samirabid.com

I am having a moment of consideration and consolidation. The online marketing consultancy is open for business and the website is getting visitors from around the world everyday.

The open question remains: Which industry sector?

Although now skilled with the tools to work in any business in any industry, people want reassurance you know their industry and have direct experienced their problems.

Otherwise, they may argue, what value can you really bring them?  Their perception is maybe you don’t understand what they are going through. Furthermore, to sell consultancy you have to sell either a saving or an increase in revenue.  To justify the fee’s you charge, without sector experience, this is almost impossible by any ethical process.

It was through thinking about this sector problem that I took the opportunity to take a step back and evaluate. Consultancy is an industry limited by time and billable hours – I can only be in one place at one time. Furthermore, where is the incentive, past the good hourly rate? Is a consultant just a self-employed manager, rather than a true entrepreneur?

Here is a perspective from an interview with Chris Knight of ezinearticles.com on the subject:

What is the best advice you have for new or future entrepreneurs?

“Do it and stop talking about ‘doing it.” Get into massive action. Learn and read like mad every single day. Listen to your stakeholders and earn their respect by taking an enormous amount of action that proves you heard what they had to say. Create and design a business that allows you to step out of daily operations. If you are running your business, you are a manager and not an entrepreneur. Nothing wrong with being a manager or even an ‘entrepreneurial-spirited manager’, but true entrepreneurs in my mind unlock the creativity and innovation in market potential for their business and industry –they can only do this if they are not involved in daily operations of the business.

For the full article, click here.

I read an interesting article today by one of our (Warwick’s) MBA professors, Nigel Piercy.  The business schools and MBAs are being blamed by some quarters for the economic meltdown.  Nigel puts forward a balanced and decent repost to this notion in his article, published in the Wall Street Journal – click here.

My view is that greed is human nature.  Everyone was party to taking advantage of easy credit, fuelling the housing price boom and running up credit card bills to buy consumer items.  Its a cycle, a churn of money which spirals up and down; although we can’t directly control it individually, we are all party to the macro economy.

The macro economy is not the issue on its own, it is long established, the issue for the west is the rate of leakage of that money from the spiral.

The big point that people in the west are missing, is that while everyone argues about who’s fault it is and how did this happen, no-one is prepared to tackle the real issues, as I see it.  This crisis would have been much less powerful, ifthe west was still a net EXPORTER of goods, rather than importer.   By importing all our consumer goods, food and clothes from abroad (because we are largely too arrogant and proud to get our hands dirty and make them ourselves – why else is it cheaper?) the west has made itself very vulnerable.  It would not surprise me at all if there was a large swing during my lifetime of wealth and power from west to east, that  critically will have a profound effect on the standard of living in the west – if you look it is already happening really (why else would the UK have to borrow so much?)

Nigel was outspoken on the Warwick MBA course and quite polarised opinion within our class – some totally didn’t connect with his teaching style at all.  My feeling was that he challenged us and didn’t spoon feed us information, which I think can only be a good thing if you are to learn effectively.

Interestingly, other than in class presentations, Nigel never graded me that well in the exams; I never quite figured out what it was he was looking for.  I should therefore be frustrated with him but instead I am a fan.  I like people with a strong opinion and who challenge the status quo, making one think.  Its rare to meet people like this, with the courage of their convictions (to many unabated arrogance!) and its nice the Wall Street Journal feels the same.

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I am trying to leverage the “link juice” from this blog to use for my digital marketing strategy business called Entia Limited (link also at top of page).  If your business needs a digital marketing strategy, your existing website optimised or website hosting, then Entia can help you do it successfully cost effectively.

All most as soon as it has begun, the MBA is coming to a close.  This week I start my last taught module.

The subject is International Business and in many ways I couldn’t think of a more fitting way to finish – with such diversity in the group, this course has been truly international. 

The course readings are significant.  In fact there are so many that the binder is already full – and that is before any handouts for the week.

The highlight I hope will be the FINS exercise at the end of the week, where each team represents different groups in a simulated negotiation.  There are a mix of western multinationals, governments of emerging countries and local companies in the emerging countries.  Negotiations are expected to centre around trade incentives, tax breaks, joint ventures, knowledge transfer, government stability (or likely instability!), cost optimisation and managing the media and press to each groups advantage!  Should be a good way to finish.