These are just a few examples that I can think of right now to demonstrate what would happen if Marketing was suddenly gone. The world would be less colourful, less tasty, a bit more boring. People would have to work hard to choose, find, try, re-buy a product or service, differentiate themselves from the crowd, and discover alternatives.
I saw many businesses where the children of Entrepreneurs would have to get fired from their parents, but the scenario where the father would have to be fired is a little more complicated. And it is more complicated because in such cases the father usually holds all the cards, has more allies, and more ‘gravity’.
The current 4-day workweek trend is the bastard child of a pandemic and the force of habit. A pandemic that forced an entire planet to first stop on its feet and then work from home, and the unstoppable Force of habit of human nature that at some point saw, and experienced, that working like this might actually work. I have my doubts.
Hiring the perfect candidates is just the beginning. What next? Throw them to the wolves and watch if they can survive? We create companies to advance forward, not retreat. In the same way, we should hire in order to retain, not dismiss.
Unhappy customers are ten times louder than happy customers. You should view every single complaint as an opportunity to improve your company, not a threat. Maybe the client is wrong, but that doesn’t mean he can’t complain and talk about it. Win that customer over, again.
Everyone runs all-around all day long but at the end of the day, they don't make any or make very little profit. How is this possible? The answer is simple and obvious.
One of the first moves that entrepreneurs make when they find themselves in a difficult position or situation is to reduce wages, make redundancies, or both.
Speed is important but requires proper organizing so as not to backfire. A business with problems in terms of organization, personnel, procedures, and cash flow, can easily make a situation even worst if it tries to become quick simply for the sake of speed.
Our issue here is not the income or expenses but the processes of a business, an area where very few entrepreneurs give the necessary importance but which affects the company itself, its staff, its customers, sales, a lot more than you can even imagine.
All entrepreneurs face various problems but if you gave them the option to solve only one, it would be sales. Everyone would like more sales and would choose to solve this issue than any other they face or will face.
I have no doubt that small businesses are necessary but I have some doubts about their ability to offer more to the economy depending on their size and number.
Unless this conflict escalates to a World War where every further analysis will be redundant and irrelevant, the outcome of this war, I believe, will make us all, in the long term, better and stronger. Including Business.
The ‘people’ element is tricky. A single ‘person’ requires psychology to understand but when you add a lot of ‘persons’ you get a team, and the team often needs a different approach, most easily understood with the study of sociology.
Everybody is trying to make sense of the phenomenon of more and more people resigning from their jobs, especially since the start of the pandemic. Is it a response to the pandemic, a change in culture, is it time for a break, the employers’ fault, the employees’ fault, the Governments’ fault?