[Ron Lindeboom]

[walter biscardi] “It hasn’t always been a pretty ride, but Rebecca and I have managed to build the business very slowly but steady with the good always offsetting the bad. Honestly the business is not where it is today without her guidance. I can create programming all day, but when it comes to the business management side of things, she offers the steady hand to ensure we spend within our means and not over it. For two years now we’ve considered expanding but just didn’t know exactly how we would do it so we looked all over.”

You bring up an astute point, Walter, one which I learned well from a man named Gary Gatel who once headed a company named Rifle Farings, here in Paso Robles, California. I was the managing editor of Pacific Coast Business Magazine at the time, and I interviewed Gary for an article about getting through the collapse of a business — which had happened to the onetime $22 million dollar a year company that had pioneered and built aerodynamic motorcycle farings, but had dropped to a million dollars or less in annual revenues due to Honda, Kawasaki, Yamaha and others shipping their bikes to America with the farings as part of the bike. Rifle had to change gears quick and they suddenly found themselves in the business of building food-grade fiberglass seed sprouting tanks for raising alfalfa sprouts for sale in health food stores.

Gary taught me a lesson that I will never forget. In our talk, Gary said: “Ron, companies are always being told by the marketplace what the market will accept from that company and at what size. Unfortunately, many business owners don’t like the market’s verdict and want to do something else, something grander, bigger, with more prestige and more money. They try to create ‘their’ vision of what they want and spend a fortune building it — only to launch the company and see that their vision is rejected. But I have always believed that if you are making one more dollar than you spend, you can keep building indefinitely until you find the business equilibrium and the place where your company has established itself within the market’s expectations profitably. It’s more organic than spending a fortune building something only to watching it open to no traffic when it is launched, rejected because it was not what the market wanted. Markets also change and you have to change with them. We did, and now we know that we are no longer a $22 million business, we are much smaller — but it works because we can accept that.”

Here at Creative COW, we have always built with a keen reliance on Gary’s words. We build slowly and refine each step, we do not think in terms of “finished” strategies, merely ones that are in constant development and testing — organically assessing and tweaking each step and refining and building on each one that works.

Rebecca intrinsically understands Gary’s principle, and from the conversations we have have with her over the years, she is clearly a smart woman — one with a keen grasp on what it takes to build something successful.

You are indeed a blessed man to have such a partner in life and business, Walter.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom
CEO, CreativeCOW.net

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Graveyards are full of people the world couldn’t do without.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Patrick Ortman] “Ron, you nailed it- as you almost always do :-)”

ALMOST.

Now that’s the operative word here, isn’t it. ;o)

Best,

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Fran Glass] “I sold something about a week ago and have yet to see it. How long did it take for you all or anyone else that has sold a license before you actually “saw” the payment?”

Most of these kinds of things take 90 to 120 days before they pay you.

They sit on your money and use the “float” to make the interest off the people they are “floating.”

It is the customary way most of these companies do things. These people may be different (please report if they are), but I wouldn’t expect anything before 90 to 120 days.

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

After thinking about Walter’s post for a bit, I thought that I’d throw out a few ideas for some of those here to kick around a bit…

This market has been in a consolidation/redefinition/acquisition phase for about a decade now. Where there were once many thousands of companies serving this industry, the market has shrunk and there are days when it seems that you can now name most of the survivors.

When these things happen, people get conservative in the way that they handle their business dealings. Most get into protective modes and try to save themselves by not doing anything adventurous.

In these kinds of times, when things are shaky and risky, there are always a few that push forward and invest in themselves and their businesses. In doing so, they rise and expand while those around them continue to “pull in” and protect themselves, sort of like what turtles do when afraid.

As markets stabilize — usually after the carnage of many businesses collapsing — these more aggressive businesses are now in the prime position to lead in the newly redefined marketplace.

Some will think that it always takes money. Oh, it helps. But I hope my friend Walter doesn’t mind me reminding the readers of this forum that I can recall when Walter was on the ropes and it didn’t look good. He was in real trouble and most people in his position would have given up and walked away.

Not Walter.

Just as markets redefine themselves, so do individuals and companies. It is a sort of evolution of sorts and it allows for the kind of change that finds the answer to survival and growth. Walter is constantly redefining himself and his company. His core values are consistent but the way he deploys and reinvigorates them, is always changing and expanding.

It works. (Think of it as your stronger competitors trying to hit a moving target. The odds are far less that they’ll hit you.)

Conversely, there are those who feel that “Hey, I’ve done it this way for decades and I’m not about to change now.” This kind of attitude in today’s market is a sure recipe for extinction.

I remember when we announced we were going into the magazine business. People laughed. We didn’t have a salesman, I was already overworked (and was going to have to launch, develop, and sell it all by myself), and as Kathlyn said to me: “You haven’t felt well for years, Ron, and this is going to add a lot more work to the pile.” She told me that she’d back me on this if I really wanted to do it but that I really needed to think about it.

I told her that as long as the magazines in this market remained unchallenged by Creative COW in their core market, people (read: advertisers) would never really get the point of what the COW is or how big it is. We’d always just be this cute little thing out there with a funny name and an odd logo. But if we took them on on their own turf, we could beat them at their own game. (You see, they lacked vision then, and still do.)

Today, Videography’s new issue is 36 pages (and as I recall 4 or 5 of them were ads for themselves or trade-out ads). I think the last time I saw DV it was like 32 pages. Millimeter is gone. So is Studio Monthly, Film & Video, Video Systems, and a few others. But Creative COW Magazine — the one built by a guy who had no money at the time, and who had to do it by himself for a while just to get it out the door (until he could hand it off to Tim Wilson), is the strongest player in its field — growing and increasing its presence as the others fade.

It hearkens back to our Power of Artistic Passion issue. People who are driven and who will not take no for an answer, often succeed. And the ones who listen to commonsense all the time and who use that as their rudder always, will nearly always find the “smart” reason to quit.

Warren Buffett used to say it this way: be conservative when everyone else is gambling, and gamble when everyone else is being conservative.

Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
CEO, CreativeCOW.net

Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.

Graveyards are full of people the world couldn’t do without.

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Ned Miller] “What fire?”

Let’s see: no money, no savings, no insurance, three bouts of pneumonia in two years, getting ripped off for one of the businesses we built by a bunch of lawyers and scheisters, insane hours of fighting to bounce back from it all, and on and on.

Maybe there were no matches or gasoline involved, but it sure felt like fire to us.

😉

But as they say: what don’t kill you just makes you stronger — oh, and ornerier.

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Ned Miller] “Some people are able to take on investment risk because there may be a safety net. Recently I visited or communicated with a few guys who were my mentors and are 15-20 years older than me and now comfortably in retirement. When we were working together they seemed “normal” financially. Now I know that the majority of these successful guys, or ones I thought “made it on their own”, or wanted all to believe they did, 1) either came from family money, 2) their wife came from family money, 3) a combination of both or 4) the wife made a very high income. It is one or a combo of those four factors.”

And then on the other hand there are people like me and Kathlyn. We don’t have family money. Never had any investors. Didn’t have a safety net. No insurance either. Didn’t have a cushy job and income to bank on. We invested what we did have in our original video system, a Media 100 back in 1994. Everything was on the line. Everything.

Why did it work for us? Because we never waited for anyone to make anything happen for us. We knew that if we didn’t get off our asses every single day and work hellacious hours that most of our sane friends would have laughed at — we’d have failed.

We didn’t give ourselves excuses. Too many do that. Way too many, really.

Do something. Do it again. And again. Do it until it works.

That’s what we learned in the fire.

Ron Lindeboom
founders, creativecow.net

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Neil Hurwitz] “As an example, The building might have to be depreciated of 39 years, so if you spend 390,000 on it, you could claim a depreciation expense of only 10,000 per year. However if you can legally reclassify 100,000 of that as an Equipment purchase then you could depreciate it (the 100,000) over 5 years and get an extra 20,000 in yearly expense.”

I wish there was a way that we could apply this to some of our recent legal expenses. A few years back, a company that tried to highjack our name in this arena precipitated a lengthy legal battle that cost us $140,000 by the time it was done. The IRS told us we could only write it off over a 15 year period. Say freaking what?$#@!? 15 years? You have to be kidding, right? The accountants told us they weren’t and so that is what we are doing.

I told our lawyers that they and their colleagues need to get off their duffs and do some lobbying in their own self interests because we will be far less likely to spend a bunch of money in a legal fight knowing that we can expect a 15 year amortization schedule.

But hey, at least the IRS always wants their money right now. Now that’s something you can always count on…

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Marc Grubb] “John, Ron, to split hairs a bit, RAIDs and Arrays offer *redundancy* in the event of inevitable drive failures, and are not “backup”. They certainly are not “archive” either!”

I never said they were. I have been doing video for almost two decades now, Marc, and many years ago penned an article on “RAID Arrays & Striping: How They Work” — yes, it’s old but it was quite helpful when it was written.

So if you misunderstood me to be saying that RAID is for back-up or heaven forbid, archiving, it was not my intent in the slightest.

The only reason I suggested posting in the ARRAYS & RAID forum is that it is the forum MOST CLOSELY related to the subject, as we do not have a BACK-UP forum and likely never will. (This, as in 15 years of building forums, this is the first thread we have had requesting that we add one.)

Best regards,

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

[Chris Blair] “I love it when people are asked to do a job and they just go do it. Especially if they have to go figure something out and they just take the initiative and do that too.”

Me, I like the ones who do this AND fill out checks that clear the bank.

;o)

Ron Lindeboom

[Ron Lindeboom]

You are welcome, Dan. We are glad that it works for you and many other members of the community.

Thank you for being a part of it all, Dan.

Ron Lindeboom