VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR...

This single by the Buggles went to the top of 11 international charts including the UK in 1979. The lyrics concluded as follows:
Video killed the radio star
Video killed the radio star
In my mind and in my car
We can't rewind we've gone too far

I was thinking about it last Thursday as our book on start-ups was launched and Co-Author Rachel Bell and I sat in a sound recording studio in Hammersmith doing a series of Radio interviews.

Radio wasn’t of course killed by technology, which this curiously elegiac pop song suggested. Radio’s listening profile is remarkably consistent remaining at just under 50 million weekly individual listeners throughout the current decade.

Have you ever done it? Headphones on, red light showing you’re on air, a tiny studio the soundproofing in which gives you illusion of being deaf.  And then you’re nearly on air…

“I’m Fiona, Terry’s producer you’ll be speaking to him in just 20 seconds”
You hear a long forgotten pop song blaring through your headphones  - Video killed the Radio star…ooh ah – which fades
“We have with us today Rachel Bell and Richard Hall who’ve written this book ‘Start-ups, Divots and Prop Ups’ – I got that wrong didn’t I – sorry guys - well what’s it all about?”

Just for a moment you have no idea. Your mind blanks. You are not sure you’ve ever written a book. You recall Jeremy Paxman who had a walk on part in The Edge of Reason, the Bridget Jones film and who found it utterly terrifying, literally struggling to walk and talk at the same time.

Or there was the time a taxi driver called (say) Ted Davies waiting in BBC reception hearing a bossy PA calling  “is Professor Davis here?” He raised a tentative hand and was rushed into a studio to be interviewed by someone like Martha Kearney about a recently published  report on something esoteric like black holes in space and earnestly trying his confused best:
“That Wapping High Street can be a black hole in the rush hour”…

The mind is a funny thing. You hear a voice – not your own surely – higher, rougher, slightly aggressive with a nasty sardonic chuckle. It’s talking very fast and quoting people you’ve never come across. You sound rather pleased with yourself. It’s all rather ghastly.
“Thanks Rachel and Richard that was great”…”Thanks Fiona” you croak.

 

I have a recurring nightmare of finals at Oxford and discovering I can answer nothing, have read all the wrong books and am staring dry mouthed in horror. This happened to one candidate I heard about who taking things into his own hands shouted “you bastards” and ran up the Examination Hall to attack one of the examiners.

The reality was all the radio stations were very professional and slick. The interviewers were charming, helpful, mentioned the right title of the book and got the best out of us.

Video killed the Radio Star? Not last Thursday it didn’t.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell is published on October 3rd by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom.

THE MILLENIAL MYTH DEFUSED

When Simon Sineck talked about the millennials in 2017 he derided their sense of entitlement and said what they really wanted at work were “beanbags and free food”. It was very funny. The trouble is Simon casually set the so called “snowflake generation” on a pillar of ridicule.

It troubled me at the time. Today I think it was pernicious and just plain wrong. The millennial generation that I see has a number of admirable qualities. When Rachel Bell, my co-author, chaired a group of CEOs a while back she asked them what was on their mind and the difficulty of managing millennials  was mentioned with comments like “I can’t stand them, who do they think they are?” She told these so-called leaders they were “wrong” because if they couldn’t manage millennial talent what sort of leaders were they?

In our experience most millennials are energetic, smart, fair, collaborative, generous in friendship, thoughtful and highly skilled. They may have grown up faster than we’d like, tyrannised by the stress of an exam culture. They may be sometimes be rebellious (unlike us of course in the mid-1960s and ‘70s). Interestingly millennials are drinking much less than we did. Here’s what an NHS report of 2018 concluded:

“A study …of 10,000 young people in the UK found that … 16- to 24-year-olds who say they never drink alcohol rose from 18% in 2005 to 29% in 2015. …young people who did drink alcohol were drinking less nowadays and binge drinking rates were falling.”

But millennials are not natural employees. They resist old fashioned concepts of starting at the bottom and slowly working their way up. We may find this unreasonable arguing it did us no harm (although looking at the products of  more repressive past regimes in, for instance, contemporary politicians I’m not sure this is a persuasive point of view.)

Instead however they are ideally preparing themselves to be creators of new businesses. They are the “Start-Up-Generation” which is why 70% of them say they want to create their own businesses rather than become a “wage slave”.

Vicki Harrocks, of Edge Hill University, teaches performance arts at Formby High School and says she spots the spirit of enterprise and latent entrepreneurialism in the year six pupils who are deemed most naughty and disruptive by her peers. She says they’re the ones who are quicker on the uptake, share ideas, talk in class, get restless and are never happier than when on their feet “showing off” (or, as we in business, call it “presenting ideas”).

These are our future. As they learn real business skills playing Fortnite, FIFA 19 and Restaurant Tycoon and create huge and powerful networks of diverse talents (not the antiquated “old boys’ network”) we’re looking at great team players, people who have real values and who want to create enjoyable workplaces.

They may be hard for us to manage but that’s a reflection on our own limitations rather than theirs. It’s time to give them their head. They will not let us down.

These are the millennial militants and they are winners.

“Start-ups Pivots and Pop Ups” by Richard Hall and Rachel Bell is published on October 3rd by Kogan Page. The antidote to doubt and gloom.

A NEW AGE OF ENTERPRISE

I’m writing a new book about start-ups and before you ask two inevitable questions – why another book and what’s new to say anyway -  let me tell you how the research I’m doing has transformed my mood. I’ve talked to over 30 start-up people so far and only a few over sixty have displayed occasional discontent with the geopolitical disarray we are currently encountering. Nearly everyone is cheerful, optimistic and full of ideas. No one mentions Brexit.

There is a spirit of adventure in the air. The so called “snowflake generation” is conspicuously absent. The word on the entrepreneurial block is young people today are marvellously industrious. It occurs to me that this is because they’ve been largely selected from outside the dinosaur corporations that have historically demanded loyalty, punctuality and putting in the hours as the young people’s expected contribution to the employment contract.

We live in a new world where respect, freedom and inspiration are bywords.  A world where employer and employee alike want to make a difference, want to be relevant and want to grow themselves as well as the business. And yes it’s very tempting and easy to generalise and stereotype. The start up world of today is not romantic, nor is it cushy.  However the start-up engineers to whom I’ve talked show a wonderful talent to analyse, learn and pivot.

Theirs is a world of collaboration – sharing ideas and office space – and of caring about each other’s feelings (not ‘snowflake’ stuff before anyone snorts but empathising and recognising being human as opposed to being an alpha-male manager is the best way to increase productivity and creativity).

It’s also a world of change and disruption. On Sunday I visited Parham House in Sussex, a wonderful Elizabethan house with spectacular gardens and a great history. I stared at Elizabeth1’s motto – “semper eadem” = always the same. Even 500 years ago people wanted stability, even then they wanted to keep England great. But stability and 2018 don’t synchronise. We live in turbulent times and it’s only those who can surf the waves of change and shape our world who’ll thrive. “Always the same” served Heinz, Persil, Mars, Ford and IBM well for a long time. They used to say “no one got fired for choosing IBM”;  now they say “no one survives who isn’t choosing a better, cheaper, faster way.”

When Ferran Adrià closed elBulli his 3 Michelin star restaurant it was because he couldn’t do it any better. Similarly the glorious Anthony Bourdain went a step further in taking his own life having been everywhere and seen and done everything he’d dreamt of. They’d both run dry.

But a lot of people today are determined to find a better way

Beware you fat, old, lazy sectors rich in margin and low in innovation – yes stand up lawyers, accountants, estate agents, supermarkets, builders and so on. Beware because the start-ups are out to get you. Beware because this is a new age of enterprise.

JUST HOW GREAT ARE THOSE BLADES OF YOURS MIKE?

Look at this commercial or whatever you want to call it.

It’s more of a stand-up turn than an ad and it simply commands attention through its chutzpah. And currently everyone seems to be talking about it as a case history on how to launch a new business. Its zany combination of Police Squad (the Larry Nielsen classic) and Will-it-blend? fills me with joy. I love the dig at big brand celebrity ads – poor old Roger Federer. I love its sense of being with the flow of today’s thinking – hell, this guy Mike Dubin, the founder of DollarShaveClub.com would leave Mitt Romney floundering if he turned to politics.

After Old Spice and Isaiah Mustafa, Geico and the Blendtec people,  advertising will not be the same again.
And all the good guys I know in the business are saying “and about time too….this is the sort of stuff we always wanted to do but the suits stopped us…”

And as importantly in a world where start-ups are going to fuel economic growth it’s communication like this which will reach the new consumer – their hearts, minds and wallets. What’s notable is the internet allows cheap direct marketing like this to be delivered with cool humour in launching pirate brands.

A guy called Peter Pham, from Science Inc., is a “business-accelerator” who's been working with Dollar Shave Club. He’s apparently also been working on other similar ideas for an underwear company and a children's clothing company. But it could be for anything where there’s an economic edge and an old fashioned market leader.

What he’s trying to do is build new consumer brands. Brands like those Virgin should have launched but never quite did. Brands which write new rules and break old ones. The web makes viral and rapid brand growth possible in a way that traditional media, and companies, can't touch. It’s a way of punishing slow thinkers.

And cost of entry is very low if you get the creative right…this ad for Dollar Shave Club cost $4,500.

And yes, I also thought it was a joke when I first saw it.

But that, I guess, is the point.

I wonder if the guys at Gillette think it’s a joke….or how much they’ll pay Mike and Peter to go away.