Category Archives: Music

April 15, 2014 · 8:27 am

The Bottom Line

A business thought for Tax Day found in some dance music!  If you were following music as the punk movement hit in the late 1970’s, you were quite aware of The Clash. You might have even shed a tear when Mick Jones, one of the guitar players and a key songwriter, was kicked out of the band. This TunesDay we’ll use a song from his next project – Big Audio Dynamite – as our jumping off point to discuss business. It’s called The Bottom Line and it’s a fun listen if only for the wacky, mid-1980’s video:

This lyric raises our business thought:

A dance to the tune of economic decline
Is when you do the bottom line
Nagging questions always remain
Why did it happen and who was to blame?

It always amazes me how many smart people forget that “margin” is at least as important as “revenue.”  They spend a lot of time generating revenue from unprofitable activities while ignoring a part of the business that might have a high margin although the revenues aren’t much.  I thought we had all learned about that sort of thing in the dot-com bubble long ago (internet years are like dog years – the intervening 15 years are like a century in real-time).

It takes a fair amount of courage to abandon unprofitable customers or segments of your business which are generating decent revenue.  Revenue is always just one aspect of the business story.  Cash flow and profit are two others which are far more important.  Sure, revenue is the fuel that makes the business engine go, but a leaky gas line almost always results in disaster.

There is also the mistake some folks make in thinking about margin.  They forget that in addition to the gross margin (basically the cost to the customer minus the cost to you) there are other things that are “indirect” costs such as advertising and overhead that should be factored in to prevent the business from losing money on many sales.  Of course I see the need to scale – to build a customer base and generate cash flow – but if it’s not done in a sustainable manner, it’s just an exercise in futility.

The “gross revenue” line is where the head of sales lives.  The bottom line is where great business people reside.  Where are you?

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April 8, 2014 · 9:38 am

Your Own Worst Enemy

I can see in the analytics that many of you skip our little TunesDay celebrations each week.

Springsteen Tour, Album, and Free Single

(Photo: Brian Sawyer)

Maybe you’re still recovering from the previous day’s post (Mondays can be hard, I know) or maybe you don’t care for the song analysis.  Since I’m rather insistent in this space that we all listen to our audiences, I’m going to do less song analysis and take a more thematic turn this week.

The song is from The Boss and is off of the “Magic” album (2007) and is called “Your Own Worst Enemy“.  This is an acoustic version:

I’m not going to get into the lyrics which you can read here because it’s the notion of being our own worst enemies that’s the business point this week.  I’m as guilty of this as anyone – just ask my golfing buddies.  I know – he’s off the track again and wandering to the golf course.  Not really.  You see once one has learned the basic skill of the golf swing the game becomes incredibly mental.  People who are successful can ignore all their bad shots and “get out of their own way” as golfers describe it.  Then there are folks like me who make several excellent shots in a row, hit a bad one, and allow that one bad shot to be a distraction for the rest of the round.  we become our own worst enemies.

Business is the same although in a less physical way.  Once you’re past entry-level jobs, you’ve learned the basics.  While the learning needs to continue, most of the negative things that occur are due in part to us getting in our own ways.  You might be reading this thinking “oh not me.”  Hopefully not.  But if you negotiate against yourself, talking yourself out of making bold proposals because “they’ll never go for that,” then look in the mirror to find your negotiating opponent.  We all talk to ourselves even if it’s only internally.  If that conversation contains statements that aren’t helpful to the situation (“this guy hates me”) or are actually inaccurate (“there is no way I can handle this job”), the only one with whom you’re fighting is yourself – the enemy lies within.

Next time I see my own worst enemy coming to town, I’m putting him on the next train out.  You?

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April 1, 2014 · 8:48 am

11 Minutes Of Revolution

This week’s TunesDay special comes from the most influential band of the last century and maybe of all time – The Beatles.

The Beatles

The Beatles

Unless you’ve had your head in the sand for the last 50 years you’ve heard their music and specifically today’s song – “Revolution“. However, you’ve probably never heard this version. It’s take 20 and extends the version that runs around 4 minutes into nearly 11.  This version surfaced in 2009 and is fascinating.  Have a listen:

This cut has been dubbed “Take Your Knickers Off” from Lennon‘s comment to the engineer at the start of the track.  Eventually it was split in two and became “Revolution” numbers 1 and 9 although in this form it’s really neither.  It’s sort of self-indulgent although the last several minutes contain moments of brilliance.  Even Yoko sounds interesting!  After much back and forth about the song, the band decided to re-cut it – faster, louder, and with what are now its signature distorted guitars for the single.  Which is the business point today.

Everyone needs an editor.  Great artists can self-edit up to a point and in the case of The Beatles that editing by committee served them well.  Most of us in business aren’t quite so smart.  We generally try to accomplish things on our own – creating products, ads, reports, or whatever.  That’s a mistake.  No matter how good we think our first drafts are, they need editing.

The best form comes when we give our draft to someone who is most like the intended audience and get a response.  It’s also important to build time into a project timetable to be able to step away from the work for a period and approach it having rested and lost the emotional attachment we all get to birthing a new work.  It’s much easier to cut away material that isn’t right or that might not be your best.

Every great author – even Shakespeare – had an editor.  If their work, as well as Lennon and McCartney‘s, can stand some editing, odds are ours can too.  Heck, you can get an example of that every day right here in this space!  Got it?

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