Blogs in Plain Canadian English

Are you the owner of a business? Was your company founded a few generations ago by your grandfather? If you are a family business, you may be in danger of living in the past glories and history of the company rather than moving into the future. To get yourself up to date, I suggest you blog. Too intimidating? You don’t type? You can’t write? No worries – seriously. Here is a visual cartoon – no hard bits- on how to blog. Commoncraft found out that people like to watch other people draw. It does break through to the busy brain. They have drawn a quick story board of how blogs work. This website is also useful for giving you ideas on how to get across your company products and services in an unforgetable way. Seth Godin also has an uplifting blog which has taught me a great deal about how to get a higher ranking on Google. His blog appears near the top when you just Google Blog so I guess he knows his stuff.

Joseph and the amazing technicalities

The Economist has an interesting article where it has done a complete about face on the need for bank regulation after Bear Sterns was unable to cover its losses through high risk banking. The suggestion is to step up regulation and to get the Anglo Saxon world away from trading and back to simple business. They sum it up well:

Despite this, countercyclical regulations would not be popular with the bankers.
Over a full cycle, such rules would probably require banks to have more capital
than under the existing system (and given the rescue of Bear Stearns, the rules
would need to apply to investment as well as commercial banks). Because money
tied up in capital earns lower returns, that would mean lower profits.

Many people feel that the bankers get fat and then want a bale out - what about the middle class folk? Banks are going to have do a great deal of public relations about this paradox which makes them seem greedy. But it is hard to feel much sympathy for bankers who rake in fortunes during the boom and require taxpayers to help them out in the bust (or make central banks jump through hoops for them, as the Bank of England has done this week—see article). An efficient financial sector is vital for a modern economy but trading securities has arguably achieved too much importance in the Anglo-Saxon world. Winston Churchill once said that he would rather see finance less proud and industry more content. That is not a bad motto for those devising a new set of banking regulations. Agreed about getting these mononolithic sized banks to have to cover themselves more and certainly they could afford it. There is one issue though. We are now in a global economy and Dubai is open for business to attract the financial trading away from London, NY, HK, stock exchanges, etc. Do keep that in mind when adding regulations. If the focus of a country and its people should be more on the meat and potatoes of running a good business that can compete in the global world, then capitalism, mercantilism, entrepreneuralism and the creation of small business should be given a better position in the education system and the publically owned media such as the BBC or CBC which, at times, appears to group all business under the same evil, greedy capitalist category. More venture capital TV shows like Dragons Den!

Deals That You Have Blown

If you are trying to raise capital but getting turned down, read this list of passed deals by the USA's oldest venture capital company. They passed on Cisco, eBay and even visited the house where the Google guys were using the garage to start up their search engine. A friend who owned the house had been telling them about these smart students and all the VC s could say was, "how can we get out of this house without passing the garage?" Read more in MacLean's magazine.

Bessemer Venture Partners is perhaps the nation's oldest venture capital firm, carrying on an unbroken practice of venture capital investing that stretches back to 1911. One thing for sure - they have a good sense of humour as they list their passes on companies which are now the top ten pics of any investor. These VCs say, "if only we had invested in any of these companies. We would not be working today." I don't know - sounds as if they would because it is evident that they love helping growing companies get capital and move forward with their dreams - much like Loewen & Partners.

Your First Advisory Board Meeting - Food Matters

You know what you hope to gain from having an Advisory Board and now the first meeting looms. What contributions will your Advisory Board members make? How will they inspire you to take your business in new directions, earning more revenue? That depends on how you set the tone at your first meeting. You want to encourage your Advisory Board members to relax and contribute.
One Hot Topic: Your first meeting, therefore, like all your Advisory Board meetings, needs to be planned around a question or problem. You might find it easiest to state the problem as a goal. For instance, "We want to increase our sales by 25% this next quarter. How might we do this?" Or you might state the topic for discussion more generally: "Should we try to break into the export market?" or "Theft has been increasing. What can we do to cut down on theft at our stores?"
Professional Package: Once you've got the topic, put together a package with information that your Advisory Board members will need. You could include a business plan and any other documents such as charts, graphs and fact sheets illustrating the background of the discussion topic. If possible, you should send a copy of these documents to all Advisory Board members two weeks in advance, along with a copy of the agenda.
Time Limit: Notice that each agenda item should be timed; building a time schedule into your meeting and sticking to it ensures that your meeting doesn't get bogged down and stimulates on-topic discussion.
Take Minutes: You will also want to make some arrangements for recording the minutes of the meeting. Don't try to do this yourself; you need to be able to participate fully, and listening and contributing well is a full-time job. If you don't have someone who can attend and serve as a secretary, ask permission of your Advisory Board members to tape the meeting.
It's All About the Food: Here's the most important part - the food! Do organize tasty snacks as people bond over food - an odd comment but one you know to be true. Don't do order in pizza or soggy sandwiches. Head over to Pusitarri's or even Loblaw's where you can purchase pre-made snack food which is delicious and fresh. Plenty of web sites like the passionate gourmet can give you ideas of unique and interesting platters of finger foods.
Keep it Simple: Above all, don't fret about your presentation. You are there to share your vision and hopes for your company and seek advice, not to impress anyone with multimedia presentation effects. Your long-range goal is to establish a working relationship of trust with your Advisory Board members, so focus instead on ensuring that your Advisory Board members walk away feeling that they've been heard and that they've contributed to the management of your company - and looking forward to the next meeting of the Board.
My upcoming book, Money Magnet, has a chapter on how to get going once you get capital from Venture Capital or private equity but you will be having many more board meetings and now is the time to get started.

Need a Bit of Humour?

Jim Sinclair’s Commentary: It is a little crazy in terms of Einstein’s definition of madness to believe that those who caused all this will pilot us out of it.