Monthly Archives: November 2013

Takeaway #23: the Learning Curve and #PublicEnemy

***People, people we are the same

        No we’re not the same

        Cause we don’t know the game

        What we need is awareness, we can’t get careless

        You say what is this?

        My beloved lets get down to business

        Mental self defensive fitness***

 Public Enemy ♦ Fight the Power

I said you can write an anthology on PE (Public Enemy, not Price to Earnings).  I will not write it here, but the crew deserves at least one other quote.  Plus, BPM knows that you old heads have a lot of those lyrics in your cranium. 

Do you really believe the guy who is making a mint when he says “I just got lucky, I started the same as you?”  If you do, you don’t know his game.  You need to work that much harder.  You have to stay informed in your field.  You can’t get lazy and act in a slipshod fashion about your area of core competency.  If you sleep on the guy next door, he will eat your lunch.

Inherit in doing this, is maintaining mental fitness. Remember, in a 24-7 global economy, there is a guy on the other side of the world right now trying to take yours.  You can sit by and let him take it, or you can be working on the next thing or tightening up your game. 

BPM TAKEAWAY#23:

  • KEEP EXPANDING YOUR LEARNING CURVE

  • NO SLEEPING ON THE JOB

 

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Takeaway #26: Lessons inspired by #Mos Def

***Mr. Fash-ion, that style never last long

The harder you flash, the harder you get flashed on

There’s hunger in the street that is hard to defeat

Many steal for sport, but more steal to eat

Cat’s heavy at the weigh-in, and he’s playing for keeps

Don’t sleep, they’ll roll up in your passengers seat***

  Mos Def ♦Got;  Black on Both Sides  (1999)

The maxim:  Eat your lunch or someone will eat it for you.  Management does not want to enter the industry because it fears that it will lead to cannibalization of its current market share.  The sad fact is that if the expansion step is not taken, there is a greater chance that the company will have an even greater market share taken by the current competition seeking any incremental revenue advantage possible.  In the best market, there are always the hungry few.  The scary part is that it only takes one desperate player to take a huge bite out of your piece of the pie.

The other reality is that overplaying your hand (“hard flashing”) can only make the desperate and hungry seek to “flash on” you that much harder.  If you perpetually view investor relations as telling people how large your market share is, then you can view it as the same as putting a big red “X” on your back as a target for the competition.  And it is not just the competition.  The target is on the back for government regulators and agencies looking to make an example of you as one of the fat cats.  You can get jacked from the passenger’s side of your ride by anybody.

 

BPM TAKEAWAY#26:

  • FEAR HUNGER NOT CANNIBALIZATION

  •  GET A LOW PROFILE, DON’T GET PROFILED

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#150: Sen Dog: When Competition Eats Your Lunch

***Never know what the next man got

Any fool might make it hot

All it takes is one good shot***

 Sen Dog   ♦    Hell and Back

Takeaway 150:  The competition will eat your lunch.  Assuming a rationale, self interested player, the expectation is your competitor will seize any opportunity to exploit for enterprise weakness, even with a far less superior product.  They need only be lucky once.

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Takeaway #217: Credible Threat?

***And you could never catch me on the block without a strap

And I would never pull it out unless I’m bouts to black***

Scarface ♦ Never

Takeaway #217:  Lessons on détente.   You must be equipped with lawyers and sales people willing to take the fight to the competition – remain strapped.  Do not, however, give empty threats.  Threats must be backed by credibility.  The reason détente works is because each party actually believes the other is willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice.  Do not threaten a law suit or a competitive activity unless you are ready, willing and able to execute.

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