Changing my mind - it can happen!

This is my penultimate post on this blog, for reasons which will be outlined in my next and final post.

At a recent presentation I was forced into thinking about certain aspects of my course and my thought process; I was also led to confess that certain views I had when I started have now fundamentally changed.

There are 2 key aspects on which I have about - turned:

Firstly, Shareholder / partner agreements: whilst I always saw some value in putting together an agreement, perhaps in the form of a 'memorandum of understanding', I have been truly shocked in the course of research by the number of viable businesses which fail simply because the owners cannot get on or agree with each other. What starts out as a small disagreement escalates out of proportion and culminates in a divorce like - and commercially suicidal stand-off, along the lines of 'if I can't have it you can't have it'. Neither party will look back with pride at this process.

So I will say with far more conviction than before:

1. Sit down and thrash out all of the details of your business arrangements.
2. Commit them to a properly draw-up agreement.
3. Get it legally ratified.

On a somewhat lighter note, I'd like to comment on business forums - I'm talking here of the 'chat' style forums rather than professional networking sites such as LinkedIn.

By way of research I hung around several of these forums, showing far more interest in the questions being asked than in the answers provided (at this level I will admit that I derived some real value).

The answers I saw were sometimes a bit disturbing, but like most of us I took the view that everyone has the right to their opinion. 

There is a simple test of quality in media, which says read an article on something you understand - the quality of knowledge and content on that topic will be indicative of the remainder of that of that medium. On this basis, I adopted an alter ego and threw in questions on the topic in which I have many, many years experience - business finance. The results were truly alarming, which disinformation and unfounded opinion forming about 95% of the response rate - basically the good information was buried amongst so much nonsense as to be virtually invisible.

Another interesting point is that some of these forums listed literally thousands of members, yet the vast majority of daily input came from a handful of posters who were either very bored or simply loved the sound of their own voices.

So, if asked for a view on business forums - It would be simple - 'Don't waste your time' - you'll get better advice from the dodgy bloke in the pub!