2005-12-01 - 10:32 p.m.
I�ve been noticing how different my writing for business is. Looking at my personal writing � email, school papers, even the entries in this journal � I�m generally somewhat noncommittal. See, there I just did it again: �generally somewhat�. I tend to avoid making a definitive pronouncement. �Tend to�. God. I use qualifying words like �possibly� or �perhaps�. Things often �seem to be�, rather than �are�.
In my past business experience this hedging wasn�t so much a problem. When I was a film art director, I obviously didn�t write a whole lot. When I worked for a real estate developer, much of the material I wrote was PR and expected to be hyperbolic and overblown. I could just ignore worrying about what was true. (I�d occasionally internally circulate self-mocking parodies of the hype I�d just written.) And I�d write reports on properties I�d scouted, for the executives to decide if we should buy them, where examining all possibilities was a virtue.
But I guess I�m a little nervous now about looking like I�m stating the Truth. How the hell can I really know? Once at a meeting at the SBA, an adviser was questioning whether a West Coast engineering group developing a new wheelchair design, with whom I was looking at partnering, was for real and whether they could actually produce a viable end-product. I had never met them in person and wasn�t fully familiar with their backgrounds. Well, I replied, how do we know that this isn�t all just a dream?
There was an awkward pause across the table. That had not been an expected or appropriate thing to say. We moved on. But I think it�s true that we can never truly know what�s for real. Maybe it�s all being made up, it�s all being faked. I feel like I�m faking it sometimes. Then again, maybe everyone secretly feels this way.
One of my biggest problems in this issue is pro-forma projected financial statements in start-up business plans seeking financing. (I think �pro-forma� might be Latin for �made up�.) These show (for example) anticipated future income and expense. They always have a rosy spin. Sales increase exponentially, while production costs increase minimally, if at all! Thus, we see this will be a zillion-dollar company within two years!
The main reason you may feel able to project these hypothetical figures is because you�ve done some research to back them up. You should know the number of potential consumers of your product or service and what share of this market you can reasonably expect to capture. Your claims have some solid ground to stand on. You may or may not be smarter than your potential investors, but you definitely know more than they do.
Now, there�s a lot more to business success than book smarts. I�ve always heard that �A-students become professors and B-students work for C-students.� I�d always chalked this up to time spent socializing. This is in fact probably why dim-witted W. is president; he met more future influential people at keggers and seems to voters like the candidate you�d rather have a beer with. But maybe there�s something else involved here.
Maybe it�s partly a function of not being so obsessive about knowing the certain Truth that you�re not always second-guessing yourself. How do you know that your research is good enough, that your estimated market size or the percentage you can expect to successfully reach are accurate? There�s a point at which you should say that enough is enough. Otherwise you could spend all day worrying about not being sure.
Maybe there�s skill in really believing your own hype. Having complete confidence in numbers that are uncertain isn�t a problem if you don�t realize they�re uncertain. Or if you can overlook their shakiness and pitch them as gospel truth. Maybe a lifetime of academic writing where you always leave room for alternate possibilities has trained me too well. Maybe I should work on believing (or at least projecting belief) despite the fact that I may have it all wrong.
Shit, did I just imply that W. maybe deserves to be president?
� 2005 Geoff Gladstone
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