3 posts tagged “press”

These past few days, I’ve done nothing but read on and on about marketing and the next big thing. Yeah, I did pick up a few things, but after a few days, you find out that everything is rehashed, recycled, and repackaged.

There maybe more than just a handful that have me at the edge of my seat listening, and then at midsentence, I catch on to a glaring mistake and realize I’ve been had by a cult like rhetoric. I am sucked in to the idea that markets are becoming so defragmented, diverse, and increasingly intelligent. That as a consumer, I have an angry voice I can use to shout out and shake my cage.

Mass marketing, mass production, mass media are all archaic. Offset printers should be thrown to flames and digital printing press with the capacity to print-one-to-one advertising is the fad. Everyone is all of a sudden talking about premium products, niche markets, and target marketing. Small business built on innovation will outlive the giants.

All the intellectual talk and big words had me going a little, but a quick trip to the grocery changed my mind. With all the brands and choices for a single product in a single shelf in a large grocery store, it’s unlikely that I’ll even pick my brain about it. It’s not like I’d bother looking up every product on the internet to be sure that each fits exactly to my taste.

One time, I was walking through the groceries cold storage section and found some crabsticks for Japanese food, as well as Salmon for Sashimi. There were so many choices it was mind boggling. I thought Japanese food was specific enough. I ended up not buying anything.

It’s not that I don’t like having a choice it’s that too much choices limits my choice. It’s hard to have to second guess every purchase.

I guess what mass marketing does is simply give you the reassurance that somewhere out there, people are buying the same product. It may not be the best item brand in the entire shelf, but its good enough. You buy it and you forget about it. If it tastes funny, you try to remember not to buy it again and move on to the next most familiar brand on the shelf.

Maybe I don’t get it, or perhaps, I am one of those ignorant consumers sold out and brainwashed by mass media. Well, so what if I am? I have more important decisions to use my brain power on.   

Printing presses and publishing houses must be making truck loads of money printing shelves and shelves of business books that make starting your own business sound easy. They may contain well meaning ideas and valuable advice but to give the impression that almost anyone can be their own bosses is a potentially dangerous idea.

We may have heard countless success stories of how every other business started as a small enterprise, but there are also countless other failures that fail to make the headline or even a blog review. They say that every business that survives the first year, there are nine other failures. (Or is that another one of those urban legends?)

The biggest capital you need in starting up your own small business is guts more than money. For one thing, when you have enough guts and savvy, you can talk other people (i.e. venture capitalists) to invest in your business. You can use other people’s money to prop up your business. Guts on the other hand is something you have to put up on your own.

Get rich fast schemes may be tempting, especially for those who have money to burn and little experience, but they never really do you any good. They bait you in, you gain some money, they reel you in further and before you know it, all your dreams are gone and you’re bankrupt.

What you should pursue is a business you are interested in and knowledgeable about, but for those who lack experience, the best way to go about your plans is slowly but surely.

1.    Keep your capital small. Even when you can afford it. You can easily recover over a short period of time, and reinvest the profits from this capital to grow your business. Even when you fail, the small investment means there is a short fall.

2.    Learn from as much mistakes as you can. When you can’t succeed, the next best thing is to make as much mistakes as possible and learn from them. As long as you keep the stakes low and affordable, you can afford to detach yourself from the business and make experimentations. You can use what you learn to re-launch the business at a latter time.

3.    Adjust. When you start small, you can easily adapt your business to the trends you see or to a sudden shift in target audience or message. You are micromanaging your business and you see the mistakes as they happen, and you see opportunities as they come. Work with what you have and innovate solutions on the spot.

There is no easy way to get rich, even if some people seem to pull it off with luck. Nevertheless, knowing just how you can start small to successfully make it big one day is the secure way to go and get ahead in life.

I’m the type of person who likes paper and pens, but mostly paper.

I like having notebooks and drawing pads and an assortment of other things that would hold my precious (for me at least) scribbles, sketches, doodles and what have you. I like running my hands on them and feeling the softness and strength of it both at the same time.

Paper has this quality that can immortalize you. Call it superstitious. Call it quasi-philosophical or romantic. But if there’s any way, anyone can immortalize oneself, it is through print.

If, for anything else, I would want nothing but high-end paper to immortalize my sketches, doodles and what have you. Specifically, I would have it done by nothing less but the best printing press available.

Yes, I may obsess about such, about paper products. I obsess about it because there’s nothing like looking at a clean paper that has quality and character. There’s nothing like seeing your attempts in the best possible conditions, albeit, paper products.

It’s a luxury that I can afford. While people pay thousands of dollars for shoes or bags, computers and other gadgets, I can invest in something that is purely for my own private pleasure. And even if I did get the chance to put up my own prints on my walls, wouldn’t it be something to have prints in gallery-like quality?

I have been longing to put up my own pictures on the wall. And no, I am not being narcissistic. I am a dabbler of many things. I dabble in art, literature, music, and photography. I am also a self-proclaimed gourmand, explorer, diver and so many others. And so, I have been endlessly scheming or planning which print to put up, which space, under what lighting conditions and so forth.

I am getting quite ahead of myself here. But to surround yourself of such lovely things, through simple means such as prints, I think, is a joy only a few like me can understand. I can feel proud without being too full of myself by just looking at what I have managed to accomplish.

Even if these prints are or will be for private viewing only (again for my own pleasure), these are not merely decorations. These prints will be reflections. These prints are validations. These prints can and will immortalize the things I have seen, tasted, felt and held in this waking life.