Mottos and Important Lessons

Steve

A Hooker's Free Porn

It's rare that the matters involving billing companies appear on VNWR but this last week saw some board space devoted to those of us who were affected by the demise of Globill. It is worth talking about that debacle again because there are some valuable lessons for each of us to learn.

The demise of a billing company is never a pleasant experience because all those involved, from the lowliest affiliate right through to the CEO of major sponsors lose out. They inevitably lose money and time and some people never recover from the setback.

Others recover very quickly and after last week's debacle there were some sponsors that were back in business within 24 to 36 hours. Some recovered much more slowly and there are others that are still not back in business.

I don't know about you but mottos tend to make me want to puke but through last weekend as Marie and I worked at restoring our business there were two mottos that kept going through my head because they applied to the situation that we were facing.

'Be Prepared' is a well known motto worldwide. It was never written for any form of business but it should be engraved on the forehead of every businessman on the planet. Nothing on this planet remains the same, things always change, things always evolve and what works today may not work tomorrow.

Evolution in nature happens slowly, evolution in business can happen in seconds and you need to be ready for that evolutionary change. If you run a business never rely on another business to maintain your business records.

When Globill closed off much of their site many sponsors were left with no way of contacting their affiliates because they relied on the affiliate information that Globill held on their site. Other sponsors were in touch with their affiliates within a very short time frame because they took the trouble to maintain their own database of affiliates.

At a lower level, the demise of Globill left many affiliates with a lot of sponsor codes to change. I would like to say that I handled that in no time at all because I kept a database that linked every site I have ever built to the sponsors that were used on those sites.

I would like to be able to say it - but I can't. I am still receiving emails from affected sponsors asking me to change links and I have no idea what sites of mine promoted those sponsors.

Maintaining such databases may seem terribly tedious and an unnecessary waste of time but the events of the last week should show you how important it is to be prepared.

The unofficial motto of a unit I once served with was 'Improvise, Adapt and Overcome' and as an orphan unit on a large and closely knit base whose agenda was different to ours we had to do a lot improvising, adapting and overcoming. A case of beer often produced an otherwise unavailable vehicle from the motor pool and while that vehicle didn't always suit our needs we could often trade it off to someone else in exchange for one that did.

That motto kept popping into my head last weekend when we were searching for a quick but long-term fix for our billing problems. Thanks to a friend we found the solution that, with slight adaptation, fixed our problem and it only cost one beer, not a case.

Whether you are a sponsor or an affiliate there are always solutions to any problem, you just need to be flexible enough to see those solutions and adapt them to your situation. Sometimes that means thinking right outside the box and if that is the case then so be it.

You just need the courage and the determination to see your business succeed in the face of adversity.

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