Archive
Archive for March, 2010
Godin calls it a tribe. Kevin Kelly calls them your 1000 True Fans. Hugh MacLeod calls it a global microbrand.
Everywhere you look, you might notice a new kind of flexible, smart small business. They serve a relatively small number of people. Big businesses drool over their profit margins and adaptability. Their customers are knocked out by what they do and how they do it.
Oh, and one more thing. They’re taking over the world.
These businesses know their customers, often on a first name basis. Their customer relationships, like every real relationship, encounter the occasional rough spot. Being small and human means making plenty of mistakes.
But when these businesses mess up, unlike AT&T or Microsoft, their customers often love them more.
What’s a village business?
A few months ago, I wrote about the advantages of having a village of customers. Business is personal, intimate, and human-scaled. Each village business is individual, defined by the personality of the owner, but also by the quirks of their customers.
But unlike a literal village, many of the new village businesses have customers all over the world. Your customers might hail from Melbourne, Malaysia and Munich, while you run your village business from a home office in Madison, Wisconsin.
As economic trends smash big companies to pieces (and outsource the crumbs that are left), more and more people are creating vibrant little businesses serving their own villages of customers.
A village business is responsive
When your customer base is small, you can be exceptionally responsive to the needs and desires of those customers.
If you’re a village baker worried about health trends, you can start doing something about it right away.
You put more heart-healthy items in your cases. You open your kitchen after hours for healthy cooking classes. You team up with local restaurants to put better bread on their tables, and local mills to get fresh organic flour for your products.
What you don’t do is run focus groups to see if there’s a market need, or ask your franchise manager if they’re ok with you adding some items to the menu.
You just try it out. Your community likes it or they don’t. Either way, you won’t have to do market research to find out how it’s going — your village just tells you.
You adjust your course. You find common ground between your vision and the needs of your village. You learn by doing.
A place where everybody knows your name
Remember that line from the old TV show Cheers? The show is about a bar that’s a quintessential village business. Everyone’s a regular. Everyone is familiar.
Television shows rely on this familiarity. Shows about quirky villages (Northern Exposure, The Gilmore Girls) draw loyal viewers week after week. And even shows allegedly set in big cities (Friends, Seinfeld, Sex in the City) give us versions of those cities where we spend all of our time within the same village of familiar faces.
Most of us are uncomfortable in vast, anonymous spaces. Red Square is magnificent, but no one wants to spend a week’s vacation there.
We want to feel special, like we’re part of something. We want to be a “regular.”
Give them someplace to gather
What does a village need?
A leader. (That’s you.) A purpose. (That’s your market position or winning difference.) An idiot. (Don’t worry, one always shows up.) And a place to come together.
You might create a membership site for your best-loved customers. Or organize special conferences, user groups, and gatherings. You might build something as simple as a private online forum where your village can share their experiences — good and bad.
But give your village a place to get together. To know you better, and know one another better. A place where everybody knows their name.
About the Author: Sonia Simone is Senior Editor of Copyblogger and the founder of Remarkable Communication.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
photo by Velvet Glass
There are two places that define the contours of our daily experience of humanity: where we live and where we work.
I consider attending school and visiting doctors on a regular basis (an activity my mother-in-law elevated to an art form) part of all that.
Then there is what is known as third space.
Third space
This is what Starbucks offers its customers who buy its overpriced and often burnt tasting coffee. A place to be among other people that is not home or the office. Their added value experience? Free Wifi, no pressure and comfy chairs with that venti caffe macchiato.
This is what the four Apple stores in Manhattan offer in addition to their products – a place to play with shiny toys, fix your not so shiny toys and drift into a workshop in their theater to learn how life could be better having more of them. And you are surrounded by geniuses! Their added value experience? The cool factor, tongue in cheek geek service and a beautiful digital oasis stocked with all things Mac and i.
This is what the Studio/Shop of Wool and the Gang, a sleek and sexy yarn shop on Thompson Street offers its knitters who flock to the long worktable in the center. Their added value experience? A gathering place to knit, chat, learn a new stitch and indulge your inner spinner with your purchase of yarn.
This is what my mother’s cha cha class offers its students who gather in a bright second floor martial arts studio every week. A place to learn some steps to impress people at Raymond and Margaret’s upcoming 40th wedding anniversary party. Their added value experience? A weekly gathering of retired friends who look forward to chatting, having lunch and feeling uplifted by their ballroom dance repertoire.
These third spaces are artful communities.
Communities define the relevance of your passion so they must be thoughtfully addressed and cared for whether they are coffee drinking, gameplaying, knitting or doing the foxtrot. Good community building is social interaction engineering. It is also good for the arts, business, and people who change the world.
Here is an excerpt from a post by Michaela Hackner of Forum One:
But beyond all of the hype and noise, the most dominant theme I keep coming back to is that community is and always will be King. Even if you have the most awesome web site, campaign, or cause out there, you need a thoughtful and dedicated community behind it in order for it to be successful.
Both online and offline, communities are not only the way we identify ourselves, but more importantly, they are the most authentic and powerful vehicle for change. Our communities vet good ideas, apply the “trust” layer, and motivate us to take real action — from donating to becoming an advocate. It is the groundswell of communities that provides the momentum and sustainability for social change.
Victor, my mother’s dance instructor, asked me for my card.
“Ah, you are an executive director.”
He smiled and asked me how to negotiate a deal for street level space that could be used as a permanent community based dance studio in a development in Flushing, Queens.
What, am I that transparent?
Of course I do, I said. And of course I will do whatever I can to choreograph into motion that third space, that artful community, that cha cha class.
Get more Wow!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
www.woolandthegang.com
On the first day of spring, Seth and I were wandering around Nolita when we stumbled upon the Studio/Shop of Wool and the Gang, a postage stamp sized knitting shop on Thompson Street.
Two women perched stylishly at a long white table looked up as we walked in.
“Hello, do you knit?”
Seth immediately knew that once he said no, he would be airily dismissed as A Nonknitter, so he mumbled something about some of his best friends being knitters and disappeared out of the door leaving us Knitters to excitedly talk about what we love - all things knit and purl.
This is a place that invites you to pull up a tall stool to their tall worktable and be part of their knitting community. As all of you know, this really appeals to the nonprofit knitter in me, to the multiple intelligences learning style fan in me, yarn addict too!
Their wools are thick, rich in color and carry a simple stockinette stitch well. If you prefer something lighter under your jacket, their alpacas are what you are looking for. They will be carrying cottons for spring and summer knitting soon.
This is a chic little place to sit and knit with some great product on the shelves. Check out these knitting kits. They are nifty packages of yarn, needles, instructions, label, even a sewing needle and immediate gratification.
Can’t wait to get Hooked? Grab your needles and click here!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
I have been seeing a lot of dance in the past few weeks ranging from Paul Taylor Dance Company at New York City Center, Stefanie Nelson Dance Group at Joyce Soho to a film by Lorna Ventura, Define:Dancer, about dancers by a dancer. Lorna’s film was funded in part by a grant from the Queens Council on the Arts.
Dance awes me. I think it is the most expressive and fragile of the arts.
Dance has never been a particularly easy life, and everybody knows that.
Twyla Tharp
I am intrigued by how I came to be at these dance events as a way to emphasize how vital the nonprofit art world is to practitioners of this discipline.
My friend Ross Kramberg, the former Executive Director of the Paul Taylor Dance Company, always gives us tickets to see performances at City Center. Many times he would take us backstage to meet Paul and the dancers so that over the years this dance company became part of our life. He often “papered” the house and said that the shortfall was covered by sponsorships. The night we went Ross had filled an entire row with his friends. Nobody really makes money at the box office.
photo by ario
Seth’s friend Risa asked us and a small group of her friends to attend a performance choreographed by Stefanie Nelson, someone she knows and supports. She is listed as a donor and thanked in the program. She attends every performance and can describe nuances and differences of each one. Her eyes lit up talking about how the piece evolved over time, how she wasn’t happy with the review it received in the New York Times. At the end of the show we were introduced to Stefanie.
Lorna Ventura is a dancer who created a film about the lives of several dancers that she screened in a quirky restaurant in Long Island City on Sunday evening. Who was in the audience? Family and friends.
Who attends these events are people who are there for reasons beyond their love of dance. They are there to support a wife, a friend, a fellow artist and because they do, they are given a special experience. I love meeting the artists and talking to them after a performance. In a cultural capital like New York City, there is an infinite amount of cultural activity that clamors for your attention. It is no different in the nonprofit art world.
How I ended up at these three particular events was driven purely by personal persuasions and rewarded by extra value experiences. These dance groups will need corporate or foundation support to offset box office losses. They will need passionate friends like Risa who will strongarm and rally friends to attend performances. Dancers looking to define their next stage in life will need validation and support from arts councils. The hope is that after a certain point, creative careers will be launched, followings will grow and artists will thrive.
What emerging artists need is not audience development as much as up front and personal community development.
photo by Piedmont Fossil
True communication are two souls speaking from the heart.
Being the unique persona that you are makes you irresistible to others who will want to know more about you, to tell you stories about them and to tell stories about you. A triple threat in relationship marketing!
One stitch at a time, one person at a time.
Picture this donor, this customer, this person you want to motivate to take action. Then focus on communicating directly to this person. Me, I like to picture her sitting next to me in a knitting circle showing me the scarf she is working on as we are sharing stories about what’s going on in her foundation. There are more women in decision making positions in many industries and in the nonprofit world so I always think about a female knitter.
Speak to her like a friend, she is someone you care about. She will become your ideal knitting companion and soon there will be more knitters just like her who will be part of your circle. Even if they are a little different from your ideal person, your personal and consistent attention to their wellbeing and happiness will make them eager to connect with you. They will become your fan club.
We love to belong
Create a strong emotional connection with your donors, your customers, and they will become loyal advocates of your cause. Those who knit together, change the world together. Any relationship strengthened by a sisterhood of dropped stitches and tangled yarns is a tightly knit one. It is absolutely a much more fun and creative way to build a lasting relationship. Do you have any idea how much time it takes me to finish a sweater? Thank God for multi year grants!
We share when we care about each other
You can be a remarkable relationship builder just by sharing your individuality with others. I am the nonprofit knitter in business class among suits with laptops and I always, always find myself listening to the person sitting next to me telling me a story about the socks his Aunt Agatha made him for Christmas. My knitting is a way for him share some personal story with me and for me to gain some insight to the upcoming budget process. You can so easily be the person that people will want to relate to when you give them an appealing way to become part of your story. Or the socks you are knitting.
You and your sphere of unique interests have the power to draw like minded curious people to you. And all you have to do is to follow your mother’s advice -
If you want a friend, be a friend.
Can’t wait to get Hooked?? Grab your needles and click here!
If you want style notes and more for people who change the world, please check out:
Getting to Wow! to feel good, do good and look good
Nonprofit Knitwear for all things knit and nonprofit
Style Notes from me, your artspy
Hoong Yee
I write for love and money. It is my everyday passion. What's yours? 
