On the Art of Branding

Sometimes well-meaning counterparties are just completely incompetent at adding value. Other times they can be useful. I was just thinking about this just now when my friend invited her friend to buy things from my business ... whereupon I agreed to wait 30 minutes, and ended up waiting for 90. Who knows, perhaps this will translate to value for my shareholders later, anything is possible.

I also think about how I asked too often about the health of another friend, and was summarily ex-communicated. Such is life. I am often ex-communicated, so it is something I have become quite comfortable with over the years.

Earlier today a shareholder posted a screenshot, from the Facebook reviews of a restaurant not my own. There, a member of the public praised that restaurant for acknowledging its mistakes, and in contrast my own office was mentioned as an example of "one which does not do so, and consequently it is are closing and selling things". Encouragement comes from strange places.

I thought this a great triumph. Despite my shareholders efforts to squash my branding operations for our business, by banning me from social media activities involving the corporate brand since 2017, it would appear that the media campaign I launched slightly before that continues to add value to this day. This evidenced quality of work alone is thrilling, and it encourages me professionally, to continue doing what I do for the world, even if sometimes I must work especially hard, and especially long in order to complete a single iteration.

I find it generally useless to evaluate a project while it is underway - I am not so good at that, I believe there is a conflict of interest between the agent as a planner, and the agent as an executor of the plan, if the agent is the same person. In order to properly execute a plan, an agent cannot simply switch between planning an executing on a whim, as that destroys the purpose of planning. Of course, there are times when this is relevant, such as when the objective is to iterate upon a loop to optimise for a specific target. However, there are other instances, such as when a single iteration has not been completed, and therefore any distraction from basic execution will interrupt the only existing implementation of a plan, which has yet to be implemented.

Now it is the "season" for review, as the first iteration has ground to a halt. I found it quite the challenge to operate a brick and mortar business, on a shoe-string budget, without social media for nearly three years, and right through the pandemic of 2020, at that. With respect to the efforts put in by my team, I am quite proud of all individuals who contributed to this work. I remain disappointed with the decision makers who put us through this, however, I believe that we have each and every one of us executed our corporate duties to the best of our individual interests, and so as a whole the corporation as a social entity is a success.

Financially, it is a great failure, and I volunteer myself as the person to be blamed. But then I generally view my projects on ten to twenty year time frames, and this one is only five-years-old. And so far it is not yet exactly over. Perhaps a judge will throw the book at me, and then it will be thoroughly screwed, but this is not yet the case, so I remain, as it is my job to be so, optimistic about the potential for our body corporate.

I do believe that my colleagues are well-meaning, even if they have done some rather foolish things. And I am sure they have a symmetrical view of my work. I avoid allowing this to bother my daily work, and I suppose that is the difference between someone who has to keep their head cool for service, and those who must inspire themselves with daily dramas in order to invent meaning for their situation.

I do wonder how the story will end. But it is not over, and so I will not pretend to know. I can only document the parts that I have seen and lived through, for the betterment of others who may chance upon these readings.

Industrial Organisation: C-Level

"My first mistake in my first company, was deregulating the investors. My second mistake was assembling incompetent founders (hands-on). So now that I am in the process of restructuring, after five years, I am spending a bit of time to design the next team."

I'm trying to map out a clear delineation of roles across C-level/functions for the next hospitality team I build.

Model, iteration one:

- finance and IR need to be paired under the same person; finding, managing, and firing investors comes under this person; also both top and bottom line responsibility; this role is both political and quant, but facing strategic counterparties.

- operations; talent management, SLAs, and execution of routines including self-improving routines fall under this person; ditto political and quant but facing tactical counterparties, i.e. staff, suppliers, customers.

- legal and technology fall under the same person; because the legal constraints and innovation / fundamental problem solving concerns involve the same sort of thinking, popularly referred to as engineering talent.

Thought in progress.

Iteration two:

You may ask where product and marketing in general fall in this rubric. Well, I do think that this being the economic essence of the business it actually needs to be shared across the three functions above. Engineering needs to work on the strategic level, ops needs to work on the tactical level, and finance needs to provide political air-cover. You can't separate finance from politics. Politics supervenes on economics. It's political economy all the way down every value-chain.

Iteration three:

You may ask about branding and the soul of the company, or its heart. Well if you don't understand how branding is an engineering problem, then you simply don't have a rigorous model of how human thought works.

AFA: follow up to earlier TIFU

(And yes, I basically drafted all of these letters in my head, while in lockup.)

Asking for advice:

Proposition: Should I look for a massive personal loan to buy all the shares in a project I have been working on for five years?

(If anyone knows me personally and comments the project name, I am sorry, but I will have to delete the comment for political and regulatory reasons.)

Qualification:

We all know that borrowing money to buy shares is a risky decision. However I am hoping that readers can put themselves in my shoes, and then provide an opinion about whether the proposition is reasonable or not, given *my* specific premises. Of course, you are free to comment on the premises as you may disagree with some. Some premises may be more or less fixed, such as the premises about my motivations.

Here are my premises:

- the project is a community-facing business which provides unique and sometimes essential infrastructure to middle-class urban citizens;

- aside from lockdowns while we were closed, we served an average of 100 counterparties per day over a period of five years;

- the project has reinvested most of its profits into R&D specific to our industry; this R&D has yet to be monetised as we have been in roach mode since 2016;

- the project has never taken external investment after incorporating;

- the project has no debt; but does have accounts payable; I am personally the main creditor of the business, by simply not claiming business expenses or wages on time; this credit is interest free; (outside of the project, I usually I use my personal lines of credit from cards or relationships to keep myself liquid);

- recently, for regulatory compliance reasons the project had to turn over the entire staff; currently it has no cashflow to train new staff in the short term;

- there has always been an available opportunity for fund raising, or for any party to consolidate the ownership of the project (it has multiple owners), in order to simplify decision-making processes which are often deadlocked or simply inactive, which in turn have resulted in operational and roadshowing roadblocks since 2016;

- (hence my proposition)

- if I were to go ahead with my proposition, I would not expect to generate a great amount of cash for myself, from this project; however the project would be able to continue towards its original goal of becoming commercially self-sustaining, while addessing a few specific B2C and B2B gaps in our industry;

- if I do not go ahead with my proposition, the project is likely to fail when we become unable to pay the rent; this may or may not subsequently result in write-offs or write-downs in various remaining assets, and then possible deregistration of the corporate entitity;

- I have about 17 days to decide on this before we are late for rent;

- I created this project in order to occupy myself in 2015, as I lacked for activities, whereas I wanted to work on something for-profit in the commercial sector;

- my original background is focused on "academia" (1991-2005), and I have been studying various "industrial" operations after that (2005-2020); on the same trajectory I expect to be working at the "strategy" layer of commerce or government at some point in the future;

- I plan my life around Malaysian minimum wage, and consider any other income a luxury; most of any income I have obtained over the past few years has been reinvested in the project;

- I have no ambitions to raise a family, or to care for any of my existing family members in the future;

- I have no ambitions to be remembered fondly by anyone;

- however, I need something useful to do with the remainder of my time on earth, and so far the project has been useful;

TLDR:

Should I continue to go for broke and commit my future finances to this project? 

If you were in my shoes, given my interests (or lack of other interests) what would you do?

Instead of this project, what else might you do?

(Changing my interests is not a useful suggestion.)

Thanks for your suggestions!