Ron Lindeboom
2
COW Coins
Forum Replies Created
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[Mick Haensler] “I just got out of an 8 hour studio session cutting our first track and it is by far the best thing I have ever done musically. We have a new genre we’re dubbing “American Celtic Roots” music. I’m so pumped I don’t know if I’ll be sleeping much tonight.”
While you have been recording and not sleeping, we have been launching a new record label and not sleeping. ;o)
It’s why the magazine is sneaking out a little late because we couldn’t get some server issues resolved and the new issue contains the news and a look at our upcoming release. It would help to have a website, eh? ;o)
We are very excited as our first artist is one of the finest composer/pianists in Southern California and his music is quite beautiful.
Tim Wilson and I joked that a power pop indie band with some killer hooks would be nice as an introduction but this guy’s music is remarkable and his piano playing is — in my opinion — better than some of the New Age piano meisters like George Winston and Jim Brickman.
Back when I was in my 20s, I was in a band with this guy and he was great even then — in fact, we won a contest that Erma Bombeck held in her sydicated column looking for a songwriter. Of all the groups that entered from around the country, we won and were made her guests in Phoenix, with Ron Ripps producing a session with Tim Hunnicut at Hunnicut Studio. It was a wonderful studio and the sessions were quite fun, but we were too heavy it seems for the labels who wanted us to be like Billy Joel and Elton John. We wanted to be more intense like Andy Pratt, who was working with Tony Levin and Steve Gadd on his Resolution album, those were our heroes. (Ron Ripps would later make the first transcontinental hot-air balloon flight.)
Now, I have my own recording studio and some of my favorite players are slated to do some recording here in the days ahead.
Now, all these years later, the circle comes around full, and we are going to work together again. Watch for the next issue of Creative Cow Magazine over the next few days for more details.
Isn’t life just too damned cool sometimes?
:o)
Ron Lindeboom
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[Jeff Bach] “To me the point that gets missed in this line of thought is that by the time in the lifecycle that automation shows up, the high value has been reassigned to something that is new. The clock is reset and starts over in effect back at the valuable specialty point of the lifecycle. Innovation is important. Thinkers, creators and those looking to solve problems are no longer involved or needed in the commodity part of the cycle. Instead, they are off solving problems and coming up with the new things and services that live at the specialty front end of yet one more new cycle. And if they are not they should be.”
I would agree with this thought 100%, Jeff.
Unfortunately…
It ignores an important reality of the market, one that you can spot quite easily if you look around you: the innovators and thinkers are few, while the worker bees are many.
It is the worker bees that are being put out of work, not the thinkers and innovators.
In the World Just Past (Passed?), the preponderance of workers were those who did the menial tasks and/or repetitious labor.
There is becoming increasingly less and less room for this kind of worker, at the same time that there is becoming a greater and greater population base and an ever increasing demand for primary resources — such as food, water, energy and other “primary” resources.
In an Information Age, the “haves” and the “have nots” will be more measured by gray matter and vision than by money or even muscles. With a lot of cunning and ambition and enthusiasm, money can be found and opportunities exploited. But when muscle is not needed, because the value of labor has been so diminished, there is going to far less opportunity for those who have no vision or real ability to innovate.
Therein lies the rub…
Ron Lindeboom
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No, we didn’t buy this system and have been developing it ourselves over the years, so that we can do whatsoever we want and not be locked into anyone else’s proprietary system.
That said, not that you know that the Green T does what you want, use it or don’t — problem solved.
If somehow you want to solve the problem with some other protocol that you prefer because you don’t like Green Tea or something, well, let’s be frank and say it isn’t exactly high on our list of priorities.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
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You might even say that we are a bunch of old dogs looking to turn a few new tricks.
Or something like that.
;o)
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It is still there, David. We just simplified it and now use a single search field instead of separating it out as it used to be. Some people would try searching authors in the search field that wasn’t tied to authors and they would get confused. So we now have a combined search query field. If you want to search on an author, just type in the name and away you go.
Best,
Ron Lindeboom
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We are going to have about 1,000 overs that we have had printed available in the next revision of the COW’s Dairy Store. We will have back issues of many of the past issues available there for people to order if they would like. They will not be free but if they need to do a fill-in, they will be available.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
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[Franklin McMahon] “You need to adjust your income requirements to incorporate your added experience. A lot of creative people never factor in the experience that grows over the years. You are a more valuable person than you were last week, last month, last year.”
You also need to adjust that formula to balance it with the market conditions, the near-bread-line standing of many markets in today’s business climate, and factor in that while your value may be increasing, your employer’s chances of gaining profitable business is getting rougher and rougher.
If you really want to make $60,000 a year, then be prepared to take the pad that Franklin mentions below and sketch out what you are going to bring to the table that is going to put many times that into your company’s coffers. After all, they can’t pay you out of thin air and in today’s world, the reality is that you will either “intrapreneur” with your company or you likely won’t have enough value to stay there. Treat it as it’s your business and understanbd that while you may bring many times your $60,000 to the table, by the time that the costs of equipment, offices, wages, benefits, taxes, etc., etc., are paid, the company is going to have very little of that “huge sum that my work brings to the company” left over.
[Franklin McMahon] “Also sit down with a pad and decide how much you need to make to achieve the lifestyle you want. This result may mean moving to a new position, new company or shifting your career focus. But the key is to decide what you want to make and then work to make that income level happen. Many do it the other way, they decide well, that is all the market around here has to offer me. They have very long and rocky roads through their careers.”
Those that also think that today’s marketplace is one in which they are going to have a job for years, are also likely to find life a rocky road. The reality of The New Normal is that people are going to have to be far more stressed and competitive than they have ever had to be in the past. Those that look back to the days of union jobs and the security of lifetime positions and pension plans, are going to find the world a really rough place.
I am COMPLETELY willing to pay my people $60,000 and up — many that work for us already make more than that — BUT that money has to come from somewhere.
So, in an information age, there is power in ideas and in intellectual property. Become a part of your company’s Idea Manufacturing Dept. and do not be afraid, when you are away from work, to think through the kinds of ideas that can bring value to your company and make them known to management.
Today’s business world is hyper-competitive and you will either have to bear all of that on your own or you can become a part of a team that works together to place all of the various puzzle-pieces-of-competence that each team member has, to build something together that sustains all of the members of that team.
The old anti-business rhetoric of those who think that every business is out to screw people is the tired rhetoric of losers who will always be the Odd Man Out and will never really succeed in today’s world — the world of hyper-connected markets that extend around the globe and place people in less developed countries who are very hungry and will work for little (because they have families they love and want to care for too), in competition with people in more developed countries who are going to find this new degree of competition very disconcerting.
It won’t be going away.
It will be getting more and more competitive.
You can talk all day about what is fair and what is not but it will not change much. What will change things is when you decide that you have to “become an active participant in your own rescue.” Find the ideas that will bring new business to your employer and then ask for a cut of it — if that $60,000 you want to make is your real goal. Most businesspeople will play the game of “If I bring you a half-million can I have 60,000?” all day long. But if you think that you are going to play “Here’s 120,000 and I want 60,000,” then you are hallucinating as the margins are just not there in today’s economy. Worse yet, are those that think that is not their concern and “the company should just feed me work and pay me, thank you. I don’t think about it.”
The world is changing and the future belongs to those who know how to market. In a world full of products that come from almost anyone living almost anywhere, it is not the person working on the line who is the real value-add. It is the person who knows how to get the market to buy what they are selling. Learn the power of ideas if you really want to be both a communicator and an earner.
But don’t come to me looking for a job. I don’t hire. But I am always adding people who can communicate and bring value to the table and can take away less than they bring to that table.
I don’t have all the ideas, neither does anyone else. Your boss won’t and neither will you. But if you have good ideas, toss ’em on the table and ask for everyone else’s. Shape them. Mold them. Make something of value together. But don’t think that you can just show up for work anymore and do the least that is expected and get a paycheck and go home and not give another thought to the company. That world died with the internet and the future is no place for people who do not see themselves as part of the company they work for.
Bottomline? As I tell my team here, we either all succeed together or we will all fail together. Only an ego-maniac thinks that they are so singularly important that they alone carry all the weight, burden and reason for the success of a company or an idea. Yes, some people will affect that bottomline more than others, but do not under-sell your own value — especially if you really do want to make that $60,000 that you see as your goal. (Especially when there is someone just across the wire from you, who is willing to do it for a hell of a lot less.)
Welcome to the future that nobody wanted.
Best regards,
Ron Lindeboom
Creativity is a type of learning process where the teacher and pupil are located in the same individual.
Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
– Antoine de Saint Exupéry -
[Nick Griffin] “Am I in a distinct minority, working for many of the same people over and over again?”
Like you, Nick, we work with mostly the same people, over and over and we do not demand payment up front nor always at the completion of a job. Sometimes we do, depending on the job, but many times, we do not.
Also like you, all new accounts go on contract and pay either a substantial down payment or payment in full. On occasion, we have opted for a 1/3rd down, 1/3rd when job is half finished and the final 1/3rd upon completion and before delivery.
That places us in a distinct minority too, I guess.
;o)
Our best to you and Deb,
Ron & Kathlyn
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[David Roth Weiss] “There are clearly many Cows who for one reason or another seem to despise using our legal system to pursue bad debts…”
My objection DOES NOT cover the use of Small Claims Court for those instances where it makes perfect sense — in those cases where enough money is owed that the cost to pursue it is less than the money that you will likely recoup.
Where I DO object, Your Honor, is that some people look at Small Claims Court as an emotional arm to hammer the offender when that which they stand to recoup in no way even begins to cover the REAL costs of pursuing it.
As I said, when it makes sense, go for it. When it is not going to break even, why do it? There are few times in life wherein that kind of emotional motivation — that ignores the probability of a profitable outcome — makes business sense.
Business is about profit, not revenge.
So, if it will make you money, use it. If it won’t, find something else to do.
Ron Lindeboom
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Thank you for reminding me that it was there, now I can cheat and get my next magazine column done very quickly.
;o)
Ron Lindeboom