Big Biz on a Bev-nap...

Business negotiations are happening around us all the time, often when we're least aware of them.

A naive entrepreneur or wet-behind-the-ears business person might expect Big Deals to happen in elegant board rooms over glossy conference tables or over five-star dinners in exclusive restaurants.  They might wrap up there, they may be feted there, but Big Deals begin in discreet places  -- on the patio of the local coffee house or during happy hour at the inauspicious hotel around the corner, over a greasy breakfast at the truckstop diner or while leaning against the car boot, at the ninth tee or between rounds at the dart tournament.

Depending on the deal and the deal-makers, the more's at stake, the lower a profile is wanted for those "agreements in principle".  Many the bargain has been struck during a smoke break in the parking garage.

Open All Hours

We're Open All Hours. . .or as long as there's coffee.

The downside to being an entrepreneur:  yes, you name your own hours (hah!), but the shop never really closes 'caz it's Open All Hours in your head.  Gotta love it.

If you're an entrepreneur, small business owner, SOHO, freelancer, or contractor:  what's your downside?  Keep it decent.

Can You Hear Me Now? Intentional Listening.

Vístanme despacio que estoy de afán.

Dress me slowly, I'm in a hurry.

(Loose interpretation - Do your best and carefully, even more so
when you're down to the wire and running out of time.)

The Miraculous Melrosas High Wire Bicycles

Have you ever seen the circus act with the unicyclist crossing a tightrope hundreds of feet in the air?  Silly hat on his head, balance pole in his hands, and rising precariously from his shoulders and stretching upward beyond the spotlight's reach, a human lattice-work of more acrobats in more silly hats.  One missed cue, one miscalculation and spangles splattered across sand and sawdust.  Thankfully, long before donning his silly hat and climbing to the high wire, the unicyclist rehearsed, exercised, sketched, studied, imagined, trained, prayed, and prepared, prepared, prepared.

  

Few of us who work in the arts and entertainment arena are privileged to work in a proper circus, yet we face long years of preparation and our own peculiar dangers.  One of those dangers is when we're on a high wire and don't realise it.  In my case, I fell off my high horse, landed a black-and-blue bruise to my conscience, and barely kept my silly hat.  I learned something important about myself and about doing business though.  It all began innocently enough...

Get Javanated Friday - Free Screensavers for Bizfolk

(To save, right-click or control-click, open to a new window, click again to enlarge.

Review image, then add to your picture management application. All images are watermarked.)

It's Friday -- Get Javanated!


Friday:  ramp-up to the weekend, exit ramp from the week past, day to assess what's done and ruminate over the untidy leftovers, tinker-&-tweak day for entrepreneurs and bizfolk.  One part reflection to two parts reassessment, plus a dash of recovery.  Add ice, shake, strain, and shoot.

The Accidental Entrepreneur: Thoughts on Risk, Success, & Failure

Shout out to...

..the rockin' Plan Fund crew:  new-ish Exec Director Jeremy Gregg, Neil Small, Senior Loan Manager, Marisol Montoya, Office Manager, and the rest of the gang.  Plan Fund is a jaw-droppingly amazing MFI (a nonprofit micro-funding institute) built loosely around the Grameen model.  Their motto, "Capitalizing on Character" sums up their ambitions and accomplishments well.

Unlike the venerable and stodgy fleet at the Small Business Administration, with its Small Business Development Centers (SBA spin-offs) and SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives), Plan Fund works with a special breed of entrepreneurs some sources refer to as Accidental Entrepreneurs, others call them "under-served."

The Feds are like a fleet of ancient battleships creaking along with the best of intentions, not very fast and they don't easily navigate a sudden change in market direction or technology:  they aren't built to meet the intense, multidimensional needs of any entrepreneurs but those whose future success is fairly obvious, easily attainable, headed for mega-growth, and can be more-or-less traditionally financed.

Plan Fund, however, is a speedy and nimble PT boat, armed with micro-loans based on

Images = 1000 Words?

"Four Roses" Whiskey for a  Perfect Manhattan - artwork by John Falter -

the original 1942 magazine spreads also contained compelling text.

(Click to enlarge image - it rocks.)

Commercial Artwork Speaks


With the advent of the Industrial Age and the inventions of chromolithography and offset printing, many artists we value highly now first developed their distinctive styles as commercial artists, supporting themselves by designing advertising posters, packet labels, greeting cards, magazine and book illustrations, even toys and board games:  Parrish, Erte', Cheret, Lautrec, Mucha, Baxter, Gow, Shepard, Potter, Cappiello, Falter.


Admit it:  isn't it difficult to imagine anyone collecting the advertising artwork on today's gelatine boxes, cookie packets, or Yahoo banners?


Let's get extreme -- when your target audience encounters images representing you and your products/services, are they enlightened ("Okay, now I get it."), intrigued ("Interesting, I want to know more about this."), aroused (Wow, this is amazing!), or are they so underwhelmed they'd flatline an EEG?

Surrender and Win ~ Psalm 13

Free Screensaver for You!

(Right-click or Control-click & save to your image files)

From March 2010 to end of April 2011, I took nearly a thousand photographs of the All Saints church campus, attempting to chronicle its kaleidoscope shifts from melancholy to joy, its hushed and dusky dawns, the halleluiah-chorus sunsets, the corps de ballet of trees dancing a shimmering samba of light and shadow with the wind, the darkened chapel stirring with ancient hopes and fresh doubts.

This particular photo was taken at sunset, January 3d, 2011 -- a briskly cool, not-too-windy day, a week before the year's first snow.  The photo is unretouched.  As the sun slipped to the horizon, the actual colours were more more vivid than this image suggests.

I created this screensaver for display on my laptop,

a way to keep hope bright before me even as darkness approaches.

As a gift to readers of Java Chaat, you are welcome

to download the screensaver, for personal, noncommercial use.

Concept & Design by Shou'Shou, Gitanajava Productions LLC, ©2011.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A few years ago, during a dark night of the soul, as I rifled through a stack of books, searching for any shred of comfort and guidance, I came across Psalm 13.   This psalm resonated in me then; it still does today.  When the seas of confusion and panic come crashing over my head, sucking the very breath out of me, this tehillah is my life-raft.


At first reading, it is the tangled, inarticulate prayer of a desperate man on the run from trouble, the prayer of a man to a God he isn't altogether sure is listening, and if He is listening, then He isn't answering.

Yo vivo bailar, yo bailo vivar!

However you find a way to dance, do it! "Yo vivo bailar, yo bailo vivar!" -- I live to dance, I dance to live.

What I can't find a way to say with words, I can express when I dance.  All the joy, the pain, the passion, the tenderness, the anguish, the sadness, the confusion and uncertainty of "what next?", is pressed out of me. As grapes are expressed to make wine, and olives are pressed for their precious oil, dancing extracts from me my essence, the voice in me that cannot speak but must be heard.  We put courage back into ourselves by dancing:  literally and physically, we are en-couraging ourselves.

The PDF Lottery

A couple of weeks ago, a friend whose antiquated desktop computer will have to keep plodding along with Microsoft Office 2003 (MO 2003) until she wins the lottery, wrote asking how she could create PDF's without upgrading to MO 2010.

Here are a few solutions we found; we hope they'll help other harried netizens facing a similar challenge.

::::::::::::::::::::

Dear J,

With apologies for how long it has taken me to reply, here are some FREE options which will enable you to create & use PDF files from MO 2003 without updating to 2010.  The solutions fall into two principal styles of PDF'ing:

1. Create & store PDF's online, or
2. Create PDF's offline via freeware.

The solutions at #1 don't require you to download new software, will be compatible across multiple operating systems, and even if your computer crashes or you're away from your own computer and on the other side of the planet, the website has your documents and images safely filed and available to you via the internet from any computer anywhere.

It doesn't take a degree in rocket science to understand these "in the cloud" and "on-the-fly" web services are a godsend for computers with older OS, with limited memory capacity, or computers tottering along on their almost-obselete legs.

Marketing Al Fresco

And now, a few words from our sponsor about chilling out on the Starbucks patio to improve your marketing research...

I can circumnavigate the globe with the best GPS ever created, Global Positioning via Starbucks.  Drop me anywhere on the planet, and I will find my way to the nearest Starbucks or patio-con-cafe.  Want to know the coffee house with the best patio, best espresso shot, best crew, worst bathrooms, most corporate lockstep, most responsive and responsible management?  Call me.

My point?  An alert participant in life, his community, and in mundane, everyday conversations can gather an abundance of useful information, voluntarily offered and unobtrusively gathered.  A diligent marketer needn't invade people's privacy or manipulate them to get pertinent data for creating persuasive, appropriate strategies.  Chill out on the nearest java joint terrace and listen ' til it hurts -- and trust me, it will hurt occasionally.  Pay attention, do deep, intense people-watching, interpret a little of what you see and hear, talk a little, question.  PARTICIPATE.

As a friend in the U.K. says,

"Only Americans need a million-dollar survey to tell them the bleeding obvious."

W. Edwards Deming noted the proclivity of American big business to dismiss "unknown and unknowable factors" and business anomalies when he was a consultant to post-war Japan, helping the the shattered country re-invent their economy.  Although he was a reknowned statistician, Deming stated "one of the seven deadly diseases of management is running a company on visible figures alone" -- banking every decision on "statistics in a vacuum."

While American executives remote-controlled their decisions by commissioning study after study of consumer behaviour, Japanese companies sent executives and employes into the marketplace, to observe consumer behaviour first-hand -- at sales counters, in appliance stores, in automobile dealerships.  As Americans lagged behind in the technology and manufacturing race, insistently making big, gas-guzzling cars with fins, the Japanese passed them by with micro-circuitry, compact cars, and attention to detail.  "Made in Japan" ceased being a label to ridicule and became something to emulate.

Decades later, here goes American business again, this time with algorithms and "reality mining" overruling common sense.  To entrepreneurs, micropreneurs, solo-preneurs and marketing people everywhere:  Get out of your cubicles, java-chat your patio mates, and download real life.

After you've done your reality check, then you can supplement what you've heard, observed, and learned with surveys and statistical studies.  With an open mind and open heart, reassess your strategy, rewrite your business plan.  Yes, it may mean pulling a 180 and going an entirely new direction with your cherished, long-harboured idea.  It could mean ditching your scheme completely and starting from scratch.

Scary?  Oh, yeah.  Gut-wrenching, disappointing, and bewildering.  But, profound knowledge (remember, no more "data in a vacuum") is a "[l]ong-term commitment to new learning and new philosophy [and] is required of any management that seeks transformation.  The timid and the fainthearted, and people who expect quick results, are doomed to disappointment." (Deming)

You want BUZZ?  Go for a coffee at the scene of the crime.

See you on the patio! ;-)