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One of the factors in success in the creative industry such as digital publishing is the hiring of the right type of people. You can massively improve the odds on you succeeding if you hire the right kind of people.
Certainly, you do not want to start off on the wrong foot and then attempt to grow a company where the staff consists of disruptive influences, Social Justice Warriors, or what I like to call ‘Woke’ political activists.
Instead, you want a company with like-minded, pro-active and positive collaborators, hopefully with a deep interest in the vertical, or interest-area covered. In the example business we use in this book the industries are emerging technology verticals.
Many publishing businesses make poor recruitment decisions. Hires that from my experience increase the potential for discourse, activism, conflict and unnecessary unionisation. Fairfax is an example of one such a business.
This can cause massive disruption, PR disasters and even be a business killer.
The fundamental issue stems from two main factors, (1) a broken business model for the publishing sector; and (2) high wage economies across the Anglosphere. Combined these significant factors create a degree of pessimism and a touch of paranoia, especially when the industry they are covering is rightly deemed financially poor, overly reliant upon the public purse, or in decline.
Moving-forward, to counter these problems I would suggest that online publishers move to a gig-based collaboration model, where you focus on talent, individual tasks and paying for contributions.
Many businesses already operating within the information economy would likely save more than the additional spend outlined in this book purely by moving to this model, especially if some of the tasks and contributions were from overseas.
Remember, with the digitalisation of the global economy, the entirety of the English-speaking world is at the business owners disposal.
Those permanent staff the business requires will have a strong digital-focused skill set, a track record of tangible achievements, along with great attitude and experience and/or network within the chosen sector. These factors are more important to success, however an understanding of the verticals is also absolutely key.
