Dexter reflecting on life's opportunities

The adventure of life is to learn.
The purpose of life is to grow.
The nature of life is to change.
The challenge of life is to overcome.
The essence of life is to care.
The opportunity of life is to serve.
… The secret of life is to dare.
The spice of life is to befriend.
The beauty of life is to give.
The joy of life is to love.

Quote from William Arthur Ward

Thanks to Warren Henningsen for sharing

The Australian winner of the Veuve Clicquot Business Woman Award 2012, Maryanne Shearer

It was great to be on my feet last week, a busy week of International Womens Day events – sharing the RedBalloon journey and the things we have learned.

A highlight was attending this years Veuve Clicquot Business Woman of the Year event. A massive congratulation to Maryanne Shearer, founder of T2 as this years winner.  I have always enjoyed the experience of entering one of her stores and discovering new tastes and delights.

In addition the final touches are coming together of the new book, and we are on the countdown for hosting a mentoring weekend in April.

This week:

Monday – Speakers dinner at Hamilton Island (I will get to have a catch up with Verne Harnish).
Tuesday – Keynote for Nixon Advantage at the annual conference of 400 accountants
Wednesday – Travel to Sunshine Coast
Thursday – Speaking at IGA conference on ‘Small things Big impact.’
Friday – Sydney – Negotiations Skills Course
Saturday – Presentation at Dial an Angel conference (by then I might well need their services)

As I began to write this post I received a good overview from Business Spectator on it’s thoughts on the large retailers and the online space.

The thing that I find concerning about Mr Harvey’s approach to online – is simply his inconsistency. I would be worried if I worked in his online team, that is at some point I might simply become a rounding error and find that I did not have a job.

Smart Company has already given Mr Harvey three pieces of advice on how he can improve his online performance. Namely: emphasize deals, reduce shipping time and redesign the site – all good ideas.

I see something else that is very much missing. It is leadership and vision. Gerry Harvey was revolutionary 30 years ago when he invented the store within a store franchise retailing model. One could argue he was a visionary and showed amazing leadership – and he has consistently executed the same model in many other retail brands. So why does he lack the same level of commitment to the online space?

Perhaps Gerry expects online to be predictable. This is never the case – no business is. The greatest ideas are not necessarily the one’s that fly. The Internet is a complete leveler… a tiny business can sit side by side with a massive retailer and get the same traffic. [Eleven years ago when we launched RedBalloon in the ninemsn shopping portal – we sat side by side with David Jones]

Not unlike traditional retail one needs an online reputation – and it takes years to cultivate a deep and consistent search engine presence.

Underlying all of this I would argue that it is about focus. Kogan has been absolutely single minded about his proposition – as have each of the deal sites. And they have listened very carefully to their customers ensuring that they have the right product, at the right place, at the right price.

A reality check please… I understand that revenues for the Harvey Norman Group in 2011 were $7,76 billion – did he really believe that for this NEW online business he could realistically achieve an income of $388m in the first year – that is apparently what 5% of his earnings would be.

Well Gerry has had a reality check – but for the rest of us out here in the online world we are growing our businesses steadfastly, with consistency, vision and leadership – through trial and error, listening to our customers and responding. Perhaps if he went back to the basics, if he remembered what it took to build his first store he might get the results he wants… in time.

In the begining there was just an idea

I have been asked to write a series for the Fairfax papers – these columns appear regularly in The Age, Sydney Morning Herald and Courier Mail…

The editor asked me to write something that was insightful but educational.. and he inferred entertaining too. As I thought about it I realised that the lessons learned – or things that ‘I wish I knew’ would probably the most useful… so I have republished them here – because not everyone has a subscription to those publications.

I think back more than a decade to the moment that I thought it was a good idea to start an online business. There are some things that I really wish that I had known as I set out. But then again maybe the greatest lessons are often learned the hard way. As one mentor said to me years ago “the greater the loss the bigger the lesson.” At some point however if these business lessons get too expensive – well then it’s all over really.

So let’s consider that very first moment when you think that it is ‘a good idea to run your own show’; you have read of these entrepreneurial heroes who create amazing ‘overnight’ success stories – and you think, “I could do that”.

All you need now is that idea – which will make the business simply slip into place and you are on your road to Nirvana. Ah, what a lovely dream – sorry to bring you down to earth – but businesses are 1% idea and 99% execution.

You still need that idea though; with out it you only have hard work.

I’m approached regularly by people wanting to share a new business idea with me. They ask earnestly “will it work?” My response to all these queries is always the same. “Why do you want to do it?” Working out why you want to start a business (let alone keep running it for a good proportion of your adult life) – I believe is essential to sustaining you, and ultimately the success of the enterprise.

My suggestion is if you are driven solely by financial success – think again. Great businesses solve a problems… they make life ‘easier’ – they do things that had not been done before. They make a difference to other human beings. In fact you could argue that great businesses make the world a better place.

All of the great start-ups that you can think of solve a problem. Facebook was about keeping college students connected – Google was about making the worlds information accessible – Apple, can we count the number of problems that it has solved?

So the first step on creating a viable business is to work out what problem you are solving, stated simply ‘what is your purpose’.  Even if you are already in business – you could ask yourself the same question. In fact a businesses purpose may change over time as it adapts to the market or sees new problems to solve.

My purpose developed as I began to serve customers and I learned about how our experience vouchers were being used by our customers. Initially when I started the businesses in the front room of my home – what I was looking for was a lifestyle – I had two young children and I thought [naively] that I could play with my kids in the day and work at night. Until the kids challenged me one day and asked “why do we have to go to bed at 5.30?”

I did want to create a flexible work place – but that was really about ‘how’ we did business rather than ‘why’ we were in business.

RedBalloon was not the first business idea I had – but as I look back now I realize that of all the ideas I had – it was the one that inspired me, that I was passionate about, that I could see making a difference with. As I learned only last year when I did a Harvard Business course the idea was a ‘disruptive’ innovation. It brought a new product to an existing marketing delivering it cheaply and quickly – and the incumbent dominant gift retailers would not have noticed us on the horizon – coming to market (nor would they care).

If I was to pose a question for you to think about: why do you do what you do – and who will give a damn? Are you building a better mousetrap or are you changing the game of rodent management?

The world catalogued into one big 'scrap book'

This article first appeared in The Australian on 5 March 2012 – I thought I would share for those who might have missed it.

The only constant online of course is  change – just as I think I’ve got Twitter, LinkedIn and FaceBook worked out – other interactive social sites show up. My 16 year old daughter has taken herself off FaceBook – claiming that Tumblr is where it is all at… and now Pinterest has arrived and appears to be the new frontier of social media for business. There is no doubt that all the social media players are quickly moving to more image intensive platforms – [On FaceBook you can ‘scarily’ now view your entire history on the site in a visual time line] and as a business we need to stay abreast if not harness the power of what is new. In some sense we need to be a new adopter in all our communications – rather than following after something is tried and tested. Of course the list of potential social media sites does seem endless – and one doesn’t know really what is going to be the next big thing.

Pinterest is creating the biggest online buzz at the moment claiming “Our goal is to connect everyone in the world through the ‘things’ they find interesting…a favorite [sic] book, toy, or recipe can reveal a common link between two people…Pinterest is connecting people all over the world based on shared tastes and interests”. In its most basic form, it’s a visual bookmarking site that allows users to pin anything they find on the web that interests them. All of your likes, comments, pins and re-pins are recorded on your own profile – or, more fittingly, pin boards – thereby connecting people based on their interests rather than existing friendships or professional networks. These boards are arranged by any number of topics from gardening to technology and include subjects such as “Products I Love” and “Favourite [sic] Places and Spaces.” It’s a refreshing approach to social media – neat, orderly, uncluttered and void of those annoying flashing ads offering everything from banishing belly fat to burlesque lessons. And it’s also a potential gold mine for businesses; arming them with a tool to connect with consumers on a personal level about the things they hold dear – think hobbies, interests and passions. And you can’t just sign up – you must be invited to join and play with this exclusive new social media toy.

As marketers though we’re dipping our toe in the water, and we’re excited to see where the Pinterest journey will take us.

Businesses have already started flocking to the site in an attempt to humanise their brands – giving them a personality or bringing that personality to life. For instance at RedBalloon this is a very attractive proposition as we are an online brand and it’s often difficult to have resonance with your customers when you rarely have face-to-face interactions with them. This is incremental to our activity on Facebook and Twitter and we need dedicated people to listen, learn, look and play with all of the social networks. Real people talking and listening with real people – not pushing marketing message for the sake of it… this is NOT a broadcast media.

But Pinterest takes it a step further, allowing brands to connect with customers on a level above and beyond the product they are selling, which in turn creates a more genuine and reciprocal relationship. We use the site to share gorgeous, striking images of our experiences and our customers genuinely enjoying those experiences. And these images really are worth more than a thousand words of copy on a webpage – on Twitter they may be re-tweeted and on Facebook shared among friends, but the image carries far more weight when it’s targeting an interested audience.

From a pure marketing standpoint, Pinterest is a collection of focus groups. Try to think of a more perfectly efficient way to road test and gather feedback on a new product or idea. Can you? The site already attracts almost 12 million active users a month – women make up between 70 and 80 per cent of its members, most under the age of 45. But itgoes one step further. What an opportunity for entrepreneurial marketers wanting to target consumers in an environment designed to connect people according to the things they love and desire. Many brands are already embracing the new frontier with some success. There are examples of clothing brands running “pin it to win it” competitions, where customers have to browse the brand’s website and pin the images of their favourite outfits to win. This encourages users to interact with the site, but also visit and browse the products on the brand’s own site.

As Pinterest continues to grow and develop, there will no doubt be some great brand stories emerge, but similarly therewill be brands who do not respect the site’s raison d’etre – pushing the boundaries and upsetting users who have had yet another social space encroached upon by brands trying to sell sell sell. The site itself has loose rules around promoting products, stating “Pinterest is designed to share things you love…try not to use Pinterest purely as a tool for self-promotion”. But the creators are also keeping very tight-lipped on the subject of how they plan to make money from the enterprise, so I predict a few changes to the way the site operates in the future. I guess it’s a wait and see game for now, and I for one am intrigued to see how brands will tread the fine line between wooing customers, building relationships and selling products.

Here is a link to the RedBalloon Pinterest page

It's about choice for our children

I considered that perhaps it was a cultural thing. But after listening to her TED talk on the topic (view below) I have to concur that much of what she says does translate to Australia.

This generation we will barely make a dent on the number of women in board rooms around Australia – nor in senior leadership roles – but the point she raises is what do we tell our daughters… and our sons. What lessons do we impart to inspire them to make the choices they want without fear of failure.

Sheryl gives us three insights.

1. ‘Sit at the table’ – this means women need to really participate, make a statement, stand up for themselves – don’t underestimate your own ability. ‘Own your own your success.’ This could be viewed as slightly pushy however how often do women not apply for the job that they don’t have every skill for – whilst their male equivalent would put himself forward.’

There will be sacrifices that we make for playing a bigger game… and these are sacrifices that our brothers wont have to make.

I was having dinner with my daughter (16) and son (14) over the holidays – and my son asked me if I would prefer to be a man or a woman… I instantly responded ‘A woman’ – when he asked the same question of my daughter, after some deliberation she said ‘A man’ when I questioned why she said – ‘they just get everything easier.’ – This saddened me. At such a young age my daughter is already seeing limitations…

2. ‘Make your partner a real partner’ – Sheryl laments that in fact there has been more progress with equality in the workplace than on the domestic front. She said workingwomen work twice as hard on domestic chores and do three times the childcare than their male counterparts.  She wonders if it is because from a very young age society puts more pressure on males to succeed. We need to make it easier for males to stay it home – too. Men are not always welcomed at playgroup.

Interesting that a number of years ago I was called up to see the vice principal of my daughters school – as the spirited girl she is she had pushed the boundaries and they wanted to discuss it with me specifically rather than my husband who was the primary after school carer.

This successful female educator said ‘Your daughter just needs to see more of you – you travel a lot for work and she misses you terribly’ – I responded – ‘she does have a parent with her every night of the week; her father…’ She realized what she had just said. Here was one successful career woman telling another that the role model I was being for my daughter was not appropriate. And this was from a leader of a girl’s school – at that point I did ask what they were teaching the girls about financial independence and fulfilling careers…

Stereo typing is very, very hard to change

3. ‘Don’t leave before you leave’ – Sheryl said that in planning for a pregnancy and to have ‘children’ fit neatly into a career often means that women are planning to take time out of their career long before they need to. In fact they might even hold back on a promotion or responsibility because they think ‘I might not be here next year’.

From the moment women think about having a baby…they might be less career focused as such their job may become far less fulfilling. Yet once you have a child at home to return to work is a massive sacrifice. So your job better be rewarding, challenging and you really need to be making a difference because otherwise it is too hard and simply not worth the cost (both financially and emotionally).

If you took your foot off the ‘gas’ too early in your career ie you didn’t take a promotion for instance then this might mean you don’t have the ‘best’ job to return to. I wrote a blog about this very thing some months ago.

I concur with Sheryl – we want to teach our children to make powerful choices on what they want to do. Not what they think is prescribed for them – because that is how it has always been.

Jack Cowen - Founder and Exec Chairman of Competitive Foods

Jack Cowen started his presentation at the EY Entrepreneurs workshop with a quote “An entrepreneur needs to be a cross between a microbiologist and an astronomer.” He believes that true entrepreneurs are special in that they can be both detailed and visionary.

He was a judge in the EY Global Entrepreneur of the year program in Monte Carlo for 2010. It was a delight to have him in the room sharing his insights – not just from his own amazing entrepreneurial journey – but also from the many business founders he has met along the way.

He made the following observation: Those businesses that own the technology or the system, ie they have a level of exclusivity gain great advantage. They have the magic of what people will pay for and it makes it difficult for competitors to invade that space. If a business cannot own the technology (or systems and processes) then it must own the brand.

Jack reflected following the EY event that in his opinion the six traits of great entrepreneurs are:

1. We have a fundamental curiosity – we want to explore things.
2. We are persistent beyond reason
3. We search for better ways to do things – we agitate for change
4. We are endlessly positive in every part of our lives
5. We are focused and able to run lean and mean
6. We have exemplary people skills – we understand leverage and that we cannot do it on our own.

Marg Hartley with her teenage daughters

That would certainly make headlines, wouldn’t it? I wonder the impact such an initiative would have.

On the weekend I was chatting with my friend Margie Hartley and she shared some insights into why there are not more women in senior roles in Australia. Marg facilitates women’s resilience programs and is a coach to executives. She wrote a blog recently about the disappearing pipeline for senior female executives.

As we were chatting I offered that making childcare – including qualified in-home childcare – tax deductible could be an advantage to keeping more women in the workforce. This idea was recently tabled at the Tax Forum by a group called Chief Executive Women, representing nearly 200 business leaders, including highflyers such as Gillian Broadbent, Ita Buttrose, and Janet Holmes a Court.

Of course, this does not take into account those women not attracted to the corporate ladder, but still requiring greater flexibility in childcare, for example nurses working shifts, where the usual 7am opening and 6pm close of a long daycare is no help.  Actually, nor is it much support to the corporate working- woman either, given the hours often ‘expected’ in that world (which is another blog in itself).

Another submission made to the Tax Forum by the National Foundation for Women, argues that childcare tax breaks are not the solution, as tax deductibility versus the current childcare rebate would leave some families weekly out of pocket on their childcare fees. Put simply, nurses do not have access to the tax breaks that higher earners in the corporate world can experience.

My friend Marg’s response upped the ante: “What if Australia had free, ie: publically-funded childcare? We have public primary and secondary schools – our economy is changing and public policy needs to change with it.” It’s an interesting idea: public preschools that feed into our publicly-funded primary system.

However this is not a simple issue for under school age children. Every working mother I know talks about the horror of handling school holidays and trying to find appropriate arrangements.   Plus coming back to the notion of working hours, services that run outside of school hours are also vital.

Speaking with another woman the other night at the Global Banking Alliance for Women summit – hosted by Gail Kelly – with Penny Wong presenting the 40% female representation on government boards initiative. Much of the conversation around our table at the event was about the ‘juggling’ game that parents play. One woman lamented “I work 4 days a week, I have two pre school children and childcare costs me $40k per year…in POST TAX DOLLARS – I have to earn $70k just to pay for childcare… you have really got to love what you do at work to make it worth working at all.”

That is the point!

Ultimately, as business leaders, we all need to be willing to embrace change and lead by example. Change the notion of what is an appropriate working week. Change leadership expectations and, as Margie writes in her blog: “have leaders demonstrate flexibility that is really flexibility. Not a five-day week squeezed into four days or the ability to work 14 hours a day through technology.”

Let me hear your thoughts on this one…

Our Customer Experience team - 'Being Real'

Another interesting question posed by The Australian – everyone is looking for the get quick rich scheme – and the reality is that there are none – unless you don’t mind a bit of hard work… here is my response to the question “How to make money online?”.

This century is all about transparency and authenticity – people want to know that you are real. But having a great product that appeals to people and will get them talking is where real success lies. I have always asked myself the question – ‘who really gives a damn?’ We might think it is the best idea ever, but really we need to get over ourselves, a bit. Sometimes when people share with me their ‘fantastic’ business ideas – the first question I ask is ‘why?’ Why are you doing this? It might be your passion but are there other people who agree – more importantly are there millions of them?

Don’t be fooled into thinking RedBalloon was an overnight success – it was two months and 4 days after the site launched in 2001 before we made our first sale! In almost ten years we have taken that number to over 1.1million experiences sold. Hard work, dedication and expelling the word failure from your vocabulary is key.

One of the biggest difficulties in running an online company is trying to connect with a customer who you will never have a true face-to-face relationship with. We try to combat this by ensuring each and every opportunity we have to engage with a customer – whether that be by phone, email or the physical delivery of an experience – ends in a great memory. In the early days a woman called me saying she was just about to purchase online with us – but she wanted to know if we where ‘real’. I answered “well you are talking to the CEO”. She responded but how do I know that, you could just as easily be the janitor (the reality was that I was the janitor too – I wore most hats in those early years). In that moment I knew that I had to build trust for my fledgling online business – I had to let people know that there was real people behind the brand. Hence with every opportunity we attend trade shows, conferences and seminars. We get out from behind the website and eye ball our customers. I personally find myself speaking at many events – this is all part of the plan to make sure people can really know us… so we are real to people…. (and it is one of the reasons for being a blogger)

Step number one in making money online is to be real, be yourself and be accessible. (Most of the promotional photo’s you see on the RedBalloon website are either of team members or were taken by team members). The next step to making money is about having a clear sense of purpose – and let people know what you stand for.

In the case of RedBalloon, it was about identifying our key audiences by considering “who would want to buy experiences” and “what sort of people want to make a difference in the lives of others”? I quickly came to the conclusion that RedBalloon would appeal to both the corporate and consumer world. Mums and dads, brother and sisters as well as businesses who put budgets aside for rewarding and recognising the efforts of their employees.

Yes, we are a business, and a key objective for a business is to make a profit. We make no secret of that. But some recent research from Travis Carter and Thomas Gilovich* really cemented that we’re on the right track with what we are do here at RedBalloon – to change gifting in Australia and NZ forever with meaningful experiences, because we believe that the most important gift is the gift of shared experience. The research showed that it’s not wealth that causes happiness, but what and how money is used that contributes to our sense of well being. The more aligned a purchase is to ‘shared experience’, the greater the sense of happiness. This deepens relationships. Interesting that the research tells us that we adjust our memories over time to ‘edit’ the bits we did not like about the experience – and we only remember the good bits – whilst the luster of a material gift will continue to fade over time.

Another critical ingredient to being profitable is not to waste money. When I started the business at home I used second hand computers, shared resources and did almost everything myself (except cut code). Whilst it might not have been the most professional or best return on my time – it meant that every dollar earned was invested in growth – rather than administration – and that we made a nominal profit from day one which could be reinvested. (RedBalloon is completely self funded) My philosophy has not changed. You do need to spend money to grow (no-one has saved themselves into growth), but the reality is that most business growth comes through building unbreakable customer relationships. And to get unbreakable customer relationships you need people who are completely committed and passionate about what they do. So a dollar invested in your people is worth far more than splashing money around on expensive bill board advertising. Advertising has a place – but it is to remind people of the relationship that they have with your brand… not to create a relationship. It takes people to do that.

So to make money online is very much about knowing what you stand for and sharing the story – having a fabulous team who share a deep commitment to a sense of purpose. The purpose simply cannot be ‘to make money’ – making money is to business what breathing is to life – it is essential, but I didn’t wake up this morning just to breath. I remember years ago when I worked in a professional services firm and the partner said something to the effect of “work harder make me more money and one day you could be here too”. Very uninspiring. If you are in business just to make money then the road is likely to be far harder, than being in business to do something to make the world a better place.
In summary

1. Be real
2. Sense of purpose
3. Invest in people

* Carter, Travis J and Gilovich, Thomas, Enjoyment of experiences and possessions

Peter Schwarts - Futurist

In no particular order I present quotes from the event which either made me reflect, ponder, question or dream. (I have only added links for the people who were speakers at the event – the other quotes were part of either the work book or presentations)

1. “Every morning is the beginning of a brand new day. You have been given this new day to use it as you want. You can waste it, or use it for good. What you choose is important, because you are exchanging a day of your life for it! When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever. In its place is something that you have left behind. Let it be worth it!

2. “If there is a hole in the boat – it does not matter if you have the cabin on it.” Mr Kofi Annan

3. “Again some questions to answer. The first answer that comes to mind will be interesting; the second that comes to mind will be very smart. The third answer that comes to mind might well be the truth. Find your third answer.”

4. “The problem is not how to get new thoughts into your head – but how to get the old one’s out.”

5. “To dare is to lose one’s footing momentarily. To not dare is to lose oneself.”

6. “We live in a time of profound turbulence” Peter Schwartz – Futurist and world wide web user #70

7. “By 2030 70% of the worlds population will live in cities and the most likely source of conflict in the future is over water.” Peter Schwartz – childhood friend to Steven Spielberg and adviser to movies such as the Minority Report.

8. “Prosperity – Peace – Sustainability must go hand in hand – it is not one at the expense of another – we only have one planet.”

9. When asked, “What should we teach our children?” Kofi Annan answered “Give them the right set of values, and start early. Character is everything. It is extremely important. Teach your children to be true to themselves.”

10. “It is necessary to the happiness of a man that he be mentally faithful to himself.” Kofi Annan.

11. When asked about what it was like to sit and negotiate with dictators he responded “when the man sitting across from you is a murderer, a person who kills people and the only tool I had was persuasion – you do it because you know that you will leave a better human being – and maybe have made a difference.”

12. In 1974 as an experimental atomic physicist at the University of Oxford, Joshua Silver asked himself the question “Why are there 3 billion people on the planet who need glasses and they can’t get them?” So began his life journey to develop cheap, self-adjusting glasses that could be manufactured for a dollar and distributed through existing world health organizations. So far he has 40,000 self-adjusting glasses in the field being tested – but they still cost around $19 to produce. Here is a man who is asking the big question. (see TED talk inserted below)

13. “At the end, entrepreneurship is not about wearing expensive suits and earning a lot of money. It is all about being true to yourself, to your values in life. Your dreams.” Richard Branson

14. “ To be an entrepreneur is the degree to which you can handle uncertainty.” Peter Sage.15. “The problems of the world cannot possibly be solved by skeptics or cynics whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities. We need women and men who can dream of things that never were.” JFK

16. “Our legacy is to teach our children to move their value set from individual/greed to collective/generosity. There is only one people, there is only one planet”

17. “Who dares to get lost discovers new roads.”

18. “There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path.” Morpheus – The Matrix movie

19. “Even the wisest mind has something yet to learn.” George Santayana

20. “Possibilities do not add up they multiply.”

21. “We don’t do this because it is easy we do this because it is hard.” JFK

22. Entrepreneurs don’t wait – they shape their own world – the bigger the challenge the greater the opportunity.

23. “To dream anything that you want to dream, that’s the beauty of the human mind. To do anything that you want to do, that is the strength of the entrepreneurial spirit.”

24. “Surround yourself with people who are only going to lift you higher.” Oprah Winfrey.

25. “I learned the power of conviction, the potential of community, and the imperative of action.” Chris Turner springwise.com