Comfortable decisions

There are only two ways you can make meaningfully make money. You can either find out what people want and work out a really clever way to make it or you can work out what you can make and find out a really clever way to make people want it. I think the most successful goods are a combination of the two, for example, (something totally unwanted becomes desirable due to the workings of marketing) - at the other extreme you have commodity goods that people want at the beginning and your job is simply to provide them as cheaply and efficiently as possible. Very few things lie at those extremes, most things are a combination of essentially understanding human needs and also understanding how you can present what you make in a way that makes it likeable. I think most really successful inventors and entrepreneurs are also great showmen and salesmen. For example, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Thomas Edison, they are people who not only know how to make clever things, but they also know how to sell them.

---

““There are only two things that add value, marketing and innovation, everything else is a cost.” ”

— Peter Drucker

Smart kids are not always cool

I was born and raised in London, my parents came from Jamaica and I have been living in Copenhagen since 1997, so I’m always fluctuating between those worlds. I come from the inner city and have seen so much misguided entrepreneurial spirit on the streets. I have met bright, smart hustlers, entrepreneurs who don’t realise their essential product is risk. They have to deal with employees, profit and loss, some of them are extremely sharp and would thrive in the corporate world, but in reality they are not going anywhere because they don’t have the right frame of reference. Inner city kids don’t have access to capital, they have not experienced any world other than their own, they feel isolated and not engaged in the broader community. And from these humble beginnings is why a sub-culture develops.


Anything that is not marketed is not going to be purchased!
You can never become a great communicator if you only understand your own material and not make it relevant to your audience. Connecting is the art of the game. Communication is about connecting with other people and in order to do that you have to listen, learn and understand that your preferences, culture, ideas and concepts are not the only ones on the planet. And if you are going to be effective at meeting more people, you have to be broad enough to at least embrace the notion of how they hear what you are saying. There’s a huge difference between what you intend to communicate and what’s being heard. You have to become bilingual and learn the language of the hearer. Contact me via e-mail for guidance on the survival techniques required to sustain the things you love.

---

Curiosity killed the cat

I was recently asked whether curiosity was my primus motor? No, I think that curiosity is what fuels me! What drives me is a desire to make things better. I see what I think is broken and I see what people will benefit from learning, not because it will make things better for me but better for them. And the tool that I use to see those things and provide the insight is my curiosity of asking, “Why didn’t that work?” and “Why is this not what it could be?”

Most of the entrepreneurs I know are not saying, look at my bank balance and they are not saying here’s how I cut corners. They are people who would like to make things better by making better things. And I am proud to be in that category, and all I am trying to do is spread the word.

---