Author Archives: codemizell

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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#154. Hunger and the starving man.

…Call me Felix Hunger, starving artist at-large
Independent entrepreneur, the hardest to rob
Hardest to dodge, till I’m offered a job
So call off your guard
I’m trying to get this loot and buy cars for my squad…

The Odd Couple ♦  Por Que

Takeaway 154:  Before you adopt a Bertrand/cut-throat pricing strategy, remember that this is your competition. The competition has less to lose than you and will do what ever it takes to get inventory and sell it at basement prices.  Today you are the fat-cat, do you really think you can make a starving man hungrier? or just mad enough to take the food of your plate?

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