In Case Study #25 I take a look at the saga that was American Apparel.  Beyond the tawdry headlines lies a case study in the need for product visionaries/marketing savants to be balanced with finance and operations acumen.  This balancing force on the management team needs to have a strong personality to appropriately “handle” a forceful, driven leader.  Not to slow them down, but to ensure corporate, market and product dreams and aspirations are balanced by the ability to “get it done” and make an optimized profit in the process.

Grab your notebook, take notes and if you see something interesting, please leave a comment or share the video on social media along with your thoughts – join the conversation.

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I woke up early today and couldn’t get a thought out of my head – it was about finishing strong.

Finishing Strong.  That’s not a motto.  That’s not an inspirational quote.  It’s a way of life for those who are known as finishers.  People, companies, horses – whatever.

Starting is easy.  Closing is everything and finishing strong is the ONLY way to close. “Coffee is for closers” is a cheap movie line.  The concept of finishing strong was around centuries before that line was ever written.

My favorite finisher of all time was the Apostle Paul.  Regardless of whatever faith you have, what he went through from a historical perspective is incredible; “Five times I received forty lashes minus one.  Three times I was beaten with rods, once I was stoned, three times I was shipwrecked. I spent a night and a day in the open sea.”  That’s insane! How committed are we to our mission to endure ANY challenges let alone things like that?  One of Paul’s last quotes also shows how he objectively evaluated his own performance against that standard: “The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought the good fight. I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.”  Wow.  Who can say that about anything they have tried?

I have another favorite finisher – a distance runner named Steve Prefontaine – “Pre.”  Have you heard of him?  Probably not – Pre ran in the early 1970’s.  (Photo Credit: Tony Duffy /Allsport)  His approach to running – his chosen craft – was more about testing his own heart and limits in each race than by merely beating the other runners. Of his many quotes, these three are my favorites:

1. “To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift.”

2. “A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more.”

3. “Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.”

If you want to read more about him, go get the book “Pre.”  It’s a somewhat weak bio, but you’ll get the story.  There are also two movies, but they are fairly average (“Without limits” is the better one).  With all the talent in the world, you’d think a great movie or great bio could have been written.  In any case, at least we have these.

It’s easy to get up early, grab a coffee and START anything.  I’ve been in hundreds (literally) of conference rooms, auditoriums, and stadiums where everyone gets pumped up and cheers at the start.  The test is who will be there at the end – finishing strong.  The crowd of finishers is usually small until it’s time to collect bonus checks and then everyone rushes back into the room and claims “Oh, I was there at the beginning.”  The finishers know who carried the load and who the posers are and they don’t last long.

Life has many metaphors that show us the fickle nature of the human heart.  How many sports fans go on stub hub and pay money to get the best seats and arrive early to watch their team warm up?  They want to see their heroes up close.  But many of these same fans leave early when their team is behind.  I’m not talking a regular game in the middle of the season – I’m talking playoff games.  Champions are very, very, very rarely undefeated.  My feeling is that defeats are the best weights to lift in order to become a champion.  You learn from defeats.  Defeats expose weaknesses and clarify opportunities.  Defeats also mold humility and character.  Those who finish strong already know this.

Who are you?  Paul, Pre or a fan leaving early?

The sun is rising – it’s time to rise and shine and find out who you are.

Why the ruminations?  Well,… even rising mid-list authors are seeing advances dropping and the number of titles per contract falling –while other terms remain flat or slide even further in the publisher’s favor.  Thus, basic market forces are causing some authors to consider E-Originals.  Those who have been paying attention have known this for a lonnnng time.

In a recent blog post my industry colleague and kindred spirit Richard Curtis pointed out the challenges facing the big six publishers in this area.  I agree with what he had to say.

Let me elaborate and do the math… suppose a mid-list author is offered a $10,000 advance for an e-Original by a big-six publisher.  After much wrangling, the author accepts the deal despite feeling like Ned Beatty squealing like a pig in the movie Deliverance.  Important note: you never ever want to be Ned Beatty.   Anyway, the author collected the advance, delivered the manuscript and waited a year for the first statement.  It arrived along with a check for $2.61 (rough estimate) which included the usual set of nefarious deductions.

Alternatively, suppose the author publishes an E-Original (full-length novel at 120,000 words) at let’s say, $7.99 retail, and earns approx. $4.00 net per eBook copy sold from a digital publisher.  At sales of only 2,500 books, the author will earn approx. $10,000 – which is the advance and the party has only just begun!  Assuming the author is at least midlist and regularly attends to their audience, these numbers are not difficult to attain.

We can talk all day about math, and it’s a good exercise, but to me there is a much greater question: control of the author’s content IP.  A digital publisher (full disclosure: I am CEO of PDP) can provide a better royalty (PDP gives 75% to the author and pays monthly), better term (PDP gives 3 to 5 years vs. a life of copyright) and allows the author to keep my ancillary rights such as Audio, TV and Film (be sure you keep those gems).  Content is where the value is – publishers are not purchased for their teams.  An author with a reasonable level of success that controls his or her IP for the long term will be in a much better position.

So, to me, the answer to the question “To E or Not To E” is not as much about E-Originals alone as it is about the authors deciding to take in control of their content library and demand better business terms along the way.

Don’t be Ned Beatty.

In a recent article, Tara Weiss and the Forbes research team correctly point out the areas where jobs in specific industries are growing.  Here’s the article.

Looking through the 3-sided lens presented in my book, “The Rat, The Race and the Cage“, the industry where you work is the Race.  I encourage people to pursue a career in an industry that they find intriguing.  For example, if you are an advertising expert but soap and deodorant don’t excite you (insert your favorite joke about the French here), then the consumer products industry is probably not for you.  Find an industry you enjoy and take it as far as you can.  Sometimes that means moving to another city where the industry is thriving, or at least doing better than where you are located…

While green shoots are not coming up in the macro-economy when viewed in its entirety, Weiss correctly points out that select industry segments ARE seeing growth and those industries invariably have employment concentrations in specific metropolitan areas.

If you are seeking a job in one of the industries described in the Forbes article, it may be time to consider a relocation.  While uprooting is typically the LAST thing people want to do, it is also an opportunity to experience a new part of our great country.  When I press my case with folks, there is usually push-back: the job market is probably competitive because so many experienced professionals are already located in that city.  I counter with the notion that there also may be a shortage of talent.  Example: it was nearly impossible to find great engineers in San Jose from 1999 to 2002 and remains challenging today, albeit it’s easier than it was in 1999-2002.  At that time, stories of lunch-hour job changes were accurate.

It may be time to take a long look at a new city.  I can suggest a great closing line: “While I am currently located in Atlanta, I am planning to move myself at my own cost to Boston as it is a hotbed of activity in Education, an industry where I plan to spend the rest of my career.”

Be bold.