Letting lt All Sink In

4Nov,2015

I always find it worthwhile talking to entrepreneurs who have been there, done that. I learn most of what I find truly worthwhile that way.

And when the entrepreneur is Bruce Dickinson of the Iron Maiden, I’ve found its really quite something!

Initially, I was inclined to downgrade any interaction with Bruce. After all what could I really have in common with the lead vocalist of a band I’ve never bothered to even listen to before? And anyways I’m not fan material .I like certain performances of a few musicians/bands here and there and that’s it. I have them stored in my i-pod/phone/you-tube account. These pieces touch me and I listen to them over and over again.

But boy was I wrong!

It all started with both of us being Nokia users. Now, nobody who knows anything at all about tech is supposed to touch Nokia. Admit to owning a Nokia product, and be instantly laughed out of the room by the cool kids! But apparently, after being laughed out by the cool techies, I might just find myself in company with many of Bruce’s friends, entrepreneur-CEO types, who think of professional social-media types as twits! And indeed we are, when we could be using our time better!

But cell phone preferences have a co-relation with personality types and I was to find that Bruce and I had enough in common in our approach to work, life and business to actually make it super-productive for me to learn from him.

And 4 days on, I’m still mulling over all that I got from him ranging from: an entertainer’s advantage in having fans not customers, the disruptive effect of the internet on older business models and how it actually benefits the entrepreneurially minded, thriving in the days when the internet makes certain types of content like music non-lucrative, marketing of aspirational luxury products, co-branding, merchandising, launching a beverage, growing a brand, distribution of a new product, launching a road-show on a budget, influencing the media and social media, content marketing, negotiating, turning other people’s surplus inventory to a cheap resource for one’s business, finding and serving new markets, working one’s way into a new line of business, bartering, securing resources for free, starting a new business from other people’s scrap and liabilities, reducing start-up costs, reducing R&D expenses in cutting-edge technologies, developing a prototype, working with large corporations and governments, dealing with budgetary cutbacks, dealing with soured relationships with VCs, buying back assets at a discount, manufacturing at cut-prices, de-risking business deals, dealing with bankruptcy and homelessness, spending when fear makes you feel you can’t, improving one’s risk taking capacity , building relationships, networking, group-dynamics, synergy, putting together a team, patching up broken business relationships and moving on, dealing with the nay-saying of accountants ……………………..

And to think that a person with concerts in 35 countries coming up ,following a hit album and scores of businesses world-wide, was actually open to continue communicating with me via his manager and allot time as early as January or alternatively April for my initiatives truly revs me up!