be ready to adapt
You’d be surprised at how many entrepreneurs aren’t good at adjusting to changing environments, and it’s a major reason why so many businesses don’t achieve their full potential. I see it all the time. Someone with ambition and talent decides she’s going to be the Martha Stewart of kid-friendly sandwiches, and then all of a sudden discovers that somewhere along the way she reached a core group of beer-drinking dudes who are religiously watching the show. Instead of embracing that demographic and adapting, she refuses to acknowledge it and keeps making fish-shaped pimento cheese. Maybe she does fine with her blog catering to the kiddie set, but can you imagine how much bigger this ambitious person’s business could have been if she had given up a day a week to prepare sandwiches perfect for tailgate parties?
A perfect real-life example of a brand that drew an unnecessary line in the sand regarding its positioning is Cristal. Starting in the late 1990s, the upscale Champagne was enthusiastically adopted by the hip-hop community. But instead of embracing and leveraging the attention, the managing director indicated in an interview with the Economist that he’d prefer to distance his brand from rappers and their fans, saying, “We can’t forbid people from buying it. I’m sure Dom Perignon or Krug would be delighted to have their business.” He had the chance to cultivate a golden opportunity to capture major market share and instead he killed it, because smart and influential entertainers like Jay-Z were rightfully offended by the guy’s attitude and organized an effective boycott against the brand.
put out fires
Now, reactionary business has nothing to do with social media—everyone in business should practice it even if they’ve decided to completely ignore social networks (a stupid idea but one that a lot of established brands are following). On the other hand, all of these social networking platforms turbo-boost your ability to be reactionary, not only by enabling you to guide your brand to where it naturally fits or where you discover pockets of interest, but by giving you a lot of power to put out fires. For example, I was seen all over ESPN after the NFL draft booing the Mark Sanchez pick by the New York Jets. It looked like I was hating on the pick and the player, which wasn’t true. I didn’t know the details of the trade and when I saw the team go from seventeen to five in the rankings, I assumed that the Jets had given up a whole lot to get Sanchez, and that’s what was bothering me. Turns out that wasn’t the case. Regardless, I felt bad that everyone, including Mark Sanchez if he happened to be watching, misunderstood my reaction. Five years ago I couldn’t have fixed the misperception, but thanks to social media, the Monday after the game I was able to use my biggest platform, Wine Library TV, to clarify what I thought.
A more relevant example can be found in the way Domino’s used YouTube to respond to the negative publicity they suffered after two employees shot video of themselves doing disgusting things with the food before serving it to customers. A lot of people pointed to that story as evidence of the downside to social media because two idiots were able to blast a negative image of a company out to thousands of consumers within minutes. But the Domino’s brand didn’t get hurt. Anyone with half a brain knows that morons work everywhere and that this could happen in any restaurant, from fast food to reservations only. No one wants people messing with their food, and of course the employees responsible should be punished, but their actions didn’t hurt the brand. In fact, I think Domino’s helped their brand by showing great reactionary business instincts. I respect how fast they got into the trenches and responded via the same medium as the crime that was committed, with a YouTube video. Good for CEO Patrick Doyle, who in his address appears to be a pretty traditional corporate guy gamely trying to fight fire with fire (next time, Mr. Doyle, try to look into the camera and lose the script; it makes a big difference). CEOs and business managers don’t need to have a power meeting with their PR department to discuss how to handle a problem like this one; they should know what they want to say, and then say it. Successfully dealing with a situation like this is all about speed, honesty, and transparency.
I saw this as a great opportunity for Domino’s to flip this situation on its head. They, and every other fast-food restaurant, should open up their kitchens to a livestream that anyone can watch from anywhere, including while waiting in line to order pizza. To me, adapting in this way to the reality that cell phones and Flip Cams (which are going to merge, wait and see) are always going to make their way behind the scenes of any restaurant would be an outstanding example of reactionary business.
shape your story
Thanks to social networking platforms, your story is going to get told, unfiltered, whether you like it or not. You can no longer control the message, but that’s not a bad thing unless you work for a closed-minded PR company. As far as I’m concerned, the biggest hurdle for most corporate brands today is their dependence on their PR people. They’re terrified of the unfiltered message, but what they should do is encourage it. Every employee of every company should have a Facebook account where they can talk about their work and the company (in addition to whatever else they want). Let people gripe, let them air their frustrations. Don’t wait for exit interviews to find out what your staff really thinks; tap into the pulse of the company and start making changes right away. Yes, there are websites dedicated to allowing people to air their dirty laundry, but people should be allowed to hang their dirty laundry on their own clothesline. Empowering your employees to communicate is a great thing. If you suppress their urge to talk, you’re only weakening your brand from within by limiting your access to information.
When you know what people are saying and thinking about your brand, you can address it. If you see falsehood, you can correct it. If you see praise, you can show appreciation. If you see confusion, you can inform. Your empowerment doesn’t stop with your staff or your customers, either. It used to be that you were at the mercy of the media, with no say in how it told your story unless it was willing to pick up on your version. If you didn’t like the picture it painted, you were kind of stuck. Now you can fight the media itself with these tools, with your blog and Facebook and Twitter. Now you can do a live press conference on Ustream, whereas ten years ago you could try but it was always a gamble whether someone would show up with a TV camera.
trendspotting
Some entrepreneurs are really into creating the next big thing. Not me. I’m about identifying the next big thing and jumping all over it. To me, honing your ability to act on waxing and waning social and cultural trends is a major reactionary business move.
Some people are born with good trendspotting intuition. My whole life I’ve been able to see something and just feel that it’s going to be big. I felt it for baseball cards, for toy collectibles, for wine, for the Internet and video blogging, and I’m sure I’ll see the next trend that comes around. I look everywhere for inspiration. Recently I noticed that certain kids are using markers to draw tattoos on themselves and create body graffiti. Occasionally I’ve used my forty-five-minute drive to work to wonder, what does it mean that kids are drawing their own tattoos? How do I capitalize on it? Where is the opportunity? Then while on the Thunder Cruise (a cruise for my fans) in April, we docked in the Bahamas and I noticed a huge line at the kids’ tattoo station at the Atlantis. If I were in the ink business, I’d want to create an organic, nontoxic, kid-friendly, skin-friendly brand of ink and capture the market of kids who want to design their own tattoos. The tremendous line at the booth told me that parents are clearly ready for this. I’m not the right guy to invent the product to fill that market need, but if you do it, let me know.
Being reactionary means that you’re always thinking about the meaning behind cultural change. Let’s say you’re at a party and a friend tells you she’s canceling cable. You hear that and your radar should go off. Canceling cable? No one would have canceled cable two years ago, what’s going on? If you haven’t figured it out already, I’ll tell you why it’s important: it means that the day is almost here when ther
e will be no difference between watching TV and watching online video. Cable on Demand and Netflix and TiVo and YouTube and Hulu have each pushed the envelope a little farther by extending the life of movies and shows and by making network programming schedules irrelevant, but the next phase will be even more dramatic. Eventually Comcast or Time Warner is going to announce a new channel that airs online videos. You’ll be able to use your remote to search by subject. Now the kid who draws tattoos on his arm will be able to type in “body graffiti” and find forty-five different shows about body art on the Internet. He’s going to create his own TV watching experience, not just swallow what the TV stations have decided to feed him. If you happen to host a graffiti video blog that at first was reaching five thousand people, you’re suddenly going to have the potential to reach hundreds of thousands. For someone practicing reactionary business—someone who is looking ahead and adapting to markets and taking advantage of new opportunities to communicate—that puts a lot of media dollars into play.
Thanks to social networking we now have access to powerful, real-time, streamlined data that can allow us to steer our ships very accurately in response to trends and to turn challenges into huge opportunities. But reactionary business isn’t limited to businesses developed through social media platforms. Whatever the next business phenomenon turns out to be, your reactionary business skills will be critical to capitalizing on it.
thirteen
legacy is greater than currency
It used to be that only people in the public eye had to worry about controlling their message. They used teams of stylists and publicists to shape their image, and even the media acted more as a guardian than a snitch—no one knew about our presidents’ affairs or an actor’s drug habit or a tycoon’s backroom deals. Those days are long gone, not just for celebrities but for all of us. We’re all in the public eye now, swimming around in a clear glass fish bowl of our own making. With every e-mail and video and blog post and tweet and status update, we add to the real-time documentary of our lives. For the person who thinks of himself or herself as a brand—and remember, everyone needs to start thinking of themselves as a brand—the ability to spread your great ideas and share your triumphs is a golden opportunity. The downside to this, of course, is that when you mess up or things go wrong, there’s no longer anywhere to hide. The public can be forgiving when it wants to be, but rather than test its generosity, I urge you to start training yourself to think through the consequences of every business decision you make before you actually make it.
Perhaps that sounds like obvious advice, but I know for a fact that many people have a hard time thinking long term. Successful entrepreneurs are like good chess players; they can imagine the various possibilities ahead and how each one will trigger their next move. Too many people, however, can’t think past their first move (worse, some don’t care to, like a small number of CEOs who know they’ll be gone in three years and just want the stock price to go up no matter the long-term impact on the company). They’re all about what’s good for their business today. That kind of thinking is at the root of a lot of really crap judgment calls, the kind that will sink a personal brand. Achieving 100 percent happiness is the whole point of living your passion, of course, but to my mind that happiness is unachievable if you don’t recognize that with every decision you make, you’re building more than just a business, you’re building a legacy.
For all of us made of ambitious, competitive, hungry DNA, the urge to take our personal brands as far as they will go is second nature. But let me assure you that if you’re coming exclusively from the monetizing angle, you’re going to lose. How you build your business is so much more important than how much you make while doing it. Yes, I want to buy the Jets. Yes, I intend to crush it. But as I build my brand and make money and work to achieve my goals, I am always hyperaware that everything I’m doing is being recorded for eternity. It does bother me a little that all the cursing I sometimes do in my keynotes is going to become part of my story, yet I have to embrace it because that’s just how my DNA expresses itself when I’m onstage. I want to be proud of what I do. I want my kids and my grandkids and great-grandkids to be proud of me. This is why every decision I make is weighed in terms of currency and legacy. Will this business deal make me money? Yes? Good. Will I be proud of how I made that money? Yes? Okay, then, let’s do this. If the answer is no, I don’t go there, ever. Legacy always wins.
My obsession with legacy should explain to you why I insist on trying to answer every e-mail, tweet, ping, or comment. Back in the early days I used to reply within a couple of hours. Now the volume of my correspondence has gotten so overwhelming that it takes me a few months to get back to people, but I guarantee you, I always try to. If I realize I’m falling behind because I’m busy or I have a brutal travel schedule, I’ll shoot off a short video explaining what’s going on and promise to reply to everyone as soon as possible.
Now, a lot of people think I’m out of my mind for keeping this up. In the beginning they thought it was kind of cute, but now they think I’m insane. After all, I’m on the social network radar. I may be only a triple-Z list celebrity, but it would be fair to say that I’ve done all right for myself and that I’ve secured an interested, loyal audience through my particular brand of perseverance and hard work. Surely, some well-meaning friends have suggested, people would understand if I had to delegate my correspondence or even start picking and choosing who gets a personal reply.
That’s not how it works. Not in my world, anyway. No matter how big you get, every e-mail, every customer, every friend, every single person with whom you come into contact matters and deserves respect and attention. Not because you never know who’s going to be a good contact or resource later on, although that’s definitely true, but just because. If someone takes the time to reach out to you, it’s your obligation to reciprocate.
That said, the truth is that my e-mail volume is getting to the point where I fear I may have to make some adjustments in how I respond to correspondence, but rest assured that I will find a way to remain accessible to my friends and fans.
Legacy is the mortar of successful, lasting brands. I’ve known this since my days in retail. There was one year where I found out that a customer in Westchester, New York, hadn’t received her case of White Zinfandel. It was December 22 and there was no way FedEx was going to deliver the wine in time for Christmas. My ordering department had received the complaint, but because the customer was neither a regular nor the order particularly large, they hadn’t brought it to my attention. By the time I got wind of the problem there was only one thing left to do. I threw a case of White Zinfandel in my car and drove three hours in blinding snow to the woman’s house. Did I mention that she lived in another state? That it was our busiest time of the year? That my time was much more valuable in the store during those six round-trip hours? And believe me, there was no angle. The customer was an older woman who lived far away and wasn’t about to start hosting a lot of parties and using us as her exclusive wine supplier.
Yet I knew that it was up to me to set the tone at the store, and that this was a perfect way to do it. Our corporate culture was cemented the day I delivered the case of wine to that woman. I follow the same philosophy when I answer every single one of my e-mails. Making connections, creating and continuing meaningful interaction with other people, whether in person or in the digital domain, is the only reason we’re here. Remember that, set the tone, and build legacy.
conclusion
the time is now, the message is forever
Today’s entrepreneurs are building on top of a foundation that has changed our society forever, something that goes much deeper than Twitter and Tumblr and YouTube. The greatest paradox surrounding the Internet is that as much as it allows us to isolate and limit ourselves only to what we believe is immediately relevant to our specific needs, so does it allow us to connect at unprecedented levels and extend ourselves beyond our farthest horizons. People still underestimat
e the reach of this thing. The Internet is only fourteen years old or so—it’s so young it hasn’t even had sex—yet it has already crushed many of the biggest communication platforms known to humankind, and it’s not done. The Internet is as powerful as oxygen, but we have not seen its full capabilities. It’s got a long way to go, and it’s going to morph and change and reveal all kinds of surprises. You’ve got to be prepared to evolve and adapt along with it.
Whatever you do, don’t read this book and take everything I say word for word. I’ve offered you a blueprint of the step-by-step process of taking advantage of what the Internet has to offer you now, which has worked well for me. But in six months the environment will have changed again. If you see something—a platform, a trend, a social pattern that makes your radar go off, you should absolutely follow it. Don’t ever be afraid to put your feet in that water, whether I’ve said a word about it or not. Listen to your DNA—it will always lead you in the right direction.
If there’s any message I want you to take away, it’s that true success—financial, personal, and professional—lies above all in loving your family, working hard, and living your passion. In telling your story. In authenticity, hustle, and patience. In caring fiercely about the big and the small stuff. In valuing legacy over currency. Social media is an important part of it for now, but maybe it won’t always be. These concepts, however, are forever, no matter what the next business platform or social phenomenon turns out to be.