Monthly Archives: February 2021

Why are some businesses loved and adored by fans, employees and investors, while other companies are hated and viewed as evil? It’s a complex and multi-faceted question, and in this essay we will look at some of the factors, including the mission of the company, how the company presents itself, how it treats its employees and customers, and it’s history. Let’s get into it!

The Mission

The mission of the company sets the tone for everything else that follows. If the mission is to make as much money as possible, and to extract as much value from its customers and employees as possible, then all other decisions will flow from that, and the company will be viewed as evil. If the mission is to enrich the lives of its customers and employees, and enrich society, then the company will be viewed as good.

When the mission is to enrich the lives of its customers and employees, and enrich society, then the company will be viewed as good.

For example, both Apple and Tesla are loved by their customers, and in general, society. Why is this? It’s because of the mission of the companies. Apple’s mission is to “bring the best personal computing experience to students, educators, creative professionals and consumers around the world through its innovative hardware, software and Internet offerings.” Their products are crafted with care and they include an important and real amount of time and effort toward fixing the environment and improving it for future generations. This goes a long way towards winning love.

On the other hand, there are companies that have a despicable mission, despite what they say. For example, Walmart’s mission is to “save people money so they can live better”. In truth, their mission is extremely negative and selfish, they just want to pay their employees as little as possible and make as much money for themselves as possible, so that they can live better (not anyone else).

So the mission is not just what the company says, it’s what it does. This has a huge impact on how the company is perceived.

Brand image

Some companies have a wonderful heart, support their workers and treat them fairly, but are just terrible at marketing themselves! So, the customer is missing out on learning how good they really are. I think we need to support these good companies!

A great example of a company that does marketing so well it’s marketing itself is Apple. Apple is generally liked, and the reason is that Apple is “cool”. Apple has created a great brand image that is associated with high quality, innovation and style. Their keynote speeches are the perfect example of a company presenting it’s image extremely well. Many companies simply have someone from their office voicing their radio ads, TV ads and videos on their website, and they stand a lot to gain from a corporate voice over.

That said, if you have a bad and greedy mission, no amount of branding and marketing will save you: despite what Walmart says, we all know they are horrible. Google’s motto of “Don’t be evil” isn’t fooling anyone.

Company History

How the company has acted in the past is a great measure of whether they are good people or not, and how they will act in the future. If the company has a history of mistreating their employees, or of being dishonest, or of hurting the environment, then it’s very hard for them to change in the future, and people will continue to hate them. These companies have a lot of work to do before they can be loved.

On the other hand, if the company has a real history of improving the world, and supporting it’s employees and customers, then it is more likely to continue to do so. If you look at mom-and-pop small businesses, they know this to be true, and they have been doing right by their customers and employees (often their own family members!) for many years, sometimes even generations.

So, to know whether a company will be loved in the future, it’s best to look into its past.

Conclusion

So, the takeaway is: if you are a small business, or large company, the key to being loved by the public, by employees and by investors is simple: be good. Have a good mission. Be good to your customers, be good to your employees, be good to the environment, and be good to your investors. And importantly, simply share that fact with everyone so that they know you’re good, and you will get all the recognition that you deserve. If you keep doing this, consistently, day in, day out, over the years, you will build up a solid history of being good, and you will become a loved business, not an evil company. Simple as that!

Currently a member of the working class has three distinct stages of life.

• Youth, which prepares you for the world including learning, growth, puberty, self-discovery and sexuality.
• Adulthood, in which your best years are spent living life and doing hard work, giving back to others in society including your own family, and citizens of this global village.
• Retirement, where your obligations to others taper off, the world asks no more of you, and it instead leans up to support and help you enjoy your time on earth.

Recently, powerful business interests and capitalists have invested millions of dollars into research around longevity: that is, extending the human lifespan and extending the time that we remain healthy in old age, also known as “healthspan”.

Trust

Personally, my first reaction to longevity research was similar to that of other harmless (albeit expensive) but occasionally helpful activities, such as meditation, yoga, acupuncture, neti pots, self help books, pre-biotics, and so on. Throughout human history (and no doubt, before), people have been promising, selling and convincing each other some variation of the fountain of youth, and yet despite a total lack of long-lived examples, the public continues to be deceived by every new snake oil that comes along.

Many pharmacies, local chemists and other small businesses have sold harmless vitamins and supplements for decades, even selling steroids that claim that they “may” increase well-being, but to take the outright step of directly claiming to prevent or reverse aging, it just another level of audacity.

So far, with such a long line of hucksters, fraudsters, scammers and con artists, I feel more than justified in claiming that the level of scrutiny that should be applied to longevity should be much, much higher than the burden of proof leveled at normal pharmaceutical drugs to treat actual diseases. A very analogous history exists with “perpetual motion machines”; a long line of believable characters promise to sell unlimited power and energy, are shown to be false or misleading, and as a result, the bar for such claims was raised in the future. To this day in the United States, you can apply for a patent for any invention whatsoever without providing a working prototype, with the singular exception of a perpetual motion machine. The bar must be higher for products and promises that have a higher potential to attract fraudsters. Better to not trust these claims.

There’s one more aspect to trust and longevity, along another train of thought. Older age is often used as a proxy for trustworthiness and stability. It’s understood (most of the time, making a bit of a generalization) that wild young teenagers are sometimes unpredictable and going through an emotionally turbulent time. On the other hand, a slow and steady old grandparent, with decades of experience behind them, simply exudes trust and stability. You can see this in life insurance advertisements and other areas in need of high trust, producers tend to opt for a male voice actor to give a sense of confidence and trust to the listener.

Motivation

There are already many billions of people on this planet, and capitalists of course want more and more to be born, new people to sell luxury goods to, more people means more competition over jobs, which means lower wages and more profit for big business. I cannot help but think that part of the motivation of the global elite investing significant sums of money into longevity research is to cement their high position in the hierarchy of the world.

Let us assume this, in addition to the most obvious motivation for such capitalists: money. All human beings want to live, it is the highest and most urgent motivation that can be presented. Sex sells. Attractiveness sells. Bottled confidence sells. These are all well and truly tested in the market. Humans need a few basic needs met. However, one need more than any other is universally strong and desired: the desire to live. It just so happens that to date, there has been no product to deliver more life. As such, the market for such a product is universal, and the price to be paid is essentially limitless. Once you’re immortal, you can offer to mortgage a century of your labor to pay for it.

The point is, whoever discovers (or more accurately, whoever gets to sell) the elixir of life will become fabulously wealthy, naming any price in money, land, rights and power that they name. What could be more motivating to a group of powerful elites?

Consequences

Fast forward to the point that anti-aging is widespread and available (via strong regulation, or by force) to the working class. Everyone is young again, strong again, and has boundless energy again. Suddenly many jobs that were once the domain of only young people are now back on the table, available for old and young alike to perform. What then? If your time to rest and enjoy life, your retirement years, are pushed off into the distant horizon of the future, what will become of the working class? If there’s no more need to save up for retirement, we may very well find ourselves forever enslaved to the wage, living our life in endless labor or drudgery. I can think of no worse scenario for underprivileged and powerless working class people.

Solution

Let us tread carefully and slowly, strongly considering the ethical and moral impacts on the people of earth, before we release the immortal genie from its bottle. Once it’s out, there’s no telling when we can put it back in. Let worldwide thought leaders and think tanks, advocates of the people, decide who and when may undertake longevity research, and with what conditions on its sale and use. One thing is for certain: the world will never be the same again, if left in the hands of reckless capitalists.

In this life, we have a responsibility and an obligation to help our fellow human beings. Whether that’s donating some of our inter-generational wealth, paying our taxes proudly, or even sparing a few coins for the homeless busker’s empty hat. This is the first thought we have when it comes to being charitable: the literal charity of giving money to those less fortunate than yourself. However, there is one further, often overlooked way of giving: giving your time, and devoting a portion of your skill and ability (however humble), to those in need.

I often feel annoyed when I see a middle class pensioner helping out at a soup kitchen, putting in hard and often freezing hours to help those homeless and unfortunate people who don’t have any food, while at the same time, young people in their prime (who could really handle a late night in the cold without a further thought), strut on by, in their tailored suits, out on the town for post-work drinks late at night, celebrating the signing of some huge deal or contract. Then I realized, it is the same annoyance I have at those who do not donate even a tiny bit of their huge wealth.

Now, it’s fair to say that people who are busy with their work may not have time to share with others, as their job is demanding, but if they are earning a lot, then there really is no excuse, they should be donating some of those funds.

In my freshman year, I always looked upon the big consulting firms (McKinsey & Company, Bain & Company, Deloitte, etc) with a sort of distrust, and a sneer. And if I’m honest, a bit of jealousy. I always felt that it was a highly competitive race, run by highly competitive over-achievers who are out to get the high paying job and obsess about their work hours. It just seems heartless and not connected to helping their fellow human beings, down here on the bedrock with the trees and the animals.

However, my eyes were opened when I met a few consulting types, they were genuinely cool and down to earth people (though I know not all of them are). What surprised me the most was that they often “donated” part of their time towards helping charities, or community organisations. So this made me realize that it’s possible to work 80 hours a week and fit the stereotype perfect, but also to have a heart.

Here are a few examples of pro-bono consulting that an Accountant, a Senior Analyst and a Solicitor shared with me:

• Every year, a group of auditors (along with my accountant friend) offer their services to help a small accountancy firm in a developing nation (e.g. the Philippines, Tanzania, etc) that does not have access to the same technology budget as us. They offer them a week of pro-bono consultancy to help them with their company accounts and financial systems.
• A senior analyst and data scientist at a Big Four firm is also the president of a non-profit that helps underprivileged students get into the best universities in the country (e.g. Harvard, MIT), by helping them with their applications, etc./ Even though their main skill (data science) is not at all related to the way they’re helping the students, it provides so much value. Simply by sharing their life experience, guiding those students down a path that is both familiar to them as a consultant and completely inaccessible to those without a privileged background, that they’re able to completely change the lives of many more people than just themselves
• A Melbourne-based solicitor who I met some time ago (travelling for work, of course) does pro-bono work for a not-for-profit organisation that helps refugees and asylum seekers to resettle in Australia. I was equally shocked to hear that this solicitor not only eschewed business class flights, but personally forked out their own money to purchase a carbon offset for double their flight’s carbon emissions. Not everyone is able to afford this choice, but if a consultant is earning enough and they decide to put the money to the betterment of the environment, then I say; all power to them. 

I really do admire those people who put their heart and soul into helping others. It is a noble cause that I would like to become a part of someday, but unfortunately I formed my pessimistic (and wildly inaccurate views) of the consulting world early in my university choices, so I fear that I have started down a path of higher education that does not align well with landing a high-paying consulting gig. Now that I have learned a bit more about the world, I wish I had taken more of certain subjects, and less of others. So if you (like I did) held the view that all this consulting stuff was for die hard capitalists, well, I suggest that you turn that view around. I thought to myself, why not stay the course of my university degree, and concurrently, skill up and enroll in a data science course and put those skills to use, giving back to the community at the same time.

I am already on the lookout for possible pro-bono consulting opportunities (junior data science only), not only to add to my resume and CV (which I am furiously trying to catch up on polishing, in preparation for consulting interviews after I graduate) but to add to the list of good deeds that I carry in my heart.