Archives: Business

This week I have been engaged in numerous discussions of the organ donation system in the UK, mostly spurred by my appearance on Channel 4’s 4Thought.tv strand which asked, “Should Organ Donation Be Compulsory”.

Over the week, the show has featured a variety of views both for and against presumed consent and organ donation as a whole. One of these was Derek House, a Jehovah’s Witness who believes that all organ donation is fundamentally wrong.

While his views raised ire among the transplant community, it struck me that Mr House isn’t the man we need to be targeting. His religious beliefs preclude him from supporting organ donation: we’re not going to change that.

If we want to see the number of organ donors in this country increase, we need to tackle the vast disparity between the 75% of people who say they would be willing to donate their organs1 and the 26% who have signed the organ donor register. Those people don’t need convincing of the merits, they just need to be drawn out of their apathy.

Focusing our energies on a battle we’re already winning seems like a better use of resources than fighting one we will inevitably lose.

The same goes for any kind of battle you may be facing as an artist or entrepreneur: look at the fights you face and work out which ones are worth your energy.

Picking your battles is not the same as taking the path of least resistance. It’s about using your focus and energies on strategies and tactics that will make a difference, not banging your head against a brick wall.

1. the oft-quoted figure of 90% is, infact, the people who support the idea of organ donation; 15% of people support the idea, but say they wouldn’t donate their organs [↩]

In yesterday’s post I talked about how mistakes are now open for public consumption thanks to the permanence of the internet.

What does that mean for innovation and leadership?

It means you have to fail bigger. Fail better. Fail publicly.

Too many people see the increased visibility of failure as a reason to go all out to avoid cock-ups.

Au contraire. The bigger, the more significant, the more noticed the fail, the quicker, the stronger, the more good-humoured the recovery, the deeper, the longer, the more profound the admiration will be.

Set an example. Tell the world it’s OK to fail before you get things right.

Sometimes knowing when to stop trying to be the market leader is good for you.

Everyone wants to be Top Dog and we all want to be known as the go-to place for people to find our products or services. But there are times at which accepting that you’re not the biggest can be a distinct advantage.

Take MySpace, for example. Yesterday, I tweeted that they have release a new app to help musicians maintain their MySpace page and update their Facebook Fan Page at the same time. While I’m sure that MySpace is still smarting from being the go-to social networking site for a good couple of years way-back-when, they have now accepted that the vast majority of people use Facebook as their primary social networking tool.

The problem that MySpace faces is that while it’s ingeniously designed for musicians in particular, it’s fairly useless to those individuals and bands if the only people using the site are the musicians and bands themselves. The artists want to connect with their fans and the easiest way to do that is through Facebook.

By effectively helping their members to advertise themselves on Facebook, MySpace are helping to ensure that those who prefer the interface and usability of their site over Facebook can still use it to reach millions of fans who may never have discovered them if they had stuck solely to Facebook.

Biggest isn’t always best, especially if you know how to piggy-back on the success of a larger player to give your core customer base exactly what they want from your product.

Many of us have had a taste of success. Some of us dine on it frequently, for others it’s a rare treat. What it does is to help us all feel like we’re doing what we should be in life.

Too often, though, we define ourselves by how we feel. We even decline things by saying, “I just don’t feel like it today” – we put so much stock in feelings that we don’t stop to look at what and who we actually are.

This quote got me thinking:

It’s not about feeling like a filmmaker, it’s about being a filmmaker.

Drake Doremus, The Wrap

Doremus is talking about filmmaking and how it’s better to shoot for a lower target budget in order to be able to make films as opposed to holding out for the mega-budget and never actually making anything. It’s also about how the trappings of a “big” production don’t make the film, it’s the kit, the crew and the cast who make a film what it is.

It’s time for us all to stop chasing the “feel” and start “being” what we want to be – filmmakers, entrepreneurs, writers, artists; we all have goals and we all want to achieve them, but if we set about doing the things we need to do to get there, no matter what, we’ll arrive and find success much quicker than doing all the things that make us “feel” like we think we ought to.

Even after my apologetic post last week, I was unable to return to the flow of posting daily.

Instead, I’ve been having something of a break to focus on developing other things, including a programme of motivational speeches and presentations to help re-engergise and re-focus businesses, upping my programme at the gym in preparation for the 3 Peaks Challenge and working towards the launch of my new website theindiefilmhub.com – a content curation site for independent filmmakers, now just 5 days away from launch.

Although I’ve previously suggested that breaking your routine in blogging – whether about your film, your business or your personal life – can be punished with a significant drop in your readership, sometimes it’s good to take a break for a while.

Taking a break doesn’t have to mean not doing anything at all1, it’s simply about re-focusing, allowing yourself to be immersed in a different project, a different goal or even a different world.

The old cliché goes that a change is as good as a rest. Remember, clichés are generally only clichés because they’re true.

1. although we all know the times when that’s precisely what we need! [↩]

Struggle with getting down to work some days? Most days? Every day?

If you’re trying to think creatively and get yourself into the right mood, but can’t seem to settle your brain to the task in hand, you need to create yourself an inspiration pathway.

IP’s (as I like to call them1 ) are a form of hypnotic process that allows you to reach the right state of flow to achieve your creative goals.

We all recognise the feeling: when you’re reading the blog of an inspirational online mentor (Tim Ferriss, for me); listening to that track that gives you goosebumps; sitting in that perfect spot that fills you with feelings of limitless ability and peacefulness. The trick is to find a way to tap into that feeling and apply it to your work routine.

By recreating that feeling of invincibility – of total creative power and freedom – you can access the flow state that will see you glide through the challenges that face you over the next couple of hours, or the ten pages, or that sales call to your dream client.

If you’re trigger is musical, so much the better – just hit ‘Play’ and take yourself there. For other triggers, find a way to access them each and every day when you sit at your desk to get cracking.  Bookmark a favourite post or posts, stimulate your sense and psych yourself into inspiring yourself to make the most of your day.

Inspire yourself and you’ll reach new heights you never imagined.

What lights your inspiration candle? How do you help yourself reach a state of flow when you sit down to work in the morning (or afternoon, or whenever you do your best work)?

1. since it takes too long to type inspiration pathway every time [↩]

In the pub bathrooms where I lunched with my Godson today, I was struck by the “novelty” condoms machine, which offered prophylactics in an epic range of colours and shapes, with character’s faces drawn on them and designs that were supposedly “ticklers” and, therefore, more pleasurable. Not my thing, but I do see that there may be a market for them.

Until I saw the qualifying statement:

Not suitable for barrier use.

That’s right: novelty condoms at £1 a pop (roughly $1.60) that don’t actually work as condoms.

In business (or filmmaking, for that matter), there’s nothing wrong with novelty for novelty’s sake. After all, how many sea-side resorts keep their economy rolling on frankly useless novelty tat that tourists of all ilks like to pick up?

But if you’re offering a novelty item that serves a purpose, it’s vital that the novelty shouldn’t get in the way of that given purpose.  The proverbial chocolate teapot excepted1, anything you ship, sell or offer needs to do what they say on the tin (in this case, be a condom) over and above the comedy, novelty value that they offer.

1. it’s not really a teapot, it’s just a foodstuff, and you’d never consider using it as a teapot [↩]