Two weeks ago I gave an interview to the rather remarkable Joe Shooman, a fellow Jedi and multi-skilled master extraordinaire. Joe’s writing a book about the MySpace phenomenon called “Whose Space Is It Anyway?” which is due out in March next year. Joe’s an author, radio DJ and also has the best named band in the world – “Joe & The Bastards“, which he’s amusingly invited me to join. How could you say no? The man is going places and has as many irons in the fire as me.

Believe it or not, when I’m not on MySpace, I actually have a life. No, really I do. Ignore what everyone else says. When I’m not on here professing my love for Emma Brown, I do business things. In my industry I’m quite a well known chap and considered fairly serious firepower. So it stands to reason that someone like Joe might hunt me down for a chat, as lots of others tend to do.

I remember when MySpace first arrived. I wasn’t impressed. In truth I have no idea how it got this large. So in January I gave it a go. Since then I’ve fallen in love, made enemies, posted nearly 100 articles on my blog, been haunted by ex-girlfriends, made contact with old friendsI haven’t seen for years, and met a whole load of lovely people I wouldn’t have known otherwise. All my business colleagues on it, and even my Mum checks in to see what I’ve written.

This from Joe sums it the phrase being “Cameron’d” very well:
“I’m kind of observing myself getting deeper and deeper into this, and I know what book I’m supposed to be writing but I want to write a twelve volume opus about it from every angle imaginable.”

Joe recorded the call, and here’s an excerpt. To read the whole thing, you’ll need to buy it. Would be interested to hear what other people think. This is how I talk in real life.

A: I’m a Myspace fiend; I use it every single day. I’m absolutely obsessed with it, as is everybody I know. Although apparently it’s not cool anymore; Facebook is the new thing.
JS: I’d disagree; I’d say Second Life is the one to keep an eye on.
A: Actually someone mentioned this to me; a friend of mine who works for the Internet Advertising Board says, “You’ve got to go and see Second Life.” It’s supposed to be the really big thing, and I don’t know very much about it if I’m perfectly honest with you.
JS: I’ve banned myself from that because I’d do no work. But it is becoming this 3D, Lawnmower Man-style Matrix-type world. It’s fascinating to watch its development.
A: Like a virtual game environment with a real economy; a real life thing. Taking it one step further than The Sims.
JS: Exactly, and people are trading in Linden Dollars, on eBay.
A: I saw that, you can trade credits and scores, it’s actually real financial value that these things have which is just extraordinary.
JS: It’s a symptom of what we’re talking about. And maybe the model that Myspace should be heading towards. So, I’ve got a few signposts I want to get to, but inbetween we can just chat.
A: So where shall we start? You want to look at some perceptions and insight?
JS: Pretty much, I think we’re talking about copyright really but to start it off gently why don’t you give me an overview of what you do?
A: I’m quite young, I’m a spring chicken, I’m a bit of a destructive upstart in the industry which of course is amusing. I was an engineer; I did Red Button applications. I run Digital TX now which is about 54 clients or so. We’ve got Microsoft, Google, all the major studios and record labels, doing about £615 million worth of deals. So I would argue that I’m probably the most high profile IPTV figure that I know of, who’s not working for a big company. I’ve written a lot of articles and I’ve spoken a lot in public but we have a bigger venture coming which is going to be a lot louder than what we’ve done so far. Roughly, in a nutshell!
JS: A career in twenty seconds! Impressive. Obviously Myspace has come into your life fairly recently, but given your background it must have been something you were keeping an eye on for longer than most.
A: Definitely. I never really looked at it very much; I saw it when it first arrived and was just so shocked at how bad it was! It’s so dreadful; it’s utterly dreadful.
JS: Yeah people have said that a lot. It’s a hodge podge of different codes on top of each other.
A: Yeah, it was originally Cold Fusion wasn’t it? And then Microsoft came along and said, “Oh, you’re a big site, can we give you our technology? And we’ll give you the expertise too.” So they could say that they were running Microsoft software, the dot net stuff – and it’s even worse with that stuff. The engine that runs it is a particular type of software that allows you to merge xp.net and Cold Fusion. But it’s horrid. It’s supposed to be a folksy feel when it crashes and falls apart all the time. But it’s not like that at all. All I get is errors, all day long.
JS: All users do. And you can only play so many games of Pac Man in a day.
A: That’s the thing; that’s totally it.
JS: If you had to put a date on it coming on radar, when would that be?
A: for me, the beginning of 2006. When I joined up there were about 92 Million members. But that’s a very interesting thing in itself because that statistic is false. I remember reading an article in it where someone did some basic maths where they polled 30,000 different profiles. And statistically speaking it showed that out of 110 million accounts at that time, that was literally just accounts, but it would generate a realistic figure of forty million (active) members. Which is not insignificant at all, but at the same time it’s not anywhere near where they said it would be.
JS: Dead accounts; people who’ve got pissed off with it; people who’ve fucked it up when they signed up. That sort of business.
A: Yeah, people who registered their account and haven’t bothered deleting it; people who’ve not checked their account in three months. The article was called Myspace Maths or something like that. There’s a bit of smoke and mirrors, unfortunately.
JS: There is a lot of media hype about it which we’ll get on to in a minute. But forty million is still a significant number.
A: Absolutely. There’s very few websites in the world that have that kind of traffic.
JS: So why do you think it’s had such a big take up?
A: It’s cause it’s addictive. I talk about this every single day, with people, about content. We talk about The Long Tail concept; One Percent Rules and all of these things. There’s a lot of stuff, especially since the beginning of the IPTV world and it’s specific to that and digital media. When you’ve got an absolutely unstoppable amount of digital media, an absolute mess of it, it’s impossible to find your way around. That’s the problem with it; it’s incredibly difficult. And you tend to find that the old media way is that you push things at people; whereas the new media way is that people – especially in IPTV, it’s a nightmare – assume that people are going to search or actively look for content. When the old media world says that human beings are lazy and needing things pushed at them. This is getting around to why Myspace is successful. But when you’re outside a tube station a paper is thrust into your hand; if you want to watch football matches, they’re on Sky Sports; you read an advert or read something a journalist’s written. Basically the information is put to you, it’s pushed at you. And if you look at what Myspace does, it’s very clever compared to everything on the other sites, they update you all the time; they’re always pushing things at you. They’re pushing event messages. When you’ve got new messages, new blogs and that kind of thing. They’re continually pushing new notifications at you, and giving you a reason, pushing you back to the site. Or pulling you back, if you like.
JS: The userbase, the searchable database, is a pull economy model.
A: Absolutely; there are a number of ways that they can do it. They are just very clever about the way that they deal with things that are addictive. The sharing of music on different pages – that’s very addictive. And the fact that they’ve basically screwed every dating site in the world. What they’ve gone off the back of is all these different dating community sites like match.com and Faceparty whose business model is charging for messaging. The classic example of this is [removed], which has lost something like 60% of its business because everyone you know’s on Myspace so they’ve got the critical mass issue and you don’t have to pay to message people on Myspace. You can do exactly what you can on all the other dating sites but people can do it all completely for free. Complete with no business model! Which is hilarious.
JS: One aside to that is that by not making itself into a niche site, by not saying they’re a dating site, it’s become the most powerful dating force there is.
A: yeah, absolutely, and most people are on there for dating. It’s incredible. My other half’s on there as it is now. This is the bizarre thing, my sister has just gone to her boyfriend, who she met through Myspace. It’s become a bit of a social force.
JS: It’s changed the way that people decide if they want to go out with each other, because you can find out so much about them.
A: You can screen them. Employers can screen potential candidates; paedophiles can screen potential victims. The other thing is that it’s an instant audience when you’ve got a site of that size. If you’re a band you can immediately generate a fanbase. If you’re like me and you blog a lot, I’ve got something like five thousand views on my blog in the last two or three months. It’s an instant audience – otherwise you’d create your own site and spend three years promoting it to get (an audience) that’s one per cent of the size.
JS: It’s an enabling technology, basically.
A: Yeah. It grabs you an audience very quickly; it’s a quick way to acquire a customer base. Every business I know is on it, even if they’re not even a person. There was this silly thing that they were talking about originally, a marketing idea through all the media buyers, where you would become friends with all the products as opposed to people. The other thing is that social networking’s very natural; we’ve been doing it for three thousand years. There’s nothing about social networking that’s remotely new, and there’s nothing new about user-generated content; we had ‘You’ve Been Framed’ ten years ago. Everything On Demand in the world, we talk about IPTV being On Demand; people make it out, with big hype, as this massive revolution. It’s not. We’ve been doing everything on demand for millennia. You go into a supermarket and you buy a loaf of bread when you want to; it’s on demand. Scheduling broadcasting, from a TV perspective, is actually a very unnatural thing. So a lot of its success is not because it’s a new technology, it’s just automating, in some ways, electronically doing things that we do in a very natural and familiar way.
JS: That brings with it some problems; if everything’s on demand and the schedules are being blown away, what about the copyright holders; the songs, the videos…
A: And my blogs.
JS: Sure. You said Myspace had no business model but that’s kinda not true anymore.
A: They’re trying to get there; since News Corp have started commercialising it you can see it’s the advertising model they’re adopting. Cause the moment they start charging for services… that tells you a lot about the success of Myspace, that they’re not going to attempt to put any premium charging on it. It’s the so-called ‘Freemium’ model where you give away everything for free, and then you introduce a subscription service on top where you make your money from, which is premium. That tells you an enormous amount. The advertising support is on everything. People have said before that it’s just a giant page counter with continual pages and pages to serve adverts on. And it’s very targeted as well. It’s a great way to start.Just this whole crusade of following Youtube and Google Video; I don’t know. It’s very difficult to see where we’re actually going to go next. If I was them, I’d go onto (mobile) devices. But I’ll tell you something; the most impressive thing they’ve ever done is getting things built into instant messenger. That is incredibly smart. I put a business plan together two years ago for a friend who was building a dating site. “What you need is a unified communications model – like eBay are doing, putting Skype into their webpages – you get alerts and communications via an instant messaging tool.” So the next step up (for Myspace), if I were them I’d put a Voice Over IP on the instant messenger. And start allowing people to do free calls. It’s just the same model. Advertising supported models have been here for hundreds of years. You see adverts on ITV which is entirely supported by advertising. Now the censorship is the problem; as well as the business terms and conditions. Brad Greenspan has just sued Murdoch. Because apparently he got it for a knockdown price.
JS: Apparently so. Greenspan’s contention is that, firstly it was a knockdown price – and you can see in the revenues that have come through Google in the interim that it possibly could be considered to be but it’s ultimately a business risk.
A: Well that’s cause he’s clueless! That’s what I’d do, a simple open and shut case in a court: “You’re clueless. They exploited it, got you at a cheap price, made a shitload of money out of you.”
JS: So stop whinging about it! The censorship issue has happened though where if you post links to Greenspan’s new sites in your blog or whatever it comes through on Myspace as just an underscore or a blank hole in the text instead. Which is a dangerous game for Myspace to play, I think.
A: Very much so; the other problem they have is people embedding Youtube videos, which is very popular within Myspace. But bulletins themselves are an act of genius; it’s a brilliant idea. What’s kinda irritating about Myspace, firstly, is the technical faults are getting to the point where everyone I see when I log into my account and get in there is people just getting absolutely furious with them. The second thing is phishing, which is utterly ridiculous. People promoting sites; the fact that anyone can log on. Thirdly, the censorship; fourth is copyright infringement issues. I mean, these guys have more problems than they can shake a stick at, you know?
JS: You are seeing with Gootube…
A: That’s a nice way to put it actually, Gootube!
JS: Thanks! They’re doing a deal with Universal now. And this is related because we’re talking about convergence as well I think; the Zune deal where they’re essentially paying a hardware premium to Universal…
A: This is the advertising supported model they were talking about before. They put the entire catalogue on for free and they deal with this new commercial service where everything’s paid for by advertising. Very brave of them. The other thing is that if Google are monetising the advertising on that site, now they own Youtube Murdoch’s gonna be at pains (not) to piss them off. Because if they’re big partners and they(Google)’re bringing in a lot of cash for Myspace and they (Myspace) start blocking Youtube, they’re going to be at loggerheads with Google in a very big way. And they don’t want to have that at all.
JS: I think what we’re seeing is the emergence of the new major record labels, if you like, the people who can monetise the copyright material are going to be the new gatekeepers.
A: This is the thing; that Myspace supposedly allows bands to go directly to their audiences, which cuts out the middlemen. I read something that said they’re going to allow artists to create their own online stores which is a very serious threat to record labels. That’s extremely dangerous for them, seriously bad territory. So it will come round to who owns the copyright for those songs. If Murdoch owns part copyright in all the songs that are uploaded to Myspace, then that causes some very interesting dynamics at work. You look at John Mayer, Black Label Society, they’ve got tens of thousands of viewers; all they need to do is pop up a small store and they’re already up and running. It’s the power of the audience they’ve harnessed which is why Murdoch likes it because it’s a mass market proposition.
JS: That’s a pull, rather than a push, as well.
A: Very much so. Murdoch is [removed] in the sense that in the grand scheme of things he’s an extremely greedy man, and he cross-promotes endlessly across all the media. Which is common commercial business sense, but if you see the plugs on Sky, in The Sun and News Of The World for Myspace, it’s getting ridiculous. Locking out competitors and that kind of thing. It’s all very much in his interests, and not very much in the interests of the customer, which shows you a lot about his attitudes. It’s a mass market product that he’s bought and he doesn’t give a shit about the people who are there already that he’s selling to: “You need me a lot more than I need you.”
JS: And of course what happened with Myspace was that everyone migrated there from Friendster when they got pissed off with Friendster’s functionality and restrictions.
A: Yeah, they had a limit on things.
JS: Silly stuff presumably to save their servers, but Myspace allow it and their servers are always down as a result probably!
A: It’s crazy. Also the ability to personalise pages, they’ve just got a nice formula. They’ve made it simple for idiots. There’s this whole support community around it where people allow you to generate your own page layouts, hit counters and things like that. It’s allowed people to innovate around it but that’s because it’s free; it’s as simple as that. I know why they haven’t released an API like Google Maps or something, but there’s a couple of different ways you can see it going. Number one is the advertising, the music online store, those two particular things are going to be very key. But the impression I get is for Murdoch it’s just actually a way to herd the crowd. But then again the boss of Google predicted it would be the best investment Murdoch’s ever made.
JS: Who can tell; everybody’s speculating wildly at the moment. And ‘wildly’ is probably the right word to use, actually.
A: Yeah. I read something where this guy reckoned Myspace would be worth £18-20 Billion, which is just absurd. Look at Orkut on Google – it’s shit. That’s why I don’t take what Google are saying for granted. It’s just the most dreadful website in the world.
JS: They have to have it but it’s a very transient technology anyway. People aren’t going to use it if it’s crap – although Myspace is still being used!
A: It’s Bebo and Facebook now; that’s the thing. Websites are becoming web applications, and with the advent of IPTV which is a medium that uses internet technology, any device that speaks IP can speak to any other. So you’re getting to the point where you’re getting these consolidations. Community is no longer about pages on the net – they’re about other ways to integrate. Like VOIP, Skype with eBay – they’ve gone from being this Web 2.0 model, this whole software application, to wider communications. And that’s the next step. 2D web pages are one thing, but being able to call people directly from them is an entirely different thing, on different devices.
JS: And historically, if you go right back to the birth of the web, it’s kinda come full circle. It was meant to be a read/write interface.
A: Very much so; the Web, when it originally was created, was a document management system. By Tim Berners-Lee. It’s strange, cause when we talk about the platform that we’re building, we’re bringing the internet to television, but the philosophy of the internet; not internet TV but set top boxes and everything else. People ask us what they can do with Bell and we say, “Well, what can you do with the internet? You can make a website.” That’s the kind of scope we’re talking, it’s the freedom to do things, it’s empowering and enabling people to do things. Like build crappy little page layouts; the simple little things that excite people. And some of those layouts are dreadful!
JS: Yeah, but again, not so for the people who have made them! It’s called ‘Myspace’ – it’s Their Space. And if Murdoch, or whoever, is going to make it His Space… it’ll end up being just His Space, and his alone.
A: It’s interesting that if you look at the majority of usage around Myspace, it’s based around communication. I remember speaking to [removed] about this and the most commonly visited pages are messaging and bulletins. It’s about communicating with other people. Reaching out to other people. Things like the classified ads don’t fly; groups don’t really fly. Yeah, you go and visit bands you like and that kind of thing, but it’s predominantly about communicating with others. So when you put your top eight together you’re advertising to other people about who your favourite people are. It’s based around talking to other people and it’s all based around that core way of doing things. It’s about pushing ideas and notifications of bulletins and messages and that kind of thing to people. The other stuff that’s added on – which wanky executives would call ‘added value’ – just doesn’t really fly. Your homepage, your bulletins, your messaging, your top eight, your profile – the core features which power that site are far more interesting. It’s the Pareto Principle – 80% of the features… but it’s an interesting precedent because they’re going to have to do a lot to keep up now. The competition’s going to be pretty fierce and their major battle is going to be in retaining an experience for people which isn’t frustrating. So technical error reports on every single page – they have to get that sorted, or they’re in serious trouble. The paedophile scam’s one thing, but phishing and technical breakdowns are another.
JS: What I struggle with is how they are going to monetise it. Yes, the advertising model is one thing and it will bring in a huge amount of money, but it’s not a killer application for Myspace. It’s just an extension of what’s happening already.
A: Yeah. They’re just putting adverts around everything that’s there. It’s people’s tolerance of it; how much advertising they’re likely to take, because if they introduce a Freemium service, that’s commercial suicide for them. So there’s only a couple of things they can do: monetising coms like VOIP, and advertising. But, again, it’s how much advertising the users will take, because if you start slamming advertising everywhere you’re in trouble. They might do a broker model like eBay where if you offer a download store to the artists and the bands, they might offer something like a revenue share where Myspace takes 30% of the sale of the track, depending on who hosts the material. Youtube’s bandwidth bill in its first year was $12 Million; a million dollars a month. So their infrastructure cost is getting massive. Doing Myspace Video, now, is insane: if you can’t even keep your normal service up and running on your website you don’t want to be introducing video. I think it’s Limelight who hosts all of that stuff? What they’re doing isn’t particularly tricky; it’s just very badly coded. That’s the problem. The development of the site is so dreadful. The cross-browser compatibility is just awful, and there’s things like if you edit a blog and resubmit it the time’s completely changed. I’m a developer so I know exactly what that is, and exactly how to change that. It’s only two or three lines (of code). The fact that they can’t even be bothered to check two or three lines says a lot. If they got somebody professional on it they could start developing it properly, even the Microsoft teams are pretty appalling about it as well.
JS: I guess they would say that “It works, 120 million pages are on it so it can’t be that bad.” Which is bollocks.
A: Yeah they probably would. But, no! It’s 40 million people which is a third of that, and they have no way of measuring how pissed off people

are. JS: People are spending a hell of a lot less time on Myspace.
A: Yeah, I read it in Wired magazine. The amount of time people are spending on sites; they tend to disappear after their peak period of two to three years. Friendster was two and a half hours, and now it’s two and a half minutes. And Myspace is eleven minutes or something.
JS: That’s also a function of people becoming familiar with the technology, and when the shine of it being new wears off then it just becomes part of your communications network.
A: It’s all about people. You don’t communicate with websites; this is the problem which drives me mad. It’s a social anthropology question more than anything else. It’s about people communicating with other people; they’re not using websites. This is the thing with broadband connections: you don’t buy it for the broadband connection; you buy it to look at a website. You look at a website to look at news, admittedly, but effectively you’re interacting with other human beings. If you read a news report, that’s something that another human being has written which you are reading. And when you’re on Myspace you’re looking for messages from other people and sending them to other people. You’re not using it cause it’s a great system with great functionality, you’re doing it because you’re meeting new people or building an audience – and it’s all based around being human. There’s an enormous amount of detail you could go into in that regard.
JS: Yeah, I’m kind of observing myself getting deeper and deeper into this, and I know what book I’m supposed to be writing but I want to write a twelve volume opus about it from every angle imaginable. And actually it will be out of date by the time it’s written; it’s got a built in obsolescence because every day something changes and all the fucking goalposts move again.
A: You wanna try writing about IPTV – it changes every hour! I’m probably one of the best known authors about it and even I have a problem keeping up.
JS: That’s the world we live in now; everything is accelerated. And if you go back to the music industry, which is kinda my background cause predominantly I’m a music journalist, and have been in bands and all the rest of it – the turnover in bands is staggering now. And the expectation is staggering. Socially, or culturally, if you like, there’s a generation growing up with this concept that ‘new is good’.
A: Well the way that people interact now; I look at my dad’s generation and the way that they watch TV and consume media, it’s incredibly passive. And my generation was the one that grew up when computers turned up and the internet first appeared, and we’re still pretty active about things; but the generation below us – the way that they behave is just extraordinary. How active they are in consuming media. I had a conversation with [removed] earlier today who’s coming in for our project, and he said he was getting frustrated because he can see everything happening, and everyone’s saying they’ve got a window of 18-36 months, but he’s getting angry and telling them it’s going to be twice as fast as they think it’s going to be. And I’m agreeing with him because I’m seeing this happen now and I know; I can see the speed at which things are happening, and a lot of people are comparing what’s happening in terms of social networking in digital media with the birth of the internet. They say, “The internet took ten years to take off, it’ll be the same for TV and the media.” What they forget is that we now have the power of the internet behind us to power that change. That in itself is extraordinary. There’s a thermodynamic law that says that the rate of development is, effectively, exponential, the easier it is for people to communicate with each other. The easier it is to communicate, the higher the speed of development. It’s a very simple, basic physical law. So if you have a tool at your disposal which allows people to communicate all over the world, any time and in any way that you want, with a global audience, you are not looking at a simple development timeframe of a simple couple of years. You’re talking about something that’s massively accelerated.
JS: Let’s talk about the copyright and content issue. I don’t know how to unravel that one.
A: Nobody does!
JS: DRM is dead and people haven’t accepted it; in terms of copy protected CDs and time-stamped expiring tracks and that sort of thing. The market has spoken and they don’t want to be dictated to like that.
A: No they don’t. And you’ve got people who are wanting to keep control of it and they’re failing very dismally. The record labels are saying that digital now makes up to 20% of their revenues every year. What’s changed within the labels is interesting; they’ve gone from being direct controllers of what’s going on to changing to become wholesalers. They no longer operate on an exclusive basis, they’ll deal with absolutely everyone who comes to them. They’ve come to accept that but it’s been forced on them. They’ve looked down the line with some very clever people. With digital media, when the copy gets preserved, when it gets transferred, you can’t control the spread of a file. What you can control is people’s access to it so what you’ve got in the world, if your entertainment follows you wherever you go now, via the internet, then rights are allocated to people as opposed to territories and platforms and countries. Which is enormously difficult. And things like Myspace just fuck everything up. That and Slingbox cause absolute chaos. Rights deals are massive: they’re about six inches thick. And they’re so arbitrary, there’s no commonality between any contract I’ve ever dealt with.
JS: People are talking about things like blanket licences.
A: Like Youtube’s got, like a public performance licence. It’s the only thing they can do at the moment. Tony and Guy’s TV system is run by Cube Music, based in Kingston, and they have a blanket public performance licence that allows them to do that, but it’s just not possible to licence (Myspace) because you cannot control the spread of files. So it’s impossible to licence specifically.
JS: So do you have a hardware levy? It comes back to this Zune thing.
A: Like in a DRM system. People will get around it.
JS: At the end of the day if we’re talking about people, if you’ve got a piece of music on your Myspace page, a person has created that and they deserve to be paid for their copyright and what they’ve done to enrich your life. That’s how art gets perpetuated.
A: To a certain extent. That’s what happened in the forties with ASCAP. When they started playing radio over the air for free there was an absolute backlash and now it’s all happening all over again. They did the same with cassettes and CDs – they just have a big old strop and eventually it all slows down. Download’s become more popular than the physical media chart. It’s incredibly difficult; it depends if that’s the model you want to adopt. That copyright being paid for every performance has only been with us since the 1940s, or the twenties maybe. Comparitively speaking in human history it’s a very new development. We’ve been playing music freely on the side of the road and having public performance for hundreds of years. It depends on the context of it. There’s things like the Creative Commons licence, which also changes things, allows people to modify them. But the problem with doing things with DRM is that consumers hate it, it complicates things and blocks access to the media, and the problem with advertising is that it always creates a surge of technology designed to avoid it. Take the popularity of Sky+ and TiVo. So there is always a resistance against commercialising art, because people always want it for free. And in some respects that’s not really very compatible: the expression of feeling and emotion – and money.
JS: And yet there’s a money trail you can follow between an idea and a track being released.
A: Yeah there are costs.
JS: It’s really difficult, and this is the issue with it in a music industry sense. Myspace, as a social communications tool, in the same way that Tim Berners-Lee implemented a load of different ideas in a clever and user-friendly way, Myspace has basically done exactly that.
A: Absolutely, it’s just combined a lot and found a formula which works for it. When I speak to bands, friends of mine, they always ask, “Can we put our music on our site, we just want to put a 30 or 60 second clip, what do we do? We don’t want people to steal it.” And I say, “Don’t be ridiculous. Put all your music on, full-length, but do it at 96kbps so it sounds like crappy radio. Then if people want to buy it they can buy the high definition, 320kbps track if they want. So you allow them to preview, they can get the whole track and then they can exchange it; throw it everywhere you want to.” Another interesting angle on doing this is selling eBooks. There was a protection system where you had to add a password, or a code to access the eBook. Which doesn’t stop many people, they just buy an access code and put it on a peer-to-peer network. But this particular vendor was very, very clever and made your access code your credit card number. Which is really smart because there’s no way in a million years you’re gonna give out your credit card number to anyone. It’s little innovations like that, just thinking about different ways of doing things. Eventually we’re not going to have physical media anyway – it’s all going to run across the network so we won’t have access to it in the first place. We’ll keep a local cached copy maybe, but eventually when we get tracks we’ll pull them off the network first. It’s a very difficult thing to police. Myspace is an audience, it’s not really a distribution system as such.
JS: By default it’s become one.
A: We can download all the MP3s that people put on their pages anyway. I can download the music player that people are putting on their pages, decompile it on my desktop, decompile the code and see how the XML file’s passed and just nick the MP3 via URL. I know that’s how bands are doing it, they externally host. 80% of people are going to pay for it but there’s always going to be the other 20%. Be it software piracy or music piracy there’s always 20% who are doing the pirating, and finding a way around it. It depends how vast that piracy is. Cause piracy at the moment is a reaction to the music industry’s model – it’s not a serious criminal enterprise. And if the music industry embraced the way that people deal with music at the moment it would cease to become piracy; it would just become the normal way of doing things. Piracy, in my view, is organised crime: that’s what we need to be worried about.
JS: There is one thing I want to say about that; at the moment MP3s are King Delivery Format. But when everybody’s got a fat enough broadband pipe you can have full-length, top quality files quite happily. So for the next couple of years that’s cool but as soon as the broadband’s sorted out in this country properly there’s gonna be a whole other set of problems.
A: In Hong Kong you can buy a gigabit a second. You can buy your own wavelength.
JS: Ludicrous.
A: And 100 megabits in Denmark and Sweden for the last five years. And we pay £20 a month for 2meg. Unbelievable.
JS: The technology’s pulling toward an even bigger mess of copyright I think.
A: The trick is the delivery mechanism. Audio’s fine and you can do a lot with it over the net but when you get to things like video you’ve got a bit of a step change. Broadband’s enabled people to download movies. But for video to work on a worldwide basis it has to be a commodity; it has to be incredibly cheap – literally pennies. The problem is you’ve got the carriers, the guys who own the fibreoptic cable, and the networks, who are trying to turn it into a premium service which you pay for by the minute or you pay a lot of money for. So if there’s a way to monetise those pipes – which we’re building into our venture – then you can start offering it. But for that kind of thing to happen, bandwidth needs to be a commodity and connections need to get bigger – which they will.
JS: What’s coming through to me clearly throughout this project is that there is actually a lot of money in the system. But it’s not necessarily spreading effectively to the people who are creating the content that draws people into the whole thing, to these sites.
A: There is, they’ve got far too much money. The problem that I get when I go to the labels and the studios is that there’s incredibly bright and clever people working in lots of different departments. The heads of department are all pro-DRM, but when you go a little further down the chain the Bus. Devs, the managers and some of the scouts; the guys who are on the edge – they are completely different. I mean, most of them have got Limewire in the office! They’re just the same as the rest of us; the problem is that their ideas, beliefs and passions are squashed when it comes to board level. There’s a glass ceiling that doesn’t allow them. The people above them, the executives and bosses just don’t get it. They don’t agree with them. So all the talent that they have amassed inside those places is, effectively, going to waste.
JS: there will come a time fairly soon when that’s not gonna be the case anymore because somehow, by the old guard losing their jobs because purely of the bottom line, or there’ll be new independent companies who do things in a way that clearly works better.
A: I hope so, that’s going to require the ability to do the delivery and the distribution which is where Myspace fits in. Because it enables the bands to go directly to their fans. That’s what it’s going to require and they need the distribution system to be there to be able to back it up to enable them to do that. To enable them. And the people who are controlling those enabling types of systems are big brands like Murdoch, and music labels. So if they get their act together and realize that then they can keep control, but if they don’t then they’re in a lot of trouble. The problem is you’re so far into the woods that you can’t see the trees

I originally wrote this for Emma, as a guide to learning the basics of business when going about getting web design contracts. But it soon became apparent that there are a whole load of people who could benefit from what’s inside. We’ve talked about the Jedi mentality, and how you know whether the business you want to start will actually make any money. This time we’re going to talk about how you do business day to day, the art of getting new business.

Marce is offering consultancy and web development, Piers is looking at building a real estate technology, Shaun is selling design services, Beth is starting her image consultancy company, my mum has just started running her telemarketing business, Lisa is offering professional massage, Andy is looking for the big idea, Virgilio is working out how to get things off the ground in the right direction..

I could go on. In short, business is a strange thing with its own etiquette, the thought of which intimidates people as they worry about not having the right experience or not knowing what to do. Maybe you just came out of college or university and are just getting in the world. Maybe you’re starting your own business. Maybe you want to go up the ladder at work and need to impress everyone with a bunch of new clients. Its all the same and you’ll have to learn it at some point.

The fact that I’m some kind of businessman now is hilarious, especially to all the people that have known me since way back when. I was thrown out of every class in school, truant all the way through college and never bothered with university. I have a criminal record as long as your arm, a list of transgressions against my own community and am a ridiculous mess on the best of days.

Andy once told everyone in front of me that what he most admired about me was my alleged ability to each myself an entire degree in a subject very quickly. I don’t have an MBA, never went on any formal training scheme or was an apprentice. I hated working for someone else. I still hate offices, rules and stuffy companies that are more like classrooms than money-making enterprises.

I taught myself everything I know now, from scratch. They say the art of good business is being a good middleman. And if the feedback is anything to go by, I’m pretty fucking good businessman. Ruthless apparently, charismatic too. Passionate. A visionary. An amazing (no, not my words), unbelievably nice guy (also not my words), with a surprising and unexpected evil streak.

Whatever.

I meet a lot of people, and I know a lot of people. I spend hours in meetings and conversations in places all over the country and the world. I have the ear of some of the most powerful executives in the media industry and have brokered deals worth hundreds of millions of pounds. I’ve made a lot of people very rich and also ruined quite a few others. I’m referred to in the press regularly as a respected author, public speaker and as one of the great visionary minds of my generation.

If you read that as arrogance, you’re making a very serious mistake. Look at it again. It’s referencing historical facts and expressing credibility. You have to know the difference between someone who understands their value and knows how to sell themselves, and arrogant fools who think they are capable of more than they are. Watch an investor talk and you will see. The difference between people who are profoundly successful and those who aren’t is their strength of will and their ability to sell their own value and/or worth. Its not pride. It’s a mechanical gesture to explain you have the necessary faculties and experience.

Your charming self-deprecation and inferiority complex might help people feel comfortable around you at the self-help group, but it won’t get you anywhere in the commercial world. Your confidence gives others confidence in you and helps them feel reassured you are competent. Nobody is interested in whether you are a nice person. They want to know you can get the job done, and most of the time that means kicking ass, upsetting people and being a real shithead. Harden up, know your worth and wield it like a weapon.

You learn quickly through making a lot of mistakes, and seeing the mistakes other people make. You quickly spot the good from the bad, and you imitate the former and avoid the latter.

It takes time to learn the ropes and get used to doing business. Once you come out of university with your fancy degree and letters after your name, you think you know it all and end up getting ripped to pieces in the corporate hamster wheel. Nobody teaches what you really need to know, and so many people just spend years walking around in circles wondering what to do next and how to act.

And there aren’t any books which teach this for some reason. Its taken for granted and expected to be learned along the way.

But it’s all incredibly easy. You pick up the routines from doing it over and over again. In business everything is a model and/or a formula. There are rules and guidelines and you just have to learn them. When you see people doing amazingly well, you ask them what their secret is, and then you do the same. But the most important art is harnessing your natural instincts, as good instincts make the difference between an office monkey and a billionaire. You can have every qualification, suit and buzzword in the book, but without instinct you are dead.

So we’re going to use web design as an example, as its something a lot of people do and make good money from. Any business follows the same principles, so you just get that structure and apply it to what you are doing. You are there to get customers, sell them something you’ve made or do something for them, and then receive a load of money from them in return. My own secret is that I know a fuck of a lot of people, I know where I want to get to and I’m an utter bastard who doesn’t like having his time wasted or being manipulated.

This is the structure of a basic business deal in real life. Forget stupid self-improvement books or industry manuals about the world’s best salesman with their theoretical bullshit. This is the cycle you follow for each one, again and again. Over and over. This is the Cameron way of doing things, and not in any fucking textbook.

Remember one thing always. You are after the contract. You’re not there for a nice chit chat to get to know them better. You have a solid purpose, and you’re there to collect something.

1. Research your target.
   Find people who might want to be your customers or make sure they know about you. Check out their websites, ask around and find out what makes them tick.
2. Open the discussion.
   Approach them in a polite and credible way, explain who you are and why they might want to talk to you. Make them curious.
3. Sell it and seduce them.
   Tease, excite, scare, batter, convince, interest them. Reel them in, push their buttons, tighten their thumbscrews, do whatever you have to do until they are powerless to resist you.
4. Negotiate the terms of the deal.
   Haggle. Offer more than they expected, take more than they expected and turn the deal into something much bigger and longer term. Under promise so you can over deliver.
5. Get them to sign the contract.
   Close the deal. Put the paper in front of them and get them to commit in writing to buying.
6. Deliver it to them early.
   Work your ass off and give them something amazing they will tell everyone about, and you can show to the next customer. Make sure they come back.

Rinse and repeat. Ten times a day. Every day for a week, then a month, then a year. You’ll still be doing it after 20 years for the 56,000th company you want business from. We’ve been doing it for millennia. It’s built into your blood. You already know it. It doesn’t matter what business it is, you do the same thing each time, over and over again. It’s the biz dev cycle.

It’s amazing how many people are totally clueless about something so simple.

All those years you convinced yourself it was an impossible wall to climb. All you have to do is get through those stages with each potential customer. Follow from 1 to 6, one after another. It’s the same, every time. Learn the steps, and you learn business. The only problem was that no-one told you what to do, and you never got round to reading that boring theory book.

You’re approaching them because you want them to buy from you, not just to fanny around and have a nice conversation while the clock ticks. You’re going for the contract. Its all about closing it off and moving to the next guy to empty his wallet. So many scared and anxious nicey nice people just faff around feeling awkward about asking people for their business or having no idea of why they’re doing what they are doing, or what they want from the situation.

You want their signed contract. Simple as that. No possibility of a contract? Then shelve it to review later or trash it and move on. All very simple again.

Let walk through it as a web designer.

1. You hear that someone wants a website, or approach one who might. You check up on them, see if they’re credible, work out how to push their buttons and create a pitch for them. Be one step ahead.
2. Get an introduction from someone they respect and trust, or politely approach one of their senior management with a position to make it happen. Listen to what they need and fit in to their situation perfectly. Be a new best friend. Ask them to invite you in writing to provide them with a proposal and quote.
3. Tell them what they want to hear, and give them what they want. Explain why you are perfect for them, and different to them. Promise them, pitch to them, offer them great prices, sell them dreams and be there for their every concern. Smooth any worries, keep in contact, buy them drinks, make friends with them and bring them sunshine every time you speak to them. Write down what they want and send it back to them as a proposal. Show them a demo or some ideas. Tick the list of boxes and break down each obstacle they put up in front of you. Wait for everyone in their company to agree internally. Give them a cut off time and date to answer you before your offer ends and you will move on to another customer. Get a yes, or shelve it.
4. Provide them with terms of business that spell out everything, and the framework you operate in. Get a deposit and argue for the best situation that will bring you the most money and benefits. Use your instinct. Think of all the things that could go wrong and explain the shit you won’t take and the things you are flexible on. Write the rules and be tough as hell. They won’t like you for it, but they’ll respect you. They’re already sold anyway. Don’t take any shit.
5. Put a contract in front of them for them to review with their lawyer, and then get it signed. Give them another time limit. This is what its all been for. You’re done. The deal’s closed. You’re home free. They owe you a deposit according to your terms, and you are free to spend time on it as paid work.
6. Make it, and always stick to your terms and as every project goes wrong. If something looks suspect, trust your instincts. If they don’t pay up on time, give them 5 business days warning, then show no mercy and automatically send the account to a debt collection agency.

We use the word “deal” a lot to say people are wheeler-dealers and dealmakers like its some strange natural talent people were born with. A business deal is just trading something of value you have for something else of value that someone else has. Its an art rather than a science as no two situations are the same. Fundamentally you put two people together and profit from doing so. Business is rarely done on a island, as everyone is a middleman to everyone else somehow.

Businesses are groups of people. You have meetings with people, people buy your products and services and people pay you. Machines and paperwork can’t talk. Being good at business is about being a good people person: knowing when to kick ass, when to be kind, when to strike, when someone is withholding something and so much more. Learn to deal with people

Never, ever be late
A cardinal sin. Arrive 5-10 minutes before your meeting. You can tell a lot about a person and how competent they are by the attitude they have to your time, and their own. If you are going to be late, always call, apologise, say you are embarrassed and offer a gesture to say sorry.

Always be smart
You don’t need to wear suit, just be smart. Casual clothes are fine, but first impressions count so make sure you are neat and well presented. No mini-skirts, Bermuda shorts or tasteless ties.

Always be polite, well spoken and well mannered
Improve your vocabulary, speak slowly and clearly and make sure your manners are in check. There is no excuse for not being dignified and polite. Don’t shovel food in your food. Be erudite and elegant. Take classes if you have to.

Be literate and numerate
Always use a spell checker on all of your communications. Get your times tables in check. Nobody is saying you need to be a poet or scientist, just that you know how to add up and write a letter without using text message language.

Always have good personal hygiene
There is absolutely no excuse for this sin. 7 out of 10 executives have foul-smelling halitosis and it’s absolutely disgusting. Check your nails, always shower, use deodorant and antiperspirant, check your nails and wear clean clothes.

Always carry a notepad and calculator
People see you taking notes and being prepared as a sign of competence, organisation and intelligence, and vice versa. Carry them to every meeting and for every phone call.

Know what you can do that other people can’t
You need to be different and have skills no-one else can. You need an “angle” or “take” on things that no-one else can supply. There needs to be a reason to deal with you over the next guy, and it doesn’t need to be complicated at all. Emphasise it whenever you can.

Money talks, bullshit walks
Money is power, and its what business is all about. Money decides whether your plan is going to fly or its going to fade away like hot air. Nobody will give you the time of day if they don’t think you have the money to do what you say you’re going to.

Always respect confidentiality
Never ever tell a customer’s secret to another customer, as it will tell them immediately you are not to be trusted and will do the same to then. In fact, never tell anyone anything about anyone else. If a competitor knows your move, you lose the fight.

Have a laugh, but know when to be serious
Humour helps build rapport, loosen tense atmosphere and shows you are human. There are times to enjoy a bit of light-hearted banter, but there are times to be deadly serious. Never appear to be flippant. Appreciate someone’s seriousness and use your instincts.

Always appear to be very busy
This is pathetic political trick corporate idiots play all the time, but its human nature and works well. Always have to fit people into your calendar and make it known how busy you are. Being busy implies you are in demand and very successful.

Always be available
Immediately reply to emails and pick up the phone within 3 rings. Your customer must be able to get what they want, whenever they want it, and by and large that means they want you. Set up all your communications equipment to gratify their desires. Get back to them immediately so they feel important.

Don’t take things personally or attack people personally
Business is a very nasty and cruel business where you will suffer as many knocks as successes. Its important never to attack someone personally about anything, such as their personal taste in clothing, intelligence competence or abilities. Likewise, let the immaturity of others wash over you. Get over it.

Figure out the timewasters and bullshitters
There will be hundreds of these people knocking on your door. They will drain your time, distract you from the really clients and lead you up the garden path. A lot will be talking about something that will never happen or succeed. Use your instincts to work who is actually credible and be ruthless with the others.

Approach from the top down
The simplest way to get taken seriously is to introduce yourself to the CEO or MD. They won’t have time to deal with you, so will pass the details to someone below them. Because it came from the boss, they are reporting to him and will take you very seriously. Give it to a grunt or a monkey and people will just ignore them.

Work out a pitch in advance and rehearse it
Everyone has different requirements, concerns, threats and things that influence their decisions. You can’t just walk in, talk ad lib and hope for the best. Research them, understand them, get in their skin and put it together into a slide show. Rehearse it in front of 5-10 people at a time to get it right.

Name drop whenever you can
Customers like hearing that they are not the only one you are dealing with or know. If you know someone they do, they know they can get a reference and feel more at ease. Often the people you know will impress them enough to buy straight away. Don’t over-do it though, for obvious reasons.

Know hotels and private clubs to meet in
If you don’t have an office to invite a customer to, the next best thing is to meet in a nice hotel or private club. Even Starbucks will do. Just make sure its respectable, quiet, smart and business-like. Businesspeople are always travelling so these places are like second homes to them.

The sales process takes ages
Getting someone to actually buying something after showing interest in what you have is called converting them, or turnaround. It takes 10 times as long as you think it will and is very, very frustrating. A lot of company’s sales cycles are 12-18 months. That’s a long time to go without getting the business.

Always trust your gut instinct
Instincts can’t be taught, and don’t fit into business rules. Always go with your gut instinct. If something’s not right, act to stop it or withdraw. If is a reasonable risk, take it. Intuition and instinct make the difference between greatness and irrelevance.

Never take project fees
They are a con. The idea is you do a whole bunch of work for someone that takes ages, but only get paid at the end. If you actually get paid. Firstly, it messes up your cash flow, and secondly, the project will never end. It will take longer than you think ti will, there will be hundreds of changes and no-one wants to pay you on time. Get paid regularly.

Always get a deposit
If you want to see if someone’s serious, ask for a lump of cash (10-50% of your fee) to demonstrate their seriousness. It will show them you are very serious about what you and are hard-nosed. Money talks. If they don’t want to do that, shelve them and move on.

Don’t take any shit
Ever. Remember that its not personal. They won’t like you for it, but they will respect you. If they see you roll over, they’ll know they can get away with it again and just keep doing it. Strike out at the first sign of any problem, even if they are bigger than you.

Speak their lingo
Different types of businesspeople refer to things in different ways. Accountants talk about debits and credits, and investors talk about risk and reward. Listen to them and observe them. You wouldn’t turn up in rural Pakistan and expect them to speak fluent English.

Avoid buzzwords
They are sickening. They are vague, ridiculous and make you look like you can’t think for yourself or be bothered to communicate properly. Make it easy for people to understand what you saying by thinking about the simplest way to explain things.

For god’s sake just shut up and listen
99% of winning a client’s business is just acknowledging them, They don’t usually want you interrupting them or talking over them. They already have an idea of what they want, so guide them through the process in a passive way.

Imagine a little person on your shoulder saying “so what?”
This is the way IBM teach their execs to pitch when they are seeing customers, and it’s a great technique to help you sell something to someone. Every time you make a claim or tell them how wonderful it is, illustrate what the implications for them about how they save time, save money, can do wonderful things and how you are the best thing that’s ever happened to them.

Never apologise, justify or explain yourself
A lot of bullying goes on in business, some of it subtle and some of it overt. People will drag information out of you, interrogate you or make you feel like you have to go into massive amounts of detail to explain. Resist it. Be polite, but stay strong with your silence or admission that you don’t know an answer.

Talk fluently and calmly
You are not in a job interview being questioned. Speak calmly and in a relaxed way that makes you fit in with the other person. Don’t clam up, freeze or be nervous. Practice what you want to say and structure the topics you want to bring up in advance.

Help people to visualise
This is so crucial ir can’t overstated. Talking about something means you see it in your mind, whereas the other guy has to imagine. Use diagrams, photos, illustrations, models, demos, software or anything else to help them see it in front of them. When the penny drops, you strike.

You need to be telepathic
A lot of customers are dreadful at describing what they want or need. Half the time they aren’t asking the question you think they are, so you need to read between the lines. They have something in their mind, so you need to figure out what they see in their head and then have to create it in front of them.

There is always a shithead
Every time you meet a group of execs, there will be a power structure within their little team. The guy with the money will probably be quiet, another will love you, but there will always be an idiot with an inferiority complex who is out to impress the boss. They will put you down, rubbish your claims, tell you why nothing will work and how they can better elsewhere. Learn how to deal with them.

People associate price with quality and value
The first thing you will want to do is undercut someone else in the belief your potential customer will go with the cheapest price. But it doesn’t always work this way at all. Expensive means a Rolex, cheap means a crap plastic watch from a market stall. The same works for what you sell.

People do business with friends, not strangers
Businesses are made up of people, and all things being equal, we will always go to friends for things before strangers. Networking is the art of making business friends who can turn to you if they need something done, and vice versa. Your aim is to make as many friends in as many places as possible, and then get introduced to thei friends.

Their ideas will be crap, but just give them what they want
If they could do it themselves, they wouldn’t be coming to you. Don’t be precious about them thinking they can join in too, as its just part of the process. Your customer’s interfering or suggestions will almost certainly be crap and make you shudder and cringe. Just shut up and remember the most important rule: give them what they want, even if it is crap in your eyes.

You will never get paid on time
Nobody ever pays up properly, ever. If you say 30 days on your invoice, you’ll get part of your money in around 45-60 days. Its important to be on top of this and to be very, very strict. Use debt collectors if you have to, early on.

Nobody pays what’s on the price tag
Well ok, on the high street they do. In business, everything is negotiable. Sometimes you pay in cash, sometimes in shares, man hours, barter or kind. There is a difference between the public price and the cost to you as someone’s customer, and it will work the same for your own customers. Price things so you can give them a special discount.

Its not about who you know, its who they know
Networking makes people cringe, but it is the lifeblood of business and the mechanism that keeps its wheels turning. Its not about your immediate contacts, but the people that they know and can introduce you to. And then even their friend’s friends. Your entire world should be built on your network, so invest time on it.

They will always try to take the piss
Its human nature. Everyone you deal with will try to exploit you and get something out of you. Sometimes you can allow it and get something in return, but mostly you have to be tough as hell. Don’t let them get away with anything and deal with problems very harshly from the beginning so they don’t happen again.

Projects always go wrong and never finish on time
It’s an open secret that nobody dare speak about, but no project is ever delivered on time, for the allocated amount of money, to the proper quality. It’s a nightmare. Never ever plan anything with the assumption it go perfectly. Always assume the worst and think of all that could wrong.

Limit what you give away for free
You could stand on the street corner selling £10 notes for £9 all day long. You’re in it to make money, so know your value and your price. You can get thousands or customers who will take what you have for free. Freebies can be nice incentives or gifts, but that’s all they are. A lot of people don’t trust a free lunch and see you as weak and foolish for it. You want their money, so practice saying no and not feeling guilty about it, as no-one else would.

No means “not now”
Getting a customer is a lot harder than anyone thinks, and keeping them is even worse. It means getting rejected, and at first you take it very personally. Often its about being in the right place at the right time, which is where your network helps. Expect to be turned down 5 times by each customer before they buy, as it’s a good benchmark.

Documents
There are a tonne of different documents you need to have to work in business. Most of the time they are created for individual situations by a lawyer and designed to lock thing sin so tightly that nothing can get out of control. But there are some you need to have as standard for dealing with anyone: You need to know what they are and have your own copy to offer someone. Having it there makes it look like you’ve done it before and are very competent and organised.

You don’t have to pay a lawyer to write them for you. Ask someone you know for their copy, and change the details accordingly. If it’s a big deal, you need it looked at by a solicitor anyway.

Your customer will probably want to put these through a legal team, and any payments will need to be signed off by the money guy and boss. Your invoice will be sitting in a tray somewhere or on someone’s desk, underneath a bunch of others. They pay the one they can delay the most, last.

• Non-disclosure agreement (NDA)
  This is a gagging order, and you sign it together with your customer. Neither of you can talk to anyone else about the contents of your discussion for a few years. Its useless and unenforceable, so a gesture really.
• Request for proposal/quotation (RFP/RFQ)
  When a customer tells the world they need something, they put it “out to tender” and invite several rival companies to bid for the business. They will “raise” an RFP which tells you what you’re bidding for. You answer it with a proposal with a few other potential suppliers.
• Sales invoice
  This is pretty simple, it’s a bill you give to your customer they have to pay within a certain amount time, like the phone or gas bill you get. If you issue it before you have done the work, its called a “pro-forma” invoice.
• Introducer’s agreement
  If you’re a good middleman, you’ll be putting lots of people together with each other who will spend and make a lot of money together. You make them sign this, as without you they wouldn’t have the relationship to make the money from. You get a % cut of the money made or spent for a period of time.
• Terms & conditions of business (Terms, T&Cs)
  This is very specific to you and can’t really be borrowed from anyone other than a competitor or someone who does something similar to you. Your customer has to sign it before you supply them, and it contains your rules they must agree to for when they inevitably try and take the piss.

Lastly, we need a few notes about presentations and meetings. When you’re not in the office, you’re going to be doing one of these 2 things. Both again are structured and repetitive, but most people fall into the corporate malaise that makes almost every example dreadful. Don’t do what other people do. Build your own structure that’s better.

Presentations/pitches
You’ll do this to impress the boss or pitch a client. Usually you put together a few slides in Microsoft PowerPoint and walk people through it, following up with some extra information afterwards. The important thing to remember is that people respond to other human beings, not slides. It needs to be very well rehearsed.

General pointers:

• Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse again. Then rehearse again.
• Tell them what you are going to tell them. Then tell them, then tell them what you just told them.
• Totally customise your pitch to the customer. Never use a “vanilla” presentation. Always emphasise why your experience is perfect for them.
• Only give our PowerPoint slideshows and paper hand-outs afterwards.
• Never, ever, ever read text off PowerPoint slides to your customer
• 10 slides or diagrams with headlines to elaborate on.
• Maintain confident body language (no hunching or slouching) and talk slowly and clearly
• Never assume someone understands if they are silent.
• Use examples of previous clients and competitors so it drives them to be part of the herd.
• No-one can remember more than 3 points.
• Make it exciting, interesting and help them visualise with diagrams and demos.
• Tell a story – use the Hollywood 3 act structure which involves problem, complication and resolution.
• Always remember to conclude with suggestions for the next steps the customer can take.

Meetings
These are unbelievably boring and usually pointless. You should never have to have a meeting. If you do, you should do it standing up or walking, as these things are an invitation to waste time when you could be doing something far more productive. The usual thing is people wander in at different times, often late, faff around getting prepared and pouring coffee, and then once they gone over the points they want to cover, go back over them again to remind and reassure themselves.

In fact, a lot of people do meetings just to say they’ve been busy “in meetings” in the hope the people they tell will think they are big and clever.

Not taking many meetings sends out a message that your time is precious and you are more organised than the average person. Everyone else will want them, so get used to saying no. The usual duration is an hour, in which the most important things are brought up in the last 2 minutes. The biggest mistake novices make is going to as many as possible with almost anyone, for no apparent reason or tangible benefit afterwards.

If you absolutely have to have a meeting, follow these rules.

• Don’t have a meeting for the sake it, have a very specific reason.
• If you don’t have a specific reason to be there in person, then it’s a social and/or personal thing, and its for after hours or the weekend.
• Do a phone call first to see if you can get things done that way before travelling or booking things into your diary.
• Always have a list of things to discuss and points to talk about. This is your agenda.
• Request that all the attendees arrive 10 minutes before so you can all get a drink and lay your notebooks out.
• Allocate time blocks of 15 or 30 minutes for meetings (not an hour) and stick to them religiously. The meeting begins at 1 sec in, not 10 minutes after everyone has a cup of tea and a biscuit in front of them.
• Make sure you take notes all the way through. Notes are called “minutes” of the meeting.
• Aim to finish as soon as possible rather than stringing it out. Once you’ve covered all your points, end it there without any more waffling on.
• If you say you will need 5 minutes, your meeting stops at 4 minutes 40 seconds in.
• If you are booked at the end of the afternoon or on a Friday, you’re not very important to them.
• At the end of the meeting, decide what the next steps are. These are your “actions”.
• End by “wrapping up” and recounting the next steps.