Four Olympic U.S. swimmers, Ryan Lochte, Jack Conger, Jimmy
Feigen and Gunnar Bentz claimed they were robbed at gunpoint while in Brazil.
Questions about the robbery began to arise after this interview between NBC’s
Billy Bush and Ryan Lochte. His overly calm demeanor was questioned.
Brazilian authorities found the story to be “fishy” and
later requested the seizure of all 4 swimmers passports. Lochte had already
landed back in the U.S. when the request was made. Conger, Feigen and Bentz
were detained in Brazil. Now it has come out that all 4 members of the U.S.
swim team lied about the robbery. Below is the video footage from the gas
station.
I don’t need to point out the obvious; this is awful. There
is something to be learned from this. Crisis management is needed BEFORE a
crisis ensues. Athletes and artists need a crisis manager on their staff or on
retainer and need to meet with the crisis manager periodically. This is most
important before they leave the U.S. to embark on tours or games such as the
Olympics. There is a certain degree of entitlement that the U.S. tolerates that
other countries do not. Athletes and artists need to understand and RESPECT the
laws and customs that govern those countries and act accordingly. Calling in a
crisis manager to handle this case at this point is almost useless, all you are
trying to do is save face with your sponsors. It will do little to rehabilitate
the athlete.
Mark Cuban and Daymond John are two business experts who are
most famously known as “sharks” on the hit ABC series Shark Tank. They share a
similar background of being men who built their wealth from the ground up.
Photo courtesy of ABC
Mark Cuban is a self-made billionaire with an estimated
worth of $3.2 billion dollars. While
most people know him as the owner of the NBA team, the Dallas Mavericks or from
his appearances on Shark Tank, Cuban’s business portfolio dates back to when he
was a little boy. At the age of 12, Cuban was going door to door selling
garbage bags to save money to buy a pair of sneakers he wanted. His big break came in 1990 when he created
MicroSolutions, a computer consulting service that he later sold to CompuServe for $6 million dollars. His bigger break came in 1995 when he
and a friend wanted to listen to the Indiana Hoosier’s basketball games in
Texas. They created Broadcast.com in order to listen to the games in Texas.
Four years later Cuban and his friend sold the company to Yahoo for $5.6 billion dollars.
Photo courtesy of ABC
Daymond John is a self-made millionaire with an estimated worth
of $300 million dollars.John, like
Cuban, got his entrepreneurial start at a very young age. At the age of 6, John
was selling pencils at school, shoveling snow in the winter and raking leaves
in the fall. His first break came in 1992 when he launched a clothing line in
his mother’s living room. The clothing line was called FUBU, an acronym which
stands for “for us by us.”He sold the
items in and around his Queens, New York neighborhood, but he couldn’t keep up
with demand. His mother took out a second mortgage on her home to fund his dream. Everything changed in 1997 when LL Cool J, a rapper
from Queens, New York, wore a FUBU hat and slipped FUBU into the rhyme of a Gap
commercial he was featured in. Both LL Cool and John hail from Queens, New
York. LL wanted to look out for his fellow native New Yorker, much like others
had looked out for him. He wore the FUBU hat in the commercial and recited the
lines:
G-A-P gritty
Ready to go
For Us By Us on the low
“G” that’s for getting it
A for always
P that’s power
After the success of FUBU, John went on to see success as an
author, motivational speaker, a shark on Shark Tank as well as serve on
President Barack Obama’s My Brother’s
Keeper initiative.
Each expert is looking for something different from a
business plan. John is looking for a plan on how one intends to brand their
product or service. He said, “branding is the most important part of a successful business plan, even if the plan is
to do something that has already been done.” This is critical because there are
very few “brand new” ideas. There are many ideas that build upon or take
something away from a previous idea or creation, so you have to brand and
market yours to stand out from the rest. Cuban is looking at a few areas of the
business plan. He wants a business plan that will show if there is a need for
the product or service, is there a market for it and he wants to see a well
developed and produced business plan. This will let him know if the business is
something he wants to invest his money in. Cuban wants to ensure that his personal
investment and his personal brand are not going to be tainted by an idea or a
creator who did not have their business plan properly developed. Losing money
is not an issue for him, but he does care about his reputation in the business
world. When seeking money from an investor the decisions made by the creator of
the idea can impact everyone involved.
Daymond John’s viewpoint on branding is the viewpoint I need
to focus on for my plan. There are many crisis management firms in the United
States and in the world. I have to brand my company in a way that makes it
stand out from everyone else.
Expert Views on Business Plans. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://bpexpertviews.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2012-07-02T08:44:00-07:00&max-results=7
Forbes (n.d.). #527 Mark Cuban. Retrieved from http://www.forbes.com/profile/mark-cuban/
Lee, Ellen (2012, August 7). How FUBU founder Daymond John conquered urban fashion. Retrieved from http://www.cnbc.com/id/48535056
Mark Cuban Companies. (n.d.). Company website. www.markcubancompanies.com
