In comes an email with a question on getting going by an airline employee in a good situation. I have not reproduced his email to me, since it does not really matter, it is the situation and my reply that I want to highlight:
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And this is what I would say to anyone with a solid career who is now looking to get into int'l trade as a start-up. And if an when the primary existential question as answered, I'd go to the next item on the checklist.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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What's classic about your email is the violation of Peter Drucker's argument against "organizing around the resources." Impressive resume. What does it do for the customers? How does you flying cheap serve them? How does a JD serve people whose only law is a loose version of lex mercatoria?
What customers? If you propose to start something up, it has to solve a problem. You cannot effectively start-up competing on price, selling something already existing, because you do not have the resources to beat the conservators at the game of lowering prices.
So starting up would be a matter of solving a problem. Again with Drucker, all products and services are solutions to problems. And there are no solutions that cannot be improved upon. Your job is to solve a problem not yet addressed.
Now, as you know, our strengths are our weaknesses. You've moved ahead where most get washed out. We like to lead with our strengths. But what if the world was designed in a way that your profile did not fit in? Then you'd have to move ahead by a different means, not studying the text and getting the rules down, but by listening to customers for what not yet exists. I am not denying that the vast majority of piloting and law is intuition and hypothesis, only saying the checklist rules the world in which you have thrived.
As a business start-up, it is intuition and hypothesis that rules the world, with the checklist being a secondary thing. So it is exactly the opposite. Both are necessary. To start up you need to go to the part that has been secondary and make it primary.
So to start, what product or service? Forget about all you have learned and been successful at, and answer this direct question directly: If you could trade in absolutely anything you wanted, what would it be, and why?
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And this is what I would say to anyone with a solid career who is now looking to get into int'l trade as a start-up. And if an when the primary existential question as answered, I'd go to the next item on the checklist.
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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