Over the last weekend, i discovered a show that i think should be required watching by Geeks, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares. For those unfamiliar with the show, it features a top chef and entrepreneur Gordon Ramsay who sets off to try and rescue a restaurant that's about to completely fail, and probably sink the lives of everyone involved. These aren't hard luck cases, they're desperation cases. He goes in, slings expletives as well as hash and within a week, drags the establishment back on track and gives it new life.
So, why should a combination cooking/decorating show possibly be considered required watching for geeks?
Easy. The cooking and decorating are just part of the problem. What Good Mr. Ramsay does is beat solid business ideas into the heads of the folks he's set to help. It's all blindingly obvious things: What are your competitors offering that you're not? Are you focused on the customers or on less important things? Is this really what you want to do? Quite often, the answers are staring folks directly in the face but they refuse to hear them until someone shows up, slaps them around a little and proves that paying attention to that sort of thing is a really good idea.
What he says and does is generally applicable to damn near everything else.
- Know what's important. (don't just trust your "instincts", know, dammit.)
- If you don't know, find out.
- Focus on doing just that.
- Do what needs to be done without adding any fancy bits that don't belong.
- Market only AFTER you've got something worth talking about.
Blindingly obvious stuff, isn't it? Still, it's amazing when i think back about how many much time and agony i could have saved if i had various folks in my career watch these shows.
Myself included.
(Oh, and skip the Americanized version on Fox. It's twaddle.)
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