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Articles filed in: Entrepreneurship
How Dollar Shave Club Succeeds With A Better Brand Story
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Storytelling
How does a startup come on to the scene, take on giant global brands like Gillette, and win?
That’s what Dollar Shave Club did, by harnessing the power of great brand storytelling. This is how they did it.
- By telling the truth, and keeping it simple.
- With an easy to remember brand name and tagline, which reinforces the brand’s value proposition.
- Presenting that clear value proposition right there on the home page.
- Educating the audience and clarifying why they are different from the competition.
- Appealing to the target demographic, with anti-status quo values, design, tone and copy.
- Giving customers plenty of calls to action. All roads on the site lead to customer conversion.
- By showing their audience that other people are excited by this product too. Using social proof; almost 5 million shares on YouTube, and thousands of tweets and Facebook likes.
- With a great affiliate program. Customer incentives are front and centre, (the photographer who took the photo above is earning free razors with an affiliate link on his Flickr!).
- By making their customers feel, enlightened and doing what the big brands were not prepared to do.
You no longer need to own the means of production, to secure a slice of the market. Big companies will try to work out how to avoid being ‘dollar shaved’.
But the truth is, that today, you don’t need $57 million to tell a better brand story.
Iage by Mitchell Bartlett.
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.
Valuing Creatives. When Love Is Not Enough
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
No business owner would expect to rent an office for half the going rate, or buy a delivery van for far less than it was worth. Not even a fledgling, bootstrapping, startup founding, entrepreneur. And yet every day designers, creatives and freelancers are asked to drop their rates, do a deal, or consider some special circumstance.
Talented geniuses who have the power to communicate everything about an idea to the world with visuals and words. Who make the abstract concrete. Who take their insight and experience and make ideas tangible, are regularly asked to take less, so someone else can be more.
Not just less money, but less respect for their art, and less acknowledgement of the value they deliver.
Can we quantify the value of Nike’s swoosh or Apple’s apple? The impact of “Think different” or “Just do it”?
I think we do a pretty poor job of commoditising creativity.
Creatives who take on projects at knock down rates to pay this month’s rent, can’t do their best work when they know it isn’t truly valued.
Great designers get ten enquiries a day prefaced with, “we love your work”.
Bargain basement rates are never a bargain in the long run, and sometimes love is not enough.
Image by Adam Toldfield.
Being The Most
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Storytelling
In the 80’s Starbucks set out to be the most inspiring coffee brand on the planet. When they forgot this in the 90’s and tried becoming the most ubiquitous, they lost their way.
If you could be ‘the most’ to people what ‘most’ would you be?
Most reliable.
Most irresistible.
Most ubiquitous.
Most loved.
Most —————.
You get to choose.
Image by Steve Rhodes.
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.
Signal Versus Noise. You Get To Choose.
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
I’ve always loved the name of the blog at 37Signals… Signal vs Noise. They chose well. They write well too.
Signal versus noise perfectly describes how we are living and working right now. We want to be connected, both as business entities and as human beings. But we’re sacrificing hearing the signals because of the noise. I’ve thought about this every time I sent a tweet or an email this week and asked myself, “Is this a signal or am I just adding to the noise?”
The ratio of signal to noise is more relevant to what you put out than it is to what you take in. You can spend your days online endlessly curating, filtering and re-purposing content, or you can create.
Are you endlessly curating, or endlessly creating? You can’t do both.
It’s easy to convince yourself that the time lost exploring links down virtual rabbit holes is your real work. It’s not.
If you have time and energy to find ideas worth sharing, then you’ve got time and energy to bring ideas of your own to life.
Your real work matters. Send signals. Don’t just make noise.
Image by Brent Danley.
If Only You Could Write Like Malcolm Gladwell
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
WANTED
“A professional writer talented in non-fiction storytelling with a passion for the topics of startups, social entrepreneurship, cutting-edge science and technology, and the psychology of the crowd, capable of crafting non-fiction pieces that are captivating and massively popular (think Freakonomics or The Tipping Point)
Location: Los Angeles or telecommute
To apply: provide your resume and relevant writing samples. Applications without writing samples will not be considered.
Responsibilities:
Work with a high-profile CEO of startups and foundations backed by some of the world’s most famous billionaires to draft blog posts and articles in his voice (i.e. all byines (typo not mine) will be that of the CEO).
Work with a small team of content researchers to identify topics and develop content.
Draft a series of blog posts based on the NY Times bestseller of the CEO.
Draft a series of original blog posts and articles based on interviews and research on subjects such as:
How to create audacious startups to change the world.
How to drive innovation through crowd-sourcing, open-sourcing, incentive competitions and DIY communities.
How billionaire entrepreneurs realized their audacious goals.
The position is a month-to-month contract (part time or full time), expected to last 8 to 14 months.
Required Skills:
Excellent writing and story-telling skills.
Demonstrated ability to create engaging non-fiction articles that entertain, intrigue, instruct and inspire by telling a good story with actionable lessons.
With a writing style/voice akin to non-fiction bestsellers such as Freakonomics and The Tipping Point.
Outstanding communication, interpersonal and interview skills.
An organized and creative researcher.
Able to work as part of a small 2-3 person team.
Content production, editing and publishing experience.
Familiar with online publishing platforms like WordPress.
Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
Able to meet all deadlines.
Enthusiasm and passion for our subject matters.
A plus: audio and video production experience.”
This is a real position. The job is open. Yours for the taking.
But…if you can do even a fraction of what is “required” here, please don’t apply. Go build your platform. Tell your own story. Write bylines you care about. Build a team. Be audacious. Innovate. Then show others how to do that, on your terms, for as long as you like.
The difference you want to make doesn’t happen when you’re working week to week for a paycheck.
Don’t live in anyone’s shadow, not even Malcolm’s.
Image by Chris Christner.
The Magic Of Making It Up As You Go Along
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
In Robin Sloan’s Fish: a tap essay, he asks what it means to love something on the Internet. Liking with a single click of the mouse is not the same as loving. To love something means to be moved enough to want more. It means to go back, retrace your steps, to linger.
Yesterday I found something worth coming back to. The best advice you’ll probably ever get about success, failure, fear and doing what you love.
Yes, it really is okay to stop holding your breath while you wait for success to arrive.
If you don’t know it’s impossible it’s easier to do.
If you make mistakes it means you’re out there doing something.
Let go and enjoy the ride.
Pretend to be someone who is wise and behave like they would.
Make glorious and fantastic mistakes.
Break rules.
Leave the world more interesting for your being here.
Make good art.
Image by Pilar Almenar.
How To Standout
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Care more.
Do what you say you’re going to do.
Stand in other people’s shoes.
Solve problems.
Fix what’s broken.
Change how people feel.
Create what you want to see in the world.
Don’t wait for an invitation.
Think beyond what’s possible.
Get over your fear.
Act.
Rinse and repeat.
Image by EIO.