"Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind." F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Silence remains, inescapably, a form of speech." Susan Sontag
"The ordinary man is involved in action, the hero acts. An immense difference." Henry Miller
Today's image: splash by nikond300. Very cool. Thank you for sharing.
Takes one to know one dept: Robert Feder calls radio legend Dick Biondi sui generis
Interesting conversations this week about the road ahead. Several client CEOs and COOs called to discuss revisiting their 2009 planning and budgets. Each year at this time we are involved in assisting clients with their planning. Concurrently we are deep into the process of developing our annual ad spend forecast. Because our firm also provides representation to talent we enjoy the advantages of a unique "both sides of the table" perspective. Recent events in the financial markets have caused us to rethink even our most conservative assumptions.
This morning, thanks to Fred Wilson, we viewed a slide show created by the folks at Sequoia Capital. On balance, we agree with many of the points made in the presentation and have emailed the slide show to our clients along with our suggestions with regard to next steps. This morning I would like to share selected content from four of the slides in the Sequoia presentation.
Our Take
- Manage what you can control. Spending. Growth assumptions. Earning assumptions.
- Focus on quality
- Lower risk
- Reduce debt
New Realities
- Cuts are a must
- Need to become cash flow positive
- M&As will decrease
- Prices will decrease
- Acquiring entities will favor profitable companies
- IPOs will continue to decrease and will take longer
- Perform situation analysis
- Adapt quickly
- Use a zero-based budgeting approach
- Make cuts
- Review salaries
- Employ a heavily commissioned sales structure
- Bolster balance sheets
- Become cash flow positive as soon as possible
- Spend every dollar as if it were your last
Everything here is my personal pov and does not reflect the views nor the opinions of my employer. This has always been the case. Please use comments when you have a different opinion to share.
RIP: Financial engineering
The days of the financial engineer are, as a practical matter, over and that is a good thing. We are in this mess today no thanks to the leger de main practiced by too many self proclaimed financial engineers.
In my next post I'll share my thoughts on what must be done by media CEOs to prevail in 2009.
Have a great weekend. See you next week in a brand new show.
