Hi Every, Ted Amberg here! I wanted to let everyone know that I have moved my entertainment and event management related blogs over to TedAmberg.com and my business consulting blogs to ThePurpleCowConsulting.com. Make sure to follow me over there for more content!
Story Telling Creates Your Brand
“The art of storytelling is not just to entertain kids. It can revolutionize your companies’ brand, and in turn make your brand the story people tell.” – Ted Amberg
The idea of telling a story to get a brand message across may seem daunting. But you simply need to answer a few questions to get started. Those that tell the best story will most often win the business. Ask yourself the following questions:
· Why did I launch the company in the beginning?
· What problems did we help solve for our customers in doing so?
· Why are we passionate as a company to serve this market?
· How do we stand out from competitors, and what truly makes us unique?
· How do we want our customers to feel when they work with us?
· What are we the absolute best at that we set the bar ?
Take a few minutes and write out the above questions and answer them as honestly as you can for yourself. Do you see a trend? Do you see some areas that need improvement? Do you see where you can grow and create better customer loyalty possibilities?
Remember the old saying, “People won’t remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.” The best branding experts realize this and use it to their advantage. Effective branding is moving past the mere functionality of a product or service and creating a sense of loyalty and emotion in your customer base. There is a reason that brands such as Harley Davidson have their customers literally tattooing the company logo on their skin. It’s not because Harley makes great bikes, it’s because those customers feel a sense of bond with the company and other customers, in the sense of a tribe. And that’s powerful branding.
Anyone can throw a lot of money into an ad campaign or a marketing push. You can do the same, and you’ll likely get some customers out of it. But when another company comes along with a “shiny new toy” or a lower price, then they will leave you faster than a toupee in a hurricane! You must instill a sense of loyalty in your customers to keep them around. Brand loyalty is competitor insulation. Understand that it’s not about your services and products. It’s really about the story you convey to your customers and the problems you solve for them. That is key.
“People don’t want to buy a quarter inch drill bit. They want a quarter inch hole.”
– Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School Professor
Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.
How Do Your Customers Actually Feel?
From the desk of Ted Amberg:
Having a crystal clear understanding of HOW you want your customers to feel will help keep you on track towards making your vision a reality. Having a true vision of that will change everything. Because when you focus on the way you want your customers to feel, instead of what you want them to buy, it will translate into huge rewards for both of you.
The values that you create and utilize in your business are what reinforce the vision for the business, shape its culture and direct what behavioral patterns it has. These are the things that allow a customer to connect and build the important trust and loyalty a great business must have. Values are the common ground on which the company and its customers can unite.
In the book The Fortune Cookie Principal, by Bernadette Jiwa, she sums up the definition of what a true brand is perfectly. She says, “Let’s think of a fortune cookie as a product. The cookie is a commodity, the thing that is exchanged with the customers for cash. Remember, the customer is not actually buying the commodity; they are buying the benefit it delivers. They are buying the joy of breaking the cookie open and sharing the fortune with others at the end of the meal.” So, while you’ve got to make a good cookie, the best that you can, it’s extremely important to make the fortune (the story) good too. You need to give people a reason to not just hire you for your services or buy your products, but buy into your brand.
“Find the right products and services for your customers, not the other way around…”
You can have the best vision and brand ideas in the world. You can have a great story that will captivate all who hear it and create loyalty and customer satisfaction like never before. But if you don’t have leadership in your company and a team that will convey that brand message every single time they interact with the customer, you could be sunk. Every single person in your business from you, to the delivery driver, to the sales rep, and everyone in between, must play a role in helping tell that story.
Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.
Story Telling Creates Your Brand
“The art of storytelling is not just to entertain kids. It can revolutionize your companies’ brand, and in turn make your brand the story people tell.” – Ted Amberg
The idea of telling a story to get a brand message across may seem daunting. But you simply need to answer a few questions to get started. Those that tell the best story will most often win the business. Ask yourself the following questions:
· Why did I launch the company in the beginning?
· What problems did we help solve for our customers in doing so?
· Why are we passionate as a company to serve this market?
· How do we stand out from competitors, and what truly makes us unique?
· How do we want our customers to feel when they work with us?
· What are we the absolute best at that we set the bar ?
Take a few minutes and write out the above questions and answer them as honestly as you can for yourself. Do you see a trend? Do you see some areas that need improvement? Do you see where you can grow and create better customer loyalty possibilities?
Remember the old saying, “People won’t remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel.” The best branding experts realize this and use it to their advantage. Effective branding is moving past the mere functionality of a product or service and creating a sense of loyalty and emotion in your customer base. There is a reason that brands such as Harley Davidson have their customers literally tattooing the company logo on their skin. It’s not because Harley makes great bikes, it’s because those customers feel a sense of bond with the company and other customers, in the sense of a tribe. And that’s powerful branding.
Anyone can throw a lot of money into an ad campaign or a marketing push. You can do the same, and you’ll likely get some customers out of it. But when another company comes along with a “shiny new toy” or a lower price, then they will leave you faster than a toupee in a hurricane! You must instill a sense of loyalty in your customers to keep them around. Brand loyalty is competitor insulation. Understand that it’s not about your services and products. It’s really about the story you convey to your customers and the problems you solve for them. That is key.
“People don’t want to buy a quarter inch drill bit. They want a quarter inch hole.”
– Theodore Levitt, Harvard Business School Professor
Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant, entrepreneur, and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.
What Business Are Your REALLY In?
“Ted Amberg understands how to uncover the truth of what a business is vs what it once was.” – Jacob Bracovey, NCA All-Tech
What business are you in? If you ask this simple question to a hundred people in our industry, you will get lots of different answers. There are many examples of businesses that thought they were in one business and changing times said otherwise. Here are just a few:
The railroads. For well over a century the railroads stood as the single mass transportation provider for both people and products across the United States. Then the airplane was invented and very quickly became a solution that was far quicker and cheaper than days on a train. Even products began being shipped by air for faster, more convenient deliveries. Most of the major railroad companies no longer exist. They thought they were in the railroading business. Had they realized that they were in the transportation business, they may have been able to adapt and evolve to changing times, and perhaps evolved into air transportation. After all, they already had a huge network of customers, suppliers, and they understood transport, logistics and time schedules. All they needed to do was switch the mode of transport.
What happened to video rental companies? Companies such as Blockbuster and other mega retail rental chains were caught completely off guard by startups such as Netflix and Redbox. They thought that they were in the brick-and-mortar video rental business. Had they been able to adapt and realize that times were changing and customers wanted quicker, simpler methods for picking up movies (like no late charges), more of them might have survived.
Phone book companies, magazines, newspapers, and more are currently on notice to a rapidly changing landscape. It will take creative thinking and understanding of what their customers truly want and need to evolve and stay in the game.
So… What business are you really in?
Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant, entrepreneur, magic trick creator, and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.
Confront the Brutal Facts, Yet Never Lose Faith
“Ted Amberg has been an industry expert in the events and entertainment field for many years, and has amassed a solid reputation for helping many struggling companies grow their businesses.” – Pamela, 3MI
You must have an honest and clear view of the challenges the company faces – everything from competition, financial woes, changing markets, regulations, etc. – while still having an unwavering faith the company will prevail. When a company faces a hardship, it must face it head on and accept the brutal facts of the situation, and in some cases, change the course of direction. This is called the “Stockdale Paradox.” It means to accept the brutal realities of your current reality, yet remain absolutely convinced you will prevail in the end.
This was named after Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam. He understood his horrible reality as he was starved and tortured, yet he never lost faith that he would come out ok in the end and turn the experience into something positive in his life. At the same time, he maintained the discipline to accept the brutal truth of his reality. His fellow POWs, who had unrealistic expectations about their release dates, etc. did not fare so well.
For a company, acknowledging the truths about its situations can help it make the right decisions.
Great companies also have a distinctive working environment that Collins calls a “climate of truth.” To create such an environment, the company must have leaders that truly want to listen to their team. Four methods to creating such an environment are:
- Lead by asking questions, not by making pronouncements.
- Encourage open dialogue and debate, rather than just allowing people to vent their frustrations. Really listen and hear what they have to say, even if it’s difficult.
- When things go wrong, examine where the system broke down, rather than looking for someone to blame.
- Develop methods to use information in such a way that it becomes information that you cannot ignore. These are called “red flag mechanisms.”
- The Hedgehog Concept: Identify what the company’s core business should be, even if it’s not doing it currently. The company must be better at its core business than anyone else in the marketplace. Great companies are like hedgehogs. They do one thing better than anyone else in the world. When a fox is near, the hedgehog only needs to do one thing really well…curl up into a ball. In comparison, a fox will try many strategies to attack the hedgehog, but because the hedgehog does his one thing better, the fox rarely succeeds. This is not an easy process for a company to do, but once there, will know how to proceed forward (or not) on any threat or opportunity that arises.
Collins writes, “Hedgehogs simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea. A basic principal or concept that unifies everything.” For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea, holds no relevance. To arrive at a hedgehog concept, companies must ask themselves three questions:
- What can the company be the best at in the world (or market)?
- What drives the company’s economic engine?
- What are the company’s leaders and employees deeply passionate about?
By focusing and understanding each of the above three questions, a company can focus its energies in one singular direction, leading the company to greatness. As an example, to answer question number one, Walgreens decided that they would be the best at offering convenience for its customers. They focused on having locations that made it convenient to get to.
To answer question number two, they decided to change their focus from profit per store, to profit per customer visit, to match its hedgehog concept of running the best convenience drug stores. The third question indicates that passion cannot be created. Leaders and their team must find what they and their team are passionate about and then follow that passion.
Collins writes, “The Good to Great companies understand that doing what you are good at will only make you good. Focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is the only path to greatness. It should be noted that knowing what a company cannot be the best at is just as important as knowing what it’s great at.
- A Culture of Discipline: Once you have a hedgehog concept in place, disciplined action becomes the focus. When you have a company where everybody brings the same work ethic to the table, you do not need excessive controls or hierarchy. Doing this will inspire a spirit of creativity and entrepreneurship that in turn creates great team performance. Great companies create a culture of discipline by hiring self-disciplined people and giving them the flexibility to be creative, within a framework. The goal here is to create an environment that is conducive to creativity and responsibility, while strictly adhering to the hedgehog concept.
The company should put equal discipline on its “stop doing list.” These are the things that do not meet the criteria of a company’s hedgehog concept, and are therefore wasting time, money, and energy. By surrounding yourself with only disciplined, self-starting people, you can get tremendous results. Competitive male swimmers are a great example of attention to the smallest detail and discipline. They shave their legs and arms in the belief that it might help shave off a tenth of a second. Your team should go to similar extremes to meet their objectives.
- The Flywheel: Success happens after a long and gradual buildup. Jim Collins calls this the Flywheel effect. It takes a lot of effort to turn a heavy fly wheel (a heavy revolving wheel in a machine that is used to increase the machine’s momentum,) but it gets easier with each turn, and eventually the momentum makes it turn effortlessly at great speed. Success with your business will not typically come from a single “miracle moment,” but rather from disciplined thought and disciplined action by disciplined people.
Success comes from a cumulative process: step-by- step, action by action, decision by decision, and turn by turn of the flywheel. That all adds up to sustained and spectacular results. Your team, pushing the “flywheel” together, as a team, will make the process move even faster.
Collins illustrates that level five leaders gravitate to the flywheel due to their focus on slow and steady growth. Having the right people helps push the flywheel. Confronting brutal realities brings the next moves to light to help with the next push. A belief that the company will prevail helps during the long haul. A deep understanding of the hedgehog concept leads to a laser point focus. All of that, combined with disciplined actions, people and thoughts, leads to the breakthrough from good to great.
It is much easier for a company to become great, than it is to remain great. Learning and applying the Good to Great concepts, and then sticking with them, is a recipe for success.
Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.
Focus Like A Laser Beam, Not a Shotgun
Let’s take a hard look at the audience you wish to serve. The event planning/party rental industry changes a bit throughout the country, and certainly the world. Understanding who your target audience is and what they need is critical to proceed forward. What does your ideal customer look like specifically? How old are they? Are they male or female? What are their interests? What is their job title? You need to know all the demographics that will effectively paint a portrait of this person. This is an exercise to do even before you begin goal setting. At the same time, you should be looking at your ideal target market.
Defining your target market comes before you define your ideal customer. You must first understand the ins and outs of your niche (target) market, which is what we will now look at. One of the most important things you can do is to find a niche market that has “Blue Ocean.” Blue Ocean is a term described by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne, authors of the book Blue Ocean Strategy. In the book, they describe that most markets are red oceans – full of “blood” from all the sharks feeding there already. Or in other words, it’s a market that is already over-crowded. There are plenty of markets like that in the Event industry. The key is to analyze and uncover markets that are not crowded, or ideally have never been touched. These are blue ocean markets. And those are the ones you want to set your sails for. And of course, it should follow your hedgehog concept (see Chapter 5.)
There are many other benefits from having a niche market. One of those benefits is the branding aspect. As a small business, you will more than likely have limited resources and budget for marketing, advertising, and sales campaigns. You will have to pick and choose where those dollars go. It’s a better idea, therefore, to take a pinpoint laser approach rather than what we will call the shotgun approach. The more defined your target market is, the more honed your message can be and more focused your budget will be.
Another added benefit is that you can become the leading authority in this space. I’m not suggesting that you only go after this group, but you should put the majority of your resources and time into catering specifically to your niche market, if it is identified as a great opportunity. Early on, I decided that I wanted my company to focus on the corporate market – specifically company picnics for manufacturing plants around the Midwest. That’s pretty specific. As a result, I was able to fire off marketing campaigns with the accuracy of a Navy sniper. And that’s pretty darn accurate.
Take time right now to look at the markets that you serve (or want to serve.) Which ones have the most potential and least amount of competition? This is not always an easy process. You will need to peel back the layers to get to the sub-markets, just like I did when I first defined that I wanted to target corporate clients. I then peeled back the layers to identify manufacturing plants because I learned that they were the most likely to host outdoor picnics that we were geared to orchestrate. If I specialized in event furniture rentals, or perhaps décor and lighting, then that would not be the sub market I would want to target. I might change it up to identify more-white collar service industries such as insurance companies, large consulting firms, tech firms etc. Take the time to really get in and see what’s around.
The reason we need to clearly define who your customers are is to make sure as you create marketing and sales campaigns, you use laser like focus when writing to that specific audience. Notice at the beginning of the chapter, in the description of my ideal customer, how I not only included sex/age/position, but also insights into their frustrations, etc. Simple research into this type of industry’s blogs, Facebook groups, etc. will give you plenty of intel into their way of life. Understanding this will help pave the way for effective marketing/sales campaigns. Learn exactly the type of person you will be selling to, and you will be able to know how to communicate with them and create a bond.
Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.
Good is the Enemy of Great: How Will You be Great?
“Ted Amberg knows how to help companies grow. He understands that success is found through great customer service and attention to detail. Learn from him and grow!” – Sam Jackson, Jacksons Parties & Events
According to Jim Collins book, Good to Great, great companies have “level five leadership. Those are leaders who combined personal humility with an ironclad will to succeed at any cost. Collins says there are five levels of leadership, with level five being the pinnacle:
- Highly capable leaders
- Contributing team member
- Competent manager
- Effective leader
- Level Five Leadership
Level five leaders are ambitious in everything they do, but it is for the success of the company, not for themselves as an individual. They lacked flamboyance and bluster. They deflect credit for success and take responsibility for mistakes.
Each also had a clarity of purpose and a non-negotiable insistence on excellence to help their companies rise to greatness. These leaders can be summarized with two main traits: personal humility and professional will. Collins writes: “Level five leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves, and into the larger goal of building a great company.”
The basic idea is this. How does a company that is already doing well transition itself from a good one to a great one? Jim Collins studied eleven companies that did just that and then compared them to another eleven companies that did not make the leap. The following explains what set them apart and allowed them to be great. Every single one of the GREAT companies had all of the following traits. The companies that were only considered “good” did not.
– All had an abundance of discipline, both in thoughts and action.
– All had an unwavering belief that both the company and its leaders were on the path to greatness.
– All focused on the hiring process first, before strategizing on processes, markets, etc.
– All of the leaders were humble and shied away from taking credit and instead gave it to the team.
– All had team members who were disciplined with a singular shared passion.
– All understood that good is the enemy of great.
Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.
Building Your Culture
“Ted creates magic. And the way he creates it is by having fanatical fans…within his own team. He believes that the culture of a company defines its success.…” – Gerald Andrews, Mission Alliance Initiative
People want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. You have a great opportunity to create a culture that people want to be a part of. Being part of a team is a lot better than working for a company. You will inspire more ideas from your people, and that can make everyone a lot of money.
Choosing the right people to have around you is the most important part. Speaker Tom Cummins said, “I’m not sure what is more damaging…..thieves and criminals or stupid people.” Make sure you choose your “tribe” with the most caution and forward thinking possible. If they are not working out, cut them loose immediately. Jim Collins’ analogy of the business as a bus (making sure the right team is on the bus, and the wrong people off the bus, and then the right people in the right seats) sums that up. You will only be successful to the degree that you surround yourself with people who make your vision their vision, and your game their game as well.
Culture is one major component in a lasting foundation. Your components of culture are the behaviors that you deem as “non-negotiable.” You must be absolutely clear on your core values and have no gray area. As an example, Chic-fil-A is never open on a Sunday. They could earn a lot more by being open on a Sunday, but their company culture and ideologies are their core values and are non-negotiable. And their customer base understands and respects that. Make your culture a part of your future goal setting (your mission).
Your mission is your purpose. This is the reason you exist as an organization. You don’t make money. You are not the mint. You earn money through your mission.
Your team must share your values, believe in your mission, have the competence to hit your standards and maintain the necessary skills and talents to support your core competencies. Core competencies are defined as the strongest capabilities of your organization. These create greater margins and make a difference. These are the things that consistently move the ball forward.
Your company culture will dictate your company behavior. In turn, this determines your results. To create a company culture that nourishes and facilitates growth in your organization, you must develop strength in your leadership. It’s important to remember that you can’t delegate culture. It starts at the top, with you, and then must be interwoven throughout the entire company. Creating culture is not something you did – it’s something that you consistently do. It’s a never-ending process.
In creating a culture (and mission), you must be clear, crystal clear about the company culture you want to establish. This includes the objectives, goals, and expectations that are important to you. Understand that strong accountability is impossible without crystal clear clarity.
Great leaders accelerate their efforts by eliminating all gray area. Consistency is the magic word. Take time to establish benchmarks for what is expected of your team in terms of income goals, performance and behaviors.
Your team is your greatest asset. Pay people what they are worth or someone else will. Give them what they earn. It does not matter how long they have been there. If they deserve it, give it to them. On the other hand, you must quickly eliminate anyone who does not share these same visions. You must remove negativity and “infections” in your company. This is where you have to be a strong leader and get tough.
There must be a zero tolerance for this type of behavior and mindset. Having a poor attitude, negative disposition, or habitual issues with lackluster performance must be weeded out and dealt with, or risk having it spread to all corners of your company like a disease.
I once had a great salesman, who was great with clients and got big deals done. But he spent countless hours complaining around the office, making excuses, and putting other people down to make himself feel superior. I cut him loose when it was clear that was simply his personality. Unfortunately, it had cost me a couple of other good employees by that time. After he left, the mood and positivity around the office shifted drastically. Lesson from this: do it sooner than later.
Have you ever noticed that people who are consistently late always seem to have a new excuse? They place themselves as the victims of their actions and shift blame to others. These same people also use scapegoating of successful people as a way to cope with their own inadequacies. They try to bring them down for their successes and create reasons why they succeeded.
For example, they claim the successful people came from better homes, have a better car, got a better education, live closer to their job, know the owner better, etc. These individuals would be much better off trying to learn from the success stories. The bottom line is that you are where you are because you earned it or you did not.
If you fail to define the culture in your company, society will do it for you. Take the reins and set the perimeters for excellence within your company.
Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment.
You are in the Business of Selling Experiences, Not Renting Equipment
“Believe in yourself. What would your future self, perhaps five years from now, look back and tell you to do to become that person? Do that now…” – Ted Amberg
What makes you stand out? Consider this. If you were to switch your logo and the logo of your competitor on your website, would there be a major difference between the two? Again, all of these things that help brand you should also make you stand out, be different, and please your customers. What experiences are they taking away when they visit your website or use your services?
Coming from a background in magic, I frequent a couple of online retailers of magic products. One of these, Penguin Magic, has a great way to connect with its customers. When you make an online purchase, you receive a video shortly thereafter that shows your product being packaged for shipment. It has music, shows them placing your very product into the box, and finally they hold up your mailing label to show you it’s yours. The person packing it up is even wearing white gloves. What a cool touch. You feel like a VIP client with your own 30 second personalized video. That’s branding, and that’s what connecting with customers is all about. They are not selling a magic trick, they are selling an experience.
Think about the content of your website and marketing materials. It’s really important in connecting people to your brand and showing who you are as a company. You should write like you speak. It’s more personable. Mrs. Henderson, my 10th grade English teacher, is cringing right now. But really, you connect with customers when you do this. If you do it right, your customers will be able to “feel your vibe” as they read the content. Your brand should have a voice that looks and sounds different from your competitors. It should convey the experience you want people to have when they hire you. You’re not selling equipment, you’re selling the experience.
So how do you stand out? How is your brand unique? Think about when Apple created white earbuds and white devices, while everyone else was using black. Walt Disney was said to have crawled around parts of Disneyland on his hands and knees, just to gain a better perspective of how the park would look for his younger guests. The experience was that important.
Ask yourself these questions now:
· What are you really selling? Are you delivering what you promise in your branding?
· How do your customers feel after experiencing your services? Have you asked?
· How does what you write, the design of your website, and the look and feel of your promotional materials make you look different?
· How would you feel if you personally experienced your own company as a client from a phone call, to an email, to the actual event? It’s important to put yourself in their shoes.
Ted Amberg is a nationally recognized business consultant who has and author of “The Unfair Advantage,” a book that explores what’s needed for success in today’s tough business environment. He has been the go-to source about events management from CNN and other new outlets.
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