Today I was reading a lot of stories about Best Buy and how apparently they have been having a lot of trouble financially due to a changing market such as people buying things online and general management issues. The news story interested me more as I actually worked in company a few years back and even had shares in the business.

Even though from a corporate point of view or ladder I was pretty much an unknown I still remember the times such as the store I was involved with did literally over 2500% more sales than the other top stores during various key launches mostly due to the management’s ability to allow a person like myself to take full charge as to how to market and sell the items.

Of course that number definitely turned heads. Afterwards I was actually motivated in wanting to contribute in different ways such as getting more into the corporate decisions such as taking advantage of the social media scene as at the time there wasn’t really many companies in that industry that did it. That was actually one of my keys to success to as I took a lot of pride in what I did and constantly scoured various places on the Internet to see what people were saying about the store. However, it appeared though that they went more for the trust the guys on the board table direction as opposed to the people that were knowledgeable and passionate about products and of course people like myself felt that there was nothing to grow into anymore which meant parting ways.

Looking back it really makes me wonder what simple choices like those would have done for the business. In some ways it reminded me of like the “old timers” basically swaying off the “young generation” where the new way of doing things sounds crazy. Never just sway off ideas just because you don’t understand it yourself I guess is what I would say in that scenario. I think the Netflix and Blockbuster story is a good example of that. Sure is weird though seeing a company where at the time you were with was so big just to now read it is struggling.

Today I met a person who at first seemed like they were a force to be reckoned with as the person’s bio mentioned that they have been doing projects in big cities in areas such as the US. Naturally that got me interested in trying to see what the person has done. Oddly enough, the person has worked in a very miniscule role one time. For example, it’s almost like someone trying to be an IT consultant who said his background consists of working for Google or Microsoft except his work was simply being like a runner for a day.

This definitely gave me a different perspective before I met the person as usually this means the person will either be very boastful or egotistical in the sense of putting others down. Sure enough that did seem to be the case. The interesting thing is most people didn’t bother to do the background research as it is like walking into a seminar where you simply rely on the sales literature to edify a person. In some ways it almost reminds me of people taking pictures with say a celebrity and using that as a way to hopefully stand out from everyone else.

I guess that also shows too why so many people say things like they are friends with so and so as the assumption is if those people are willing to associate with them then that must somehow mean they share similar traits and quality. In these cases though, due diligence never hurts I guess.

Today there was a conversation about relationship building when it came to trying to get a business or company to take notice of you versus everyone else when you are simply the the small guy in a big crowd. The funny thing I thought was that a lot the advices that were given to what was mostly a self employed crowd was really no different than for people who are say doing an interview for a job.

For example, some people are so into talking about themselves and how great they are versus someone who shows a bit of knowledge about the company they are speaking with to demonstrate that they at least have some interest in it. I think that is true in almost everything. Heck, I bet even dates are the something where I’m sure if the person keeps talking about themselves it will probably turn out bad. I’d like to think too that if you were genuinely interesting in forming like some kind of business relationship with another company that researching about them is something you would naturally do.

Just remember it usually comes down to what you can do for them if the other guy holds more authority at the moment.

There was some news I was reading recently that apparently tomorrow there was going to be an acquisition of a company that I currently do business with and of course usually the press releases will say how this is a good acquisition as it will open up new opportunities. The first I did of course was research about the company that decided to buy the business out to get a better idea on what exactly their growth strategy was in deciding to purchase them.

The other thing I was wondering too was whether or not the purchase was more to control the competition or if it was to genuinely expand. It is kind of weird as you have to pretty much sit and wait to see what kind of new direction the business will be taking to see if your relationship with them are still mutually beneficial. This should be interesting indeed.

I was reading an interesting situation today about an organization that was looking to purchase advertisements from various companies in an effort to promote one of their upcoming events. The natural thing they thought of was to buy advertising space from various places that had the type of people they felt would be interested in what they offered.

There was an interesting situation out of this though as for one place in particular they were constantly denied the chance to purchase any advertising space because overall the organization thought what they offered was a scam of sort. At first they didn’t outright say that but rather swayed them off. After a bit of going back and fourth eventually the organization did say why they didn’t have confident that what they wanted to advertise was legitimate and began writing lots of examples of well known scams.

I guess you can say the people who were looking to buy advertisements took full advantage of that and started to accuse the organization of a lot of things such as being bias which ironically has then given them more advertisement then they probably would have gotten with an ad. I was then thinking how it probably would have been better if the business said less in this case. Example, at worst it probably would have been safer just to say they need more information about the person’s services and so at this point they unfortunately can’t ofter them any advertising space. Such a dangerous situation to be in too if you are being opinionated and speaking as the business.