A while ago Philip Welnman spoke at the Hive. (Australian Entrepreneurial forum) One thing he said struck me, and I think it’s true
“Without relationships we can’t win. We never lose business over price, it’s always the relationship, and price is the fall guy.”
Sure, there’s probably some exceptions, like commodity trading. But who wants to trade commodities anyway?
Steve – rentoid.com
An actual definition of brands here on startup blog would be both boring, and downright insulting to my readers… Instead something better; A bit of brand anthropology reverse engineering.
We use brands to tell our story, to make short cuts. To define ourselves.
That said we all have brands we use to define ourselves to others. Brands like the suburb we live in, where we were educated, the companies we have worked for, the job titles we have got, the past times we participate in, the beer we drink and the car we drive….
So then we must consider this; How would our people, our customers and our brand users feel if they had to define our brand as part of them?
Would they be happy to do so? To reference us as part of them?
If yes – we are in an awesome place.
If no – we have some work to do.
I recently had some beers and a meal at a place called Little Creatures dinning hall in Melbourne Australia.
For the uninitiated, Little Creatures is a craft beer which has it’s origins in Australia and has recently opened a flagship ‘dinning hall’ – seen below.
They’ve simply taken this to a new level. I’m not taking about the fact that they have weird and groovy beer flavours, all naturally brewed. I’m talking about the way they take you on a personal journey with their service.
My favourtie was the beer education programme. They have a ‘pony show’ – I don’t think it’s called that, but it is what I’ll call it for this post.
You get a taste in little groovy pony glasses of all their different beers, then choose one you like. One of their ‘Little Creatures Beer Experts’ comes and sits down on your table with you and they explain all the different types of beers. A real sit down for 10 minutes. A rare treat when the usual sitiation is waiting 10 minutes for crappy service in bars and restuarants. They teach you how to taste each beer and the slight nuances of each. They even provide an idea what type of people generally like the different types.
It’s really nice and fun. I even heard the word “sessionable” to describe a beer – They invent some nice jargon to make you feel part of a tribe. Cool.
No need to advertise this little venture. We’ll do that for them….
And this is what cool startups are doing in retail.
This is nothing new – but when was the last time you checked out Springwise?
Springwise is a daily blog featuring new, cool and groovy business ideas, concepts, brands, products and organizations from around the world. Springwise is for everyone, everyday. Even if you don’t need an idea, or you are merrily changing the world already with your startup, it’s a great way to do the following:
Keep up with the world
Be inspired
Find potential collaborators
Cross fertilize thinking and transfer ideas into what you’re doing
In today’s world ideas really are free, but as a startup a more important question is how we take advantage of them.
While thinking about web front page design, yesterday Cyber Guru Ross Hill had this to say:
“To find a needle in a haystack, one doesn’t have to burn the haystack, just make sure the needle lies on top of it.
If our people can’t find it. Then quite simply it isn’t there. It doesn’t exist, and they may not return. After all that hard work to get them here, that’d be a real shame.
This is why our homepage designs must rock
You need more industry experience
You need to have experience managing a team
It’s out of my control
We care, we’re listening
We have a sustainable perspective
Our interests are aligned
People are our most important asset
Open plan is for open communication
We have a long term strategy
We serve our shareholders first
We put our customers first
We put our employees first
We have a lot of first places… ?
We make stuff up so we can justify the money we extract from something we don’t own.
Make your startup the antithesis of this – mean what you say.
My problem is…. I’m a really nice guy. Really, I’m reasonably nice, just ask anyone who knows me….
Actually it’s more I’m not as smart as I’d like to think I am. You see, often I don’t do people any favours by trying at all costs to be, Mr Nice Guy. Even if it’s at the expense of helping them grow. The interesting thing is that I usually get what I give, and that is, people are generally very nice to me. Even if what I need on occassions, is some home truths to help me grow.
What I really need is tough love.
Turns out my team also need some tough love too.
Tough Love – Startup blog definition:
Having a team let each other know ‘in no uncertain terms’ when members are goofing off, at the expense of agreed upon and shared objectives.
It doesn’t mean we turn into nightmare colleagues or the boss we always hated.
It means that we have a culture where we don’t want to let each other down, but we pull each other up in tough times and provide mutual motivation. We give each other guidance when we need it.
Photo by Chuck Rogers
Words by Steve – rentoid.com