Category: Sales

Posted on

How Many Years Of Experience Do You Have?

junior-senior.png

Good decisions come from experience, and experience comes from bad decisions. – Rita Mae Brown

Thursday, 10.06pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Sometimes it takes me a long time to get things.

A really long time.

For example, I always thought of “u” and “w” simply as letters in the alphabet.

You know – how it goes in the song you learn with your ABCs.

It was only when I did a poor attempt at learning french that I heard the sounds “ve” and “duble ve” and realised that a “w” was actually two “u”s – a double “u”.

Maybe it was just that my kindergarten focused more on rote learning and less on making sense of the origin of language symbols.

Which also makes sense when you consider that the teachers were dealing with four year olds who were struggling with the concept of staying in one place for more than two minutes.

Anyway…

I read something on Medium that is totally obvious when you read it but that, if you’re anything like me, you might have missed until now.

It’s by Ariel Camus and says “What makes senior developers senior is not that they know the syntax of a given language better, but that they have experience working with large and complex projects with real users and business goals.”

We all start at the bottom of a professional ladder and it’s easy to assume that those higher up are there because they are more skilled than us.

And that can sometimes be the case.

But it’s often not.

Take a lot of academic work, for example. It’s very easy to spend a lot of time carrying out research into a particular area.

The problem is that when you come out of school you find that you’re starting at the bottom in the world of work.

Having those degrees and smarts and skills doesn’t automatically propel you up the career ladder.

What gets you up is being able to show people with the power to make decisions that you’re the person they need to get a job done.

I suppose we should be careful not to confuse seniority with power.

Some people get to the top because they’re good with relationships or politics or power.

That’s not the kind of thing I’m talking about here.

What I’m talking about is the kind of knowledge that comes from trying to solve problems.

Preferably ones that real people have. And ideally ones that are expensive to leave unsolved.

It’s obvious really. It doesn’t matter how smart your work is if no one cares. If someone does care, that’s good but you’re not going to make a living unless they care enough to pay you. And they’ll only pay you based on what you save them so the more impact you can make the more you can make.

It really comes down to the old saying about years of experience.

Have you got ten years of experience?

Or do you really have one year’s experience repeated ten times?

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

Why Planning for When You’re Bigger May Be A Waste Of Time

scale.png

Monday, 9.19pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Do things that don’t scale. – Paul Graham (Y Combinator)

Why would you want to be bigger?

I suppose your size could be a measure of success?

I’ve read that some successful people say that they don’t really care about the money.

To them, it’s a way of keeping score.

So, if you were coming up with a goal for yourself or your business, should you aim to be big?

Should you want to be a millionaire? Or start a billion dollar company?

Or are these approaches looking at the wrong things altogether?

After all, money is presumably a byproduct of what you do.

This can be something that’s a little hard to talk about.

You tend to get very quickly into the differences between tails and dogs.

For example, if you’re looking for an education should you go for the one with the biggest salary prospects or the biggest probability of getting a job?

Many of us do.

So, one would assume, that the better your education the better the job you will get.

Although, why is it that the people who run companies are not usually the ones with the most degrees or letters after their names?

Why is it that so often in real life, as Robert Kiyosaki brutally puts it, A students work for C students, and B students work for the government?

Let’s look at another area that appears to be exploding.

Almost everyone has an idea for a killer app.

Something that, if they could only get it built, would take the market by storm.

The steps involved are pretty simple. Find a development shop, explain what you want, pay for their time and get your app.

How much would you bet that the shop would get things right?

If you’ve ever tried to get something like this done, you’ll know that at the end you now know exactly what you want and it isn’t what you’ve got.

Now, why did you go to the shop in the first place rather than making something yourself?

You could have picked up Excel or created something that worked in a paper planner?

But, by raising money and getting a team together you felt like you could get to scale faster.

It’s the rocketship model. Money is like fuel. If you can create customers before your money runs out you’ve achieved orbit. If not, you’re probably debris.

I was reading some advice on coding – procedural versus object oriented.

Use object oriented, an experienced programmer urged. It might mean you write more code but if you get successful it will be much easier to manage then.

All of these approaches say you should plan for what happens when you scale.

But, Paul Graham doesn’t.

And the experience of many others also suggests that scale can be a trap.

At the start of any process you need to do things manually.

Recruit customers one at a time. Serve them, like you would as a waiter at a table. Get to know what they like and ask them how the food is.

Because, when you’re bigger you won’t have the time to do things like that.

And if right now, when you can talk to each prospect, you don’t, you’ll never know what they really want.

If you want to build something, build something you want.

If you’re building for someone else, like that shop you hired earlier, they’re less interested in giving you what you want than not being blamed when you realise that what you said you wanted wasn’t what you needed.

Building what you want is more than just building a product. It’s the same approach to building everything else – relationships, careers, interests.

The place where we go wrong is when we try to predict what will succeed rather than just working on what interests us.

And when we’re engrossed in our work we don’t think about money or size or scale.

We think about the work and if we’re lucky, those other things will turn up as well.

But it really wouldn’t matter either way.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

What’s The Most Important Question You Need To Ask Yourself?

shit.png

Friday, 8.35pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Okay, how do we sell this piece of shit?” – Steven Pressfield

I was listening to Steven Pressfield being interviewed on the Joanna Penn’s podcast, The Creative Penn.

You know Steven? The author of The War of Art, a writer of war books, and of the battles inside each of us.

It’s one thing knowing something and getting it. Really getting it…

Like realising that no one gives a shit about you.

It’s not that they’re unkind or self absorbed or nasty. It’s just that they are busy and have no reason to be interested in you or your stuff.

That makes it hard when you’re trying to do any kind of sales job.

Or… does it?

Yes it does. Really.

Which is why the question you need to ask is the one that’s near the top of this post.

The fact is that we’re all selling something. When we’re looking for a job we’re selling ourselves. When we’re working, we’re selling what we’ve done to the boss or to a client.

Selling matters. It’s the one thing that tells you whether what you’re doing is working or not.

If it isn’t selling, you’re doing it wrong.

Unless you are unfortunate enough to be an artist in the Soviet Union.

The New Yorker has a piece on the writer Sergei Dolatov who was one of many artists simply not allowed to publish their work behind the iron curtain.

What he had would have sold if it was allowed to sell and it did when it was, when he moved to America.

The thing that’s different now is that it’s harder to keep you silenced. You can say what you want, write what you want and publish what you want.

The problem is that no one is listening.

And the solution is simple. Simple, but not easy.

What you have to do is figure out how to make what you have interesting to someone else.

Which leads back to us sitting at a table looking at a steaming pile and asking ourselves how we can sell it.

There are two roads we can go down now. We can be “sales people” and try to sell. Or we can be human and try to help.

If you’re focused on selling then you’re focused on what you have and how you can get someone else to buy it.

That’s an attitude you see very often from people new to the job. I’ve got this thing. Now how can I tell everyone to come and listen to me?

Now you know that’s not going to work. What you’ve got to do is think like the person who might need what you have.

Or even better, listen to them. Not talk to them but listen.

Listen to what they have done, how they act and talk and frame their choices. People make decisions all the time.

If you can listen and learn how they make decisions then you can make it easier for them to see what you have, understand what you have and make a decision.

For example, I saw a LinkedIn profile recently that said “I’m a management consultant and entrepreneur”. The author then added that he hated those terms. He was actually a systems thinker. But saying that wouldn’t get him any jobs. That’s someone who has asked and answered the question.

A question that’s worth asking again and again about everything you do.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

How Do You Know What Kind Of An Impression You’re Making?

experienced.png

Wednesday, 8.52pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Even if the sun were to rise from the west, the Bodhisattva has only one way. – Shunryu Suzuki

It is difficult, sometimes, to know who you really are.

We lay down layers of personality over time, layers that we use to tell ourselves who we are. Layers that we use to show others what we think we are.

Take jobs, for example.

Most people don’t start off knowing exactly what they want to do. They’re steered by people they trust, when young, and gravitate towards things they are good at, when older.

The chances are that you are where you are right now because of certain choices. Ones you remember clearly, even now. Choices that could just have easily gone another way.

Let’s say you started as an intern, or someone looking for your first role and stumbled into an industry and stayed.

Did you choose the job? Or did the job choose you?

I wonder about things like this because I wonder what’s the point of it all.

There aren’t that many routes people take. Some move from job to job, rising quickly. Other stay in place for a long time, decaying quietly. Yet others stay, learning and growing and turn into bedrock, into people the organisation depends on.

I read a line in a book, now 29 years old, about hiring people. Look around, it said, for people wearing brand new suits. More experienced people wear jeans.

You’ve heard many times, I’m sure, about how clothes matter. How people judge you by what you wear.

So, if you’re in a situation where you’re being judged what kind of position do you want to be in?

If you’re in a suit and you’re trying to impress the other person then they have the upper hand.

If you’re wearing jeans, however, perhaps you’re comfortable that you have something to offer that is more than the clothes you have on display. In that case. do you have the upper hand?

Or does it really have nothing to do with who has what hand at all?

In an ideal world you’ll work with people who value what you do. Not how you look or where you come from.

The thing is that experience will out.

You can tell when someone knows something regardless of what they’re wearing. Just because of the way they talk. The kind of questions they ask, and how quickly they come to a view on what your options are.

It just seems like it would be nice to get to a point where you can dig through those layers and find yourself.

Get to a point where you’re just comfortable in your own jeans.

And to a point where the impression you make is of just who you are.

Where your way is the way.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

Why Learning How To Let Go May Be The Most Important Thing You Do

relationships.png

Tuesday, 8.53pm.

Sheffield, U.K.

A thousand details add up to one impression. – John McPhee

I have just finished John McPhee’s Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process. It has had a tough life with me already. Its cover is stained with tea, what seems like an entire mug’s worth.

It’s a book that makes you think, that makes you wonder just how long it takes to get every word just right. To construct sentences and paragraphs that just flow.

A long time, McPhee says. It takes as long as it takes. He’s been lucky, never been in a hurry. He’s been able to take his time.

Then again, a piece of writing is never perfect. That’s the irony, the secret that no one tells us. Joyce Carol Oates, one of America’s literary icons, apparently said “No book is ever finished. It is abandoned.”

When we see something that seems perfect we forget to notice the word “seems”.

For example, think of Steve Jobs. We know of him as a perfectionist, someone who brought us the iPhone. But we shouldn’t forget that each phone that was released was a compromise. The best they could do but probably not as good as Steve wanted. Certainly not perfect.

When you start to see this concept of perfecting something versus abandoning it you start to see it everywhere.

Take any business process. Is it perfect? Or is it good enough?

Perfection takes too long, and costs too much, and probably can’t be achieved anyway.

Is that too defeatist? Or is it being realistic?

Facebook had signs on its walls saying “Move fast and break things” and writes that it wants to “ship early and ship twice as often.”

I learned recently that children that tend to do best at school are the ones that are not afraid of getting it wrong. They are willing to make mistakes, they aren’t scared of making mistakes, and so they learn more and learn faster.

The thing is to get somewhere, you have to get going. And it’s not a one-off thing either. You have to do something day after day.

Those little somethings add up. You might simply be working on what seem like disparate, disconnected dots.

But eventually, you can draw lines between them. Shapes emerge and an impression is made.

Impressions are about details.

That’s the thing with anything, a book, a process, a sale. The things that draw people in, that keep them interested, are the details.

And even with those, it’s best not to get too hung up on perfection.

Take the quote that starts this post, for example. McPhee has it in his book and attributes it to Cary Grant.

So, I started by writing that was so. But then, it felt like something that was worth checking and it’s easy to do that with the Internet.

Well, Cary Grant didn’t say that. It was close, but he talked about 500 details.

Enough of a difference to possibly make it a McPhee adaptation rather than a Grant quote.

So maybe even McPhee can get it wrong. Although it’s possible that he has a much better reference than a single search on the Internet.

The point is this. Whatever we do, whether it’s writing, or business or a profession, we agonise over getting it right.

And that’s a good thing. We don’t want to turn out rubbish.

But we also need to get comfortable at letting go.

Because, we don’t finish things.

We let go of them.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

What Should You Do If You Want To Be Free?

minimalism.png

Monday, 9.35pm

Sheffield, U.K.

There are two ways to be rich: One is by acquiring much, and the other is by desiring little. – Jackie French Collar

Sometimes a stray statement, a position taken by someone, can make you wonder whether we’re shackled by anything more than our own thoughts.

Not, of course, if you’re literally in chains but, assuming you live in a free and democratic society, when it comes to everyday living.

There is a famous photo of Steve Jobs taken in 1982 which shows him living in a sparse, unfurnished space despite already being rich.

Some people see that minimalist streak in Jobs brought to life through Apple products, with their emphasis on design, minimal interfaces and intuitive use.

So, when you hear of someone complaining that they don’t have a desk to work at, what do you think? What does that say about how free they are?

There is a story about Amazon, about when they started and needed desks. But desks were expensive and doors weren’t. So they bought some doors, fitted some legs and used them as desks.

Frugality is still a big thing at Amazon, as are desks made from doors, even though they are now one of the most valuable companies on the planet.

If you’re the kind of person that, when you don’t have a desk, can work anywhere else without complaining then you have what it takes to start and run a business.

If you can think of alternatives, come up with suggestions, sit and work on the floor if you need to, then no one can stop you from getting things done.

Because much of business is about being resourceful and inventive, about seeing opportunity where others see nothing. About solving problems, big ones and little ones, day after day.

And there are certain principles that are worth remembering when we try and deal with what comes at us every day.

When you’re selling, for example, after a while you’ll realise that most people you meet have pretty much the same questions about what you have to offer.

There’s also little excuse for not doing your homework before you meet someone. There’s so much information that people put out about themselves and their businesses that you can get a good idea of what they are all about before you meet them.

So, if you know what questions they have and have done some homework on who they are then, really, the main thing you need to do is to listen to what their problems are and see if you have a solution.

Your presentation becomes less about you and more about trying to get them to open up and engage with you. You know it’s working when they start asking questions, ideally ones to which you have the answer on the next slide.

There is a difference between this kind of approach and one that tries to tell your prospect everything about you.

It’s like a child with a box of toys, every one of which is special and important to him, so he wants to talk to you about each and every one.

You listen politely, but really, your mind is somewhere else.

But when that child wants something from you, his tactic changes. Now he is laser-focused on that one thing – that one toy and nothing will divert him from it.

What do these different concepts – minimalism, frugality, focus – have to do with anything?

Well, if you can craft a message that shows your prospect just what is important to them, shows them how you make it for them, at the lowest cost possible, and how it solves a problem that they are focused on, how do you think they will respond?

And I wonder whether if you want to be the kind of person that can pare down a message to just what is important, you also need to be the kind of person that can pare down what you have to just what is important.

Because, of the two ways to get rich quoted at the start, the second is the one more likely to set you free.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

How Do You Tell When Something Is Good?

critical-thinking.png

Friday, 9.06pm

Sheffield, U.K.

There is nothing new under the sun but there are lots of old things we don’t know. – Ambrose Bierce

Do you think we live in a world where what we see and read is better than ever before?

There is clearly more stuff. More people are writing and creating words, music and video. They are coming up with games and apps and platforms.

All shiny and new.

So, what makes one creation better than another? Why do you sit and watch one box set, unable to turn away, for week after week while others you abandon after the first ten minutes?

One test – much loved by the analytics folk – is to look at what people do. If they can watch your behaviour, see how you vote with your mouse and remote and money, then they can figure out what you like and give you more of it.

The thing with analysis is that it looks back at what has happened. You can try and do more of what worked in the past but, as the financial folk keep reminding us, past performance is no guarantee of future results.

Also, this whole thinking in aggregate, in big numbers, in terms of markets is applying statistics to people. And no one really wants to be a statistic.

Take consumer behaviour, for example. In his book Buy.ology, Martin Lindstrom writes about Socrates and how he told his students to think about a mind like a block of wax. If an image is pressed into the wax and stays there, then we remember it. If not, it’s like it was never there. In other words, it leaves an impression.

Lindstrom goes on to describe how the things that leave an impression on us, from touching a hot stove to being embarrassed when we told someone how we felt about them, shape the way we start to respond to things.

But, while we share many of these things none of us have exactly the same. Imagine all these experiences like strands hanging down in front of you. You pick and weave your experiences into your own unique sense of identity.

So, while a statistical approach can be approximately right the ideal approach is one that is made just for you. Not one that is designed to make you feel special but one that actually is special.

John McPhee is an American non-fiction writer. I heard about him in a podcast and was interested enough to take a look at the cover of his latest book, Draft No. 4: On The Writing Process, but not interested enough to buy it.

Until I read this review by Michael Dirda on the Washington Post that had these lines:

“However, its opening two chapters, in which McPhee presents his various systems for structuring articles, do require a bit of perseverance. There are graph-like illustrations, circles, arrows, number lines, maps and even an irrelevant excursus about an outmoded text editor called Kedit. The upshot of it all is simply: Take time to plan your piece so that it does what you want.”

There are two points that the writer makes: drawing pictures is a waste of time; and text editors are irrelevant.

Well, if you have read this blog for a while, you’ll know that drawings are a big part of how I write. And I write with a text editor, possibly one even older than the outmoded one that the writer of the Post excoriates.

So, of course, I had to buy the book. Because now I desperately needed to read those two chapters.

And that’s the funny thing about people. They don’t act in the way you want them to. Just because you think things should be one way doesn’t mean everyone is going to agree.

So, that takes us back to asking how we know when something is good. And one answer is that it’s good if it’s been around a while.

Like pencils.

Pencils?

If you’re a writer, you know how to use a pencil.

What’s newer than a pencil?

Pens, text editors, Microsoft Word, some kind of SAAS program?

If you write with a pencil your words will still be legible a few hundred years from now.

Penned words may start to fade.

Plain text will be readable as long as we have computers.

Your Word documents from even ten years ago are probably lost.

And that SAAS company went bust not long from now.

In other words, choose things that have some history because they have shown they can last.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

What Approach Should You Take If You Want To Succeed?

agincourt.png

Thursday, 9.01pm

Sheffield, U.K.

All things are ready, if our mind be so. – William Shakespeare, Henry V

The English insult is different from that commonly seen in much of the world.

Instead of a middle finger raised aloft, they hold up the index and the middle, palm facing inward.

This custom, apparently, comes from days when the longbow was used in battle and the French would threaten to cut off those two fingers of any prisoners to ensure they never drew a bow again.

And so, in battle, the longbowmen held up those fingers to tell the other side what they thought of them.

The longbow, apparently, came into its own at Agincourt in 1415. 8,500 English soldiers, 7,000 of which were longbowmen faced around 50,000 French troops.

They won – helped by their arrows – which travelled towards the enemy faster than they could run and walk towards them.

But, what does this have to do with business or sales and marketing?

It’s a story that can be used to look at the same situation from different points of view.

Let’s look at tactics, for example.

The losing side were just as brave as the winning side. If anything, they might have been braver, trusting in their armour to protect them from those pesky arrows.

They had a plan, to head towards the other side and so that’s what they did.

That’s a little like having an army of salespeople taught to smile and dial. They hit the phones, make the calls, make their numbers and succeed.

Is that approach, that works like a cavalry charge, all might and muscle and fury, going to work?

Increasingly, it seems to me, it doesn’t. A cold approach, whether on the phone, email, snail mail, is easily stopped, ignored or turned away.

The arrows, on the other hand, are multiple points of contact. Some might miss, some might hit, and the ones that hit may make a difference.

So, the way I think about this is to imagine that you want to build a pipeline of business. You could reach out to people directly or you could send a shower of arrows their way.

You could advertise where they are going to see it, you could engage with them in the places they are going to be, you could work with them on things that they feel are important and you could get introduced to them by people they already trust.

Is that going to increase your chances of success?

Possibly. Even probably.

I guess it simply comes down to this.

There are lot of things you could do.

You could focus on just one of those things – something you’re strong at, and just do that thing.

Or you could do as many of those things as you can at the same time.

For some people the focused approach will work. For others, the wider one.

Unfortunately, there is no right answer.

There is just what happens when you finally join battle.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

Why It’s Important To Really Understand What Free As In Freedom Means Today

small-big.png

Monday, 9.04pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Don’t think free as in free beer; think free as in free speech. – Richard Stallman

IBM has bought Red Hat for $34 billion.

Things have come a long way…

Twenty years ago, on a machine that I can’t remember, I started up a CD of Red Hat and went through the installation process.

Red Hat wasn’t my first try at GNU/Linux.

That was Slackware, on 3.5 inch disks, but it was the first distro that I can remember using properly.

I’ve often wondered why I was drawn to GNU/Linux, why Windows seemed quite so undesirable, even all that time ago.

Why choose something so small and fragile instead of a dominant operating system?

I think it might have been because of my dog.

Years before that install, I went out and chose a puppy. A Pointer – black and white, with floppy ears, a wobbly walk. It was the one that came over and said hello so, of course, I had to have it.

It was an age when computers were coming into our lives. And my dad suggested we name the puppy Unix. So, Unix he became. And I wonder sometimes whether the draw that GNU/Linux, a Unix like system, has for me is because of that connection.

But there is more than that.

When you come from a country that has a history when it was colonised by those with superior technology you learn that you need to have your own if you are not going to be controlled once again.

So, self reliance is important. It’s good to be reluctant to give up freedom, even when it seems convenient.

The last twenty years, for me, longer for others that started before I was born, have seen people working on a strange concept. The idea that programs and computers should work to serve society, not to control them.

The common connection these people have, is their desire for freedom. The desire to be able to use their machines without being controlled by someone else.

A few centuries ago, many monasteries were among the richest organisations around. How did that happen, when the monks were committed to a life of prayer and meditation? It was because of the power of volunteering. The power when people come together, to work for a goal bigger than themselves.

So, it’s strange and reassuring, to see that power is still capable of taking on the strongest in society and winning.

Richard Stallman wrote as far back as 1996 that it was just fine to charge to distribute free software. You could charge nothing, a penny, a dollar or a billion dollars. He didn’t think you would get a billion, however.

Red Hat got 34 of them, just 22 years later.

Freedom looks to be winning.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Posted on

How Are You Going To Compete Against All The Cheap Substitutes?

made-in-sheffield.png

Sunday, 7.56pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Goodwill is the one and only asset that competition cannot undersell or destroy – Marshall Field

How often do you look around you and wonder if you’ll ever make it in business?

Take business shows, for example. If you attend one you’ll see a plethora of small businesses, from florists to gyms. And lots of marketing and IT firms.

What’s going to make one succeed and another fail? And how will any of them compete with local and global competitors?

The first thing to see is that at least all of them have started something. You can’t succeed unless you start. That’s a basic rule.

Once you get past that, however, you start to see some basic truths.

Many businesses have a natural ceiling. A restaurant, for example, can only serve a certain number of meals every day. They can raise their income by maximising the flow through their restaurant and by raising prices.

At some point, they’ll reach a peak and they can’t go past that without raising their ceiling somehow. That probably means starting more restaurants or serving faster food.

Now, whatever they do, they are still anchored by the economic structure of their businesses. The question to ask yourself is what that means for you.

And there is no better place to start than Warren Buffett, and what he had to say in his 1983 letter to shareholders about goodwill.

Goodwill in this sense has nothing to do with emotions – to how someone feels about you – and in a sense it has.

Confusing? Perhaps.

Let’s say you’re starting a restaurant. I looked at one a number of years ago – a family business came up for sale for around 30,000 pounds.

We’d eaten at this place a number of times. It served good home-cooked food and we probably spent around 40 pounds for a meal for four, or 10 pounds each.

They probably served around 20 people for a sitting. Maybe they had two sittings a day and were full mostly on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

So let’s say they made around 20x2x10x3x48 = 57,600 a year. After salary costs, perhaps they had a profit of nearly 10k.

So, if I invested 30k I’d make my money back in three years. A good rate of return?

Now, this place got taken over a few years ago, and the food went from simple home-cooked to a gourmet experience with a well known chef. The price for a table of four ended up being more like 160 pounds. On the same math, this results in a turnover of 230,400. The profit, rockets from 10k to more like 180,000.

My payback can be counted in months.

That gap – that’s what shows there is goodwill.

And what creates that gap?

One word. Reputation.

I was watching a documentary about Sheffield and its steel-making history. Why is Sheffield Steel so well known? Was it because the city made shoddy stuff? Or because it made some of the best quality steel in the world from the start?

No one can compete with factories staffed with cheap labour that make commodities. In the early part of the century British factories dominated global markets for textiles, helped by laws that undermined local competition.

In India, Gandhi took a stand and asked people to use locally made goods. He started by weaving his own garments.

What he made wasn’t better quality than machine made stuff. But his voice made a difference – his reputation led a country to boycott foreign goods and buy local instead.

These days it’s the West that looks anxiously at the great factories of China and wonders how it can compete with a tidal wave of cheap product.

And the answer is that you don’t. You don’t compete on price. You don’t even compete on quality.

There is space for cheap products. And there is also space for the products you make.

The question is, what kind of reputation do you have?

That’s what you compete on.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh