A good project needs a good promoter. I got into a fight with someone a while ago in which I said I would take skilled management over a good promoter any day. I still think I am right, but I am also starting to understand the other side. If you are a rational person, skilled management has to win, but if you are going to go out and make bets, your best first hire is a good quarterback who is probably not rational, but can project a vision and how to score the goal. Then you hire the guys who get stuff done.
In business there are principals, and then there are consultants. The two are wired very differently. A consultant thinks about the number of hours billed and does the math on what he earned and is very happy. A principal does not count the cards in the same way.
I always dreamed of being a consultant. The fact is, if you have something to say, people will pay for it, and it probably pays more on a risk-adjusted basis for most people than being a principal. You get up in the morning, you do your job, and you get a sum of cash. If you save 10% of that over your life, you are going to be quite well off, assuming you have an education and a brain to sell.
The key to being a good consultant is knowing not the truth, but what the client wants. Maybe another way to look at it is the truth is what the client wants. Most people want to hear themselves in a slightly different manner. If you are a consultant, every project is feasible and everything is couched in wiggle words.
I had a professor in grad school—heck, he was the only reason I stayed in the program—who hated wiggle words. You either knew something or you did not and you were never to couch the answer in “I think” or “should.”
If you are a principal, you do not think about personal money and project money. You might be driven by money, but you are more driven by the game and playing it, and damned be the person who gets in your way to the end goal. Australia is full of principal, as is Canada. Some are very, very good, and most 99.99% of them would be better off going out and finding a day job.
Principals have dreams and then they go do them, sometimes well and sometimes horribly. They sometimes win, but most of the time they lose. A good principal always is an optimist and is able to map the path from where he is today to where he needs to get. Just being an optimist does not work. You have to be able to clearly know the steps you need to take to get to your goal, and to have a clear plan on how to take those steps.
A promoter who is good is a principal who can also play quarterback. Not only can a promoter promote, they can get the vision across to lots of other people in a orderly manner. There are very few good promoters, and I am starting to understand that even in their projects that are junk, they stand a much better chance than the rest of us. Every project that is a success in this business is driven by a good promoter.
The best promoter knows when to sell out, and that is the key. It is, however, amazing how much further down the path that sale is vs. what a mere mortal would do. He will get every last penny off the table before selling out. A good promoter will make a so-so project fly, but even a good promoter can not produce gold out of straw. The best promoters find good projects and the combination is a wonder to watch.
