Episode 27: Building Community
Ever heard of The Safer Way? No, The Safer Way is not a euphemism for the rhythm birth control method, it’s the original name of a now well-known grocery store whose community came together to help the founders get back on their feet after disaster struck. Pretty amazing – customers coming to your rescue. Imagine how meaningful that would have been to the founders in that situation. For some founders fostering a community has been great for business and for some, simply more fun. So, pull up a chair, listen in and find out the name of our mystery store – and much more – in this, another friendly episode of Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn.
Transcript
Glenn Suart 0:00
If you can do something like that, where you can appeal to a community, and do it regularly, well, that helps you with your sales and your growth and everything else.
Doug Ross 0:24
Welcome to Conversations on Startups, a podcast brought to you by Douglas Ross, author of the book, Spark Click Go: How to Bring Your Creative Business Idea to Life, and Glenn Suart, of Today’s Great Idea, a radio series featuring over 300 origin stories of businesses, brands and inventions that have changed the culture. Welcome to today’s conversation.
Doug Ross 0:47
Hey, Glenn, how ya doin’?
Glenn Suart 0:49
I am doing great. As you would expect this time of year, it is cold in Calgary, nothing like keeping the community around you to keep yourself warm.
Doug Ross 0:57
Ah, interesting you mentioned that. By the way, hopefully our chat would be nice people can sit next to the fire or someplace warm and listen in while we talk about the importance of building community as you build your startup. So when you say community, Glenn, what are we talking about here? If you think of any community, it’s sort of… sometimes… it’s people that are forced together. I think in this case, we’re talking about people that come together for some common interest, maybe support each other – that kind of thing – and that a company can interact with. Anything else on the definition of what we’re talking about here as we dive into it?
Glenn Suart 1:40
No. It can be participants, it could be customers, it could be other like minded businesses, similar to yours that could be part of your community. I’ve got a story to tell you, Doug, about a group that relied on community to get them through a tough time.
Doug Ross 1:56
Okay.
Glenn Suart 1:57
See, see if you can guess this one? .
Doug Ross 1:59
You know, I’m not very good at this. If I looked back, I’m probably batting about five hundred.
Glenn Suart 2:04
Okay, well, this one, hopefully, you’ll get – it’ll be a good one. John and Renee lived in Austin, and they loved – Austin, Texas, of course – loved health food, so much so that they decided to open a store, which they called The Safer Way instead of Safeway, The Safer Way [okay]. And when they got booted out of their apartment for storing products in their apartment, they just simply moved inside their store and lived there. And two years later they merged with another health food store run by two other guys named Craig and Mark. And together they had this one whole store with the four of them. And at 10,000 square feet, it was their one and only store, quite large, but it really worked. It was a big success there in Austin. But then, less than a year after opening disaster struck. A flood devastated Austin and the stores entire inventory, most of the equipment as well worth $40,000, all wiped out. They had no insurance. So obviously the lesson here is good insurance. Looks like the whole show is over. But then something really wonderful happened and their customers and their neighbors showed up to help clean up and repair all the damage. Investors, creditors and vendors relaxed their terms and just 28 days later, the store reopened. Today, the company originally called the Safer Way that survived that of course, disastrous flood has grown to over 340 stores across North America and sales of over $12 billion a year. Any guesses what chain? And all because the community rallied around them in the beginning.
Doug Ross 3:47
Well, you said Austin, Texas, and if I’m not mistaken, that’s where Whole Foods originated.
Doug Ross 3:54
Congratulations, Doug.
Doug Ross 3:56
All right, I got one.
Glenn Suart 3:58
I tried to drop in the whole show is over and a few other things in there.
Doug Ross 4:02
I only hear those in post production. Oh, yeah. He was saying that. That’s very good.
Din 4:08
You’re listening to Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn. Thanks for joining us. Let’s get back to the show.
Glenn Suart 4:17
It is a great story because they really developed a community of people who loved what they were doing and felt part of the operation even though they didn’t own any of it. And so when disaster struck, that community rallied around and made it great. Now of course, today, Whole Foods is now owned by Amazon but at the time, the community was critical to their success. I guess it still is… you could argue that they got a very good community. I know people who just go to Whole Foods because they know that they get good quality stuff there. If you can do something like that, where you can appeal to a community, and do it regularly, well, that helps you with your sales and your growth and everything else. So that’s… that’s just one angle on community. Do you have any other thoughts?
Doug Ross 5:05
Yeah, I do. And perhaps another example, as well. I really liked the component there, though, about the mindset that you need to have as the entrepreneur. And it’s an open mindset. So you are communicating what is important to you – this mission, that you’ve got to bring healthy foods to people, Whole Foods. I think we’ve got to get that out there and share it and be thinking about creating this sort of thing that’s bigger than just your store and your supply, your business. Just that element [yep] and, sort of, thinking of that people part -so I really liked that part of it. It is true as well, that it’s not just your customers, it could be… I think you said suppliers, relaxed terms, that kind of thing – that was a win-win sort of approach. So it’s a really good story. I think that when we talk about community and trying to build it, if you look at the whole Silicon Valley mantra in the software space, they… they have this kind of mantra, which is grow, engage and monetize. You know, the monetize piece, of course, you’ve got to do if it’s going to be a business. So the Engage part, though, is, I think, relevant here. So you’re engaging people in your business in some way. So in this case, it could be it’s usually customers, users, they call them and when we’re talking about software, but another angle that you can really leverage, I think, are the people that are helping to create that product. So in this case, developers [yes]. So if you have a software business or platform you can develop relationships with people that help you to create this. And maybe they’ll do it on their own. That’s sort of the ideal here. And your example with Whole Foods was a spontaneous reaction, which is the best thing if you’ve got people coming together in support of your mission, I think, is fantastic. But you can look for that as well as and really foster it. So one example that I would bring up would be in the running shoe department. And it’s a company that was… it’s been around for a long time, but it was kind of fading in the background and was a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Warren Buffett’s company, and they needed to do a turnaround. And so they decided to focus this company that used to make a shoe for everybody on the runner, the serious runner, and I think that to the degree that you can do that – they’ve been doing it now for almost 20 years – so just imagine how you would feel if you were a serious runner, and you’ve got a company that’s dedicated everything they do into making something that will help you run better, longer, more comfortably, more efficiently, whatever it is, and the natural kind of community that comes out of that. Other runners. Let’s get together. And we got a Brooks sponsored, or not sponsored, [yep] and have these events. That’s part of the success story here with Brooks. And it’s by focusing laser sharp, which I think a lot of our entrepreneurs can benefit from, on one particular customer.
Glenn Suart 5:30
That is interesting. No, it makes sense. Understanding your client base and what… and appealing to them. Yeah, it’s not a one way street. t’s a… the community should respond well to your what you’re doing, and they clearly have in that particular case, that’s great.
Doug Ross 8:44
Yeah, and pulling out the fact that it’s not a one way street is really, really important. Because you have that community, some are going to be closer to you than others, many companies create user or customer advisory boards so they kind of formalize things that way. But even without that naturally – and I saw this in many of the startups that I have been part of – the people that are enthusiastic about what you’re doing, they make themselves known, and it’s drawing them in and then helping them to meet other customers and having that [yeah] sort of two way communication… two way street on not just your product development – it could be that which is highly effective, but could be the way you’re deploying things, the channel you’re using, pricing, customer service, any of these sorts of areas. If you’ve got a community you can reach out to as an entrepreneur, and… you said at the beginning, Glenn this common sort of mission I think is really what binds people together.
Glenn Suart 9:37
I think of community I think of – we talked about these examples before – Wikipedia, [yeah] a community of people who want to do something and.. and they don’t need to be paid for it. They want to be part of something bigger, yet makes it easier to run the business. You couldn’t have run Wikipedia if you had to pay everybody. The example I think, you know, the Broadway show… the movie Hairspray in 2001, right after 911. was trying to raise money for the production. And typically Broadway shows are paid for by lots of people who’ve got deep pockets, you know, hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars. But because of 9-11 and a few other things the… they raised $10 million by finding 100 or 300small investors who put in small amounts of money, and it was a community of people who loved Broadway musicals and was interested. And of course, they all made their money back in 10 months. And it’s been very lucrative for all those investors since. But the entrepreneur behind it built a community of investors to take on the risk of running a Broadway show. So you can’t do everything by yourself. If you can build a community, it really goes a long way to scaling up your business, it increases the speed, it increases the success and increases the feedback on your business so you know what’s going right and wrong so you can do it better. I think, basically a community if you can figure it out, and get people engaged, it’s great. You know, I get people calling me, you know, telling me all the time when they hear my radio stuff, the stories I do for Today’s Great Idea – they actually turn up the radio at the time that it comes on because they want… they know they’re getting something of value, something of interest. So they’re part of my community and to get that feedback is extremely valuable to me. If you can make sure it’s not just a one way street and talk to your customers, investors, whoever – you can do a great job. That’s what we mean by community.
Doug Ross 10:49
Hey podcast listeners, we’re gonna take a short break now. If you’re enjoying the show, feel free to invite your friends, remember to subscribe, and if you want to help spread the word leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app. Each episode of Conversations on Startups focuses on a single topic. If you want to comment on something you’ve heard on the podcast, or suggest a topic for us to cover in a future episode, send an email to:go@todaysgreatidea.com or douglas@sparkclickgo.com. Glenn and I appreciate you and hope you find our uncut and unrehearsed stories, perspectives, and tips helpful. Speaking of helpful stuff-let’s pick up where we left off.
Doug Ross 12:35
Yeah, and I think the additional benefit to the ones that you listed there is it can be more enjoyable. Doing your job [yep]… bringing out your product, it can just be more enjoyable because you’re seeing it resonate with people. One example I would say from… I have this book Spark Click Go – which is great – but when I go and talk to students that are taking entrepreneurial classes as an example, I get to see what they’re thinking, and what’s important to them, and what they’re trying to figure out, and that’s very… it’s rich, it’s meaningful so it adds purpose, a sense of purpose. So I think you see that when you have a community. You were mentioning the hairspray example, there’s, there’s a group out there now that will allow you to, and maybe I’ll have to put this in the show notes Glenn now that I’m mentioning it. I can’t think of it. But there’s a group out there that allows you to invest in movies. So just when they’re an idea, again used to be the same thing, it’s usually deep pockets, but they are calling the community and people that are interested. I don’t know what kind of donations you might have to put in probably whatever you want to do, five, ten this kind of thing (dollars) and you could be part of this, you know, now you get the email, now you get the newsletter and you’re a part of it and you see things early and you… when it comes out, in this case a movie, you are much more likely to go to it, tell your friends, tweet about it, you’re much more likely to be an advocate for this… whatever this production or this business is that’s getting started. If you’re there from the ground floor, you’re going to be a natural advocate. I know another example. There’s the startup – it’s one of the ones that I do through the Canadian Technology Accelerator. And they do a great job summarizing how they’ve done in the last quarter – milestones they’ve hit – anything that they’ve done. They’ve joined an accelerator, they brought in a new investor, they’re gonna go to clinical trials, whatever it might be, and they send out a… it’s kind of locked link about this to their supporters. So this is… they don’t have a product yet – it’s an early stage startup, they are building a business and they are just building this kind of community as well. It’s a sort of a one way. And I think a lot of these things that you can do as a company are one way and we should talk about what people can do Glenn, to build this community, but then naturally as you have these groups in your sort of atmosphere, there will be occasions when you could get them together virtually online, maybe a Slack chains. [Yep} And things where people can talk some sort of forums, or ideally physical events, where you could have people together. Maybe you could do that with Today’s Great Idea – have an event and thank… thank your sponsors and people that have talked to you. But yeah, it’s it’s an interesting… it’s an integral part to a lot of companies growth. So what do you think? How do you think entrepreneurs can do this – foster this community? What are some of your ideas?
Glenn Suart 15:50
Basically, the first thing to think about is how could community benefit… benefit the idea and how can I benefit that community. It’s a bit of a two way street and then you figure out where to go from there. In some cases you don’t realize you’re actually creating a community. But if you’ve got a lot of initially reoccurring revenue from people, you know you’ve got customers who like what you’re doing and they want to keep ordering it – that’s your community to work with. See if you can expand that community. And because those customers are liking what you do, they have friends and connections, they should be happy to tell you tell their friends and vice versa. So you could leverage your community. That’s the way I would probably do it is think about what is good. And to that point, there’s also negatives to community. If you don’t perform well, with your clients, or they only order once and they don’t repeat the order, well, that could be dangerous, because now your community is talking about how bad you are.
Doug Ross 16:50
Yeah, they’ve turned against you. Yeah, well, that’s a very important signal to get from your customers. You’d have to wise up pretty quickly. Or, if it’s really early on, it’s just telling you you’re missing the mark. So as negative as it is, it could be valuable. But when you were saying that, Glenn, I liked that… just that sort of starting point that you gave to people. What’s the win-win? How do you benefit them? What kind of information do you need from them or… or action? There’s companies that have grown, many companies that have grown with this sort of friend of a friend type of thing. And it’s either if it’s… if it’s software, tons of these things are well, you know, basically, you create a network effect and to use this product, you’ve got to invite your friends
Doug Ross 17:36
Multi level marketing. Yeah.
Doug Ross 17:38
Yeah. I mean, it happened with BlackBerry back when they had BlackBerry Messenger and you’ve seen that with a lot of other things. WhatsApp… sort of all grew through this friends wanting to bring their friends in.
Glenn Suart 17:49
Yes, that’s not multilevel marketing. I thought you were going to that level. But yeah, yeah, I know what you’re saying. Multilevel marketing is a community but it’s not a good one. You’re not there necessarily, for the right reasons. It’s a bit pyramid scam kind of thing, not in a bad… some of these things, you’re.. you know, reasonable, but you want a real community of people who actually care, they’re not… they’re not paid to be there.
Ben 17:51
You’re listening to Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn, thanks for joining us.
Doug Ross 18:04
That’s a great measure to know, if you’ve got that real community.
Glenn Suart 18:24
Like the Whole Foods. Didn’t get paid to show up, they wanted to show up because they loved that store. That’s the thing, so.
Doug Ross 18:31
And your example, with Wikipedia [yeah], the same thing, it’s a community of people that want to do it. It’s a small group that does most of the articles, is what I understand – like it is in most cases, it’s the Pareto law, you know, the 80/20, or something like that in terms of percentage. And then the business is supported through [charitable] donations, which by the way, depending on what kind of business you’re in, it is one way to monetize your business is through [charitable] donations. And there’s Patreon is out there [yep] to create that link to your community. So you could have a Patreon page, people can go there, and they can support you on a monthly or one time basis, all of that kind of thing. And that’s a way to capture from community. But there’s other businesses like Uber that grew by saying, Hey, Glenn, you’ve been a driver for Uber, we will give you some kind of bonus – dollars, or I’m not sure what they do percentage or increase your take home – if you bring in other drivers. [Yeah]. And so that’s another way to, sort of, build community. So lots of great benefits to doing it. I think creating an email list is one of the most effective things you can do – as a company, you’ve got direct control there. You can send them information, you can write a blog, many things that you can do, many channels right now, but email as a list is one of the things that you actually own compared to some of the social media things you can do. You’ve got a page on LinkedIn, for example, you post something there, your followers should see that but you’re also at the whim of the algorithm of these social media platforms. So you probably do both. But lots of ways to sort of get this thing going look for those early repeat customers that you mentioned, Glenn, I think that’s… excellent advice. Anything else on how companies… how startup founders can create community, Glenn?
Glenn Suart 20:30
I would say just be thankful. And so let’s just take advantage of that right now and thank our listeners for their feedback and their comments and their support. We’ve gotten lots of good feedback. And it’s helped us get better as we roll out the series. And, again, we’re trying to build a community around this podcast, and it’s working, so.
Doug Ross 20:51
Nice, absolutely grateful and that’s echoed by me, Glenn so thanks for bringing that up. Okay, terrific. So how about the next time we get together, any thoughts? And I know, I put you on the spot for a couple times, the last couple of times. Any thoughts as to what we should talk about next time, Glenn?
Glenn Suart 21:11
Well, the good news is, we did think about it beforehand and then now of course had a memory failure to think from a few minutes ago, what it is we talked about, but now I do remember, and it is actually a very important part of business. And that is, decision making. What’s good decision making and what’s bad decision making.
Doug Ross 21:33
Yeah, sounds good. Glenn. All right. This has been Conversations on Startups with Doug and Glenn. I’m Doug.
Glenn Suart 21:39
And I’m Glenn Suart. In Canada. Thanks, bye.
Doug Ross 21:52
Conversations on Startups is a production of Glenn Suart and Douglas Ross. We hope you’re having fun listening but mostly that you take action on your business idea. For more inspiration visit our websites: todaysgreatidea.com and sparkclickgo.com. Another episode of Conversations on Startups will drop soon, or is already available to binge. Thanks for joining us, and remember to subscribe and invite your friends. See ya next time!
Transcribed by https://otter.ai