Selling the family jewels
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on April 20th, 2009
Tagged as: Me, Projects
I guess this has been in the works for a while.
I’ve been looking at various strategies to get this company off the ground. Finance, loans, partners – they all have their pro’s and con’s.
The hard part isn’t so much the money itself, it’s convincing people that your idea is worth investing in and then giving up a piece of it when you know they don’t believe even half as much as you do. There’s nothing worse than knowing in your heart that you’re on to something and that what you’re trying to get started is actually worth doing and then having to waste so much energy on doubters.
Of course, there are Andy Bechtolsheim’s and forward-thinking VC firms like North Venture Partners out there; it’s just that none of them live in my neighborhood.
I did have a the weirdest meeting with a millionaire property investor who gave me exactly 5 minutes to convince him of both projects during a walk from one business meeting to lunch. To be perfectly honest, I gave up after just 2 as I’m pretty sure he had a minute and a half earlier.
So what’s a guy with two brilliant ideas during a recession in Italy to do?
Well the first thing is to figure out just how much you want this thing to work, convince yourself that your determination is a living, breathing entity and treat it with the respect it deserves, plan it all out and then sell the family silver.
Tough call that last one but the success Gods always demand a humongous sacrifice.
So here’s Plan A:
We get Genitori In Fuga up and running first, including everything from blog entries to the Advertisement section, along with associated sites and services (Flickr account, YouTube page and Facebook group for starters) and then hit the sponsors.
The first one we have lined up might catch you off guard. The Italian Ministry for Culture. That’s right. In Italy, this Ministry also handles tourism, which is where we want to go. If we can convince them that a) we’re promoting strong family values and b) helping tourism on a national scale and c) this Italian idea will then be exported, then we might get that all important seal of approval and assistance at Regional level which is when it starts getting interesting.
Once the Italian site starts gaining traction, then we can roll out other countries.
Tomorrow I have a meeting with a local web agency to see what needs to be done to get this first site finished and I’ve also asked those wonderful people at The Blog Studio who did this site for their thoughts. I’ll let you know how we get on.
-
Loading ... - 0 Comments
- Print this
Writing another ending
Posted by Michael Walsh (Check me out!) on April 15th, 2009
Tagged as: Projects
How is it when you put a plan together, something big and wonderful that could well change your life, if not the world around you, and bring true value to your existence, obstacles and reasons “why not” simply fall out of the sky?
As I wrote this morning on my Italian blog, how do you get back on track when you’ve spent the past few months assiduously following someone else’s?
Well nothing gets done without a bit of effort so now’s the time to roll up my sleeves and find my own to follow.
Breathe in the future, breathe out the past
Recently, I had lunch with a very good friend who works for a huge TV network. I was absolutely shattered over lunch, having a really hard time stringing sentences together that were anything other than loosely concealed cries for help.
At a certain point, my friend said: “You know what your problem is? You occupy a really important role in a small company, which is why they expect blood whereas I occupy a medium role in a large company - our different blood pressures can be explained right there.”
What he was saying wasn’t that I should look for anonymity in a huge corporation, rather I should get out of the shadows and show the world what I do.
So without further ado, here’s the deal:
I am the de facto senior copywriter for Acer Group inasmuch as I work for the Ad Agency with the worldwide exclusive on Acer’s PR, corporate and product communications. If that doesn’t sound like a big deal, how about I tell you that there are in essence just five of us creating strategies and content for everything from product naming to corporate events? Still not enough? Well that we do this for Acer Group, Acer Inc., Packard Bell and Gateway?
Oh and I haven’t mentioned that I created and run single-handedly the unofficial Acer blog which alone has more than 60 thousand visitors / month.
In any ordinary company, there would be hordes of us, or at the very least a strategy which went beyond “getting it done”.
I won’t hide it - I’m tired. There’s got to be something more.
Bring on change - please!
I’m convinced that the current financial crisis, the general downturn needs to be taken by the horns. I mean if there’s a general sense of gloom, it’s because society is behaving like a herd, following the lead of the next guy who’s just another follower of mainstream depression.
I’m not saying we can just will our way out; what I’m saying is that we’ve forgotten how to offer - or worse - communicate anything of real value, so that when the bubble bursts, the superficiality of the way the world works and what it has to offer inevitably floats to the surface and people simply turn away in the search for something that goes a little deeper.
What’s needed right now is a profound sense of humanity in the things we do, not blind resistance to change coupled with faith in worn-out models that are obviously dying. I personally am sick of hearing exhausted messages that do nothing to add to my sense of well being. On TV networks, radio and web ads, the clutter all seems to follow the same script, no matter what the segment and who the customer is, the thrity-second sound byte has been rinsed and repeated so many times it’s impossible to tell what the original colour really was.
And when I stop and look in the hope of finding things to prove I’m wrong, there’s very little that does, apart from Google, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter and a bunch of Social Media sites that bring that all-too-rare value into my life as they’re not selling stuff/ideas/fashions/dreams I don’t need, they’re giving.
So value is where I’m heading.
In absence of any real contenders for true value propositions (no-one I know is seriously considering social media as a means to talk with customers), it’s time I started my own, and this site is where I intend to share how I get on.
Welcome back then, and keep up the good work.
-
Loading ...
- 0 Comments
- Print this
Recent Comments