Ideas, opportunity, time & capital

Any new enterprise requires a combination of ideas, opportunity, time and capital.  The absence of one or an unsympathetic proportion between the four and sooner or later the venture will fail.

Last week's travel hassles had me cooling my heels in Singapore, hanging out with old mates and getting a taste of the comfortable expat lifestyle that a career in Asian dealmaking affords.   I found myself thinking, "I could handle this. The great food, warm weather, access to amazing cities and a chance to be situated near the centre of the next economic revolution."

But could I handle it?  Is there a niche in the turbocharged Asian environment for a Headcount: 1 player?  No one of my personal acquaintance is genuinely and successfully playing with his own capital in Asia.  I can name half a dozen people who've fallen in love with this or that island in Thailand or Indonesia and who are the proud (part-) owners of overgrown building sites rapidly receding into the jungle.  The real game in Asia is either resource extraction or building those big things that only governments and huge consortia can afford to pay for.  Tapping into that world is what gets you that cool Singapore lifestyle.

I doubt that a market yet exists in Asia for my sort of sales/marketing insights.  I've delivered a couple of projects a year across the region over the last five years but in every case the client was the Western-run global or regional office.  I've never had a local manager contact me for unsolicited follow-up work. This lack of bottom-up demand speaks volumes; I don't mind taking occasional money in the name of global harmonisation but to be successfully based in Asia I'd need demand directly from Asian offices.  No amount of time, capital or great ideas will compensate for the lack of on-the-ground opportunity.

As I write I'm sitting in Zurich en route from Singapore to Germany.  I bet that there are at least a dozen men and women just like me in this airport right now; self-employed, small-shop consultants specialising in semi-soft skills. Each of us happily making a living without needing to conquer all of Europe to do so.

Eighty percent

Eighty percent of being successful in life is showing up.

I've quoted this Woody Allen line (from Annie Hall) before but in the shadow of Eyjafjallajoekull it's worth revisiting.

I've long held the Sydney Morning Herald to be the worst broadsheet in the world so this smug and sneering article was no surprise whatsoever: -

All those people on TV, frantically rushing from departure gate to train station to hire car vendor, remind me of a quote from a novel I once read (Margaret Atwood, perhaps?): “People will do anything rather than admit their lives have no meaning.” It turns out they’re even willing to sleep in airports.

Of course there's nothing a SMH journo enjoys more than sneering at the wage slaves.  If they're those nasty, Gaia-killing corporate traveler types then so much the better.  It doesn't occur to the writer that for many of the people she's mocking travel is as much an end as a means.  Showing up - being present at the meeting - is not a downside of the job, it is the job.  Airily declaring the meeting to be pointless doesn't change this.  Making fun of someone trying to do their job well; i.e. doing everything in their power to make the meeting, is a cheap shot.

A freelance writer who hires a taxi to get her copy to the editor when the fax and email goes down is the ultimate professional; the legend who went above and beyond to get the job done.  The habitual Business Class flier who opts to travel overnight in a 3rd Class rail carriage is an exact analogue.

Looking back I bet we'll be saying that this was the week when the understudy got her big break.  Like when the up-and-coming act got to close out the main stage.  Critics will put it down to the luck of being in the right place at the right time but in our hearts we know there's more to it than that.

No one is going to get sacked this week for missing the meeting but being the guy who did show up will count.

Eyjafjallajoekull

I suppose everyone is stuck somewhere this week.  I just happen to be stuck in Singapore.

It's hard to grasp the extent of the shutdown of European air traffic from this distance but doubtless there won't be a full roll call at Wednesday's pan-European pitch meeting in Milan.  My worry is not that I'll be somehow marked down for failing to anticipate the eruption of a volcano in Iceland but simply that the moment presented by the pitch will be lost.  In most workplaces an Act of God is the ultimate 'Get Out Of Jail' card.  Missing that meeting in Milan is consequence-free for everyone but me.

Most people live lives with very few totally unforgiving days; the time your train got delayed on the way to the interview and the job went to the other guy.  Self-employment is accepting that there are going to many more of these totally unforgiving days.

No one owes me a second chance regardless of why the first one went awry.

Orange, NSW

We spent the weekend in and around the town of Orange in the central-west of NSW. The occasion was my youngest sister's wedding, which gathered friends and family for a truly great couple of days.

As both the UK and Australia go to the polls this year there was much discussion about the relative strengths of the two countries. I spent a lot of time trying to convince the othet party guests that they were better off, both comparatively and absolutely than the Brits. No only does Australia have more natural resources under better management than any European country, its intelligent, pro-active oversight of local banks meant that the economy barely dipped into recession during the GFC. As bad as it might feel in rural Australia, I said, life is far worse in urban England.

"So what?" was the response, "You can only live in one country at a time." A more cogent comparison for Orange, 2010 is not London, 2010 but rather Orange, 2005.

Walking past block after block of vacant shops on Summer Street this morning restated their argument for them.

Time & tide

After a good week's work in Singapore, on Friday I met my wife in Australia for Easter. We traveled south from Sydney to spend the night in the beautiful Calderwood Valley on the farm where she grew up.

The matriarch is her grandmother, a 92-year-old sculptress named May Barrie. May has been working in stone for seventy years and whilst she's well-known to the cognoscenti the family has always harboured a feeling that she deserved greater recognition. Last year she won Australia's most prominent sculpture prize.

May herself remains as matter-of-fact as ever. She's always known her work is good. A long life creating beautiful things in a beautiful place with friends and family close by is as good as it gets.