When you start your own business there are going to be lessons that you have to learn through first-hand experience. But there are many mistakes that are common and have been made many times before. Save yourself a headache by reading articles like this and not repeating history. Below is a valuable lesson I learned the hard way. Hopefully, you don’t have to.
As technologists we often drink our own Kool-aid. We build products that we know can transform businesses. After a release, we get excited and high five our fellow engineers. But then something happens: Our prospects aren’t as receptive to our vision. They don’t see the value; they don’t know how to properly integrate it into their workflow; they’re doing it wrong. When this happens our natural reaction is to think they just don’t understand. But if we don’t solve our buyers needs then we are actually the ones who don’t understand.
I know because I have been a victim of this. I come from an enterprise-level tech background. My previous buyers were sophisticated engineers who understand the minutia of each component and readily contribute to open-source projects. With my new startup, Adored, my co-founder, Cory von Wallenstein, and I were speaking to small business owners — people who run coffee shops, bars, restaurants, resorts. Small business people are exceptional entrepreneurs but typically aren’t fluent in technology nor super receptive to unproven change.
Of course, being an excitable entrepreneur, these red flags didn’t faze me. I believed in the technology we had built and I would convince them of the value of Adored, a mobile app that better allows small businesses to communicate with their customers.
Well, despite our best effort this first iteration didn’t work. When I would give a small business owner the ability to write their own push notifications they struggled. The content came out forced, impersonal and in no way a reflection of their amazing brand. I realized that wasn’t going to lead to success.
After leaving a not-so-good meeting with a small business owner, I was frustrated. How could they not understand how to write a push notification? How did this cafe become so successful if they did not understand marketing?
And then it hit me. Well, actually I hit it.
I walked into a chalkboard that was set up outside of the coffee shop. On it, in beautiful hand drawn calligraphy, were that day’s specials and a nice note reminding customer to get the Adored app. The names and descriptions of their lunch specials were so enticing that I brought our entire team back for lunch later that day.
That’s when I discovered that I was the one who didn’t understand. Of course, these small business owners intuitively know how to market their offerings. They make lunch dishes so tempting it can alter my behavior. And they do it under the hardest of circumstances: they serve people selflessly while being judged daily.
Where they need help is in distributing that material. What they’re not well-versed at is being forced to cram that creativity into all of these various mediums — push notifications, social, email campaigns — that are being pushed onto them. A chalkboard is natural. It is authentic. A witty, 140-character tweet is not. While we can all adapt, it takes time. And time is not something a small business has in abundance. The key for any vendor is to make a convenient solution. If it isn’t convenient, then interest in your product will be lost.
The problem with a chalkboard, however, is that it has limited reach. If someone can’t see it — no matter how beautiful it looks — then it won’t impact their behavior. Getting the right message in front of the right people isn’t easy.
While the chalkboard had limited reach, as I mentioned before, new types of marketing were uncomfortable and so they led to the wrong message. For small businesses there is something to be said about being tangible. When marketing is out of sight, there is less of an investment.
I can’t see a push notification on a customer’s phone 30 miles away. A newsletter doesn’t help me decide where to eat lunch. I don’t open customers emails. Out of sight, out of mind. But if I look at a chalkboard all day long; if it is physically standing in front of my cafe — which I take great pride in — then I am going to make sure I do the best job possible. That motivation is a powerful tool to leverage.
When building a product it is exciting to come up with a brand new way of doing things. But when building a business it is much better to have a product that amplifies what a buyer is already doing.
This is why Adored has evolved as a distribution mechanism for small businesses’ chalkboards. The content is already created. The marketing is already done. The passion has already been put out there for all to see. Now we can help move that from a hyperlocal tactic into something with much grander reach.
This wouldn’t have been done if we tried to force our vision onto our customers. We were trying to cram a square peg into a round hole. Instead, we identified a need and figured out how we could solve it on a consistent basis, without having to develop a bunch of new habits. It was a great lesson for us to learn and one I hope you can immediately implement in your own business.
An experienced developer and entrepreneur, Dan Vine is the CTO and co-founder of Adored. He has spent more than 15 years as a leader in the tech industry. His true passion is helping small businesses solve problems.
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