Thoughts & Opinions

WHAT’S THE VALUE OF CONTACTS MADE & BUSINESS MEETINGS ATTENDED?

We’ve all had someone say to us that they know the CEO of xyz International company, have shaken their hands, have had a meeting with them. We’ve all got friends and associates that name drop; “I was at Bill Gate’s house for a function the other night”, “Oh I know Tom Smith who is friends with Bill Clinton, he should be able to help out..”. I could go on but you get the idea.

The value of these brief encounters, hand shakes, collection of business cards, today for both of us, is 0! A big, fat, round 0.

Having these experiences might be good for the ego, and make you look somewhat important, but unless you can phone these people up as a friend or worthy business associate and get cold hard cash from them, now, then their value, their name, their position is worthless to us.

I use to be in the hedge fund industry and I would get many people trying to sell their list of contacts, their rolodex’ for thousands of dollars. Some of these business cards would be from very important CEO’s and multi-millionaire investors. But to me they were worthless because these guys didn’t know me, I couldn’t just call them up and ask them for a few bucks. I would have to start from ground zero and try and introduce myself to these people, which would probably result in 0 sales.

I’ve got Richard Branson’s contact details, I’ve met Bernie Eccelstone, I know several politicians, I’ve been to Lachlan Murdoch’s house. But I’m not in a close enough relationship to them to warrant a phone call for a favour. So I don’t brag about these meetings because to you they are worthless. Unless we can guarantee their support.

AUSTRALIA STEALING TALENT BECAUSE THEY HAVE NONE OF THEIR OWN?

I was in Australia over Christmas, and although I could write a long story about their attitude I just want to mention a small something I noticed during my recent trip. This little something is actually quite a big deal. This big deal is the matter of Australia branding foreign talent their own when in technically it isn’t. What talent you ask? I mean actors, actresses, musical and sporting personalities.

When someone makes it big over seas and their last port of call was Australia, then all of a sudden they are branded great Aussie talent, and cheered on to make Australia proud. Although they may have started their careers in Australia, or used the country as a launching pad, technically they aren’t Australian. And it really pissed me off that the media kept proclaiming certain artistes were Australian. Below I have started a list of famous artists that made it big, are considered their fellow countrymen by the people down under, and which actually are not. I will be adding to this list over time. Please feel free to add yourself.

* Russell Crowe- New Zealand    * Men At Work- Scottish.    * AC/DC- All from England    * Rolf Harris- English    * Mel Gibson- New Yorker

* Crowded House- New Zealand

D GRADE CELEBRITIES?

So while I was surfing YouTube the other day I came across a clip from a TV show called I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. We don’t get this show where I live and I’ve never heard of it, but it seems quite popular with the lower classes and the not so intelligent in America and England. Basically it’s an eclectic group of “celebrities” stuck in the forest and they have to survive together and complete certain tasks such as eating bugs and pretending to be scared. The US version is based in a Puerto Rican forest and the English version are dropped into the Australian forest.

The thing is though, these so called celebrities aren’t really famous, or aren’t famous anymore and haven’t been for over 10 years. Most of them I didn’t even know. Watching these D-Grade celebs hamming it up for the camera was quite embarrassing and cringing in a David Brent (The Office) way. Are these has-beens that stupid to think that doing something like this will re-ignite their careers? It’s so obvious that they are down on the lowest rung of fame since they have time to appear on this tacky show and not concentrate their efforts on a proper career or shmoozing for more respectable work at Hollywood parties. Just the thought of knowing how, why and what they’re thinking just churns my stomach.

So do we categorize these people as D-Grade celebrities or worse? Keeping in mind that an A-Grade star woud be the likes of Robert DeNiro, Johnny Depp, Merryl Streep. These “celebs” are sports stars that never made it onto a cereal box, actors from TV sitcoms from the early 80’s, and people who think they are well known because their publicist has distributed some photos of themselves in worthless women’s magazines.