jayeff

The main reason I have respected your posts over the years is the same reason why I "get involved", as you put it. Which is that in the long run, narrow issues are largely irrelevant: the environment in which one does business is what matters most by far. You frequently seem to understand that.

When I opened my first business, it was in an industry - although you couldn't really call it that back then - where competition was dealt with mainly by bricks or worse through office windows. Fortunately it was the tail end of that era and I was backed by some of the most unpleasant people in London at the time, so apart from one attack on my home, I got through that easily enough.

Next we moved into a phase of buying work. I recall having to pay several thousand dollars to one aircraft company executive, simply to talk to him. Four years later I lost that contract to someone who paid him more. I won other contracts playing the same game.

I dealt with that crap because I had to in order to stay in business at all back then, but it was like a bunch of kids stealing each other's lunch money. You won one day and lost the next. I knew from day one, that until we started behaving like professionals and began to focus on the market instead of each other, no-one was going to make any really serious, long-term money. That business is now part of Deutsche Poste.