Peter
The Bank of Dave
How do you achieve the impossible? How do you crash your way into one of the most exclusive and powerful clubs on the planet? How do you as a tiny player unleash a disruptive strategy in an industry controlled by giants?
Bank of Dave’s David Fishwick
The answers all lie in the Channel 4 documentary Bank of Dave. For context, Dave Fishwick is a successful minibus dealer from a small town in northern England. When the banks stop lending to small business, Dave comes up with the crazy idea of opening his own community bank to lend to local businesses. This is when he is confronted with a seemingly impenetrable wall regulations designed to keep outsiders out.
Dave is a joy and an inspiration to watch in action. He is relentless. Nothing stops him. Every regulation, obstacle, is just something to be swept away, overcome, or dismissed with contempt.
A long time ago, one of my profs told me that it’s far better to do something and ask for forgiveness afterwards then to wait for permission. It’s one of the best pieces of advice I have ever been given. Study tycoons and you will see that all follow this principle.
Dave reminds me of an Al Pacino quote:
There’s no such thing as too far. You understand? You push everything as far as you can. You push and you push and you push until it starts pushing back. And then you push some goddamn more. – Al Pacino
Go watch this extraordinary story and then do a search on his results.
History Channel’s The Men Who Built America
I recently watched the History Channel’s program Sun Tzu’s Art of War which in 90 minutes did, arguably, the best job of not only explaining the classic’s lessons but, more importantly, showing how they all dove tail together. If you have any interest in strategy, for business or war, watch the program.
The program reminded me of a controversy that raged back in the 1990s over whether or not, war was a valid metaphor for business. As I read the views of various business book authors I found myself sitting on the proverbial fence. Part of me felt that it was true that business is warfare minus the bloodshed but another part wanted to believe that it was a more gentlemanly affair. Over time I came to accept that business truly is war if you want to build anything significant. If your goal is to settle for running a small Main Street shop out in Springfield, you maybe able to get away with telling yourself that it’s not. The reason for business being war is that building anything significant requires that you upset the status quo and ruffle some feathers. This is going to generate push back from vested interests.
The Small Business Growth Strategies of Tycoons
Let’s get down to how tycoons make money in the deal-maker’s game of buying and selling companies. The big pay day comes when a company is finally sold. To sell a company at a profit requires that you increase its value while it’s in your possession. (Value creation is an ongoing topic in this course.) Increasing value entails growing the business to increase its value. In other words, you want to “fatten up the hog for market,” as they say in the agricultural industry.
Let’s take a look at why bigger is better when it comes to business.
History Channel’s The Men Who Built America
This looks like it’s going to be a great series. On Tuesday October 16 the History Channel premieres The Men Who Built America. It’s a series about the great tycoons of the 19th century: Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, Morgan, and more. It will use actors to dramatize events. I look forward to it.
I also recommend the western series Hell on Wheels for anyone interested in this period because one of the key characters in it is the man who built the eastern half of the transcontinental railroad, Thomas ‘Doc’ Durant. For anyone interested in reading about these characters, I recommend The Robber Barons.
Canadian Guy Laliberté was a street busker not all that long ago. He was earning a living as a stilt walker and fire-eater in Montreal. Today he is the founder and CEO of Cirque du Soleil and has a personal net worth of $2.6 billion (US) in 2012.
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