Fake Money Blog

I don’t link that often - not yet - I suppose it is because I haven’t been doing this for too long. Drum roll please, here is a link to Seth Godin’s post, which is called: Lesson learned from my biggest business mistake.

In that article Mr. Godin claims that he couldn’t see certain opportunities right in front of him. The reason for this being: “the rules of this new business didn’t match the rules of my existing business.”

DYNAMIC ILLUSION
To my opinion this means that one is more or less fixed to old behaviour patterns. If you are a newspaper man it could be mighty difficult for you to understand how to run even relatively similar business like novel publishing not to mention completely different industries like sawmills and car manufacturing companies.

EXAMPLE
Even slightest changes can be terribly damaging for person’s learned set of business rules. I know person who did brilliantly as an account manager in mobile software company with most of the customers in Asia.

HEADHUNTED

Head hunter

He was headhunted to another company as their EMEA area manager - super! He went to work industriously and relied to his experiences while totally signing off all current dealers. His reasoning was to cut the middle man to increase margins and personally travel to meet customers to give superb service. As you can understand, he completely blew it.

THE BLOW
Dropping agents stopped revenue stream, because almost all of their end-customers remained with agents and even changed to competing product. Personal service also failed since the issues were different from what he had experienced in Asia. He had no solution to give. Respectable market share of almost 10% went to zero in less than two months.

HAPPY ENDING
Nowadays he is enjoying his life as an account manager for mobile software company in Hong Kong. You don’t always have to strive for same level of success as Mr. Godin. Use your working set of rules in right place and make the difference.