Way back when in October 2009, we brought you business insight
in 140-character slithers courtesy of @MCHammer - yes, he of
the knee-length crotch and horizontally-challenged hairdos.
And now this week, blessed be, none other than rap-pop king Kanye West
joined the twittering fray to impart his entrepreneurial wisdom
unto the masses. Now don't get us wrong - we think Kanye has got an
impressive business head on his shoulders behind those sunnies.
Like Jay-Z before him, he recognised early on that the real money
in music is in production rather than singing, and that his brand
was more valuable than his music, and if he leveraged those two
realisation he could get very, very rich. (For only someone very,
very rich would be able to tweet something as audacious as this
little gem: "I specifically ordered persian rugs with cherub
imagery!!! What do I have to do to get a simple persian rug with
cherub imagery uuuuugh").
So with that in mind, let us come to five great lessons in
business from Mr West - and a little expansion on each of them,
courtesy of us.
1."one of
the keys to leadership is doing what YOU believe is right ... for
those who follow you"
Leadership doesn't work without self-belief - it's as simple as
that. Yes, you need to listen to the opinions of those around you,
but you also need to always present yourself as having utter
confidence in what you're saying and doing. After all, if you don't
seem sure about what you're doing, who else is going to put their
faith in you? And that applies to staff as much as customers.
You also need to accommodate what your 'followers' want - that
means employees as well as clients again. Keeping both of them
happy makes for the smooth, efficient running of a business.
2."CASH
IS KING"
Right again. You can have all the orders in the world, but if
you don't have the cash ready to fulfil them, you'll go out of
business faster than you can say 'but the future looked good!'
Talk to your bank manager early on to negotiate an overdraft
that will always be big enough to act as a buffer in cashflow
crises, and watch this video on
getting a bank loan as a start-up.
3."Make sure your accounts receivable
are faster than your accounts payable"
This is again part of cashflow management. Enforce it by
incentivising your customers to pay early (perhaps with small
discounts), and chasing invoices diligently and doggedly (calling
every couple of days is fair, and if they're late paying, calling a
couple of times a day is fair).
On the flip side, pay your own invoices as late as possible.
Yes, this is massively hypocritical, but if it protects your
cashflow and therefore your survival, you need to swallow your
principles and get on with it.
4."most businesses don't make it out of
their first year"
Cold hard news, but also sadly accurate. In fact, five in six UK
businesses fail in their first five years. At the risk of sounding
more repetitive than a Kanye West background loop, bad cashflow
management accounts for 40% of those failures. So heed the advice
above to avoid it.
The other lesson here is that failure isn't rare - it's actually
the norm. So if your business does fall down for whatever reason,
don't give up trying. The mark of a great entrepreneur is being
unphased by failure - they embrace it, learn from it, and move onto
the next project without it letting their confidence drop. In fact,
we're hard pushed to think of a single entrepreneur we know who
hasn't had at least one failed business somewhere along the line.
Try, try and try again.
5."My past arrogance has caused the
failure of my past businesses .... be humble in your decision
makin"
Well, this is completely true, albeit a little hard to believe
from the mouth (or fingertips) of the man who but a day earlier
tweeted 'it's good to be King lol!!' Lol indeed, Mr West, lol
indeed.
However, hypocrisy aside, it is good to be humble. Business is
not a solid thing - it's a constant flux of peaks and troughs, and
if you get arrogant, you can bet your bottom dollar you'll be
reminded of it on the way down. Humility is an attractive
trait.
That doesn't mean underplay your achievements - you still need
to blow your own trumpet and be confident to lure in good contacts.
Just don't go around thinking you're the, er, king.