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Articles filed in: Strategy
We Don’t Have To
We arrived at the restaurant right on time, because we knew they needed the table by 7pm for the next booking. The waitress forgot to smile as we pushed open the door, where the sign still read ‘closed’. “We’ll be open in three minutes!” she barked.
Oh.
The smile never made an appearance.
But that’s not what they promised on their about page.
“Our name (the restaurant), loosely translates to happy, jolly or bright which is at the heart of our philosophy. We aim to deliver the best possible eating experience in a happy and bright atmosphere without compromising the integrity of our home style food.”
What actually happened was the reverse.
The place filled up. People obviously came for the food, and not the experience. My guess is that they left feeling full, but not satisfied.
People experience average, we’ve done the minimum required type service, all day, every day. Average businesses don’t do more, because they don’t have to, (not on a steady Saturday night anyway).
And the brands and businesses we can’t live without just keep blowing us away, by doing the things they don’t have to do.
Image by Sheridan Rose.
How To Charge What You’re Worth
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Worldview
The days when you clocked in and out, and got paid by the hour for dipping squares of caramel into big vats of icing, (pink or white—a job my mother did for years), at the factory, are largely gone. You don’t get paid for showing up. And yet that’s how many creative entrepreneurs try to charge for their art.
How is it possible for Johanna to charge Starbucks by the hour, for the joy drinking in the London store surrounded by her hand designed wallpaper? What about the time in took to get there? The years of practice, of putting her bum in a seat, the knowing exactly where to ink?
If you’re a coach, consultant, writer, designer, teacher, leader or muse how to you charge for the ability to change everything?
You do two things.
1. Acknowledge what you’re worth to yourself first
Really sit and think about this for a second. I work with a slew of creative geniuses (writers, coaches, designers, leaders and on and on), who have trouble acknowledging what their work is worth. Mostly to themselves. “It only took me half an hour”, or “That’s what everyone else charges”, they say.
You don’t work on the assembly line.
Your art is not billed by the hour, it’s billed by the impact it creates.
2. Frame your scarcity
Don’t be shy about telling the real story. Point out how your designs brought a brand to life. How your coaching helped someone to do the thing they’d always wanted to do. Tell people the story of how your work changed how people feel. Show them how you take people from where they are to where they want to be.
Find the right words. Set yourself apart.
Then hold your head high and double your prices.
Image by Fred Hasselman
Understanding The Problem To Solve
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Strategy
There are a million and one web hosting services on the market. It’s hardly a niche. The market is so saturated, why would you consider launching yet another one?
That’s exactly what my friend Kelly did. Her hosting business doesn’t stand out by competing on spec, or uptime. Kelly differentiates by understanding the problem to solve in a tiny niche, and going narrow and deep.
She realised that the biggest pain point for bloggers, was the helplessness they felt when things went wrong. When their site went down, there was nobody local available to answer the phone. Sure, they could get through to a faceless overseas call centre operative, but what they really wanted, was an unscripted conversation with a real human being on the end of the phone. And how many hosting businesses have a picture of the person who answers the phone on their about page?
Kelly’s business provides hosting, but what she actually sells is peace of mind.
She succeeds not by being cheaper, or more perfect. But by understanding the problem to solve perfectly.
The same opportunity is open to you.
Image by Carlos Bussenius.
Because It Matters
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
How do you stand out when there are two other juice bars on the same street, and half a dozen ‘good enough’ life coaches just three clicks away?
If you’ve got the same choices as the competition, how you choose can make all the difference.
Do you make decisions based on what’s gone before, or do you change everything?
Are you doing what you do because if feels safe, or because it matters?
Same amount of effort, big difference.
Image by Ed Yourdon.
What Does The Competition Do?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
I was consulting with two financial planners this week. We were discussing what made them different, when they told me this story about working with one of their clients.
Jonathan was offered $9 million for his house, which had amazing, never to be replaced views out over the river. He was in a quandary about what to do. Most advisers, (thinking about maximising the return of a portfolio) would have told him to make hay, sell immediately, take the equity and reinvest it.
Not Mark. He sat out on the balcony with Jonathan and chatted to him about his personal and life goals. They talked about why Jonathan had chosen to live there in the first place. Mark encouraged him to imagine what life would be like with the money in the bank, but no view. Jonathan decided to walk away from the $9 million, that could never replace the feeling he got every day by just living comfortably where he was.
No surprise then that Mark and his partner don’t need to advertise, and that 95% of their business is generated by word of mouth.
Work out how you are least like the competition, then tell that story.
Image by marksjonathan.
Why Are People Ignoring You?
It’s been a while since I bought a nice glossy magazine. I usually enjoy flicking through one at my favourite cafe. I’m not sure why I was so surprised to get 32 pages into the latest edition of Vogue and still be on the adverts. The entire magazine was 208 pages, 100 of those pages were adverts.
By the time I’d leafed through the articles, (it didn’t take long), I felt more than a little cheated. That was fifteen minutes of my life I would never get back. What I wanted was to be entertained, but as I closed the back cover I couldn’t help feeling that my attention had been stolen. Impact of those 100 pages and thousands of advertising dollars. Zero.
The world is full of people like me. Remote control wielding, advert skipping, PR immune consumers. The kind of people you want to engage with. People who choose to ignore what you’re selling every day, because they can.
So instead of trying to steal their attention, captivate them. Do the thing that the big guys didn’t realise was important.
Give them something to care about.
Image by Siddharth Khajuria.
Worldviews And The Story Of Bottled Water
filed in Marketing, Strategy, Worldview
Do you remember the first time you saw bottled water for sale? For me it was back in the late 80’s when I was on holiday in Greece, where the tap water wasn’t safe to drink.
And then in the 90’s suddenly there it was. A trickle that turned into a deluge, supported by a worldview that we need to drink two litres of water a day and that bottled water is “better for you”. The global consumption rate quadrupled between 1990 and 2005.
Today the bottled water market is valued at $60 billion, and apparently the need to drink two litres of water a day is a myth.
Bottled water was not created to satisfy a need for thirsty consumers. It is a product designed to fulfil a western worldview about health. A 21st century creation that supports the story you can tell yourself about making the right choices. Like a take away Starbucks coffee cup, bottled water has become a statement as much as a product, for people with a particular worldview.
Bottled water companies didn’t create the worldview, they tapped into the beliefs at the edges of a market and created a product that supported those beliefs. More on that in this video (it’s well worth watching).
You should pay attention to the beliefs of the people you serve. Marketing and brand storytelling is about reminding people what they wanted in the first place.
Image by Dave Hoefler.
How Can I Make Money From My Idea?
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Asking this question is a terrible place to start. I don’t know of many great ideas where the first question the creator asked was, “How can I make money from this idea?”
You’ve got to care about the idea and understand the problem you are setting out to solve first. Not in a naive , if I build it they will definitely come sense. But from a place of knowing that there is inherent value in what you plan to execute, for the audience that you want to serve.
If you start from the making money perspective you limit your ideas to what’s possible. You think in terms of the limitations and what the focus group wanted, and you kill what would have made your idea golden in the first place.
I recently heard Lina Ashar speak about how she founded the hugely successful Kangaroo Kids Education in India. She said if she’d listened to what the research told her the market wanted, she would never have gone ahead and launched her business.
Did Mary Quant, Banksy, Vidal Sassoon, James Dyson, Steve Jobs, Jessica Hische, Richard Branson, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kriegar begin by asking, “How can I make money from this idea”?
There’s nothing wrong with caring about the money. Just care more about your idea.
Image by Toban Black.
Attention Is Not The Problem
You’ve may have access to a hundred and one new channels that allow you to broadcast a message, but there are only a handful of ways to get attention for your idea.
1. Advertising
The old and expensive way to buy attention. You might be able to buy eyeballs, but you can’t guarantee you’re changing minds.
2. Sales
You can beg people for attention using a sales team, or social media. People become tired of dealing with interruptions they don’t want.
3. Public Relations
You could join the public relations lottery and keep waiting for the call from Oprah. It’s a long shot.
4. Earned
Alternatively you could just focus on solving people’s problems and creating something they value.
Build what you’re building for engagement not just attention. Beloved brands, favourite cafes and cherished products are always built to love. Attention in isolation is overrated and it’s not what makes ideas that matter.
Image by Methos04.
Are You Measuring What Matters?
The cafe owner thinks that what’s most important is getting customers seated and served quickly. Because she believes her customers simply value tidy lines and orders pushed through, she creates standards and KPIs. She measures things that enable her staff to tick boxes and make them look hunted.
The truth is people don’t visit her cafe in order to tell themselves a story about how they got fed quickly, for three times the cost of making a salad at home. When they want quick there’s always McDonalds.
Your metrics should be created around what’s most important to your customer. Is he looking for a shortcut, reassurance or love? Whatever it is you need to understand it and deliver it in spades.
Businesses and brands succeed when they deliver value based on customers wants, not the metrics of a well-oiled machine.
Image by Coffee Common.