CHAPTER 9
FACE THE FACTS BEFORE YOU START
… In which we discover how hard it is to get an honest opinion of our plans and how vitally important it is to face up to reality.
HONESTY
As we plan our enterprise and decide what it is we want to do, the one thing we need, and which is almost impossible to find, is honesty. I don’t mean our honesty as it relates to our integrity with customers, suppliers, or even the law. What I am referring to is the honesty – the brutal, tough, uncompromising honesty – that we are going to need from others about our enterprise so that we avoid the horrible fate that awaits the deluded when it comes to self-employment.
How will you find out if your ideas are sound before you sink your life savings into them (first tip, don’t sink your life savings into them)? Perhaps you could ask me my honest opinion, but even then you might not get it. The thing is that I am writing this book with a picture of you in my mind, and I desperately want you to succeed through the tips or even, dare I say it, the inspiration that the book gives you. But I also want to be loved, so when you ask me what I think of your idea I find it impossibly hard to tell you that it is crap.
Beauty Is Not in the Eye of the Beholder
I was watching a business guru the other day – I think he had been one of the Dragons from ‘Dragons’ Den’. He summed up the situation beautifully by calling it, ‘The ugly baby syndrome’. The idea is that you meet an old friend carrying their new baby. They show it proudly to you. To your horror, you notice that this thing is so ugly that it could stop a clock. What is your reaction, what do you say? Do you say, “My heavens, he’s an ugly little brute and no mistake!” I bet you don’t. You say something like, “He’s a tough little guy. I bet he is going to be a football player when he grows up.”
This ugly baby thing really got me thinking, because there is a lot to it if you can relate your infant enterprise to the concept of the ugly baby. First, can you ever see your own baby as ugly? They say children are like farts, you can just about tolerate your own. Perhaps the same applies to enterprises.
Consider the ‘footballer’ comment that people made when looking at the baby; it is quite clear that there is a clue to our beloved’s challenges in the looks department. I notice that if I don’t want to upset, I use weasel words like, “Perhaps you could try … ”, “It is bright and cheerful but what about a more subdued range for your less adventurous customers … ”. The problem is that we don’t actually want to hear anything bad about our ideas but we do need to – weasel words and equivocal comments are clues but they are only clues if we have the courage to look for them. I could suggest that we are irrevocably blinded to our offspring’s failings and, dare I say it, similarly blinded to the shortcomings of our ideas.
Would I Lie to You?
I am billed as the world’s toughest business guru, the Hell’s Angel of management consultancy, and have the appearance of a nightclub doorman … Well, if that is the case and even I am intimidated by your heartbreak, what chance have you got?
Take your own situation. It may well be that you have joined some kind of start-up group, or you have discussed ideas with friends. I regularly speak to groups like this and there is always some lunatic who has the most bizarre idea from the Planet Zarg – something like teaching dogs to weld. I earwig in during the coffee breaks and hear you, yes you, telling this idiot that this is a great idea. “So you can teach dogs to weld?”
“I believe I can!” says this maniac, fixing you with the gaze of a true fanatic. “Do you own a dog?”
“I have a poodle.”
“They would make excellent welders; it’s the woolly coat, you see, resistant to conflagration from stray sparks. You are a very lucky person; you have a true potential canine welder. Perhaps when I set up I should come and see you.”
Your reply – is it a cry of derision? A sharp slap-down? No! You say, “That would be great. Toto a welder, hey? Well I never.”
When I go around the group and am told of the plan for welding dogs, instead of hurling this genius into the stormy night all I can manage is, “What makes you think there is a call for welding dogs? Have you done any research?” Of course he has, everyone he asks has welcomed the idea, even you. With assurance he sets up ‘Bark Welding’, then one day there is a knock at your door and there he stands, laden down with gas bottles and miniature goggles. It is time for Toto’s first foray into the fiery art of bonding metals. Well it’s your own fault, you encouraged him.
REALITY TELEVISION
I was approached by BBC Television to do a business rescue reality show called ‘All Over the Shop’. The idea was that I would visit small, one-person enterprises that were struggling, and with the power of genius and perspicacity I would set them straight. The problem was that I wasn’t that confident that I was a perspicacious genius.
“Don’t worry,” said the producer. “This is TV. We can work magic; we can even make you look intelligent and engaged.”
The strange thing is that the show, despite being agonizingly low budget, was quite a hit, and even more astonishing was the fact that nearly all the businesses became roaring successes. Was this down to my genius or ability as a business guru? I doubt it but, believe it or not, I think it was about honesty.
The TV researchers are genuinely brilliant; when you watch reality shows and say, “Where on earth do they find these people?” it is the result of hours of painstaking work by the researchers. They are looking for characters and, let me tell you, they found me some real corkers – people who made welding dogs seem pedestrian and mainstream. The researchers knew everything about the enterprise I was visiting but they rationed the information they gave to me. We would arrive in a truck with a director, runners, a film crew and a sound technician. I would be given some sparse but provocative clues, such as, “Ask her about where she got her loan” or “Ask him when he last drew a wage”. They knew the reply would be something sinister and wanted to see the sparks fly. Then I would be cast from the truck to go and sort things out. The show was well received and got mostly good reviews from the press, but one critic who hated it said probably the most honest thing about it. The review said, “Geoff Burch wanders in, states the bleedin’ obvious and then wanders out again. Then four weeks later everything has miraculously changed for the better and all is well.” That is, in fact, exactly what did happen but we need to understand why.
Tough Talk
On the first day of the first shoot I ambled into the first enterprise and met lovely but barking mad people who were making a complete pig’s ear of things.
“Well, it all looks very nice,” I said.
Our director was a small fiery Welsh woman with a ferocious temper. She leapt forward, grabbed my ear and dragged me outside for a savage talking-to.
“Very nice? VERY NICE?!” she stamped like Rumplestiltskin. “This is telly. I want you to tear them to bits, Mr Tough Business Guru.”
“I don’t like to, they’re nice.”
“Listen, mush, that is the deal. Their businesses will be seen by millions of viewers, they want to be on the telly. This is the price they will have to pay. You are here to entertain the viewers, that is what you are paid for. You are not here as a business consultant, you are here to entertain. These enterprises are not your customers, the viewers are, and they want to see you give it to them right between the eyes, car crash TV. So remember …” she put her hands up in the shape of tiger claws, “grrr, grrr, grrr, grrr!”
So that’s what I did. If their food was horrible, I told them. If the shop looked rough, I told them. If they were untidy or unprofessional, I told them. If I ever held back my eye would catch on to this small, vigorous figure behind the camera jumping up and down, hands like claws and silently mouthing, “Grrr, grrr, grrr!”
Take It on the Chin
On the other side of this equation, the people in the enterprises took it. Sure, there were huge rows, shouting and tears, but they stood and took it because they were on TV. They took it on board, they changed and they became successful. It is not my skill, this happens in every TV reality show – ‘Kitchen Nightmares’, ‘Mary Queen of Shops’, ‘Hotel Inspector’, you name them, they all bring success. Why? Because in the real world you would never get such honesty about your enterprise. You may believe that the success was down to the exposure to millions of viewers, but the whole show is in the can before anyone sees it. In my own case, it was over a year before it went to air, so the business transformation was caused by the enterprises meeting the horrible truth fair and square. The problem for us is, without the aid of TV how can we get this honest appraisal of our position?
A Matter of Taste
A dear friend of ours produces custom-made corporate chocolates. He has come from a marketing background so he knows his onions as far as that’s concerned, and what he has done is to invest in a very clever printer that works with edible inks. This means that chocolates can be created with a company’s logo or pictures on them. This enterprise took off a storm but soon started to peter out, but why? We ordered some of these chocolates for a special celebration and we discovered why things weren’t going too well. The chocolate tasted horrible – well actually not horrible, it was worse than that, it tasted a bit like dog treats. Now, you would think that this fault was blindingly obvious but while everyone could see it, no one dared mention it.
THE MORAL OF THE STORY
The famous question, “Does my bum look big in this?” will never elicit an honest answer.
Tom Peters tells a wonderful story of a huge American corporation that decided to go into the dog food business. Their mighty marketing department chose special colours for the packaging that their research had told them particularly appealed to dog owners. The psychology department said that the size of the can gave certain perceptions of quality. The logistics department made sure every store on the continent possessed sufficient stock. The project cost millions and was supposed to buy the dog food market, but the results were horribly disappointing. The CEO gathered a huge contingent of the team together and addressed them.
“We spent millions, the packaging is great, the distribution is great, the marketing is great; what went wrong?”
From the back of the hall, from the darkest corner, an anonymous voice called back, “The dogs hate it!”
TOO NICE
So how are we going to set this vital honesty in place in our enterprise before we have a disaster? Before we get started in our enterprise, we don’t just have to face some truths, but we have to find those truths first. Let’s take our chocolate maker: if no one will tell us what is wrong, how do we find out? Firstly, let’s understand why no one will tell us the truth. It is just too tough to tell someone you know right to their face that they have made a mistake. I was going to say that it is because people are too nice to be hurtful but then I realized that people do sometimes indulge in a bit of back-stabbing which reveals the truth as they see it but is never given to us face to face.
“Did you see the state of her?”
“We know their Brian is up to all sorts but they are too blind to see it.”
“If Gary carries on like that he is going to get fired.”
Well, why not warn Gary? Because you may feel it is a very dangerous move and Gary won’t thank you or even feel grateful.
My father, who was possessed of that wonderfully dismal Eastern European view of the world, used to quote a Russian proverb which said, “When the squires agree, the peasant gets his arse kicked” – a warning to anyone who wishes to intercede between two people on a collision course. So we can backstab and gossip but can’t be truthful to each other’s face. The answer then is to pretend not to be you …
Finding the Hidden Truth
Imagine you are in the bar with chums. Instead of saying, “I’m thinking of teaching dogs to weld”, say, with a dismissive chuckle, “What do you think of a person who wants to teach dogs to weld?”
More sensibly, if you were the chocolate maker, I would suggest that you don a brightly coloured acrylic blazer and a stupid cheap clip-on bow tie, and go out into the world as an independent researcher as can be seen on every main street and shopping mall the world over. Carry a tray with Hershey bars, Cadbury’s chocolates, Lindt, and your own. “Would you like to take the chocolate test?” If the public say without actually knowing who you are that your product is horrible, then it is horrible. If they score you tenth out of ten, then you need to do something about it.
Only the Best Is Good Enough?
Actually, in such a survey I wouldn’t be that happy to be even second out of ten because there would always be a competitor who offered a tastier alternative. Hurry back and consider that statement very carefully because from this moment on we need to make a living from this.
Let’s examine the position. What proposition will you make to the customer (this is the person that pays us for our effort, remember).
“Buy my chocolate, accepted universally as being second best.” As a customer, surely I would want to buy the best chocolate. So what incentive can you offer me to get me to buy the second best chocolate? There is a very strong philosophical point to make here and it is one that you have to consider before we move on together. The question is, how near to the best do you need or want to get? If you remember from earlier on, we discussed the formulae of value = benefit – cost. The temptation of the self-employed is to take the mindset of “Because it’s just me, I can do it cheaper”. This would fit the formula, “Good value = dodgy benefit – little cost” but as we saw with the amateur surgeon, in some cases the risk is just too great and does not represent good value at all, so is simply scary.
Our corporate chocolate maker may get away with this, however, because to have the greatest chocolate in the world was not his unique business proposition. The deal is that you can have a choccy bar with your logo on, or your happy smiling face leering back at you off it! As long as it tastes good up to main street candy store standards, you are OK, and at risk of shooting myself in the foot here, you can go too far “Oh yes, our cocoa beans are the only ones that have been through the digestive tract of the rare mountain lemur!” “But will it say Sid’s Garage clearly on each bar?”
The conclusion we must draw from all of this is that of course it is vitally important to get the truth about our enterprise but it is equally important, when we have got that truth, to do something about it. By acting as a researcher or independent adviser we can stand away from our own enterprise and look at it objectively and with other eyes. Even if the answers we get are disappointing or worrying, don’t pack them away and try to ignore or forget about them, do something about it.
POINTS TO PONDER ON ‘FACE THE FACTS BEFORE WE START’
- It’s very hard to get the truth about your ideas. No one will tell you if you’ve got an ugly baby or an ugly enterprise.
- People who love or like you would never hurt you by telling you the truth … come to think of it, nor will strangers either.
- If you don’t feature in a reality TV show you’ll have to find another way of getting an honest appraisal of your ideas.
- Get out on the street and pretend to be an independent market researcher to get some real honesty.
- If someone tells you they can teach your dog to weld and you tell them they are a genius, you are not doing them any favours.
- If someone tells you you are a genius, they are not doing you any favours either.