Brains V’s Capital – What does it take to be an Entrepreneur?

During a recent interview I was asked ‘How have you funded yourself so far’ and part of my answer was:

“We both strongly believe that you can achieve a hell of a lot without having to spend a huge amount of money – it just takes a bit of creative thinking and patience.” 

I received an email recently from a gentleman who had read my answer and said:

‘I’d really like to expand on that idea. There is a recent movement in Germany amongst young entrepreneurs and new startup companies that was initially set into motion by Guenter Faltin’s book “Brains versus Capital” called concept-creative entrepreneurship.

Disruptive business awards

The award ceremony for the Smarta 100 – to celebrate the 100 most disruptive, innovative and remarkable new businesses in the UK, was a brilliant night out.

As well as being named one of the Smarta 100, Bluebird was also nominated for an award on the night – Micro Business of the Year, which celebrates big things in business achieved by small teams like ours.

Apples or (Extra Value) Pears?

Seen the cringey homemade video we made to enter Confessions of a Start Up?

One of the diary entries tells the story of us searching for the location of our flagship store.

Which got me thinking about the place the high street will play in our lives going forward and the nature of retail businesses because of it. 

Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes

It’s not just the clocks that have changed at The Nest this past month, there seems to be change everywhere.

The Royal Mail postage change (which is outrageous and probably going to sink many small online businesses) has forced us to change our packaging. We are making massive changes preparing for opening our first shop. We’re putting some of our loose leaf teas into silk bags for the first time(!) We did our first training session with a gorgeous place in Melbourne that started serving our teas last week. We are moving home and office soon also.

It is all change.

One thing that can always be relied upon to stay constant however, are the dinner table debates that go on in our household every time we get together. Easter was no exception. 

Dragon Incubation

Apologies must be made for the lateness of this post. It has been MANIC! But that is no excuse for my poor attendance record and I hope you can all find it in your heart to forgive my blogging laziness.

But wait until you hear what we have been up to.

Actually we haven’t been up to much so far in 2013. Not in terms of getting in front of people and making tasty teas for lots of lovely Teabirds, which has made me a bit sad.

We have only been ticking over with our regular markets and the online stuff – which is starting to see a boost from all the people who found some Bluebird tea in their Christmas stocking and are coming back for more, which makes me happy.

We have a new newsletter called ‘The Bluebird Daily’ which you can take a peak at here if you so wish, and subscribe to it too if you so wish… if you’re a customer you have probably already had it but it seems to be going to some peoples junk boxes! Pesky technology!

Anyway, what else have we been doing? Well we have been ‘incubating’ (please excuse the ridiculous terminology here) and it has been an insightful but stressful time indeed.

For anyone who doesn’t know about incubating it’s just posh business jargon for taking a time out. Usually in a glamorous boardroom with industry experts and mentors to figure out what you are trying to achieve and how to achieve it going forward.

I guess it’s like an intensive health check for your business and you are supposed to come out with a full fitness plan for the next year or however long.

There are loads of companies that offer this service at a quite hefty price tag but we did it classic Bluebird style and rented a room in a rundown office block in a rundown area and locked ourselves in with nothing but a kettle, a small electric heater and huge floor to ceiling whiteboards on each wall.

It hasn’t been quite idyllic, partly because of the barbwire and double metal shutters, partly because there is a local street fighting club who train in the car park outside our window so every day at 12pm we are serenaded by shouts and grunts to the effect of: ‘Your not done yet lad, get yourself off the floor and pump that iron’, or my favourite is ‘pain is only temporary, quitting lasts a lifetime’.

We have been into the very depths of our souls searching for answers to questions that we weren’t expecting to have to answer so soon and it has been a little overwhelming at times.

We have been trying to further define the ‘why’ behind our ‘what’ and make sure that it speaks clearly to our customers. We have been trying to drill down into the assumptions we base our decisions upon and how reliable the evidence is that we use to support those assumptions and decisions. We have been trying to analyse and predict trends and customer behaviour as well as their wants and needs.

I warned you about the head hurt.

After all we started off just giving people good tea to try and spread some happiness.

It sort of feels like we started off pushing a steam train along a track with our own bare hands and that it has recently started running away full steam while we chase along behind trying to jump on board!

The really exciting thing to share with you is our experience with Dragon’s Den Nottingham. Now before you get carried away we didn’t meet Theo and we didn’t get onto the TV! But we did enter the local Nottingham version and we did get shortlisted.

So two weeks ago we went along to a very posh boardroom and pitched to 6 Nottingham business dragons. We prepared our Strawberry Lemonade iced tea which went down a storm and within 5 minutes the planned pitch had gone out of the window as we frantically tried to answer questions being fired from all over the room!

We walked out with 3 offers of mentoring and an offer for investment as well as being told we stood a good chance of winning the prize grant money.

It was an excellent experience, if a little daunting and the enthusiasm we received has only fuelled our passion and determination further.

In the end we did win a lovely novelty cheque (and a smaller real one!) and went back to visit The Nottingham who hosted and sponsored the event to serve up teas to their lovely staff.

We are now planning what to do with our grant monies but on the list is an application to The Great Taste Awards to try and get our amazing teas some much deserved awards too, a replacement for good old Edward (our midi van) who is falling apart at the seams, a bit of professional tweaking to the website and some product promotional photography to use on the website and to try and get us  some press attention.

All in all it has been a good 2013 so far, but it is flying by super-fast! Spring is already on its way .. yippee.. which reminds me we have already developed over 20 new teas set to be launched at various times this year. There are some absolute beauTEAs (!) that I can’t wait to get on sale for you Teabirds.. the Spring Collection will be on sale towards the end of March but a sneak peak just for you is below:

Love + Tea

ThatBluebirdGirl

xXx

www.bluebirdteaco.com

Basic Human Nature – We all like to be Poked.

Happy New Year Teabirds.

I hope that you celebrated the coming of 2013 in style and that you are successfully applying yourselves to your new year resolutions!

I saw in the new year with 9 of my closest friends on a narrow boat on the Oxford Canal. I had one of my weird and wonderful hunches it was going to be a brilliant plan and luckily it was!

There was enough rum to sink us, a box of sticky mustaches and a couple of pirate hats, which led to an incredibly entertaining trip once you factored in spoons around a table meant for 4, tag teaming 13 locks in the pouring rain and a man overboard!

It was great to finally have some time off and be forced to slow down (literally- there is only so fast you can go on a boat with a max speed of 4mph and crammed with 10 people) and  the remote places we moored (to avoid upsetting the neighbors with Gangham style dance moves on the roof at 2am) didn’t have any phone signal – bliss!

It gave me a chance to reflect upon our journey so far and look at the things I wanted to aim for in 2013. My new years resolutions this year seemed to have a lot more depending  on them that the usual ‘stop eating 3 kit kat chunky’s a day’.

One of my Bluebird resolutions was to make more of our social media.

We all use social media an obscene amount and it is changing the way that humans interact, grow and learn. I find it incredible that Facebook alone has 1 billion active users – that’s 1 in 7 people and Lady Gaga has over 33 million followers on Twitter!*

It can also be a very useful and successful business tool if you have the time/inclination/effort to use it – as many ‘social media optimization’ companies have cashed in on. You can get applications that you can use to ‘schedule’ your tweets or posts for the whole year if you want. You can even buy followers.

I think you all already know my views on paying companies for these sorts of common sense things so I don’t need to get out my soap box.

Let’s look at it simply.

Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram + WordPress are an essential and effective channel to interact with anyone, anywhere. Friends, strangers, current customers, potential customers, others in your industry or in small businesses or just people using the platforms who may not be or never wish to be your customer!

As Mike is constantly reminding me, sales conversion is (quite crudely put) the end goal to pretty much everything you do in an online business.

However, I don’t approach Bluebird’s social media strategy with this in mind at all- mainly because it isn’t how I view the world or my life (it would be a very sad place to live in my opinion if I did) and also, and perhaps more importantly, because it simply doesn’t work that way.

Social media is all about interaction. People use it to learn new things, forge new friendships, speak to people, share their views, laugh, share, contribute. It makes perfect sense to me that people want to share what they love or laugh at with others.. it’s human nature. And social media allows this sharing to be both instant and extremely far reaching.

The thought that your words or views or pictures can be shared instantly with millions of strangers all over the world is enchanting and addicting.

So what you want to gain from your social media platforms is shares. Likes. Pins. Favourites  Follows. Conversations.

You want to get people talking about you.

And you want to hear from, talk to and share the people who you like to interact with. Personally, I like brands like Innocent whose posts make me laugh. So what do I do? I share with my friends.

(Also just spent at least 30 minutes procrastinating playing with all of Innocents ‘Beat January games and posts… Buns of Steel is my current fav!)

Why on earth anyone would waste hundreds (if not thousands) of pounds paying newspapers/billboards/tv to spread their brand in print is beyond me when you can get thousands of regular, happy, social media loving, humans to do the job for free.

And the best bit… you enjoy it and they enjoy it too. It’s happiness spreading.

Granted there may be hundreds of people who read our posts who have absolutely no interest in tea, perhaps would never buy anything from us, but just thought our post was funny.

You could argue that it is a waste of time.

Well is it? I don’t think adding happiness to peoples lives even in the smallest degree can ever be a waste of my time, on a personal level. And on a business level it sets you out above the crowd as a business who is likable, honest, fun and friendly.

So with this in mind lets look at 5 simple things you can do to make more of social media for your business:

1. Join platforms that you are genuinely interested in and that you enjoy.

It isn’t supposed to be a chore or inflexible. If you like photos and pictures join Pinterest or Instagram, if you like keeping it short and sweet with strangers join Twitter etc. You can then set it up so that whatever you share on Instagram (or whichever) automatically feeds onto your Facebook page etc. 

2. Get involved in a two way interaction!

The BIG one. Don’t just join, follow noone and bombard people with your pictures, comments, or even worse sales pitches and expect people to share or be interested.. because they wont. 

3. If you are struggling to understand or use the platform either find a savvy person and offer tea/cake/hugs in exchange for help or YouTube/Google it!

So far I have not found a problem or puzzle that either You Tube or Google haven’t been able to answer/fix.

4. Be interesting! (And funny if you can stretch that far!)

Think about what you would like to hear about or what makes you laugh. Think about what types of things would make you take the time to share with your friends/followers. And do it. 

5. Think about setting up a weekly plan of interactions along side your ad hoc posts.

Set yourself the goal of doing something regularly so that people expect it and look forward to it. Perhaps a competition every Friday or even as simple as sharing some things you found interesting that week.  

As part of my new years resolutions I have set out a weekly plan of interactions for Bluebird:

Happy Mondays: Obviously the day that gets the most grief for being ‘the worst day of the week’. So we will find something funny or cool that will make you smile every Monday to set you up for the week.

Teabird Tweet Up Tuesdays: We will tweet or share our favourite comments from the week. Tea related or not.

FBT (Freebe Tea) Friday: Free stuff on a Friday.. honestly can’t think of a better way to end the week than with a free cup of tea!

The Nest’s Big Thing: We will share our Big Thing of the week, be it a some new music, a place, an independent retailer we’ve met or just our favourite pair of socks.

It may seem simple, and it is. And it might seem a bit daft, which it is. You might also ask ‘what on earth has some of that got to do with tea?’ and the answer would be: not a lot.

But the next time someone talks to them about tea they might mention us. They might just be saying ‘ I don’t like tea or know anything about it but someone shared a funny joke by this tea company with me last week and they seem really cool, maybe check them out.’ The important thing is they will be starting a conversation about us. And conversations can sometimes go viral.

We are all humans and we like to laugh and be happy and most of all we like to share these things with other humans. It’s basic human nature. It’s basic business sense.

Love + Tea

ThatBluebirdGirl

xXx

www.bluebirdteaco.com

*Facebook stats taken from: http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts

Twitter stats taken from: http://twittercounter.com/pages/100

It’s all about BUST

This week I promised to explain why it is all about the BUST and why chatting to your Granny is key in any business start up.

Sound a bit bizarre? Should you really be surprised, coming from the girl who gave you banana tea!?

Warning: This weeks blog is more business advice than tea chats… but I have furnished with pics from our new Pinterest page to give you your weekly fill of tea!

The StartUp Britain bus was brilliant on Friday, although absolutely freezing cold! I think Winter is well and truly on its way. Actually, it has been in Bluebird HQ for a fair few months already… We were sampling Christmas Cake tea in July!

On the bus there were business advisers, pr consultants and mentors who do this for a living. It can make you question how we can help. But I think it is because we are just normal young people who decided to start a business that makes us ideal to advise young people who aspire to do the same. We are proof that it can be done.

 

In the early days getting ahead of yourself and being dragged into all these scary things like employing a pr consultant, complex website builds and advanced marketing drains a hell of a lot of energy and money.

When you just need to get started, all you need is confidence and then you just take it one step at a time.

Obviously, as we have found, you quickly outgrow the level that common sense, hard work and confidence alone can take you and you do need to start listening to the right people and making some clever decisions… and spending some money!

But to start with, as I was explaining to some of the students, one of the most useful things to do is to clarify your concept by outlining your business idea, your promise and your mission statement (or goals).

This is where your granny comes in. It’s all about keeping it simple.

Similar to the elevator pitch concept, the granny concept is basically that if you granny can get it anyone can. Keep it short and simple. Which is a bit rude about grannies actually, especially seen as Mike’s granny is the most capable person I have ever met.

But if you think about it, it means more than that. When you speak to your granny not only do you need to explain things clearly but you would also never lie to your granny so you must be honest. And you want your granny to be proud of you too, so if your business idea makes her proud you know your onto a winner.

So it’s about having a simple idea that is honest and worthwhile.

Bluebird’s simple idea is to make tea fun and tasty for everyone. The honest and worthwhile part of the idea is encapsulated in our promise to our customers: ‘To give at least one cup of happiness to everyone we meet.’

This tells you that not only is our tea so good that is will make your day and bring you happiness but that we, as a business, actively seek to make people happy, the tea is just our worthy delivery vehicle.

Your business, you, your brand, it all needs to stand for something worthwhile. If it doesn’t promise something relevant to your customers why would you expect them to spend their time and money on you? It needs to be honest: If you they don’t trust you to do what you say why would they deal with you? And if you can’t deliver what you promise then why would they ever return?

BUST stands for Big, Unique, Simple and True.

I approached each one as a question about us and by answering them I was able to put together what Bluebird stood for. If you can make your business hit BUST and you can demonstrate and deliver them effectively then it is likely to succeed.

Big. This is basically asking what is it that you care about? What is the big thing about your business?

Unique. What are you offering that your competition cannot?

Simple. What do your customers actually want?

True. What can you genuinely deliver?

I cannot emphasise enough the following statement: Everything from your product to your service to marketing, everything, must deliver against your BUST! Without it at your foundation your business will struggle at some stage, even though the cracks might not yet be apparent.

Our name delivers again BUST, our idea delivers against BUST, our promise delivers against BUST, and what does this tell you about Bluebird?

It tells you that the thing that is big about our business is making people happy. It tells you that we are a company that not only offers an exceptional product but that it goes above and beyond the competition because that product was designed to make you smile and improve your day. It gives you an experience and a service that is friendly and personable and that cares.

Anyone who knows me will understand that I think it is just common sense that businesses that are worthwhile and honest, simple and true are more likely to succeed because honesty and integrity are the foundations to everything in life. Why anyone would want to build a business that wasn’t worthwhile or didn’t stand for something is beyond me.

I hope this is transparent in our mission statement, our goals to aim for:

Bluebird’s mission statement is:

1. ‘To become proof that you can be a nationally recognised, thriving company by basing business decisions on spreading happiness and enriching lives’
2. ‘ To have made tea exciting, fun, unique, simple and accessible to all and a regular occurrence both in and outside of the home’

When all put together, we call this the ‘Bluebird Way’ which is a way of living and running Bluebird according to its values, purpose, promise and goals. We continue to use this as a guide to help us choose which path to take us down. It has also been invaluable as a measure when trying to agree on difficult decisions. If it doesn’t fit with the Bluebird Way then it doesn’t happen.

Sorry a bit of a long one this week and not much cake or skiing… or much ranting actually. I must be off my game!

Promise to do better next time!

Love + Tea

ThatBlueBirdGirl

xXx

www.bluebirdteaco.com