Quality

Like Alice in Wonderland I’ve found myself down the rabbit hole that is coffee. A year ago I ventured into returning happily to my roots in customer service after 7 years in self employment. Don’t get me wrong I loved the freedom, the money and the celebrity of owning my own business yet the promise of not taking my work home with me was too attractive for a season. So a year ago I headed deep into the world of coffee – and what a complicated world it is!

No, there are no mad-hatters down the rabbit hole; we are all mad-hatters! When you get deep enough into the rabbit hole you’ll find baristas roasting their own beans at home at night, cafe owners video blogging the latest pour-over method, entrepreneurs starting exchange networks online, and roasters booking their personal holidays to south america in order to visit the farms.

But what’s the addiction? It’s quality. Coffee has so much to offer and yet it is often abused, wasted, neglected, misunderstood and ignored. “For lack of knowledge my people perish” said the God of the Jewish race. Similarly most people – including so called baristas, roasters and cafe owners – don’t know enough about coffee or understand it to get the most out of it.

Here are some items you may not “know” about espresso coffee:

One billion people drink coffee daily world-wide

59% of Americans drink coffee on a daily basis

80% of Europeans drink coffee daily

Espresso is stronger in look, body and flavour yet not in caffeine

One third of coffee produced in Ethiopia is consumed within Ethiopia

Arabica cultivar has 44 chromosomes whereas Robusta has only 22

Total world production of coffee 120 million bags at 60kilo’s each

Caffeine has a half-life (time it takes to leave your body) of 2 hours

Tabacco industry in the past may have funded research to disfavour coffee

A thought or two on packaging:
Did you know that coffee once roasted contains a large amount of carbon dioxide. 1 kilogram of coffee contains 12 litres of carbon dioxide. It takes 30 days (approximately) for coffee once roasted to release it’s carbon dioxide. This is called “degassing”. Did you know that once degassed many of the aromas and flavours contained in the coffee is lost. Therefore packaging coffee with a gas release valve will prevent oxidisation yet will not slow degassing thus losing many of the great flavours seven to ten days post roast!

What makes a successful cafe

In Melbourne we have a plethora of amazing and terrible cafes. Just read Urbanspoon or Foursquare or Beanhunter and you’ll find cafe’s that work and cafe’s that don’t. Obviously the coffee has to be good, but what other ingredients make a successful cafe?

The standards of customer service: offering a great product, with product knowledge and complimenting that with extraordinary service is a basic. So what gets you across the line, and makes you a “liked” cafe on Facebook, a Mayor-competetive cafe on Foursquare, and a 99% on Urbanspoon?

I believe it’s niches and passion, however the two are one in the same. A niche is a business that meets the needs of a particular segment of a market better than or in a way that no one else does. Passion amplifies the success of a niche. If you have a passion for coffee-on-the-go, or filter coffee, or single-origins, you will learn how to do it best and attract a community of people who want the same thing.

Here’s a great article on some other factors that make a coffee shop successful:

http://blog.coffeejobs.com/the-formula-for-an-effective-cafe/

“If sites like Beanhunter have taught us anything, it’s that in every city, there are good cafes and bad cafes. There are hidden, vibrant little places which serve an excellent range of coffees from various origins and only locals seem to know about, and conversely there are many cafes where no sooner do you sit, you find yourself planning on how best to make your escape unnoticed.” Read on…

What’s happening in the future of: gadgets

Three things are happening in the future of gadgets, two I will cover here. By far the greatest evolution in personal technology tools (gadgets: also including phones etc) is convergence. Convergence is the tendency for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks.

The mobile phone is a convergence of the telephone and computing.
Google news is a convergence of print media, telephony and computing.
Television is a convergence of radio communications and image capture.

These are exciting times. The second is walls coming down. The middle man is being removed by the explosion of the Internet. Wikileaks is not an unexpected phenomena: wikileaks is the middleman of government being removed. iTunes is not an unexpected phenomena: it is the middleman of the record label being removed. Netflicks is not an unexpected phenomena it is the middleman of the networks being removed. Openeducation is not an unexpected phenomena it is the middleman of universities being removed.
In a nutshell the scarcity based economics and business models of education and pretty much any industry are being replaced by the abundance economy of the internet. Jeff Jarvis writes “So stop selling scarcity. Scarcity has no value. Results and efficiency do”. On the Internet everything is abundant.

I could go on: books (scarce) & publishing (expensive) become blogs (abundant) and wordpress (free). And so on.

When it comes to your mobile phone or telecommunications data plan or any other gadget for that matter: think convergence and think abundance over scarcity, and you’ll do well.

For God’s sake dont buy a landline!

Consumer Confidence

Consumer confidence is down. Cinema’s are not selling nearly as many tickets. Cafe’s and their suppliers are sharing that they are really quiet at the moment. Locally in Melbourne, Australia people have stopped spending as much. It may be the carbon tax, the increase in electricity, the uncertainty about Japan, Libya, wars and rumours of wars. So what do you do as a business? You keep working. (Have a read of Seth’s blog on work)

Work is:

Customer service

Adding value

Actually listening to your customers needs

Taking action (again see Seth’s blog on Poke the Box!)

Try something new: launch a new product, sell to existings, price cut, take risks

What ever you do dont stop working!

A word on customer service. Australia is the most franchised nation in the world (franchises per capita) which I believe has caused a reduction in the amount of true customer service in the country. This is due to the systemisation of customer service. Unfortunately for systems people customer service is a person! And as much as I love systems and streamlining and processes nothing beats a person who cares. So keep caring!

Interesting stats on mobile marketing

I believe that the world is changing. I believe that Tim Berners-Lee created something that breaks walls down. The internet has no walls and it is changing everything. Be it Twitter or Wikileaks or iTunes or iPad – all of these things fundamentally are built on the openness of the web – call it the cloud! I am convinced that the cloud will rule the roost and mobile technology will devour every other industry in the world in some way or another. I am building my business as a marketing consultant to focus on the mobile web.

Very very soon you will see the walls continue to come down. (Read Jeff Jarvis) One of the proliferations of that wall is mobile marketing. Here are some interesting stats on mobile marketing:

• Morgan Stanley’s analysts believe that, based on the current rate of change and adoption, the mobile web will be bigger than desktop Internet use by 2015. (Source http://mashable.com/2010/04/13/mobile-web-stats/)
• Twitter usage via mobile browsers was up 347% while Facebook mobile browser usage was up 112% in 2009-2010 (Source: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2010/3/Facebook_and_Twitter_Access_via_Mobile_Browser_Grows_by_Triple-Digits)
• There are currently about 3.2 billion mobile subscribers in the world, and only 1.4 billion credit cards (Source: http://brandvoice.co.uk/uncategorized/googles-ceo-explains-the-importance-of-mobile/)
• 1/4 Americans use mobile apps (Source: Mashable)
  8 million new facebook subscribers per second in 2010 (Source: Techcrunch)
• 30% of smart phone users said that mobile is the “most important medium” to access breaking news (Source: http://mashable.com/2010/12/07/smartphones-breaking-news-study/)

When to kill a project or close your business

www.fastcompany.com/tags/work-smart

Facebook deals

Google has laid a platform of search that we can all build on. Now social is built on search. Add mobile to the equation and you get a great user experience. Add location (geo-location) to mobile and you get Foursquare, Facebook Places.

Now Facebook is becoming a social platform in the way Google is a search platform. People are building on social. My business is now findable on a mobile phone because you are standing near my business location and then you share that with your Facebook friends. Nice.

Today Facebook is doing “Deals” See:

http://mashable.com/2010/11/03/facebook-deals-platform/

Complete Guide to Facebook Deals

http://www.facebook.com/blog.php?post=446183422130

Business Bucket List

Not necessarily in order…

1. Register your domain name, twitter and facebook page
2. Write a business plan
3. Decide you want to be in business

4. Crystallise in your mind what your offering is – what PROBLEM are you REALLY solving
5. Get to know your customer. Know their needs/wants better than they do
6. Get yapping. Word of mouth starts at the home
7. Pay your tax: get your financials in order
8. Work hard
9. Tithe – giving 10% to charity is good for business
10. Enjoy the ride and STICK WITH IT!

You can do it – the power of encouragement

Courage is placed inside you when you are encouraged. The business community really needs encouragement. You can build a great business and feel very alone. “My customers don’t appreciate me”. “My staff do not understand my vision”. Encouragement will build your business.

How to get encouragement

1. Build a business you believe in – your passion will keep you going!
2. Listen to Roger – he will get you there (2 previous posts on consistency & Roger)
3. Gather Champions around you – people who believe in you
4. Operate by principles – if you do what is right now, you will have peace *and courage that it will pay off
5. Reward yourself. When you make that sale – buy yourself a gift.
6. Be goal driven
7. Excel at what you do. Work is the reward for Work. See Proverbs.

(Here’s your first star sticker – in case you never received one at school!)

Jonathon’s rules

1. The rules (of business) have changed
2. (All) Marketing is now social
3. You must lead your flock (as in your customers are your tribe). Search my posts for “tribes”.
4. Every business is a niche business (no matter the size treat your customers as niche/cult followers.
5. Continually adopt new technologies – change will not stop. You must ride the wave or you will miss it. Denial is failure.
6. Think ahead – future is the market. Start to market to your customers using tomorrows methods or die.
7. Be the best (at what you do. Offer quality no matter what. Customers are smart). Love your tribe. Do what they want. Serve them. Give them what they want. Listen.
8. Reinvent. Constantly.
9. Don’t have a business model. (That doesn’t mean don’t plan. It means be flexible). Rather have your finger on the pulse of the heart of your niche tribe.
10. Break the rules. (Yes these rules). In other words be yourself or fail.

Recommended reading: What Would Google Do – by Jeff Jarvis