Starting a Small Business

How to Be Less Rubbish

I was recently introduced to an author of fiction. I say he's an author but despite writing for nearly thirty years, he has not yet had anything published. He has told me on each of the three occasions that we've spoken, exactly how amazing he is; a self accreditted genius, no less.

I asked if I could read one of his most fabulous works of fiction and was duly sent a short story by email. I didn't make it past the tenth, relatively short page. Though I'm no literary critic, my layperson's opinion on the work, is that it is crap (there are I'm sure a plethora of adjectives used in the publishing world that could replace this particular one, but I sometimes feel that the prosaic word “crap” will do just fine).

His main problem it seems to me is that he has no idea that his writing is very poor. So, how can he possibly improve his writing if he already thinks he's at the zenith, the very pinacle of perfection?

This syndrome, for which I am going to coin a phrase.......”the multi-platinum delusion”. I'm giving it this name because of the talent show X-Factor and some of the contestents. The ones who have the highest possible opinion of their own abilities invariably turn out to be extremely poor.

The inquisitor/cad Simon Cowl always sets them up with the question of something like “so where do you see yourself in a few years time?” The most deluded ones will say “multi-platinum album sales, worldwide” or suchlike.

The more measured contestants will say something like “I'd like to be a recording artist” or something more realistic; and often you'll see that the most humble of the respondees tend to be the best performers.

Why is this? Well I would speculate on the issue that if you are good, you'll tend to be able to know your own flaws better than if you're rubbish, in which case you may not.

I think the same thing happens with businesses. Those whom are most aware of their own flaws will have a much better chance of getting better than those who do not.

But, this can be a secret exercise, there's no need to advertise to your customers where you think your business is not as good as it could be. Just for you to know, and work on it.

Sport is a very good analogy for improving in this way. A good coach will spot a weak area of your game and concentrate on that area. The Manchester United player Wayne Rooney has transformed his striking ability through concentrating upon his position on the field, not chasing around for the ball, but instead placing himself in the areas that he will be most deadly when receiving the ball. For someone like Rooney, not known for his analytical powers, this is quite a significant step forward.

Your business needs to be like our petulent England striker and recognise, then work upon your deficiencies. P.s. I am now hoping that Mr Rooney doesn't now disgrace himself in the world cup, so that I would then need to hastilly re-write this somewhat tortured analogy of self-improvement.

Business relevancy

As usual, I shall give some examples of businesses being utterly crap, and surprise surprise they are both cafes in my home town. The first one was a relatively new cafe that had been established for perhaps four months.

I was the only customer in there one morning and I asked if it was ok to plug my laptop in whilst I was having my coffee and typing away. The owner said “only if you are eating something....not just if you're having drinks”.

What does this seem like to you? To me it seems like a peculiar form of suicide. Now I admit that situations and business rights or wrongs are entirely relative to the position that you're in at the time. I fully admit that if you mostly had a full cafe of people eating and drinking, then you could fairly rationally state (if you were naturally a tight-wad sort of person) that your customer cannot plug their laptop in. You are making this decision from a position of commercial strength.

There's no doubt that a laptop would consume a few pennies worth of electricity (probably about 3 pence an hour). However, compared to the cost of the coffee, which is about £1.80 this is a fairly negligible proportion.

I never went back again to that particular cafe and was fairly pleased to see it go bust within 9 months. There was a satisfying glow in me to see it go out of business, I think the word is glee, and I'm sorry I can't help it, I am evidently not a saint; I took some considerable pleasure in seeing that stupid place go under!

The daftest thing is that the places I tend to go to that don't mind my plugging the laptop in, I will normally leave a bit of a tip as a kind of recognition of the mutual benefit. I suppose the point of this whole section is to say put yourself in the position of the customer, think about how they might feel about the deal.

Perhaps heed Billy Connely's advice “before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes........and if you still don't like him, don't worry, he's a mile away.....and you've got his shoes”.