Our Last Night. (I’m in between the two band members on the left)
Just the other week I took a nice four-hour drive down to Joliet, IL to see the band Our Last Night. Once my friends and I got there, we had to wait another five hours while other bands played. Bands we either didn’t know or they dragged on stage last-minute because the originally scheduled bands didn’t show up. After plenty of headshaking, not headbanging, Our Last Night was up to play.
As the saying goes in the hood, the music was “an orgasm in my ears”. However, this post isn’t about to promote Our Last Night, it’s what I discovered from constantly checking their Facebook page, waiting for them to upload this photo that I shared above. While I waited I saw other photos of the lead singer wearing the same shirt that he wore to the concert I saw. Even in the pictures that were taken at locations they played at after Joliet, he was still wearing the same shirt.
Finally, curiosity kicked in and I once again went on their Facebook page only to see a professional photo-shoot of Trevor (lead singer) and his brother sporting Johnny Cupcake t-shirts. Trevor was, of course, wearing the same shirt that you see in the photo above. The link was provided, I was sucked in.
Meet Johnny!
The creator of Johnny Cupcakes was, you guessed it, Johnny! Look above! There he is showing off his “Make Cupcakes Not War” t-shirt. Johnny is a multi-millionaire and he has his story. He doesn’t have a specific motto, he doesn’t have a thousand testimonials (although it would be all too easy to get them), and he doesn’t have a college degree. Most rags-to-riches stories you hear have some special opportunity in them: a person runs into an investor, an idea gets picked up by the newspaper, an anonymous person donates a hundred thousands dollars to a persons blog post of an idea, they use Kickstarter, or they know someone who knows someone. Very rarely are the stories… simple.
Johnny has a very simple story, a story that represents so many noteworthy themes and lessons.
Never giving up
Waking up early or pulling all nighters
Avoiding drugs and alcohol
Start selling whatever you can, buy in bulk and sell
Even having a smashed up car won’t stop you from making sales out of the trunk of it
Everyone loves surprises
Take risks
“These trade shows cost an arm and a leg…but you gotta spend an arm and a leg to make more arms and legs.”
Sometimes you have to leave what you like to do what you love
Add value to you and your product, no matter how crazy people think you are for the choices you have to make
Confusion sells
Upset customers sell even more.
In response to the question “why don’t you sell cupcakes too?”, Johnny says, “Well, if I did that then people wouldn’t be upset. And, if you think about it, those upset people advertise for me!”
Turn your customers into friends and truly connect with them. You can become a millionaire due to the help of 10,000 people. You don’t need 100,000.
Mac Miller representin’
Just an FYI: You’re going to see Johnny Cupcakes everywhere now. Congratulations, you’re part of the tribe!
“Do More Of What Makes You Happy” – Johnny Cupcakes
You can visit Johnny Cupcakes website by clicking on the picture above.
I noted yesterday that the more you know, the more original you can be and in being original, with a bit of intuition, you can create the next big thing.
(As I was writing this, a commercial came on for the new galaxy SIII and the final words on the screen were “The Next Big Thing Is Here”.)
What’s after that then? What are your plans now that you made the next big thing? So you made an awesome book-page-open-holder or you found a way to connect the photos taken from one person’s phone with all the other friends immediately after taking it. Now what?
You have two options.
1. You can cash out and do your best to make the money last.
2. You can use the cash from your creation to start working on the next big thing.
One decade ago choosing number one was viable. Not only would you make a lot of money from creating the next big thing, but it would be a long time before the next big thing trumped yours and cut your cash flow.
But in a world that people are making something bigger and better than the person next to them every day, option one just isn’t an option anymore.
That leaves option two. And option two takes dedication, creativity and more hard work as you invent more of the next big things. Which is perfect not just for your tribe, but for your passion, for your income, for your life and the world we live in.
This idea, this concept, this law that guides what is successful couldn’t be a better one for us. It ignores those who only create something that is cheap, that is an imitation, that is only meant to fulfill option one and that has no art in it.
I have never seen or heard of these until I went to Seth Godin’s Pick Yourselfevent and had one.
Then I had another, this time the milk chocolate kind, as opposed to the dark chocolate.
Then I had another, the same day within a span of four hours.
Then I grabbed two more and put them in my journey bag, I gave a third one to someone else and grabbed a fourth to eat while I grabbed a fifth one to eat on my way out of the event after I finished the one I was holding.
I then presumed to eat the two that I stored in my journey bag throughout the evening. Note: By “one” I mean the two chocolate peanut butter cups in the “one” package.
Total: 16
Depressing? I could fight and say they were organic although it doesn’t help my case too well. (More on organic in a moment)
To say they are delicious is an understatment which is something people often say about Reece’s peanut butter cups.
However, to say that Reece’s peanut butter cups are the most delicious ones in the world would be half-true. (As is the case for Justins) They are the best if you ask the niche audience that they are marketed to and consumed by.
Whereas, if you ask the niche group Justins markets to, they would say Justins chocolate peanut butter cups are the best.
What I’ve learned about products, not just chocolate peanut butter cups is that:
1. You can always improve but what you can improve on may not be exactly the product itself, the chocolate. It may be the shipment, how the ingredients are grown, the graphics of the wrapper, the mission statement on the box or in this case, the audience you are targeting.
2. All in all, precision meets profit. You can always find a niche market to make a profit, especially in organics. In other words, there is always a way to make it different for that special tribe who likes it that way.
Justin’s chocolate does just that. They reach out to the audience who doesn’t buy just cheap chocolate.
Afterall, for some people, going big means buying not just buying any kind of chocolate. If they are going to go big buying chocolate, they are going to spend an extra 40 cents or a dollar for the good chocolate, the rich chocolate, the organic chocolate, the chocolate that makes them feel they are benefiting the world by eating.
This is a small niche audience and Justins makes their chocolate different so it’s target is precise.
Before I even share the letter in which Howard Schultz has written to all of America, and before it is posted even more main stream this weekend, you need to understand the simplicity of judging a person like Howard. I have studied many of Starbucks marketing strategies as well as background info on the company and Howard. I have seen a few negative comments about Howard and I’d like to point out two simple details that will eleviate any negativie feelings.
First, Howard spoke at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
Taken from the Aspen Ideas Festival website, “For over 60 years, the Aspen Institute has been the nation’s premier gathering place for leaders from around the globe and across many disciplines to engage in deep and inquisitive discussion of the ideas and issues that both shape our lives and challenge our times. […] Imagine some of the most inspired and provocative thinkers, writers, artists, business people, teachers, and other leaders drawn from myriad fields and from across the country and around the world – all gathered in a single place, ready to teach, speak, lead, question and answer – all interacting with an audience of thoughtful people who have stepped back from their day-to-day routines to delve deeply into a world of ideas, thought and discussion. The week promises to be thought-provoking, meaningful and fun – true to Aspen tradition.”
Would a multimillionaire who is full of greed, who is evil or a terrible person attend this event, give a presentation and seek improvement in the world using this large of a platform? A platform that is centered on growth, on productivity and on trust.
The second minor detail which I hope no longer stays minor is the effort Howard has put towards employing Americans. Along with establishing the Create Jobs for USA organization, Howard has made America-focused choices such as creating a “new roasting plant in Augusta, Georgia that we could have located in Central America or Asia for 15% to 20% less, but we felt that creating 200 or so jobs domestically was more important.” [source]
Howard You Make A Difference
Before I share with you the letter Howard has written, it’s serendipitous that he has written this letter during a time period that I am doing an Unlocking Potential interview series with people who I know will make a different in their passion. It may also be coincidence that he shared the letter while I am in the final editing stage of my book Start Schooling Dreams (to be released at the beginning of August).
In Howard’s closing, he advocates for innovation and making a difference in the community to promote citizenship over partisanship. This is a major center of why I write. Everything I write is innovation, it’s to make a difference, it’s about unlocking potential in others, promoting people who care, really do care about learning, about coffee, about fashion about anything. These are the people who make the difference, these are the people who are like Howard Schultz, who are willing to stand up, speak out and try to create positive change, no matter how much resistance there is.
*More power to you Howard and even more power to those who have similar worldviews for change, whether it’s employment, civility, and politics or education, art and music.
Without further ado, you can read the full letter Howard Schultz has written to all of America below or click here to open it in a new window.
An Open Letter: How Can America Win This Election?
Friday, June 29, 2012
Posted by Howard S., Starbucks chairman, president and chief executive officer
On Independence Day, our country celebrates the promise of America.
It’s a day to remember that the principles that bind us together vastly outweigh what keeps us apart. The freedom to dream and the opportunity to create a better life – not just for ourselves, but for each other – has always defined our great nation.
I am a product of that American Dream. As a kid who grew up in public housing, went on to get an education at a state university and build a business, I am grateful for what this country has made possible for me. In turn, at Starbucks, we have always tried our best to honor our responsibility to the communities we serve.
And on this Fourth of July, our communities need all of us.
Across the country, millions of Americans are out of work. Many more are working tirelessly yet still unable to adequately care for their families. Our veterans are not being welcomed home with the level of support they deserve. Meanwhile, in our nation’s capital, our elected leaders are continuing to put ideology over real solutions. I love America, but we all know there is something wrong. The deficits this country must reconcile are much more than financial, and our inability to solve our own problems is sapping our national spirit. We are better than this. America’s history has showed that we have accomplished extraordinary things when we act collectively, with courage, creativity, and generosity of spirit—especially during trying times.
As we celebrate all that is great about our country, let’s come together and amplify our voices.
Let’s tell our government leaders to put partisanship aside and to speak truthfully about the challenges we face. Let’s ask our business leaders to create more job opportunities for the American economy. And as citizens, let’s all get more involved. Please, don’t be a bystander. Understand that we have a shared responsibility in solving our nation’s problems. We can’t wait for Washington.
At Starbucks, we are trying to live up to our responsibility by increasing our local community service and helping to finance small-business job creation with Create Jobs for USA. Our company is far from perfect, and we know we can do more for America. But we need your help. We need your voice.
Join the national conversation with #INDIVISIBLE. Starting today, I invite you to share your view of America, and how we can all put citizenship over partisanship. On Instagram, post a photo of the America we all need to see. On Twitter, provide a link to an innovative idea. Blog about who’s making a difference in your community; or on YouTube, share how you made your American Dream come true. No matter where you post, if you use the tag #indivisible, Starbucks will do its part to collect and amplify your voices.
Together, we can set a new tone in America. We hope you agree that doing so is a powerful way to celebrate our nation’s birthday.
In 2012, America needs to win the election more than either party does. It is time now to join together as Americans. It is time, whatever our differences, for us to strive and succeed as one nation – indivisible.
I’m spending my 4th of July observing and writing in Starbucks. This post is about all the observations I am making about Starbucks, customer service, behaviors and types of people.
The people who feel they are really cared for and given friendly service, not just customer service. These people will, after they have already walked out the door, come back in just to put a dollar in the tip jar.
The people who understand that the little adds up and are the predecessors of change. These people will not just toss change into the tip jar, but thank the coffee connoisseur for their effort.
The people who I call jingle haters. They can’t stand the spare change in their pocket so they toss it in the jar, doing their hardest to ignore the last clink of change they will hear until they make another purchase and get change back from that. I doubt any Starbucks employees complain about these jingle haters, they account for 3/8 of the tips.
The financially conservative people who treat themselves from time to time don’t tip. They also don’t just keep the change, they keep the receipt too. More power to them I suppose. Everyone’s gotta make a living.
Want to get tips? Make a game out of it? There are two registers and two tip jars, which person at which tip jar can serve remarkably enough to get larger tips? One wins but both have fun.
What I love about Starbucks Barista’s really is that they have fun. They really do live the Starbucks motto of “Rewarding Everyday Moments”. They don’t care about tips, it’s just a bonus, it’s not something they actually work for, serve for or slave for. It just so happens anyway that the more fun you have making and serving Coffee, the more tips you get. Starbucks understands the essence of relationships, not just between customer and coffee but between customer and barista.
Stay Positive & You Get Tipped For Having Fun Outside Of Starbucks Too
It’s been over a month and a half since I attended Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event in Tribeca (NY). There’s a specific reason I waited so long to reflect on the event. I wanted to prove a point, not just about Seth Godin, but what any business must produce, whether in product or experience.
Simply put, it must be astonishingly remarkable, something so memorable it is still thought of and excites a person’s senses a month, five months or a year after the product is purchased or the service is used. Essentially, that is what Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event manifested, so it is with easy honor that I will hit some points from it again along with my own curves and twists of ideas.
I had no inclination to write this so soon. I decided to after I created a new motto the other day, tweeted it and it got retweeted by a few people. It was just another tweet, another 140 characters that my mind spit out and that I needed to share.
My motto: Give yourself authority.
It was only after I expressed the motto on twitter that I was tapped by the memory of Seth Godin’s Pick Yourself event, which it’s theme was to not wait for someone to pick you, not wait for an authority to notice you, to get lucky; but to pick yourself, solve the problems yourself, find the opportunity yourself, to lead yourself and quite plainly, as my motto states, give yourself authority.
72 Steps To Starbucks Coffee
While in New York City every 72 steps, either if I turned left or right, I would be facing a Starbucks. In Manhattan alone, there are approximately 300 Starbucks stores. That means that out of all the registered Coffee Shops in New York, Starbucks consists of about 60% of them. In a city dominated by the outlier of the Coffee Industry, how can any other coffee shops even make it?
That’s a simple answer that you can come up with. The better question is how Starbucks was able to take a symbol from Moby Dick, use it as it’s logo, and create a brand – an understanding of when you see the symbol, you are going to smell the richest Coffee in town and get free Wi-Fi along with the absolute best customer service.
It’s A Revolution
The dictionary says that a revolution is a single turn of event. Our revolution, the one we don’t quite understand, the one we thought could be easily understood, the one that is making us question nearly everything, is not a single turn of event, it’s a million turns. This revolution is something that is a collective change in one sense, but deep down to it, it’s about the turn each one of us makes, a turn that may be different than the person next to us. While putting it in the most simple form, the revolution is about giving yourself authority, ridding yourself of the chains of tradition and following your passion to create art. Yet, to do each of these things is not something that we can do collectively, being collective is what got us in this grave. No. This must be done individually; each person must make the choice, must give themselves authority and use it. In its entirety, this revolution will turn Perfect into impossible
Instead Of Giving It Our All
Seth gave a long description about the industrial age and this new age of connection. The one take I want to share with you from the event is this.
“So one quick example, just to show you how deeply ingrained this is. If you don’t mind, raise your right hand just as high as you can. Okay, now raise it just a little higher.”
Instead of giving it our all the first time, we give enough and then a bit more when told to. Some people raised their hands 20% higher, others 5% higher when told to raise it a bit higher. In a room of about 200 people there was about 4,000% of potential not being used until told to. The way I see it, even if you gave 100% and raised your hand as high as possible the first time, you would still find a way to raise it higher.
I No Longer Market To You
I had no clue what real type of marketing I was doing on my website until I heard Seth Godin say this, “Because marketing has shifted from me marketing at you, to you marketing to each other.” So, when creating a product, running a business or writing a blog, you can provide all the strong content you would like, but unless you know what you want to do with your audience, your tribe, unless you know how to give them strategies to market to each other and other people that will join your tribe, you have nothing.
Juggling
Seth Godin also inspired me to write this post: The Juggler’s Perfection. On the note of Juggling, of doing what you love, of taking that risk…
“Is it worth getting arrested for?” – Seth Godin
Bluffs, Excuses and The Promise
You think you have a hundred reasons not do something, not to take leap, not to go out on your own or start your business or take a risk to achieve what you really want. Actually, you probably only have 15 to 20 excuses, or rather, they are bluffs. When you sit down, write the list of the 15 to 20 bluffs, and work through it, you will find that either you don’t have anything holding you back, or you just need to work out a way to get around one or two excuses (a lot easier than working around 20). What it comes down to, what it really comes down to is that you want a promise it will work. You want the paper to say, after you have crossed all your bluffs out, that it will work indefinitely.
There will never be a promise that it’s going to work. Once you realize that, you realize there’s no point in making a list, not because there’s no point in achieving your goal anymore, but because you realize that you are going to have to take a risk and that there isn’t a promise, you will say “something is better than nothing” and get on with it, ship the product or start the business. As humans, if we are not promised lobster (perfection), we would rather have crawfish (anything) than nothing at all. Once you realize there is no promise of perfection, no lobster, it makes doing the thing you made a list of bluffs for, all the more easy. You may even find that you like crawfish more than lobster.
A couple of sayings to use/share
Money is a weight you can run much faster without
You will be wrong a lot, but you will be right a lot too
All you need to care about is being human
The Two Achievements I Made After The Event
Seth made a simple, yet such an extremely interesting point about entrepreneurship and freelance. A freelancer gets paid when she ships, delivers the product, finishes. The entrepreneur gets paid while she sleeps. I am happy to say that, while I still do freelance writing, I have crafted a segment of it into a businesses in which I have hired two employees already! I now sleep easier (because I know I’m getting paid for it) and I have more time to do $100 an hour work that makes a much larger impact on the world – which leads me to…
The second achievement is nearly ready to be shipped. My 30,000 word manifest on what school is for: a view from an 18-year-old graduate who received his associates degree and plans to go back for a master’s degree. Not for the diploma, but for the information and experience being within the system will produce, in order to write a 90,000 word sequel upon graduation. The eBook, Start Schooling Dreams will be released at the beginning of August, 2012, completely free. More background information to come soon.
Stay Positive & Take The Authority, Make A Badge Even
It seems that we are finally seeing a slight but steady decrease in monopolies. It is something I hoped for when I was 16 and even when I thought of the most logical step to take to do it. Three years ago, I wrote the following in my journal.
“America needs to focus more on free market and trading and bartering, then it would lower monopolies.”
What I didn’t know at the time was what the free market – trading and bartering – would be made up of. Traditionally speaking, it would be about exchanging a couch for a punching bag, or a TV for food, or a boat for some of the fish the user would catch. We would expect to see a decrease in the use of money and overall monetary value and an increase in personal tangible need.
What I have now come to realize is that this free market that we are riding into is not about specific valuable items, or about money, or about the vital needs for sustainability. In fact, it is a collection of it all. We’re heading into an age where the free market is composed of information, skills, talents, art, passion, action, change, teamwork, and originality.
It’s no longer who has the fanciest house, who has the most food, or who has the biggest boat. It’s about who created a new model of a house, who combined an ancient recipe with their own originality and successfully opened a restaurant with that as its signature dish, it’s about who ditches their biggest boat to bring actual art and change to humanity.
Those who successfully enroll themselves in this new free market enterprise are the ones who will become the monopolies – trusted and valued monopolies.
Stay Positive & I Prefer To Call It The Free(dom) Market Economy
