Branding David

Deb Ng and I have launched a new blog that will focus in on being a Community Manager, and all that the position entails called Kommein. I was only a Community Manager for a short period of time, but I learned a great deal, and hope to provide extensive insights into ever part of working in the industry.

One of my favourite things to do is teach, and I can’t wait to see the community response over this blog. Deb Ng is currently employed as the Community Manager for Blog Talk Radio, and brings her own thoughts and insights from her active career. Together, we hope to cover ever facet of the job, and help those that are managing their own communities work more effectively.

Community management is a growing area of concern for individuals, brands and companies as they have to contend with the speed that the Internet can disseminate knowledge compared to the less connected society we lived in only one or two decades ago.

Kommein will be a blog filled with passion, advice, and insights, and I hope you’ll all check it out and let me know what you think.

A weird question was recently brought up with regards to success and capital. Do you need a lot of money to become a success, or is personal and corporate branding and promotional techniques enough to bring anything from unknown to popular?

With the clamp down on venture capitalist funding, it makes this question all the more relevant to people that I know and talk to. It also made me wonder how much money it would take for me to build the business I have always wanted, and do so overnight. See, I consider myself very thrifty, but on the flip side, I understand how much time, money and passion it takes in order to build a very successful business or brand online, and how these things must be weighed, especially if you start to bring on staff to help you accomplish your goals.

What is Success?

The question that we each must ask ourselves before determining how much money we need to make, is what is success, and how much of it do we want? Many companies and individuals would list success as having millions of dollars of profit at your disposal, but I am not one of those people.

Success to me, is being able to choose when I work, while still making enough money that I can comfortably support my family and being able to enjoy the occasional purchase on a whim without worrying what that means sacrificing.

To put a dollar amount on this is rather difficult, as my life situation is still in constant flux, with my wife in University, and my personal interests for both business and hobby still being fully explored.

Is Lacking Money Holding You Back?

Another question to consider before understanding how much money would be needed to make you or your business a success includes considering the key factors. For me, money is only holding me back in that I have to dedicate time to making money that I would prefer to dedicate to new and/or exciting projects.

For many people, time is more a consideration and concern than money, as we only have so much time to spend on things, and having money would free us from having to earn a living at one job, and allow us to pursue our goals in life. Many branding experts, and successful business people won’t cover this point. They will sell you on the “just do what you love, and the money will follow” aspect that I hear preached so much, but in reality, you have to balance doing what you love with earning a living and supporting yourself and sometimes a family.

Conclusion

If you really consider these points, you would probably realize that you need less money than your imagination lead you to believe, and that your goals, while still difficult, are much more realistic and closer to reality. If you figured out that you only need enough money to support your family for a year, plus some money for a programmer or designer, that could be much easier to obtain than the millions we would all like to have.

I am seeing a fair number of companies cutting staff that probably don’t need to. They are reporting record earnings, or at worst nominal drops in revenue, and yet they are cutting upwards of thirty percent of their staff. What is going on? Why are they making such aggressive cuts in their staff if the money is still rolling in?

The ME TOO Mindset

I was recently talking to a colleague of mine, and it was said that watching the news go around about all the cuts and the horrible economy most definitely pushes out the feeling that companies should make cuts because others are. When you put massive amounts of people together, you’ll notice quite often there is a tendency to follow a leader, even if it is in the wrong direction.

Are many companies letting go of hard working people just because they have seen the news that their competitors have let go of staff? Do they see this as a way to remain competitive and bolster their revenue figures? Is this just a great excuse, so that those that do the firings don’t have to feel bad?

Again, I am not saying that there isn’t a reason to downsize, if your revenues are going south, or your cash burn rate is too high to be sustained over the long haul, but to do it without any other provocation other than your competition cutting back is ridiculous.

Companies expect their staff to work hard for them, and be loyal, and then there is a hiccup in the economy and people are being downsized like there is no tomorrow.

I really think that if most companies took a moment to pause, really analyze the situation, and take preventative measures that don’t require a loss of talent and staff, they would be able to ride out this economic storm without contributing to the negativity that is currently hanging over the new media / Internet and technology related industries.

What do you think, were all of these firings really necessary?