While people are bathing in Lahore, Pakistan,
my feet are bored and footsie with each other while I am watching a football game on TV. I have to admit I don’t remember which one.
Archive for June, 2006
Biestmilch was naked in those days
When we decided to perform a pilot study with biestmilch in endurance performance we literally held nothing in hand except a strong belief in the substance, a vision and a lot of ideas. The sources referring to scientific fact fabrication were extremely poor. Our own archives were still scarcely filled with data.
Of course, we were happy that there was somebody like Jens who believed in our cause, and was ready to join in.
Very soon we were aware of the fact that we wouldn’t be able to find allies in the so-called establishment. The scientific community is as profit-oriented and on average as cowardly as everybody else in this society. On top of this, we were not so lucky to own enough money allowing us to buy allies.
Nevertheless, we went ahead with Jens and excecuted this doubleblind placebo-controlled study. At that time Jens still studied sports sciences and was active as a coach in triathlon. He had a bunch of runners, triathletes and bikers at his disposal. 53 persons were enrolled into the study. The study was performed properly with the appropriate diagnostic measures.
Today, I don’t want to introduce results to you, because they have never been of any importance for the product. Despite of the fact that these results were outstanding they were not accepted by anybody. Without backing from authorities or a well-known scientific institute forget about getting accepted.
We put the study into a drawer in our office, incidentally, the results are listed in our brochure for athletes. That’s all. It was an investment that gave us sureness but had no marekting and sales effect at all.
Today biestmilch is not naked anymore, but not because of this damned placeo-controlled doubleblind study, the study design which stands for proper science on the one hand, and on the other hand has long already reached its limits when it comes to the point to proove the effects of complex substances in complex situations with a lot of variables.
Biestmilch is very sporty
I just came back from running. It was a wonderful run, beautiful weather not to hot. My legs were heavy, my by brain tired, and accordingly, my thoughts were floating around blogging. 
I thought I might tell you little bit about biestmilch and its jolty hampered sports career.
We started introducing biestmilch with a lot of enthusiasm into the marathon scene in 2001. Soon our optimism had to give way to reality. Our small business with its fine but brand new, bizarr product got lost among thousands of runners who at the end did not care too much about their health, and not at all about us. We did not want to give in too fast. We thought things just take time, that we need to be patient. But a small business like we are can only be patient up to a certain extent.
During these months of doubts how to continue it happened that a guy from Berlin contacted me. He was a triathlete – I didn’t know this at this moment of time – taking care of kids who were extremely difficult to educate. Jens planned an adventure tour with them to strengthen their social responsibility. He was searching for sponsors to support his plans.
Biestmilch was the only company to support his cause. I worked in psychiatry and I worked on an acute crisis intervention program in Vienna in the 80ies, so I am prone to underdogs. I did not hesitate to give what we could afford to these kids.
A few weeks later Jens called me to thank us, and, he told me that he believes in biestmilch and might be able to perform a placebo-controlled doubleblind study for a reasonable price.
In August 2001 we started this trial. The results were so outstanding that we had to hide them. This is what I knew right from the beginning that nobody would be ready to to believe this data.
Never start something like this even with best intention and high professionality you will not succeed. This is part one of the story which in somehow indicates already why we entered with triathlon a few months later, in summer 2002.
I shall come back to you on this, perhaps tomorrow. Stay with us it is not a boring story yet to come.
Our most valuable cooperation partners
Today, I would like to recommend a link to you that presents to you the beloved creatures our business is completely depending on http://www.mootube.com/
Angela Merkel im Video-Podcast
Die deutsche Kanzlerin Angela Merkel hält die Nation ab sofort wöchentlich mit
Video-Botschaften auf dem Laufenden. Ich habe diese Neuigkeit gerade bei www.rocketboom.com erfahren.
Was halten Sie von der Kanzlerin? Kennen Sie sonst noch eine/n Politikerin, die/der so up-to-date ist? Congratulation!
“They say think about it. I say try it.”
Biestmilch & Team agree 100% with this quote of Tom Peters http://www.tompeters.com/
«Over thinking is epidemic in our world. Go with your gut. Get your hands dirty. Make a mistake or two. Be true and authentic. It applies to individuals and to organizations of any kind. Say it over and over again, until you believe it.
Be a do-er. The world will be a better place.»
Whether the world will become a better place, I have my doubts. Things change by doing, whether to the better is not ours to judge.
Nevertheless, what we are currently doing is following our guts feeling and revising our marketing concept. To the better, nobody knows. You out there will tell us one day, hopefully.
Christmas 2001 Biestmilch collapsed back upon itself
From 2000 till the end of 2001 we slowly climbed the ladder to a fairly stable turnover. There was no reason for enthusiasm, but we knew by now what it means to introduce a completely unknown substance to virgin market. Words I had previously used in my business and marketing plans had turned from a theoretical issue to a painful experience made out of blood and flesh.
Nevertheless, our team was confident that with consolidating our experience sooner or later we were going to make it.
And then BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) came upon us like a natural disaster. We felt helpless and exposed to events beyond our control. For weeks nobody bought a package of biestmilch, we recieved no phone calls except of those few people who at least wanted to get some concrete information on biestmilch and its relation to BSE.
During the coming months we did a lot of searches on this issue to bluntly realize that scientific data was scarce, that reliable information was hard to find, that research laboratories – first of all in the UK where the BSE problem was already prominent for years – experimenting on the topic of BSE had been closed, or funds had been cut down to the impossible. Only with the spread of BSE in Europe a reallocation of money finally took place. Of course, much too late because to recieve substantial data on BSE can take decades.
We were obliged to rely on a publication of WHO which stated that milk and its spin-offs are harmless. This announcement was based on the current state-of-the-art science results. It is still valid.
What we did was to circulate our search and the WHO statement to our customers, and most important be patient and talk to as many people as possible on a personal level. After 6 quiet and scaring months business started to gather way again.