Mar
24
How To Be A Titan Of Industry
Today, I did four interviews. This is a good thing since giving interviews is my favoritest thing in the world.
One of the things I’ve noticed about interviews is that they all eventually come around to the same two questions.
1. How did IttyBiz get so big so fast?
2. What’s your advice to newbies?
The answer to both questions is the same, so I’ll lump them in together, because I’m lazy like that. But first, a story. Get a coffee because it’s a little complicated. Either that or I’m a little drunk. Whatever. Get the coffee anyway.
Imagine an industry. You can pick any industry, but we’ll go with furniture making. For years and years and years, the furniture industry is essentially stagnant. New players enter the market and older players leave. Some businesses get bigger, others fold. There is balance.
For the purposes of this little story, we’ll say there are 100 players in the game. We’ll assume they, like any other stagnant industry, operate on a bell curve. A few radical players at each end of all the spectrums, and a shitload in the middle.
Then something happens that changes the way the furniture making business works. We’ll say it’s the green movement. All of a sudden, the market is demanding green products. People are going apeshit for Mother Earth.
What happens to the players?
All the dudes in the middle flock to the eco end of the spectrum. Instead of a bell curve, you have 99 newly minted vegans and one neanderthal who clubs his breakfast to death.
This is not ideal, but it’s probably not going to bankrupt anyone.
But what happens next?
Seeing their success, a bunch of other dudes think, “Hey, I heard there’s money in green furniture” and they hang up their shingles as the makers of bamboo coffee tables. Instead of 100 players across the eco-spectrum, you’ve got 1000 players all at one end. The market is flooded, but that’s cool for a while, because bamboo coffee tables are all the rage.
But what happens next?
The customer cannot differentiate between Tree Huggin’ Harry and Granola Munchin’ Mike. They are confused, and so they do nothing. They make do with the coffee table they already have. Harry and Mike are living in their Prius.
Now imagine you had one guy who said, “Fuck the environment. I’m killing elephants with nothing but my bare hands and a tractor wheel and then I’m gonna make lamps from their trunks. BOO-yah.”
What happens to that guy?
He gets really fucking rich.
Because now, while you have 1000 people competing for 90% market share (the newly eco chic), you have 1 guy with the other 10% (Sarah Palin) all to himself.
Thank you, Naomi. What’s the point?
Make a very consistent branding statement. Consistent to the point where it makes you a teensy bit sick. And make that branding statement the polar opposite of what is favored by everybody else.
Thanks Naomi, you just gave me one of those “aha!” moments. Keep kicking ass.
“Fuck the environment. I’m killing elephants with nothing but my bare hands and a tractor wheel and then I’m gonna make lamps from their trunks. BOO-yah.”
Love it! Though not in the literal sense.
Now to apply the logic to my business:
“Fuck English I’m writing everything in Welsh”
…think I need to work on it a lot more.
I’m trying my best to be an elephant killer, but it’s hard. I can feel myself wanting to go back to the pack and make bamboo tables again. I think it comes down to knowing my unique selling position and pimping it out so it stands out.
I sell work happiness, but I need to dig a little further. How can I stand out by staying true to my core values? The only way I can flush out the best way to makes sales is to try new ideas and tweak old ideas until I strike a chord that really works well for my buyers. Just like a musician would use a tuning fork – finding that perfect pitch.
How cool is it that I’ve been paying enough attention to Naomi these last several months that half way through this story I KNEW that the elephant killer was going to be a winner. I must be starting to really “get it”.
Now to apply it to my business. Karl is right – it is hard. I have always been a safety-in-numbers kind of gal. But I’m getting there.
Excellent post — thank you!
Hmmm, I like this. I am going to think about how I will do this more consistently.
There is no better word than Boo-ya. Just sayin’.
@ Marc — I’m telling you, dude. Fuck English. Jamie says you should do greeting cards and wedding invitations and shit in Welsh. Advertise on those “get in touch with my celtic roots” websites. He’s outside the box, that one.
@ Karl — Don’t stress too hard about it. You’re destined for awesomeness.
@ Avonelle — New IttyBiz tagline. The Elephant Killer Always Wins.
@ James — It makes it, doesn’t it? The post? Meh. Boo-ya? All killer, no filler.
Okay, that’s cool. But how about this?
We all quit trying to strategically be something we’re not, and focus on really being ourselves whatever that may be?
If everybody is just themselves and we are true to that in our businesses, then we’ll all have unique businesses . . . automatically!
I bet the elephant-thumping guy didn’t worry about what everybody else is doing or thinking or what they’ll do or think about him.
Go thump elephants if that’s your thing, but don’t do it because you don’t think anybody else is (or will).
Just the idea of a guy killing elephants with his bare hands had me in stitches. Love the advice and the attitude.
Hey Terry…
I agree with you on “quit trying to strategically be something we’re not” but I do not totally agree on “focus on really being ourselves whatever that may be”. Because “being ourselves” is too big.
The Elephant Thumper is not ONLY an elephant thumper. He’s also a little league baseball coach and a CSI fan (Vegas and Miami, not so much NY) and he loves pickles more than most — but not all — of the people in Arizona. Those are all “true”. They’re just not particularly interesting. Elephant Thumping is interesting. (Despicable, yes, but interesting.)
If he was himself, he would have no brand because he is boring. How do we know he’s boring? Because everybody is boring. It’s like fiction writing. You don’t write everything about a character, a setting, a dialog… you just write the interesting bits.
So it is with branding. It’s about choosing the parts of yourself you display.
“It’s about choosing the parts of yourself you display.”
Very good point, but I couldn’t help but think of you squatting next to your laptop and a carseat in the kitchen, pissing into a jug as I read this.
I mean I wasn’t picturing it, I just couldn’t help but think of the story, not…
I’ll get my coat
See, now I’m totally fucked because my most recent post was all about how I’d been showing only one part of myself (hopefully the interesting part) and that now I was going to just start being me in all of my facets. I have done exactly the opposite of what I was supposed to do. Am I fired?
Hi Naomi,
I get what you’re saying about the elephant guy. And it’s true that there is a fellow who is going to be getting the 10% that no one is going after.
However, not every business can be (or has the desire to be) an elephant slayer. Nor do they want to serve the dead-elephant-slaying audience.
The other 90% of buyers are still a valid target audience.
So, I guess I have some questions:
1) How does a business appeal to a subsection within the larger percentage of buyers?
2) I don’t really understand your example answers the question “How did Ittybiz grow so quickly?” I’ve read your past blog entries about how you got started with the Problogger contest and the one introducing Online Business School. So is IttyBiz’s success because you offer marketing to one-person businesses and everyone else left them out? Or is because you have the red website with the lady in the camo skirt and the bald head and potty mouth? Or all of the above?
3) When you say “have a very consistent branding statement…that is the polar opposite of everyone else,” can you elaborate on what this means? I get it on the surface, but I am not understanding how every business can be the polar opposite of everyone else.
Let’s take hotels for example… most of them are variations on the same theme. And sure, there can be a few that have wildly different themes. But don’t most buyers of hotel services basically want a nice place to stay the night? Aren’t most hotels constrained simply by the desires of most buyers?
Thanks, Wendy
@ Wendy — Good questions. I’ll answer as best as I can in my 10 pm should-probably-be-in-bed-by-now haze.
1.) You can appeal to the smaller subset of a larger percentage by bringing more than one thing to the table. What you offer and how you offer it is the most common way this is done. Maybe everybody wants eco furniture, but you do eco beds. Maybe everybody does eco beds, but you do them with recycled car tires. True, these are not the most insightful examples, but they’re an idea.
2. The IttyBiz situation was an example of the answers in number one. I think there are a SHITLOAD of people who could succeed in my industry. Marketing for teeny businesses is the most unsaturated industries I’ve come across. Well, financially viable industries, anyway. (Same can be said for PR and, to a lesser extent, business coaching.)
We succeeded because we hit a market no-one else was hitting, and we did it in a way that was memorable and pleasing. The internet changed not only the way businesses are run, but also who was running the businesses. And IttyBiz people would gnaw their own arm off before they went with a firm that played the game the normal way.
3. Every business can’t. But you either have to have a hell of a lot of money (Marriott, Hilton et al) or a hell of a lot of ingenuity (that little hotel on the beach that nobody outside their circle has heard of but they’re booked six months in advance.) Since ittybiz owners don’t have the money, they need the ingenuity. And the most effective way, maybe the only way, of communicating that ingenuity is through branding.
We got a lot of questions along these lines during the Marketing 101 calls. People didn’t understand why “outstanding customer service” or “life coaching for women” was not an effective USP. It’s because they’re not unique. Everybody says their customer service is outstanding and we’re drowning in life coaches for woman. You need to find what’s really unique and brand it.
Or you need a hell of a lot of money. :)
I love this post, Naomi.
(Hi, btw. First contact here, although I’ve been reading for a while. Guess I’m an Ittybiz virgin. Be gentle with me.)
I guess I could leave it there, with the fawning, but instead I’ll waste a few more characters on *why* I love it – because you just made me realise that something I thought was a disadvantage is actually an advantage for me. No shit.
All this time, I’ve been thinking that the art I produce is doomed to never sell because it’s so different from what’s ‘normal’ out there in my medium. I’ve been telling myself that no one would even look at it because it doesn’t fit the mould of what everyone else is producing. It’s not what people expect to see. But that doesn’t mean it won’t be valued by the right people who are bored with the usual.
So, wow. Thank you. I think I’ll go spend the day clubbing more elephants.
Heh. Finding a niche/USP has been one of the things that I’ve probably struggled with the most in this business. But this post inspires me, and this comment:
“If he was himself, he would have no brand because he is boring. How do we know he’s boring? Because everybody is boring. It’s like fiction writing. You don’t write everything about a character, a setting, a dialog… you just write the interesting bits.”
helps it click with me. Fiction writing? Now that’s something I know.
Alfred Hitchcock once said, “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.”
So…Branding is you with the dull bits cut out?
Thanks Naomi for taking the time to answer my questions.
Best, Wendy
You have just given me a great idea for a problem I have been wrestling with for a couple of months. THANKS!
Hi Naomi -
I just got saw this post for the very first time, because I’m a new subscriber, but I had to comment to say “HEAR HEAR!”
I also had to comment because this post made me snort Diet Coke out of my nose. Thank for you being ballsy enough to say this things that need to be said, in the way they need to be said. I LOVE your work and find your message highly motivating in a get-off-my-ass kind of way. Thank you!