the average one man band may know a fair bit about another OMB because they meet at the pub or whatever. Or they exchange tips. Or they hear gossip.
But the average £5m t/o company or £50m t/o company will know of competitors, because there's only a limited number of larger competitors, but they may not know much about those companies in quite the same way.
I used to know everybody of note in the music biz. From the chief design engineer at Korg, to old Professor Sennheiser (and his son) who began the Sennheiser microphone company and went on to buy the famous Neumann company. The guy who invented MP3 and then went on to invent all the other MP compression algorithms at the Fraunhofer Institute - yep, I got to meet him on many occasions.
I could go on and on and . . . well, you get the idea! And across two music markets. If I don't know them personally, I know someone who does. I once said to an old friend of mine (we started in that business when we both had hair - about 49BC) "It would be easier to list all the World-class acts you have NOT recorded! You've done them all, everybody from Tina Turner to Rammstein, from Pavarotti to The Rolling Stones! The only act I can think of that you haven't recorded is Pink Floyd."
He replied, "Yes, but I did Roger Waters recently!"
That's just the music biz. Film? Same deal! Spend a year or two in the film industry and you'll get to meet them all from Mendes to Spielberg.
Even the US high-tech equity fund scene is really tight. I was talking to some random CEO of an investment company from California about an economic study I had published and I discovered that he used to have a major holding in a company that was run by my wife's ex-boss! People just know one another. Walk around one trade fair, attend a few seminars and go to a few press events and you will press the flesh of half the industry.
OMBs are not businesses - OK, I'll buy that for the local newsagent! But I'm not talking about OMBs.
You are trying to distance yourself from OMBs for no reason!
Oh - and while I'm here -
don't get too snooty about OMBs! Someone who was running a series of area-sales for UK medical supply companies (i.e. one salesman repping them all) to Germany had a support staff of 12 and an eight-figure turnover. He was going to sell his operation to a rival - but he drank himself to death instead. Many's the time I had to hold his unconscious body in my arms, thinking "And I thought it was only with rock-n-roll that I had to put up with sh!t like this!"
Mr. O? I could tell you stories! Led Zeplin? Stones? Floyd? More stories. When old rockers get together the first thing we do is tell one another hairy stories that we have polished into perfect routines over the decades! Some were so bizarre that my own wife refused to believe them until she read about them in the newspaper!
The message I'm trying to get across is that you don't get into an industry by beasting in, all mouth and trousers, waving a cheque-book, shouting "Who wants to do a deal - cos I is got Big Money?"
And you don't get in by standing on the sidelines, hoping that you can harpoon a lucrative investment SAS-style.
Your clients' money is worthless without market insight, influence and access!
People have to know you and people have to like you.
You have to accept the ethics and morals of that industry and understand how people in that industry think. You may think it's a dog-eat-dog world, but I train and rescue dogs (German Shepherds and Great Danes) and they do not eat one another.
It is NOT a dog-eat-dog world. We all muck-in and we all get along.
And to quote my acquaintance at the lake-side, if someone comes in, blowing it out of the arse, telling us how much money they have, we say "I came here to get away from c*nts like you!"
Perhaps that's why your clients are finding it hard to find suitable investment targets. We've got enough money.
Money is just a number. Governments are printing ever-bigger numbers and cashing-in ever-smaller morals.
I live on about £25k a year. If some idiot gave me one hundred billion dollars, I would still live on £25k a year (though I might be tempted to buy a new digger). That's all I need. My money goes into projects that help others to fulfill their dreams and make things possible for people.
Dreams have currency - numbers are just numbers.
"You want to buy my company? Don't offer me numbers! I've got all the numbers! What else have you got to offer me? Distribution? Knowhow? Rock-solid ethics? Staff security? A promise that my company assets will never be used as security for debt? What?"
- from my accounting qualifications to testimonials from previous clients. Till then, as I'm not selling you anything, I don't need to provide every half-wit on the planet with detailed personal information. The information I already have public is more than enough.
