the quality of the work ahead of the workshop itself and so this is one area where I don't necessarily advocate the use of other small-shop suppliers.  We've all laughed at those books of signs that have been badly translated into English and I don't want to be the butt of a joke going in the other direction when I flash up a particularly vital PowerPoint slide.

One answer to this would be find a proofreader to check for clangers but that adds to both cost and timeline and now I'm sourcing two new suppliers instead of one.  Instead I prefer to go with a single, larger organisation that is more likely to stand behind its reputation.

When I'm working in a brand new country there is the additional challenge of finding anyone at all so there is always the temptation to use some one recommended by the client.  The upside of this approach is that the risk of poor quality work is somehow spread ("Hey, it was your suggestion...").

One downside is that the recommendation may be personal not institutional.  Unwittingly I may have been put in touch with someone's underemployed brother-in-law, resulting in poor quality work and even less leverage over my supplier than usual.  An even bigger threat is that the translator is loyal to the client not me thus creating a nasty triangular relationship with the risk that my IP is shared without my knowledge or permission.  Of course every translator signs a confidentiality agreement but I still feel exposed, especially when working in Asia.

There are two solutions: -

1. I can deliver documentation in English and hand over all further responsibility to the client.  This absolves me of any responsibility whatsoever for quality, however, I have lost additional control over my product and there may be a sense that the client somehow 'owns' more of my IP than the license indicates.  That said, I am okay with this approach in Europe
   
2. I find a 3rd-party supplier via my own network (other suppliers and even old clients) and establish an entirely separate relationship with the translation service.  I also insist in physical delivery of documents with no PDF files released to the actual client.  From bitter experience I have learned to go this way in Asia and in developing markets

I have worked hard to create a global presence in my business niche and I genuinely enjoy working with new teams in new parts of the world.  Resolving translation issues ahead of time means that I can spend my time in-country concentrating on similarities not differences.

Status 3 (facilitation)

This is my third post on the idea of 'status' as explored by Keith Johnstone in his book Impro.

As well as high and low status 'players', Keith also identifies 'status experts' who raise and lower their status at will.  Why do this?  Because low status is better for gaining information efficiently whereas high status is better for giving commands.

I remember an account by one of Margaret Thatcher's aides that sums this up perfectly.  When she wanted to know something of you, you felt like the most important person in the room.  The information was simply sucked from you.  Then in a heartbeat she would reassert her authority and issue you with orders to be followed without further debate.  This ability to alter status at will is a trait of all good leaders.  Some do it instinctively but many more have learnt it over time.

I think that facilitation requires something similar.  My definition for facilitation is as follows: - 

"Facilitation is the art of helping experienced people articulate intelligent conclusions"

I am not paid to simply tell people what to think and do in a high status manner but rather to usher them towards the 'correct' conclusion.  This requires me to: -

• Provide the group with new stimulus (requiring me to be high status)
• Get them to articulate an assessment of that stimulus in the light of what they know already (I have to be low status)
• Then insist that certain activities and exercises are undertaken so as to enact behavioral change (high status again)
• Finally I need them to voluntarily commit to applying what they've learned in my session in 'the real world' (low)
  

As an external consultant I don't have the luxury of demanding a commitment to change.  Instead I have to earn that commitment.  Yet even when people recognise that I'm deliberately altering my status to achieve this goal they're usually happy to go along with it.

Status isn't a 'trick' to be pulled so much as an insight into human interactions to be understood.

Recruiting

When working with new organisations I make a habit of asking about the recruitment profile for team members.  Inevitably the client finds this an intelligent yet intriguing question, addressing an issue that they've paid very little attention to themselves.

Understanding how the individuals see themselves before attempting any behavioral change is vital and as corporate job adverts are a sort of self-selection process why not start there?

If the headhunter is recruited 'experienced salespeople' then I should start by respecting their experience.  If the advert said 'creative and enthusiastic' then any meetings, training and events that I run must further that expectation not stymie it.

Status 2 (salesmanship)

This is my second post on Keith Johnstone's idea of 'status'.

Let's think further about the difference between 'rank' (where you fit in a formal power structure) and 'status' (your relative importance in a social setting).  This post is about what happens in face-to-face selling situations.

Usually rank and status are in synch: the more powerful person is also more important.  Sometimes this is formally imposed and history is filled with examples of social structures wherein the King is consistently treated as the smartest, strongest, bravest, funniest and best looking person in the room irrespective of the truth.  As illustrated by the story The Emperor's New Clothes the problem of 'speaking truth to power' is an out and out status issue.

Let's move on to selling and consider the problem that the following statement creates for a consultant: -

The seller will always outrank the buyer but the person with 'knowledge' has higher status

If I am selling to you then you outrank me; you don't have to buy what I'm offering* so I should always appear thankful should ever you hire me.  However, the only motivation that you'd ever have for so doing is that in some way I'm 'more knowledgeable' than you; I bring a skill, an insight or a process that you don't have in-house.

Every consultant is familiar with this balancing act: how do I establish myself as a worthwhile expert without making the client feel stupid?  If I underplay my 'knowledge' to make the client feel comfortable I run the risk of looking like I bring nothing new to the table.  Conversely, if I overplay my hand and come across as a know-it-all I'm turning off the client in a different yet equally fatal manner.

Isn't salesmanship fun?  Let's apply this idea to three selling scenarios: -

Repeat Business

The client knows what I do and wants more of the same.  Because I don't have to sell my 'knowledge' I don't have to adopt a high status position at all.  I can remain lower in status and simply thank the client for any additional work.

3rd-Party Referral Business (Word-of-Mouth)

The reason that 3rd-party referral is an easy sell is that someone that the client trusts has established my 'knowledge' credentials for me.  I can go into the pitch meeting and treat the client as someone who outranks me; I talk modestly about previous successes (not being too high status) but concentrate on giving the impression that I'd be honored to get the work.

Cold Calling

Cold calling is far harder because I'm forced to start with a high status position so that its clear that I'm not wasting anyone's time.  Then I have to drop that status to indicate that I'd be grateful for any project that might come of the meeting.  In a successful cold call you can feel the point at which the conversation pivots away from what you're offering and towards what will or won't be happening next.

This is why cold calling is never easy and I am convinced that it's the reason why repeat and word-of-mouth is the mainstay of most consulting businesses.

* There are some obvious exceptions to this statement that actually prove the point I'm making.  I'll deal with them later.

Status 1 (introduction)

As promised, this is the first of several posts on Keith Johnstone's idea of 'status' and how it might relate to the world of a freelance consultant.

As Keith is mainly interested in on-stage drama we'll start there.  He uses the term 'status' to mean one character's relative importance in a social setting.  In a two-person situation its necessarily binary: 'high status' and 'low status'.

Three observations: -

1. Status is not the same as 'rank'; the master will always outrank the servant but he can certainly be lower in status
   
2. Status is fluid; a character's (relative) importance will fluctuate depending on circumstance; sometimes being the 'wealthiest' grants a character top status but at other times it might go to the 'smartest', 'bravest', 'strongest' or whatever
   
3. On stage (as in life) characters have a preferred status; just as some people are instinctively 'high status' others are instinctively 'low status'
   

Much fun can be had using these three ideas to analyse the character relationships in pretty much any play, film or TV show you care to name: -

• Hugh Laurie's eponymous character in House is not the top-ranking doctor in his hospital but is the high status player in pretty much every situation

• The ensemble of characters in Friends are forever fluctuating in status depending on what's important at the time.  For example, Ross being 'smart' doesn't automatically grant him high status over Joey who is 'sexy'

• In The Sopranos Tony is an instinctive high status character and reacts violently whenever this is challenged

A more complex example might be the relationship between the characters played by Russell Crowe and Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator.

(Do I really need a 'spoiler alert' for a film released in 2000?)

The plot is driven by the fact that Maximus (Crowe) is outranked by the emperor Commodus (Phoenix) but is the higher status character, something that causes Commodus to react evermore viciously.  By the film's end Commodus' status is eroded until he is left dead in the dust whilst Maximus' corpse is carried aloft from the Collosseum.

In the next post I want to take these same ideas and apply them to my world.

Impro by Keith Johnstone

The book that changed my life was Impro by Keith Johnstone.

Keith is the grand old man of performance improvisation.  If you've ever laughed at Whose Line is it Anyway? then you have Keith to thank.  He worked at the Royal Court Theatre in London in the 1960's, founded the Theatre Machine improv group and created the global phenomenon that is  Theatresports.  Keith has influenced thousands of writers and performers around the world and I've been lucky enough to work with him on three separate occasions over the last twenty years.

In 1989 a new girlfriend took (dragged) me along to Belvoir St Theatre in Surry Hills, Sydney to see Theatresports.  It was a genuinely stellar cast that night that included Daniel Cordeaux, Ewan Campbell, Marko Mustac and Andrew Denton with Lynn Pierse as her strange uber-nun character Sister Mary Leonard.  I left the theatre thinking, "I must do that."

Within a week I'd enrolled in a course and on Lynn's recommendation I bought Impro.  Six weeks later I performed on the Belvoir Street stage for the first time.  A few months after that I started my own theatre company (Instant Theatre) with two partners.

As I was still working for Unilever we decided to concentrate on the conference and seminar market with a specific focus on what Keith describes as 'status issues'.  Instant Theatre successfully packaged up the lessons of Impro for the Australian corporate scene and my current business (Dramatic Change) is a direct evolution of that work.

Dramatic Change only exists because I was taken to the theatre then given a book to read.

I recommend Impro to anyone interested in creativity, narrative or especially Keith's very specific idea of 'status'.  Over the next few posts I'm going to unpack that idea and apply it to the world of the freelance consultant.

In Brussels

Tomorrow is a 'rehearsal day' for an EU rollout with a new marketing client.  Actually tomorrow is the rehearsal for the Launch meeting.  The rehearsal for the rollout proper is a week away.  I have no role at the Launch (I'm not even attending) so I don't know why I'm even in Brussels.

That's not true.  I know exactly why I'm here.

Every now and then I work with a team that is smart, driven, good to be around, strategically astute yet something is missing.  It's as if the very essence of the project eludes us.  This has  been bugging me for weeks and I've worked out why: -

The project culture is flawed, albeit not fatally

Every extended, team-based project takes on its own culture and ours was flawed from the start.  At the first meeting we embarked on an informal competition to be the most farsighted person in the room.  Genuinely important conversations were derailed by grave, oracular statements about the most trivial possibility.  We never shook the habit and decisions were made in February that could have waited until August, whilst critical issues raised months ago remain unresolved.

We'll get there.  That's why we have tomorrow and next Friday.  There's nothing like a deadline to sharpen up the discipline of a group.  Even a group of marketers.

Pneumonia

Looking over my journal I see that two years ago I was diagnosed with an atypical pneumonia with secondary reactive arthritis.  I'd been having dreadful coughing fits and becoming increasingly lethargic for a while so my doctor sent me for chest a X-Ray.  This led to one of the all-time great interactions with Britain's National Health Service: -

Nurse: "You've obviously got some sort of pneumonia.  Before we go any further, have you traveled anywhere unusual of late?"

Me: "Well, I was wandering around respiratory care hospitals in Beijing a few weeks ago."

Nurse: "Excuse me whilst I put on this mask."

This was 2006 and for a while there I was 'Patient Zero' in the upcoming European Bird Flu pandemic.  In the end it was diagnosed as 'atypical', meaning that no one had any idea except that I'd probably been on too many planes.

The arthritis hit a month later.  I was running a two-day workshop in Newmarket in Suffolk when just before lunch on the second day I felt a twinge in my left ankle that I couldn't explain.  By mid-afternoon I was limping badly and by the time I got off the train at Liverpool Street station at 7pm I couldn't walk at all.  I was on crutches for about seven weeks including a few excruciatingly painful days on the cobblestoned streets of Lisbon.

Again, the NHS had no definitive diagnosis; the arthritis was probably my body's reaction to the earlier pneumonia and both conditions would totally resolve with no long-term after-effects.  Two years on this prognosis seems happily correct.

My journal from the time is unsurprisingly depressing, the consistent theme being if I don't work I don't get paid.  And much of my work involves plane flights.

This is the reality of self-employment.  You have to look after your health because you will go broke if you don't.  This is not to say that your clients aren't nice people who wish you well.  I consider quite a few of my clients as friends but as much as they'd like to help me out, I have to do the work first.

Over the next few months I have a lot of flying to do and there is no excuse for getting ill.

Farming v. Other forms of self-employment

In my last post I alluded to the fact that I am a farmer's son.  I grew up on a farm near the town of Cumnock in the Central-West of New South Wales.  As the eldest child and only son it was actually an active choice for me not to become a farmer (see last post).

My father was a very good farmer and I long before I could articulate the reason why I knew that I didn't want to follow in his wake.  When asked about it now I explain that my definition of a good farmer is as follows: -

Someone who gets up at dawn on a rainy morning in the middle of winter to go and fix a fence that isn't broken yet.

As far as farming goes that was never going to be me.  I've never regretted the decision to do other things with my life but I do like to think that I carry that attitude with me nonetheless: -

Get up every morning and solve a problem before it even arises.

Talking to farmers

My wife and I spent a lovely August Bank Holiday Weekend in Norfolk as guests of friends who are farmers growing wheat, canola (rapeseed) and beans.  On Sunday afternoon we went to the local pub and met up with their friends, most of whom are farmers also.

As we stood around in the soft evening light chatting, much of the conversation revolved around work; in particular comparisons between the working life of a farmer and a self-employed consultant.  The similarities were all pretty obvious: self-employment, working alone and making every decision for (and by) yourself.

The differences were far more revealing.  There are the obvious things like the physical nature of farming work, the dangers of producing a commodity when selling to an aggressive buyer like Tesco and the near-total reliance on weather.

Harder to spot but far more interesting was the idea of 'cost of entry'.  With the exception of one man who was the farm manager of a large estate, everyone at the pub had inherited the land they worked.  The best way to become a farmer is to be a farmer's son.  In fact given that you can no longer go west and simply stake a claim, the only other ways to get into the business are to either sink a lot of cash (yours and the bank's) into buying land or to manage a large holding owned by someone else.  The barriers to entering the farming profession are thus remarkably high.

By contrast becoming a consultant requires nothing more than an email address and a business card.  Consultancy like stand-up comedy, motivational speaking and any kind of freelance writing has very low barriers to entry.  There is no blanket expectation that we be accredited like accountants or even be educated to a given level.

You are a consultant the moment you say you are.

This means that there will always be someone coming after you.  Some 'lean and hungry' type who will argue that your 'years of experience' equates to 'complacency' and that she can do a better job cheaper.

In no way am I saying that a farmer's lot is an easier one; I know that as a farmer's son.  But farmers should at least be able to see where the next big threat to their livelihood is coming from.  For all I know someone was made redundant last Friday who spent the long weekend deciding to go out on her own as pharma marketing consultant rather than applying for another job.  Today we don't even know that the other exists but my business depends on me behaving as if she does.

When businesses in high cost-of-entry markets fail its like the Titanic hitting the iceberg, in low cost-of-entry markets like mine its usually the death of a thousand invisible cuts.

A good day

Last week I successfully completed that job with the Finnish sales team.  There was certainly a buzz around the room when we wrapped up the project and yesterday I got an urgent request for information to be shared across the Nordic* region.  I knew that there would be follow-up at some stage but the speed of turnaround was especially gratifying.

When a new client comes looking for me; that's a good day.

* Here's something else I learned last week:  'Nordic' is a geographic descriptor for Norway, Denmark, Sweden and Finland.  'Scandinavian' is essentially a racial term which applies to all of the above except Finland.

In Holland

This week I delivered a 1.5 day programme at a conference in Holland.  I arrive Tuesday night in order to work with a sales team on Wednesday and Thursday.  As arranged I make contact with the Sales Manager immediately upon checking into the hotel.

Over coffee she updates me on the event so far.  We speak for about twenty minutes but as we get up to go, in an attempt at an afterthought she says,

"I hope you don't mind but we're going to start your session an hour later in the morning.  There's some admin issues that we desperately need to sort out so we'll do that first."

I say nothing.

"If you like we can go a bit later in the afternoon to make up the time.  Until six o'clock if you like."

Again I say nothing.

"It really has to be completed before midday and there's no other time available."

We both know what's going on.  There's been misorganisation at some point and she's playing catch-up.  She's aware that she's taking high-value time from me at the beginning of the day in exchange for low-value time at the end.  There's no way I can go to 6pm without the team either falling asleep or mutinying.  It's hard to add value to a training room where the overwhelming sentiment is 'seething resentment'.

The Sales Manager so obviously wants me to airily say that it'll make no difference to my programme but I can't do that without lying.  Aside from fatigue issues, the later start means that I can't arrange the room the way I want.  The lost hour also means that my timings are out of synch with the conference coffee and meal breaks.  Of course I'll manage but I'm going to have to work a lot harder to achieve what I've promised her.

I smile and say that my philosophy is to 'play the cards I'm dealt'.

The change has an interesting effect on me: I could look at it and say that I'm going to get paid exactly the same fee for an hour less work.   I've also earned a 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card - if the programme is deemed unsuccessful I can offload some of the blame on the effect of the later start.  It's like a little cartoon demon has appeared at my shoulder to tempt me with easy options.

But I don't get paid by the hour and I didn't get where I am by grabbing hold of excuses.  I claim to be only as good as my results and no one will remember that lost hour when the client considers whether or not to use me again.

I really do have to play the cards I'm dealt.

The session goes well enough although I have to work a hell of a lot harder to get it there.  It ends with a sense that there'll be a follow-up programme in the coming months.

This is what standing by your results means.

At the Edinburgh Festival 6

The Fringe is over for me for 2008.  I was only planning on doing my show for the first ten days but events elsewhere means I had to cut back even more.  My final performance was last Thursday night.

It was an almost entirely positive experience.  The beauty of doing a run at a single venue is that every night you build on what you learnt the night before; you feel your act sharpen and tighten as your timing improves.

Offstage I had time to think about the underlying mechanics of the festival experience; observing how the invisible hand ushers audiences out of one show and down the road and into the next.  I had the chance to consider what projects I might bring back here in the future, under what conditions and to what end.  Being self-employed I need to consider the opportunity cost of a month of late nights in Edinburgh.

At my last show we had standing room only again.  We ended on a high.

At the Edinburgh Festival 5

So much for the Scottish summer.  It's been raining for two days straight which makes flyering very unpleasant and even less worthwhile.  However, the audiences don't seem to be affected all that much.  If you're in town for the Festival, a collection of mostly indoor events, then rain is a reason to see more shows, not less.

But it does mean that audiences tend to stay in the one venue and see a series of shows rather than pick and choose between shows / venues around town.  Given that our show is quite broad in its appeal we benefit from this.  However, the act on immediately ahead of us is far more specialised.  The show is a work of genius but one glance at it's promotional material says it ain't for everyone.

My comments about Long Tail at the Fringe seem to be borne out by the fact that the model breaks down when the distribution (ie punters walking between venues) seizes up.

We had about 14 in last night.

At the Edinburgh Festival 4 (Long Tail analysis)

I was standing at the bar waiting for my drink when a local turned and asked,

"You up for the Fringe?"

"Yes."

"Wanna know what's wrong with the f***ing Fringe?  Too many of the f***ing acts are f***ing sh*t.  You cannae work out what's good and what's not."

(He was, after all, an Edinburgh local)

He had a point.  As I've mentioned in previous posts there are over 2000 shows and the Fringe positively prides itself on the total lack of quality control.  The very best of theatre and comedy is right alongside shows so awful that they beggar belief.

The obvious comparison is between the Edinburgh Fringe and the World Wide Web.  Let's look at the Fringe through the prism of Chris Anderson's 'long tail' model.  We have near enough to an infinite variety of products available and since audiences are happy tramping around the city to obscure venues at all hours, a surprisingly efficient mode of delivery.  The problem, as my drunken Scottish mate identified, is how do you know what's good and what's not?  Price is no guide as some terrific acts are performing in the free venues whilst terrible ones are charging £12 ($24 USD).

This is where the Long Tail analogy falls down I think: much of what's on offer out on the far left of Anderson's tail isn't merely outdated or obscure, it's just bad.  The Fringe is that tail in living colour.

In this environment the various Fringe reviewers wield immense influence as the only vaguely efficient guide of what to see and what to avoid.  I think the more important role is in warning people away from the bad rather than towards the good.  An hour in the company of a delusional idiot who thinks he's the next Eddie Izzard is an hour you're never getting back.

Last night we were standing room only again, which means over 30 in the audience.  And we got reviewed!

In Helsinki

I've had to leave the Festival for 36 hours or so to attend a meeting in Finland.  The shift in mindset I'm facing in the morning will take some work.

Self-employment, eh?

At the Edinburgh Festival 3

Performers' attitudes to the festival are as varied as their acts.  For acts established on the circuit it's often the one month of the year they get to do a show about something that they find genuinely interesting instead of running out the same lowest-common-denominator gags that work for office parties and hens' nights.  For newer acts it's a chance to try out longer routines (working up that 20-minute set in a relatively safe environment).  And for pretty much everyone it's a chance to laugh with (and at) old mates, drink too much and stay up way too late. 

All the usual showbiz mythologies are writ large here; talent will out, there's a lucky break out there waiting to happen, you've got to sleep with the right people to get anywhere, its about the looks these days and so on.  Most performers will lose thousands of pounds at this year's Festival yet few are willing to see the money as an investment to be capitalised on rather than a good time that they've paid for.  

In reality the Edinburgh Fringe is just a very long, very crazy trade show and the more focused acts spend every waking moment with an eye on the next opportunity: getting an agent or a run of better quality bookings or a TV deal.  Acutely aware of what shows to 'drop in on' in the hope of grabbing stage time, even in their cups they'll never admit to a single bad gig and mere socialisng loses out to networking opportunities every time.

I look at this relentlessness, this hunger, and see the same thing in the origins of my own company all those years ago.  And just as with my business, it wasn't ever talent alone that made it to the top.  Talent is 'cost of entry' but no more than that.

On Saturday night we had over 30 people in the audience (standing room only!) and last night we had 13.

At the Edinburgh Festival 2

An unavoidable part of any visit to the Festival is the flyering.  Across the city but especially near the major venues and along the Royal Mile are swarms of enthusiastic people thrusting brightly coloured paper flyers for their shows at unresponsive passers-by.  For a sector of society (ie performers and writers) purportedly concerned with environmental issues the waste is unbelievable.

It is an article of faith that a successful show Edinburgh relies on a minimum of one hour a day of flyering per cast member.  Yet the widely held rule of thumb that a 1% yield (ie one audience member per every 100 flyers handed out) is par doesn't bear out this argument.

I think that flyering has more to do with regaining a sense of agency in the face of the overwhelming odds against success; most shows lose money because there are so many shows competing for business; performers are reduced to attempting anything at all, regardless of its efficacy, to increase the chance of success, regardless of the efficacy of the action.  Your own time is cheap, why not use it?

Of course this grasping at straws is nothing more than superstition.  Although there is no logic in agency for agency's sake, most of us are guilty of those silly rituals that seem to pay dividends in the face of their illogicality.

Performers who would never deign to flyer their own show in London, instead employing kids who are happy to take a few quid for a few hours work, happily do so at the Festival.  Superstition notwithstanding, I suspect that the real reason is that this pointless task is a leveler; part of the shared 'Edinburgh experience' to bond over.

We had an audience of 9 last night.

At the Edinburgh Festival 1

For the next ten days I'm in Edinburgh performing at the largest arts, music and comedy festival in the world.

It is an especially brutal marketplace with the supply of shows far outweighing the demand; there are literally thousands of shows being staged.  They range from Joan Rivers to the 125th iteration of the Cambridge Footlights Review that gave rise to John Cleese and Peter Cook; and from serious, experimental theatre in purpose-built venues to stand-up comics in dingy rooms with a single mic.

Over the next few days I'm going to try and make sense of the stand-up comedy scene up as a market.  Being a stand-up is pretty much the ultimate n=1 proposition; you create and deliver your own product and your personal brand is your biggest asset.

Early on your personal style counts for far less than a proven ability to perform for a certain amount of time.  Strangely, the promoters who put the shows together are more concerned about the length of a show than it's content so comics must prove themselves able to be able to work to a time-based demand.  We're asked if we can do a 'tight ten' (ie a solid ten-minute routine that will work for most audiences) with no questions whatsoever about the content of the set.  Getting a reputation for 'not sticking to time' can be fatal for a newer comic.

Most promoters book acts solely on the basis of time and then leave it up to the comics themselves to worry about if their sets are too similar in topic matter or even if they're right for the audience in question.  It is within these strictures that all but the ultra-talented have to work to build their brands.

We had an audience of 16 last night.  The Festival average is 4.

Itemised quotes

The economic downturn has shown up on my doorstep in the form of requests for greater detail in pitch documents.  In the last week two different clients (one old, one new) have referred project proposals to Purchasing who have then demanded very specific financial breakdowns.  I had to remind myself that purchasing departments usually have a precise mindset that deals more easily with large quantities of tangible low-ticket items (say, widgets) instead of small quantities of intangible high-ticket items (consultancy).

Because Purchasing Officers / Managers are intentionally removed from the project itself I sometimes find it hard to avoid seeming evasive when I can't break down my figures past a certain point.  "I cost what I cost" is obviously an unacceptable response.  

It is vital to work out whether the person you're dealing with is coming from an administrative or negotiating standpoint.  With an administrator it's simply making the numbers add up, but today I made an incorrect assumption and ended up in a negotiation over day rate before I knew it.

I await the outcome.

Will Ferrell movies

I'm back in the US running a week-long programme.  It's a long time to spend with a group of strangers.  It means that the people I'm working with get to see me in a semi-social context as well as a straight professional one and we won't be strangers at the end of the week.

Personally, the biggest challenge is dinner.  No one wants to 'talk shop' but so many other topics are off limits; religion and politics are fraught, not everyone follows sport (and my knowledge of the 'Big Four' American sports is no better than passable) and you can only say so much about your kids to a complete stranger.

My background presents an additional challenge.  Because everyone else at the table has a pretty similar set of experiences (for starters they all ended up working for the same pharmaceutical company) being a self-employed Australian who lives in the UK arguably makes me more 'interesting' than everyone else.  It's bad manners to dominate a conversation, especially when I've been holding forth all day in the training room.

My solution is to get everyone to nominate their favourite Will Ferrell film.  He's made so many and they're mainstream enough for everyone to have seen and enjoyed at least a couple.  This gambit is good for at least thirty minutes of pleasant, unmemorable yet professional conversation.

His cameos in The Wedding Crashers and Zoolander were his best work for mine.

No excuses

I know I link to Seth Grodin a lot but this really is about all of us little guys.

Opportunity cost

Currently I'm pitching on a huge project; a train-the-trainer roadshow made more complicated by being pan-European and with the usual disconnect between the centralised marketing function in Paris and the regional sales teams.

I can already guess that the project will swallow every available moment of my life between now and deadline with multi-country teleconferences, endless rewriting of PowerPoint slide decks and one-line emails about the need to install an updated version of Adobe Acrobat.  Because I won't let myself to do bad work I will do all of this regardless of the financial deal I strike this week.

Whilst I want the job and I'm prepared to handle the hassle that will come with it I'm also aware of the opportunity cost of getting the pricing wrong.  It's going to be hard enough dealing with all the frustrations brought about by the client's internal politics without having to turn down more lucrative work because I'm overcommitted.  If that happens I'll really struggle for motivation.  This is what undercharging feels like and it's when I do my worst work so I need to factor a sense of opportunity cost into my pricing.

The jobs that have hurt my reputation the most have always been the cheapest.

A long walk

Today was hard.  I slept poorly and unusually for me, late.  It was one of those days where I overcomplicated even the simplest tasks.  Around midday it occurred to me that anything attempted today would take longer and be done worse than if I put it off until tomorrow or next week.

Instead I wrote a list of the simplest things I could think of doing for the afternoon: office filing, doing some laundry, preparing something nice for dinner, finishing the book I'm reading and so on.  At the top of the page was 'go for a long walk'.  So I walked through London to a coffee shop on a busy high street, I bought a coffee, sat in the window and watched the Friday world go by, then I walked home again.

Sure the week ended with a whimper not a bang but at least I ended it with a sense of agency.

The Long Tail

I'm reading a 2006 book by Chris Anderson (editor-in-chief of Wired magazine) called The Long Tail.

Whilst its difficult to relate much of the book to my Headcount: 1 model, I was happy to read his thoughts about self-published books: -

"The book becomes not the product of value but the advertisement for the product of value - the authors themselves.  Many such noncommercial books are best seen as marketing vehicles meant to enhance the academic reputation of their authors, market their consultancy, earn them speaking fees, or just leave their mark on the world.  Seen that way, self-publishing is not a way to make money; it's a way to distribute your message."

p77

Anderson is intrigued by the potential of digital technology (including improved efficiencies in print production) to allow more of us to produce and distribute our ideas.  Every consultant is in the ideas business and we're running out of excuses for not getting them out into the marketplace.

A houseguest

For the past few days an old friend of mine from Sydney has been a houseguest.  She visits London about once a year and it's always lovely catching up with her.  My wife and I feel very strongly about keeping up good links with Australian friends and family and nothing beats chatting with someone face to face.

But for the person who works from home houseguests are always going to be a mixed blessing.  My friend is having a holiday at my place of work.

There's no easy solution to this.  London real estate is far too expensive for me to have a flat large enough for my workspace to be isolated and my friend is here to see me not Nelson's Column.

The best and politest thing I can do is arrange my workflow such that I'm not especially busy for the time we have a guest.  Where that isn't possible I try and stick to my 5am starts and get work done before my holidaymaking friend wakes up.  Otherwise all I can do is close the door, put on the Bose Noise-Canceling Headphones I wear on planes and work quickly.

When we have visitors it's all too easy for me to adopt a curmudgeonly or even misanthropic persona and leave my wife to play hostess.  But that defeats the whole point of self-employment.  One of the chief joys of working for yourself is arranging life so that you get to have wine over a midweek lunch with an old friend when the opportunity arises?

Houseguests are a good thing.

Dressing for meetings

Beware of overdressing for meetings with client, especially if you're going to be at their offices.  As a consultant you want to be seen as a colleague and not a job applicant.

My rule is to go 'one up' on clients.  I try to dress marginally more formally than they do.

• If they wear chinos + jacket + tie then I'll wear a suit
• If they go without the tie then I'll wear chinos + jacket + tie
  
• If they wear open-necked shirts then I'll wear jacket + open-necked shirt (my preferred)

I will always at least carry a jacket and I never wear jeans, even at an off-site meeting.  I always wear leather shoes (not trainers) and socks (so no boat shoes).  I'm also aware that many clients have different dress rules for Fridays.

I know that some suppliers, especially creatives, get a buzz out of dressing as informally as possible because 'they can'.  To me that's tantamount to rubbing the client's nose in the fact that he's a wage slave?

For this reason I'd rather be overdressed and have a client poke a little fun at me for being 'stuffy' than be underdressed.  I can always claim to have another meeting that day where the client isn't as 'cool' as this one (flattery will get me a lot of places).

And a client who complains about any aspect of how I dress on more than one occasion is telling me, in code, that she doesn't want me to get the gig.

Keep a journal

From time to time we all need to bitch about clients, suppliers and colleagues.  When you work alone there is a sometimes a danger in that any human contact becomes a surrogate for these 'office conversations'.  Before you know it you're spraying your world with indiscretions.

My solution is to keep a journal.  That's a grand name for what is actually a series of MS-WORD files kept very separate from my work folders on my computer.  I don't write every day, only when I feel compelled, but when I do I allow myself to write down absolutely anything I'm feeling.  Because no one else will ever read these pages I can use them to hope, plan and most importantly vent.

Writing honestly is its own reward.  Over the ten years I've been doing this I've assembled a record of conversations with myself that is now a genuine resource.  Let's say I'm nervous about an upcoming meeting, I can easily review how I felt last time I was in a similar situation; what did I write before the meeting and what did I write afterwards?  What went well and what would I have done differently?

We've all heard the Socratic quote, 'An unexamined life is not worth living'.  Isn't one of the joys of self-employment the opportunity to live an 'examined life'?

Client dinners

This week I ran a two-day project for a UK client  at a country house hotel in Oxfordshire.

As is expected at such events I dined with the team in the evening.  This wasn't a chore as it was a small group of mature, interesting professionals who were very comfortable for the conversation to flow between work and non-work topics.  Most but not all drank wine.  As I had emails to attend to I left as the others ordered coffee.

As corporate dinners go this was a good one.  The bad ones begin with a group decision to abuse the company Amex and end with a drunken argument (or worse) with the management when the hotel bar closes.  The worst client dinner I can recall ended with the police being called.

As an external supplier its a common sense rule that you never get drunk in front of a client.  A less obvious caveat to that rule is that you should never bear witness to a client's drunkenness. 

There is no upside whatsoever in dealing with a client who was vomiting in a gutter the last time you saw him.

Jet lag

I flew to the US last Tuesday evening and home again on Friday night.

Whilst in the US I was fine, functioning at an extremely high level and converting a trip that I was ambivalent about into a real winner.  But since getting back to London I've struggled against fatigue.  I had a comedy gig on Saturday night (preparation for my Edinburgh Fringe Festival show) that went well enough but since then I've been unable to think straight.  I'd planned a relatively short To Do List for today but I'm not sure how I would've coped if I'd been genuinely busy.

I know its no more than a cost of doing business and I feel guilty about complaining even here (see previous posts) but sometimes I worry that my fortysomething body is feeling its age.  I read somewhere that typical 'active' McKinsey's consultant is in his or her early 30's; on days like this I understand why.

Back in Princeton

Work has taken me back to the US.  I arrived yesterday after a progression of travel disasters that will one day make a great stand-up routine (let's just say I found myself at a Starbucks at 530am, with my bags, hotel-less and into my 20th hour of wearing the same clothes).

That afternoon I had a meeting with a prospective client, a guy I've built up a decent relationship with over the last four months, and I was faced with a problem: what to say about my nightmarish travel experience?

I'm on the horns of a familiar dilemma.  Riffing about the series of mishaps is a chance for us to bond.  The reason why so many comedy routines are travel-centered is that 'the travel disaster' is a universal experience (amongst the middle class people who go comedy shows at least).  Talking about my day will act as an ice-breaker and we can have some fun swapping stories before getting down to business.

But in doing so, am I accentuating the fact that I am a UK-based supplier trying to break into the US market, at some level I'm reminding him that I'm not based in New York or Philadelphia?  Even if its only at a subconsciously, am I restating the fact that travel experiences like yesterday have to be factored into my costs in some way?

The situation was even more pronounced when I lived in Sydney, which is at least ten hours flying time from anywhere.  The fact that much of the world sees Australia as an exotic place was always a potential negative for me: what could I gain by reminding the client that when the project's over I'm going back to somewhere exotic and he isn't?

Never complain about jetlag and save the 'travel nightmare' stories for friends and family.

Response times

My rule of thumb is as follows: -

Phone call: respond in 12 business hours or less

Email: respond in 24 business hours or less (or Sunday night)

I gain absolutely nothing from stalling on client response.  Any thoughts that I might seem desperate are in my head.  Why wouldn't I want to signal that I'm eager, enthusiastic and ready to work at every opportunity?

Presence

For over ten years every page of every document I create has my email address on it.  Every person who has ever met with me has walked away with a document.  Where possible I try to agenda phone meetings with pre-sent PowerPoint presentations so that everyone has the same visuals in front of them simultaneously.  Of course my email address appears on every slide.

Presence in a marketplace is built up over years.

Business cards

My very first business card carried seven pieces of information: -

1. My name
   
2. Company name
3. Office number
4. Fax number
5. Pager number
6. Street address
7. Mailing address

When mobile phones and email came along that ballooned out to ten pieces: -

1. My name
2. Company name
3. Office number
4. Fax number
5. Mobile number 
6. Pager number
7. Street address
8. Mailing address
9. eMail address
10. Website

The card was a disaster zone.  I had to beg graphic designers to take on the project

The impression I wanted to create was that (a) not only was I the most contactable man on the planet; but also (b) that my business was substantial enough to have a street address and a receptionist.  It all cost money: phone, fax, mobile, pager, email and postal address to be contacted, plus a street address (that I didn't otherwise need) to give the impression of substance.

I was so terrified of seeming insubstantial and coming across as 'fly by night' that I was renting an office to create an impression for clients who couldn't have cared less.  

Contactability is all that matters and now my card carries only five pieces of information: -

1. My name
2. Company name
3. eMail address
4. Website
5. Mobile number

The only people who ever have a problem with this are individuals within client organisations who are politically opposed to my project, and competing suppliers.  Uncannily, both use the phrase 'fly by night'.

With 'political' opponents I respond by saying that I operate across so many time zones it makes no sense to have a receptionist answering the phones for only eight of 24 hours.  Besides, if you really do want to contact me you'll call my mobile anyway.

With competing suppliers it's all about competitive advantage.  If I take on unnecessary overheads then I lose mine.