Last weekend a buddy of mine who works at one of the big FMCG companies was telling me about a potential venture they were thinking about launching on a budget of $6MM. And he laughed. Which reminded me of a business started by a guy I know back in the US.

“Dude, a seasoning that makes anything taste like bacon!”

I laughed at that too. This was about the third idea I’d heard from my roommate’s house guest who, upon realizing that I helped companies develop new products for a living, wanted my reaction to all of them. Given some of the ideas, I couldn’t tell if he was fucking with me or genuinely interested in what I had to say. Bacon Salt (who would have thunk) has not only hit the shelves, but turned into a massive food business with some impressive line extensions like Baconaise (mayo that tastes like bacon), mmvelopes (envelopes that taste like bacon), and of course Bacon Lube (sexual lubricant that… you get the picture). Last I heard (from an unofficial source who’s bad with numbers), his food business (J&D’s) should be valued somewhere between the GDP of Montserrat and the Anguilla. They don’t hire expensive agencies (they send guys to run around cities dressed like bacon). They don’t have a massive media budget (everything’s done through social media). They make the most of every bit of press they get – from John Stewart saying that Baconaise tastes like “my tongue took a shit in my mouth”, to Oprah giving Baconaise sandwiches to everyone in her audience and interviewing Justin and Dave on the show. And in here lies a big lesson to the FMCG giants of the world and their agencies.

This guy isn’t your typical food marketer. He hasn’t done a stint at P&G or Unilever. But while I respect both of those organizations tremendously, I struggle to believe many of their people would know where to start if handed a budget of $5K and asked to build a food business without any support.

The point I want to make is that they should. We’ve all gotten used to what are actually very extravagant ways of doing business without realizing it. Are our massive budgets helping or hurting? Is your harem of agencies with their layers of account handlers and creatives really something you couldn’t do without?

I’m sure they are. But here’s an idea: What if multinationals put their high potential marketers on internal startups constrained by limited seed capital for a period of six months each? Just enough time to build some street smarts into the next generation of well heeled marketeers. Just enough time to possibly turn one of these lemonade stand ideas into an opportunity worth investing in, but more importantly, just the reality check brand owners need to realize that there are smarter ways of building a business.

It could yield a generation of smarter marketers, leaner businesses, and more interesting brands that consumers actually get excited about.

1. Why do clients in this part of the world get frustrated with consultants who want to engage them in the process?
2. Why do teams here defer to leadership rather than express their views on bigger issues?
3. Why do so many governments in the region spend so much time preserving the face of leaders, often at the expense of open democratic dialogue?
4. Why are people so much more hesitant to give feedback in focus groups (or in most contexts really) out here than in the US and Europe?
5. How can employees in this part of the world stay in the same job for years without getting a raise and not stand up for they deserve?
6. Why do sales staff in Asia always try and sell you on the fact that a product is the best selling in the market?

It’s a long-ish clip, but worth watching the first few minutes if that’s all the time you have.

Have a good sniff at the air u and let me know what you smell? Anything strike you. An entrepreneurial rennaissance maybe? Are people around you starting to use words like VC, Angels, Series A and Exiting? People around you chasing silly ideas? Last time I was in North America, every other magazine seemed to be hailing an age of startups and entrepreneurs and while I’ve hopped on that bandwagon about as hard as anyone, I’ve been scratching my head and wondering what’s driving all of this. It may seem obvious, but I have a few hypotheses. Let me know what you think.

1. THE FIRST WORLD WORKFORCE DEALING WITH ABANDONMENT ISSUES
A year and a half of being cast aside by companies looking to protect their bottom line is bound to leave the workforce in most first world countries feeling like the veteran foster kid nobody wanted to adopt on the verge of his 18th birthday. If there’s one conclusion I see people coming to over and over, it’s that they’re on their own when it comes to their careers whether they stay with the company or go solo. That means there are a lot more people looking to strike out and work on their own terms than ever before.

2. CLEVER PEOPLE NO LONGER DISTRACTED BY DAY JOBS
A day job can be a great source of stability, but it can also be a convenient and final excuse for not pursuing a project of your own. When the company you work for makes eliminating that distraction easy (i.e., sacking you in the middle of a recession with a jobless recovery to look forward to), the decision to strike out on your own terms becomes a lot easier. More unemployed people with good ideas means more ideas out happening in the world where they belong. Halelujah!

3. DEVELOPING WORLD COMES OUT OF THE RECESSION LIKE IT NEVER HAPPENED
While the developed world media portrays the end of their civilizations (nice one guys), the developing world has come out of the recession feeling like the cheerleader in Heroes. The result is an optimism built around a belief that the US and Europe are “over” and that places like Asia, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and even Africa/Middle East are where opportunity will live and happen from now on.

4. STABLE INDUSTRIES NO LONGER SO STABLE
People in industries like advertising and publishing are starting to believe that their industry may not be around much longer. And whether they’re right or wrong, the thought of reaching a “game over” screen midway through their working years has the more pessimistic among them looking for a solution. To some this is about job progression. To others this is about creating that next commercial space on their own. Both of these require the opportunistic mind of an entrepreneur and I’m excited to see more and more people I respect going for the latter option.

Just some hypotheses, but there’s definitely something in the air.

I’ve been on 9 long hauls in 6 weeks and I have no intention of going anywhere in the near future unless I’m arriving via Skype. Moaning aside, I read some great books, caught up with some good people, and Propellerfish is swimming along in a nice direction. Some decent branding is on its way, a grown up site will be up in a couple of months and we’re hoping to have a place we call home by the end of the summer. As a reward for the steady progress, I’ll be spending this weekend eating good food with friends, catching up on Lost, and slowly dragging my lazy ass back to the gym. It’s good to be home.

I’m one of those people who is will never cease to be amazed by the fact that I can meet a friend in Miami and two days later be having a face to face conversation with him over Skype while I eat a cheese burger in Shanghai and he eats cornflakes in the Peruvian countryside. The world is amazing.
In the middle of a whirlwind trip. A few days in Montreal for a Propellerfish huddle, a few days in Toronto running a demo session for some potential partners, a few days in Miami catching up with family and friends, and now a week in Shanghai for more Propellerfish workshops.
Reminds me of my friend Jeremy’s favorite line from the website “It’s hard work, but it works.” I genuinely hope so.

Sitting in Seoul with C after turning a night of focus groups into a long weekend together in a very cool city. I’ve been a bit of a workaholic lately, but mainly because we’ve got lots of interesting stuff going on at PropellerFish. New people, new projects, new IP, new applications for what we do that I hadn’t anticipated… It looks like 2010 will see us spending half of our time helping entrepreneurs turn their ideas into investment ready startups and the rest of our time helping more traditional clients innovate. I think there’s something very Robin Hood about bringing the spirit of entrepreneurship to multinationals and bringing commercial rigor to startups. Especially in an economy that’s begging for reinvention. Off to London this week for a two-day workshop followed by a week of workshops with some interesting folks in Toronto.

Photo by PhotographyPhilosophy

I just finished a two week mediation course and walked away with about three hours’ worth of wisdom. It’s good wisdom. But I think my guru’s sales strategy might have actually gotten in the way of me walking away with as much as I could. And here’s the thing: I actually feel BAD for not telling him this in his feedback form. REALLY bad. Like the kind of person who doesn’t point out that a virus is posting porn on your Facebook page. So in an attempt to make myself feel better, here’s the learning for anyone out there marketing mindfulness to the masses.

His intention: sell them (hard) on the benefits of meditation, teach material that creates opportunities to sell lots of beads, hint that there’s more to be learned but then withold it to encourage us to all sign up for an advanced course priced 7 times the fee we’d just paid.

The outcome: too much time spent selling meditation to people who were already bought into it, far too much time selling us expensive beads as necessary meditation tools, and in light of the time wasted, not enough content to make me actually want pay 7 times the price for another course lasting 3 times as long.

The recommendation: 1. Shorten the course so the same amount of material feels generous and packed, 2. Give people more in the first course so they finish just inches from enlightenment’s door, and then position the advanced class as their ticket to Zen. Much better to disappoint people after they’ve shelled out $2400 than $300. 3. Easy on the beads. Let someone else flog the crystals while you stay credible and cash in on hugs.

And here’s my excuse for not being honest on the feedback form: the questions went something like “1. Tell us one way that meditation has improved your life, 2. Tell us your favorite thing about the course, 3. etc.” It was less of a feedback form and more of a request for compliments.

Again, I’m not saying NOTHING of value exchanged hands here. I’m just saying that there’s probably a bigger prize out there and a smarter way of getting to it.

Right. How does one move to Sydney with a wife enrolled in a Ph.D program in Singapore and a business that’s just starting to roll forward? I think the answer there is that one doesn’t move to Sydney, but the past four days made me scratch my head, check property prices, and scheme a bit. In any case, we’re back in Singapore after some time driving around New Zealand and four days reconnecting with our inner urban beach bum in Sydney. 10 rolls of film sitting on my kitchen table. 10 little capsules of suspense.