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.