Under the radar

By Fiona Boyd |

I had a valuable discussion with one of my executive coaching clients recently, who expressed concern that she didn’t have a huge public profile to assist her in the startup of the new business that she’s deeply engaged in. Her concern was tangible and I could tell it felt very real and a bit of an obstacle to this client – and it really got me thinking.

With the age of public relations and mass media and now social media there is an expectation that if we’re going to do something unreal or amazing, that we better have a darn good public profile to support that. But, forgive me for being agnostic, I don’t actually think a huge profile is automatically of high value, and if not thought through and implemented with great care, can actually be a liability in some cases.

Now there are a number of really talented folk I associate with who I would say are experts in their areas and have suitably strong profiles to match – @ideasculture Yvonne Adele springs to mind, @sammartino – Steve Sammartino the founder of Rentoid and gosh, even a canine @gustheboxer – Gus, owner of hooman, @scottkilmartin and mascot at Haul – the urban streetwear, design and may I say it, ‘dog collar’ and water bowl business.

Another that comes to mind with a strong business brand and great profile is @urbansmiler, Jo Woods who runs a really neat group training studio, especially for older folks like me, to get them back into the swing of a gym environment and a really taxing workout, but without all the fuss, noise and checking out the state of your pecs and glutes of your usual gym. (Urban Workout)

All these people (and canine) have great personal profiles that connect them directly to the business they’re involved in and in many ways their personal profiles and business identity are intertwined.

Now here’s the rub! It takes an enormous amount of time, energy, goodwill, motivation, outstanding communication and presentation skills and a really robust sense of self in order to establish a public profile that rocks – and you may not always have that time and energy and dedication at your disposal when you’re knee-deep in a startup.

The whole notion of just how much of a public profile as a business founder you need to have brings back to me one of the mottos David and I and our mentor, Shane Hewitt used to hold to in the early days of Arts Hub, when the business was still called Dramatic Online – that is, to fly ‘under the radar’. The phrase had particular relevance for me as before my entrepreneurial business life with David, commencing circa 1996 I’d been a broadcaster and broadcast manager and had seen up close and personal the kind of havoc that can be wreaked on an identity when their profile starts to soar too high.

Some businesses do better when they fly 'under the radar'.

My experience was that journalists, producers, broadcasters love a new story, and adore a new identity but there comes a time when someone with a big profile has outstayed their welcome and the knives come out. Having witnessed some rather horrible public profile knifings, and mainly having escaped such a thing myself despite being a Breakfast Radio broadcaster, I was determined to ‘fly under the radar’ in my post-broadcasting life.

I also have to admit that the rise and fall of a number of the dotcom super icons circa 2000/01 also really rattled me – David Gold and dstore, the Boo.com crew, Tribe are all cases of big profiles where the business ultimately crashed and burned, and the public profile burned with it.

So back to my client. This client’s business is interesting, solid and has a target market clearly defined. Given that the market is not everybody, then it does benefit this client to become ‘known’ in the target market group, however I fail to see the value of a profile beyond this group.

Which leads me back to the maxim – some businesses and business people do better when they ‘fly under the radar’.

Over lunch today David was recounting the obituary he read in The Age about a Singaporean gentleman who had only recently died and to everybody around him’s surprise, left an $8 billion fortune. Apparently he lived in the same house for thirty years, stayed married to the same woman with whom he had 8 children, had relatively humble offices, backed out of a leadership role at his property development business several years ago and next to nobody knew he had amassed such a fortune. Clearly he was both good at business and didn’t need a profile to achieve his goals. This really is the ultimate in ‘flying under the radar’.

On the other hand though, a profile does come in useful from time-to-time. I remember that David and I needed to deal with some issues at our bank just prior to selling Arts Hub and when we went in to see the business banker (we avoid talking to the banks as much as possible – these people have such an issue identifying who is providing the service to whom) she had a copy of an article written by Amanda Gome from BRW in front of her on the desk. And we got what we wanted! Clearly a bit of strategic publicity hadn’t hurt our cause.

And returning to Amanda Gome. Shortly after writing the piece on David and I for BRW Amanda jumped ship from Fairfax Group and started her very own online startup, Smart Company. Today Smart Company celebrates 3 years of existence with Amanda now at the helm of both Smart Company and the group that runs Crikey, Private Media. Well done Amanda, this is a fantastic achievement and I know that you know what this whole business of running a startup really is like!

So when it comes to having a big public profile I suspect it really depends on both what you as a business owner are really comfortable with, and also whether or not your business really needs it. As far as my client goes, I hope she now feels assured that it’s okay to be a little less noticeable and to ‘fly under the radar’ rather than into the thick of things if that’s best for her new business.

Photo: flickr leedsyorkshire

Fiona Boyd and David Eedle go into more detail about how they flew Arts Hub ‘under the radar’ in their book of entrepreneurial lessons learned during the Arts Hub journey – Niche Content Millionaire.

Niche Content Millionaire is a downloadable eBook that tells you the true story how we made millions from subscription content and membership websites.

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