by Sean Oliver
Applications for the “On the Waters” courses have now tripled. The die-hards are still there—those are the cats that would have paid to come and stare at slideshows of boats every week. But now Fisher has now managed to cross over into a new subset of patron. More casual fishing enthusiasts are now signing up to learn, and also have a good time getting out on the water since they don’t often have the time to do so. Bring a beverage of choice, your rod, and have a fun class while the sun sets on the lake around you.
Of course the class now comes with much more value added so the cost is $100 to each student. Remember the attendance has tripled, so Mr. Fisher’s revenue is now $3,000 for the four-week class.
Why on earth would Billy do this? What is he getting in return for taking his boats out every week? Every course Fisher runs will have 30 new faces meeting Billy, getting on his boats, signing up for his email list, and maybe even booking a spot on Billy’s Saturday morning fishing charters he runs every week. Of course, each of the students in Fisher’s class has been given a 20% off coupon for those Saturday fishing charters the moment they stepped on board for the class. As Mr. Fisher’s class learns about boats, they are learning while riding on one of Billy’s boats. They have to drive to Billy’s Big Ass Boats on the wharf for each class. That kind of familiarity is priceless. It’s truly a mutually beneficial arrangement. Especially when Billy asks for a 25% cut of class registration fees for the gains his boats have added to Fisher’s course.
Several years before co-founding Kayfabe Commentaries I came across a website called The History of WWE (www.thehistoryofwwe.com). It’s a fan site, with no official affiliation to the actual WWE, the world’s largest and most famous wrestling federation. The site is a massive database of every live and televised wrestling event the site’s owner could compile. You click on a year, a federation, and what you have is a list of every match of record, the city, and the fan attendance when available. It’s quite a resource for the wrestling historian.
When we conceived our Timeline: The History of WWE series, I thought this site would be a great companion piece. Viewers of our series would love the detail contained in the site, and fans of that website would love to see it come to life with our interviews. There was clearly a marriage to be made here.
I reached out to Graham Cawthon, the site’s owner, and pitched a joint venture wherein we would credit his website in each edition of our series, and also drop a link to his page on our sales pages on our website. In exchange, we would provide him a banner for each edition of our series, which he could strategically place on his website driving some traffic back to us.
In our example at KC as well as Fisher’s store, each side benefited in strengthening their business and brand with little expenditure. I’m happy to steer our customers to www.thehistoryofwwe.com for additional information on the subjects covered in our Timeline: The History of WWE series. The site is thoroughly researched and takes great care to provide intricate details about pro wrestling’s storied history. Graham Cawthon also created a Business of Blood with his website, so perhaps I also have a soft spot for it. His venture is a solo operation as far as I know and is an absolutely astounding amount of research and information.
Symbiotic partnerships can really fill out your product line and make for a more complete experience for your customers by adding new dimension. Everyone wins, so get in bed with someone. Just make sure your company’s sensibility and brand is consistent with theirs.
At KC, the most common collaborations we enter into involve wrestling promotions. Someone running a wrestling show will usually put out some feelers as to who also might be interested in a particular talent on a particular date. If they can split the expenses several ways, while at the same time getting multiple paydays for the wrestler, then that works out for everyone.
Having said that, the wrestling underbelly is littered with humanity cast aside from traditional society. You have to proceed with caution and assume you’ll be counting the honest denizens of that world on one hand. A few years back we entered into a working relationship with an independent wrestling federation called Pro Wrestling Syndicate, the company I mentioned earlier in the story about the man-ass that remained in the ring far too long for Kevin Sullivan’s liking. The booker for PWS split from the company and his partner in the federation, and we ended up working with both of them separately, refusing to take a side. But that decision would soon be made for us.
I was dealing with new PWS owner Pat Buck who soon rebranded the company as WrestlePro and kept running great shows, drawing great houses, and partnering with us for talent. His former booker, let’s call him Pecker, started running a women’s wrestling group and we partnered with him on using talent for our Kayfabe Commentaries Bombshells series. Pecker would consult with us on talent, we’d agree on which ladies to bring in, and they’d work in the ring for him and then for us on our new show. We booked four women as guests plus host Leva Bates. I worked out how much KC would be paying for each of them and they were all booked. Pecker sent me the invoices for all the expenses associated with the flights and hotels, and we were set. Pecker told me to just pay him in bulk and he’d pay the women their fees for both KC and his company.
“No, I hand my talent their money,” I told him. “No offense, that’s how we do business. That way, there are no misunderstandings.” KC’s money goes from my briefcase to the talent’s hands for very good reason—transparency. Pecker went silent for a minute.
“Um, okay,” he said.
I talked with Leva a couple of times before that weekend to go over the hosting duties and just the general format and direction of the show. We were all set, then I got a weird text from Leva.
Who is paying me for your show? she wrote.
We are. Why? I replied.
They told me that they would pay me for everything and I shouldn’t go to you.
I knew what was happening. I’d put blinders on when I began reading about the rift between Pecker and Buck. When they split, I decided not to prejudge based on allegations in the wrestling media, preferring to reserve judgment if it ever became relevant in my business dealings with either. To that point, neither had shown me that they were less than trustworthy. But this was the first sign that something was amiss. Why was Leva being told I wasn’t handling her money for the KC shows, when I’d been explicit about that with Pecker?
Because I was being robbed.
I asked Leva how much she was promised for both my program and the wrestling show. The figure she told me was less than half of what I was paying her alone.
She was being robbed. The minute I handed Pecker my envelope, there would have been a big hole in it. And I knew that meant all five women I booked through him were being robbed too.
I left my living room and told my oldest daughter to stay downstairs, daddy had to up and yell at someone on the phone. I haven’t included a chapter in this book about the detrimental effects of owning a business on your family. I should have. Maybe it’s exclusive to pro wrestling. Your business may require less aggravation.
After several tries I got Pecker on the phone and exploded. There was not even a 0 to 60—I left the garage doing 100.
“I’m the one fucking guy that kept doing business with you after you fucked over Pat—what a shithead I am!” I yelled. “You think you’d actually be able to rob me?”
This cocksucker actually began to defend his attempted theft by saying, “Well it’s not my fault you are overpaying these girls. They shouldn’t get half of what you offered them.” That wasn’t the point and it was none of his business what anyone was getting paid, just like it wasn’t my business that he apparently paid these women like $50 for risking their damn lives in his ring. I was mad about everything.
“I am paying every one of those girls myself on Saturday and after that we are never doing business again. You and I are going to shake hands and play nice in front of everyone because I hate indie fucking drama, and I don’t want to spook the guests
. But when I walk out of there you are dead to me, scumbag.”
On shoot day we loaded in and shot four segments of the show with Leva hosting Mia Yim, Santana Garrett, Kennadi Brink, and Kimber Lee. I paid the ladies myself and told them if anyone had anything whatsoever to say about paydays, they were to come right back to me. I didn’t smear Pecker right then—I needed my shows and no drama. But now I hope they read this and know that they were about to be fucked out of 75% of their payday. I know Pecker is no longer in the business of promoting shows.
A year or so after this I did get a glorious opportunity to settle up with Pecker. He was doing a regular show with both men and women and had Scott Hall and Kevin Nash booked. They were doing a fan signing for him before the card began, and then Scott and Kevin were going to do an NWO-style promo in the ring to kick off the live event. Nash was in touch with me because he was coming to me to shoot an edition of Guest Booker after his in-ring segment for Pecker down in South Jersey at Starland Ballroom.
Nash was unhappy about the multiple people picking him up for each of the shots he had. He was doing his best diva act for me, and I played along, so sympathetic. Of course I wanted Nash to be happy, he was a major talent for us. But it also gave me an opportunity to go down to Peckermania and pick Nash up myself.
And I did. Just before his in-ring segment was to begin.
16. Diversify
LET’S SAY A stock investor is particularly excited about the prospects in the tech industry. He pours all of his investments into that market segment and holds a strong position in various tech companies, and maybe even a tech fund. A financial advisor would tell him that he’s at great risk and should diversify. He’d be told to temper his risk by buying some bonds and spreading his investments across a few sectors. He needs to protect, or “hedge” in financial geek-speak, his investments. Why?
He should do this for the same reasons you will consider having multiple product lines or services in your business. Just focusing on one thing is a risk, even if you do that one thing really well. Your excellence in that field can actually work against you if you allow yourself to become too myopic. Even of you work tirelessly to perfect your core business or item, there are external swings and trends that can affect the life of your product. And if that’s the only thing your company does, then it’s affecting your business as a whole.
Stay away from market-based businesses or products. My old real estate friends will be annoyed by this, but I think deep down they’d agree. Don’t anchor your efforts and innovation to the whims and miscalculations of the masses. Or in a worse case, to an entity like banks or Wall Street. No true-blooded entrepreneur would want their creation to be toppled by forces they cannot control. Anyone blessed with a strong entrepreneurial desire wants to be a decision maker. In a market-based business, that’s the primary decision maker—the market.
In the first decade of the 2000s, the U.S. housing market was in the shitter. It sat decimated, having been plundered by poor decisions from buyers, poor decisions from their lenders, bad advice from mortgage gurus and appraisers, and widely varied competence of real estate agents and their brokers. From the top of that chain, the Federal Reserve, down through banks and mortgage brokers to the front lines occupied by agents, closing a deal was a house of cards back then.
Around every turn there was a bank reneging on a commitment, an appraiser pulling a bizarre number for the valuation of a property, a buyer lying on an application or doing something stupid with their money before closing, or an uneducated, desperate, ethically-devoid agent blowing up the deal.
Imagine tying your ingenuity and entrepreneurial skills to that crop? Your business would be in deep shit. It doesn’t matter how great your real estate website or your FSBO (For Sale By Owner) tool is. Your success or failure is out of your hands. Don’t fool yourself—you’re not the boss in such an industry. I once told a real estate broker that the entire real estate business is a big restaurant. The kitchen is in the role of seller—they have a product that is either good or bad. The diner is buyer, looking at a menu and description, smelling the wafting gifts from the kitchen. The real estate agent is the waiter carrying crap back and forth and taking orders from the kitchen as well as the diner. And if either is displeased, forget about it. The broker is nothing more than the maitre ‘d, poking around and hoping everything is going okay, making sure the silverware is clean and there’s no one blocking the doorway. No one at the agent or broker level is in charge of a thing.
If you do decide to enter a market-based business and surrender your power to market conditions, then develop an alternative product line, like a great foreclosure advice seminar.
I won’t belabor the point. Just stay away from businesses dramatically affected by markets. While true that almost every business is somewhat touched by surrounding markets, some industries are overloaded with such risk. Bear in mind that a great built-in hedge to market weather is your participation in a Business of Blood. People will only most reluctantly turn away from their passions and vices. I dare say that in even a poor market, people will turn to their passions for comfort. They may skimp on soap and hairspray, buying only the brands on sale, and they may not qualify for a mortgage; but they will certainly head out to fish on Saturday morning to return to that peaceful place in their soul that gets challenged by the events of the work week. As a company owner, you need to be their solace. Be that gift for them.
What do video game developers and casino operators have in common? Both of them are fun, and they do superb in good markets.
And guess how they all do in bad markets? Very well.
The common thread between them? The Blood. They both tap into customers’ deep interests that are difficult to leave behind, even during a recession. That’s not to say these businesses as a whole don’t take a hit, but the declines (if any) are minimal compared to industry in general. Video games still moved $18.6 billion worth of product in 2009-10 (The Street, 1/14/11), which is a remarkable amount of money. True enough, that is a -6% drop from the prior year, but compare that to the computer software sector in general which saw a -13% drop, more than twice the damage. Why was Call of Duty selling more than accounting software? The answer has nothing to do with quality or societal importance. It’s all about the passion.
In Florida, one of the states hit most hard by the economic downturn in the late 2000s, saw its casinos jump up 10% in revenue in 2009 (Miami Herald, 3/2/11). With crippling unemployment and a skeletal housing market can this be true?
Sure. Casino games and gambling are a passion for many, a vice for some, and unfortunately an addiction for a few. Though we can debate the morality of the product, it’s an illustration that passions will outperform necessities every time. Vices, innocuous or harmful, will be chosen over perfume. I pick on the health and beauty industry a lot. Nothing personal.
In all the above cases, we’re talking about lifestyle-based businesses, heavily linked to the passions of their consumers. Think about your role as the owner of a Business of Blood—when things are good, you make your customers feel even better. When it all goes to shit, you’re the one place to which they can still turn for enjoyment. That’s a nice place to be in the world.
A few months ago I was at our vendor table at the Legends of the Ring convention in New Jersey. I was signing copies of my books and talking about the hundreds of DVDs we had displayed for sale. I’m more than happy to make some time and chat with you if you’ve made time for our shows. Grab your cell phone so we can take a picture together.
Truth be told, I was feeling a little shitty that day. The shoot market is in the process of resetting and while fans of insider, wresting programming will always exist, the means by which they get their content is changing. The wrestling aftermarket is also getting sketchy. People are getting so much of what they want at home via the myriad outlets the Internet is now offering. We have several online delivery methods as well, with our OnDemand purchases, KC Downloadz, and now our own streaming
subscription network called KC Vault.
That day at the convention I was looking around at vendors with small lines and in a near empty ballroom. Though our stuff can be purchased at home, many of those guys had wresters sitting at their tables that they’d brought out to sign autographs for fans. Many of those tables were merchandise dealers. Their business was suffering. There is a market dying before me, I thought.
While standing there longing for the good ol’ days, I was pulled out of that malaise by two fans who approached me, only about fifteen minutes apart. The first shook my hand and I prepared to hear how he loved The Ho-Bag or What a Dick segments of YouShoot. Instead, he looked me in the eyes and told me about being laid up after a serious surgery on his jaw. It was excruciating and he couldn’t really talk or eat for a month, and we’d helped him get through it with our shows. He said he watched a ton of our programming and it kept him going through the pain and the depression that was setting in.
Not long after that encounter, another guy came up and told me about a leg injury he’d sustained which laid him up for weeks. Our entire Timeline series was his sunshine during the cloudiest days of his life. I’ve had literally dozens of these encounters and still more on email. It’s always a life affirming moment for me when someone comes up to me in person. They look me in the eyes as they thank me and remind me that my work with KC is more than just entertainment.
Sometimes I forget. Sometimes I need to be reminded.
That stuff touches my soul and it goes beyond the discussion of market and The Blood, but it should serve as a lesson there as well—people with whom you share The Blood do not place your brand of product or service in the same neutral category as their brand of soap and hairspray. Okay, I said I wasn’t doing that anymore…as their socks and underwear.