Month: July 2011

Part 4 of 4 in the “OFA Town Meeting” series. Read parts one, two and three.

In my previous posts on the 2011 OFA Town Meeting, I shared that our industry faces some big problems. Our customers don’t love us like they used to, and our balance sheets are suffering because of it. Plants are less valuable than they were before the recession began. We have slid down the hill of consumer desire, and we’re not sure why–or how to reverse that trend. Do we continue to be an “ornamental luxury good” or do we mount a full-out effort to be a “new necessity?” (Or do we try to be a ‘necessary luxury’ or perhaps a ‘luxurious necessity?’) Worse still, we are ill-equipped as a group to address the industry-wide issues. There are fewer opportunities to meet, discuss and debate because our associations are limping along with less participation and support. Even when we do have gatherings like Town Meeting, the large majority of us just can’t be bothered to attend.

So, what are we to do?

Here’s the advice that I gave at the Town Meeting: “Things are so bad that maybe you should consider selling your soul. [Pause…awkward smattering of laughter.] What I mean is, stop selling products. That just leads to being cheaper than the next guy. Sell what you have that is unique. Rediscover the soul of your business, and sell that story.”

“Sell Your Soul” has grabbed hold of my brain these past two weeks. What started as an attempt to be clever with a turn of phrase has bloomed to much more than a single blog post. The following is my outline of thoughts that could possibly turn into a book. I don’t know if I will write this book, or if the things I am thinking are useful or correct. I share my thoughts here because it is helpful to get your opinion.

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Q: Which of the following best describes your strategy for “post-recession” survival?

1. Be conservative. Don’t panic; think it through! Be slow to change. Wait as long as you can before making decisions. Hope things return to normal soon. Patience is the name of the game!
2. Hustle. Strategy? Forget strategy. Move! There’s no long-term future if the short-term isn’t taken care of first. Chase every piece of business that moves. Slash prices; grab the cash. Make the deal happen today; never say “no.” You have to do whatever it takes; there’s time to clean up the mess later.
3. Sell your soul. Things are so bad…maybe it’s time to sell your soul!
4. Exit. You shut down the business…but you better act fast before your life savings are wiped out.

Pick the one you like best, and then turn the page!

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A: I think the correct answer is “(c) Sell your soul.”

Sound kind of desperate? Here’s why it’s your best choice if you want to thrive, not just survive, in the post “Great Recession” economy. Consider the same question, with the same answers, only phrased slightly differently:

Which of the following best describes your strategy for “post-recession” survival?

1. Be conservative = Starve to death.
2. Hustle = Prostitute yourself.
3. Sell your soul = Be uniquely you.
4. Exit = Quit.

Safety First.

As a business leader, your first goal is simply not to fail. When things all around you rapidly change, you must assess which change is fundamental, and which is temporary. You can’t afford to react to every bump in the road; you must chart a steady course through the turmoil, undistracted by the unessential.

The cost of over-reaction is steep: sudden death. But the cost of slow reactions can be equally fatal; it just takes a lot longer to run out of gas than to fly off a cliff. If your business is running out of gas—out of cash, customers, inventory, investment—then your conservative approach is a sure loser. How long can you wait to make a change?

If “safety first” is your motto, you’ll ultimately find your safe resting place. What will they carve on your tombstone?

In Chapter 1, we will see that patience and careful decision-making are indeed virtues, but that you can’t afford to wait too long before making changes to your business or your life.

Anything to make a buck.

Leaders exist to lead. You’re a leader, and that means that you have to DO SOMETHING, right? When things fall apart, it may seem foolish to sit idly by. It can be difficult to resist the urge to rush in and fix things.

But the sober leader knows that immediate, thoughtless reactions are most often the wrong reactions.

Sales are down? Slash prices. Overhead is too high? Lay-off some more employees. You have an opportunity outside of your realm of expertise? Act like you know what you’re doing. Customers don’t want to pay a premium for quality? Hold your nose and just get it done. Your customer’s customer tries to buy direct? Let’s hope nobody notices.

These are all probably the wrong decision, but the hustler can’t see the long-term implications.

Slashing prices leads to a devaluing of your product, which may hurt you for decades. Cutting staff too deeply can lead to an inability to serve your customers—and they will notice. Losing focus by taking on new opportunities that you can’t excel in will only lead to misspent effort and future confusion, inefficiencies and failures. If your quality slips, your reputation will slip even faster. And betraying business allegiances will lead you and your customers to wonder, “How in the world did we become a company so far removed from what we wanted to be?”

In Chapter 2, we will see there is no substitute for effort, but you need more than hustling to get where you want to go. Don’t move until you think it through completely. When you know the correct path, then you better hustle like your life depended on it—cause it does.

If your motto is “anything to make a buck,” then you’re basically a prostitute in a business suit. If all you do is hustle, you will inevitably compromise yourself, and the payment you receive will not be worth the prostitution.

Quit

Nobody wants to be a quitter, but it may be the wisest choice for you. In Chapter 3, we will set our egos aside and take a look at the real meaning of business and life, and they are not the same thing.

We’ll think through how to face the hard facts without emotion and how to proceed with the difficult process of dissolving a company or a division of a larger enterprise. We will also look at the risk of waiting too long to quit, and finally how to find help and support from others.

Sell your soul.

It’s time you stopped selling stuff—the products gathering dust on the shelves or the billable hours on your time-sheets—because the value you create isn’t in the stuff so much as it’s in you. It’s in your soul, that which makes you uniquely you. Your soul is your most valuable asset. It’s of infinite worth, actually!

When I say, “Sell your soul,” of course I don’t mean compromise your values. Quite the opposite.

Understand what lies at the soul of your business and your life…and stay true to it. Live it; don’t fake it. Put it out in the open; tell your story. Having a soul isn’t good enough now. You need to sell it, transparently and honestly.

Sell your soul or lose it.

The essentials of business never change: people want quality goods at fair prices with thoughtful service. These essential ingredients haven’t changed since from before the industrial revolution, but they have changed drastically in terms of degree and mixture. What comes after our “information age,” with its overwhelming amount of messages and information? We could well be already in the Age of Meaning, where much more than data and deals, people want narrative and connection. Your customers don’t want cheap stuff nearly as much as they want to do business with a company that confidently expresses their soul.

This concept is more than just a play on words, it’s a radical shift in thinking about value in the marketplace. Who you are and what you stand for—your soul—will be your most valuable asset in the new economy.

In Chapters 4 and 5, we examine how “Selling Your Soul” combines the best of both the conservative and the hustling approach. Thought and action, working in concert, is the approach you want.

In Chapter 6, we will see some examples of businesses and leaders that are successfully “selling their souls.” Chapter 7 is a roadmap to discovering your soul and how to build a culture with the right people to nurture your soul.

Chapter 8 is all about the tools of selling your soul, and why today’s social networking tools are the perfect gift to the small business with soul.

Chapter 9 warns about the need for honesty and transparency, while Chapter 10 examines why tomorrow’s consumer values soul over features or price, and how your business can compete and win even in the midst of massive generational change.

Chapter 11 asks the question, “When is it OK to compromise?”

Chapter 12 will encourage you to find a higher, greater purpose in business and in life, so that your soul is actually worth selling.

And, lastly, in Chapter 13 we will examine the “Return on Soul:” how to turn attention and awareness into profitable sales.

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Connect.

I’m not sure how to proceed from here. I’m eager to hear your thoughts! Please post a comment, or send me an e-mail if you’d rather keep it private. Thanks for reading! ~Art

This is part 2 of 4 of “OFA Town Meeting 2011” series. Read part one, three and four.

My last post boldly proclaimed that the OFA Town meeting solved “industry woes.” Several people have asked, “Which woes did you solve and what were the solutions?” As you may have guessed, the title had a double meaning: we talked about our woes at the Town Meeting, but the Town Meeting itself epitomizes what is ailing us as an industry. The real woe for our industry was that the Town Meeting was poorly attended.

The happy hour before with the free beer? Packed.

Now I am ready to share some of my thoughts stemming from the content of the Town Meeting. There are three, and I will share each one in a separate post: 1) King of the Hill, 2) Necessity Not a Luxury and 3) Sell Your Soul.

King of the Hill

Why don’t our customers love us any more?

That was the question at the OFA Town Meeting 2011. The best moment came when a member of the audience told us on the panel that we were full of it. He took the microphone and said, “What I’m hearing from the experts up on stage is basically the answer is just ‘marketing.’ But we’ve been hearing that same message for 20 years! It hasn’t worked!”

Do you remember playing the game “king of the hill” when you were a kid? If you’re a business owner, you are still playing that game. Only now, you’re fighting for the consumer’s dollar. It’s a perpetual struggle for attention, perceived value and ultimately the sale. If you take a breather for even a minute you’re guaranteed to slide back down the hill.

You can call this battle for position on the hill “marketing” if you want, or you could call it what it really is: BUSINESS.

By all appearances, most of us in the green industry are not doing too well at climbing the hill. Who’s fault is that? We blame the weather. We blame the economy. We blame our competitors. We even blame the stupid, lazy, fickle American consumer! Maybe it’s time we stopped blaming all the things outside our control and really focused our energy on getting back up the hill. And another thing: at an industry level we should realize that we are all really on the same team–we are the same kid.

Why don’t we have what we want?

It can be discouraging when we’ve been trying our best (we think) for 20 years, and yet that’s no guarantee that some jerk behind us won’t pull us down and we’ll have to start all over again. But that doesn’t mean that we write off “marketing” as a false hope. Marketing is simply asking. We want our customer’s attention. We want their money. We want their LOVE. Why don’t we have what we want?

“You do not have because you do not ask.” Could it be that our customers don’t love us because we haven’t asked them for their love?

Are we loveable?

Perhaps the root of the problem is that we lack confidence that we are worth loving. Maybe we don’t really believe in the value of our product. Consider the price of a plant today compared to 20 years ago…

What is the value of plants? This leads me to the next blog post, a point I’ve been thinking about: “necessity not a luxury.” Coming very soon!

~Art

You missed it.

Last week I attended the OFA Town Meeting. The topic of discussion was, “Why Don’t Our Customers Love Us Anymore? (Hint: It’s NOT the Weather!).” I really like the “It’s NOT the Weather” part: it’s easy for me to feel overwhelmed by things outside my control. It’s an old industry adage that the weather determines our success or failure more than anything else. But blaming things other than my own management is a sure way to be a loser.

The Town Meeting was great! But I didn’t see you there. Where were you? You missed a lively and important discussion on the challenges facing the green industry.

I’d like to share with you some of the discussion, which was led by Lloyd Traven of Peace Tree Farm, or some of the insight from the amazing panelists invited by Lloyd: Joe Baer of Zen Genius, Angela Treadwell-Palmer of Plants Nouveau, Jean Ann Van Krevelen of White Willow Media, Christina Salwitz of The Personal Garden Coach. I’d like to get your opinion on some of the tough questions asked by the crowd of garden center and greenhouse operators.

But…you don’t care, do you? After all, if you had wanted to know how to turn our industry’s crisis into opportunity, you would have been there, right?

It was a wonderful, stimulating session, perhaps the best thing I’ve been to outside of the ANLA Management Clinic. (And it reminded me of some of the OpenHort posters we made for the Clinic this past year…especially this one asking, “Is She An Endangered Species?”) However, I do think that the OFA educational atmosphere suffers a bit from being attached to a busy trade-show. There was so much going on at the OFA that a lot of important people chose not to join in this essential conversation. Why is that? They had something better to do than discuss the viability of the green industry?

Will there be a Town Meeting for you to skip in 10 years?

Overall, I see a disturbing trend away from industry association involvement, and a declining atmosphere of, well, good citizenship. Our associations are withering; our egalitarian spirit is fraying. Maybe the movers-and-shakers are still moving-and-shaking, but they’re not necessarily inviting the rest of you to join in. We have magazines hosting private industry summits and throwing award ceremonies, things which used to be the job of our trade associations, right? This summer there will be a big gathering in Tulsa of most of the big growers that are fortunate enough to participate in the big brands like Knockout, Encore and Endless Summer. With no ANLA annual meeting, is this where industry issues will be decided?

Don’t mistake me, I’m not saying that these things are bad. The magazines are seeing a need and filling it…and generating lots of articles in the process. The Tulsa meeting is so practical: why go to three separate program meetings when everyone can just get together in the same city? Brilliant! Both of these are super-efficient, and we can applaud that!

Also, I’m truly honored and humbled to be included in these events. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. The problem isn’t the private meetings…the problem is if we only meet privately and cease meeting as a wider industry in open forums. We need private gatherings. They’re essential. But that’s not all we need.

The green industry needs associations. We have to get together and see each other–face to face–to talk and share and challenge. We need leadership, volunteerism, and an old-fashioned Town-Hall-style sense of community problem-solving. Where is this going to occur?

Thanks, Lloyd, for being an example to me (and all of us) this week! You gave many a voice, and many more left your session thinking deeply about the problems that face us.

~Art

PS: About the picture of Lloyd Traven above…

The name “Town Meeting” brought to my mind Norman Rockwell’s famous painting, “Freedom of Speech” from the Four Freedoms series published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1943. I pulled a photo of Lloyd from Facebook and “Photoshoped” it on, along with a name badge. I added some “painterly” effects and color correction, as well as warped his face a little to make it look like it belonged on the painting a little better.

I wanted to make an image that evoked all that was good about the classically American form of civic participation. Lloyd, I think, is really trying to challenge and engage with our industry. I think more people should listen, and I think more people should speak their minds. In order to do either one…you have to be in the room!

You know Her: she’s a great customer. She ADORES plants, devours every issue of Better Homes & Gardens, and spends Her winters pining away for the first signs of spring thaw so she can eagerly attack Her garden plans. She drives the nice-but-not-too-nice car, knows your staff by name, and wouldn’t dream of shopping for Her garden anywhere else.

Um, yeah. There aren’t 10% of Her out there anymore.

NewsFlash: She’s already cheating on you. And if she isn’t, she will.

Honestly? She likes you well enough, but she’s gotten bored with you, the spark just isn’t there anymore. She used to be surprised by something new each time she came in, she was inspired by your lush and lavish displays.

The recession-era you: with paint from two seasons ago, staff reductions, and merchandise constriction, well, you’re a little less alluring.

You’ve become predictable, and not in a good way.

She’s already shopping at Nordstrom for Her shoes but Costco for Her paper towels. She’s smart enough to see the grower’s truck when it stops at the Big Box store on Tuesdays with fresh product, which, golly – looks fairly much the same to Her eye.

She’s using more coupons these days, because austerity is ‘in.’ She’s savvy enough to price shop the essentials online. And even if you’re closer… well, your staff are more harried and distracted than ever, your parking lot is tight, she can’t get to your store after work…

Can you make Her feel special again? Can you give Her the thing she values most – Her TIME – back? Can you delight Her? Make Her life easier? If not, then you’re just 5% better than the other guys – and they’re 20% cheaper.

And she’s smart enough to do the math.

Creator’s Commentary: Kellee Magee of the ANLA gets most of the credit for this one; she wrote all of the copy. I came up with the concept: I thought it would be provocative to suggest that the target consumer of our industry, an upper-middle class, suburbanite Baby-Boomer female…was disappearing, never to come back. I stole this photo from somewhere and added the caption: “Is she an endangered species?” Kellee did the rest, and she said it much better than I could have! She really nailed it, I think…when I re-read it, it scares the pants off of me. I believe Kellee wrote the copy on a vacation flight to Hawaii. That’s dedication!

The photo was quite small, so it took some work to make it suitable for poster-sized printing. I put a lot of stuff into it: curves, blurs, film grain and a vignette. I kept her face and particularly her smile pretty bright, but her flesh grows gradually pale and grey, so that her hands look almost like she’s dead. I put the black bar over her eyes because I thought it was cool. It dehumanized her, objectified her, and made it seem more ominous. Also, I guess I felt slightly guilty about stealing the image! ~Art

This week, I traveled to Columbus, OH for the OFA Short Course. One of the highlights of this trip was meeting Laurie Scullin, who I had heard speak in 2010 at the ANLA Management Clinic.

His talk was titled “Big Box Marketing for Independent Garden Centers,” and it really surprised me. For the first time, I saw that the social media tools of Facebook, blogs and YouTube were not a waste of time but were in fact the tools of communication that we needed to tell our industry’s story to the world.

I was inspired and started OpenHort as soon as I returned home from the Clinic. During his talk, Scullin described how he and and his colleague Frank Zaunscherb had brainstormed a “grassroots national marketing campaign” concept, which is described here in this Greenhouse Grower article (which I read just this past Spring for the first time).

When I saw Laurie standing in the JiffyPot booth, I was excited to meet him, and I was blown away that he knew about OpenHort, that he loved what we’re doing and wanted to see more.

It is so helpful to hear encouragement from others, especially those I respect and look up to. It really motivates me to get back to work!

Thanks, Laurie!

 

~Art

Busy day today at the OFA in Columbus, OH. Was on a panel for the “Town Hall” meeting led by Lloyd Traven.

Thanks also to GIE media. They just gave me a Horticulture Industry Leadership Award for my (meager) efforts here at Open Hort. Thanks!

-Art