Latest news with #SmallBusinessPlaybook
CNBC
5 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Luxury brand exec left world of Hermes for life on farm. It's now a $50 million home business, and growing
Richard Christiansen traded in a life of luxury (goods) for life on the farm, though it happened in an unexpected way. A vegetable farmer he was in touch with during Covid told him they were going to "lose the farm" as all the restaurants they sold to closed. "We said bring the vegetables over and we will sell them," Christiansen recalled in an interview at CNBC's "Small Business Playbook." "I had spent my whole life in advertising and one farm became two, and then ten, and then 150 farms," he said in an interview with CNBC's Julia Boorstin at the virtual event. While he spent decades coming up with campaigns for companies like Hermes, farming was part of Christiansen's DNA, with both of his parents farmers in rural Australia, where he grew up. "It's backbreaking work and the toughest job in the world," he said. "I know the grunt and grind of farming." And after running an ad agency for two decades, he founded Flamingo Estate to take a look at farming, he said, with "a new set of eyes" that considered agriculture as a brand which could benefit from "luxury brand cues." Christiansen says it turned out that trading in the world of Hermes for the farm was a wise decision. "Mother Nature is the last great luxury house," he said. Flamingo Estate has expanded from those original vegetable boxes to olive oil, and olive oil as an ingredient for soap and candles. That was part of a big shift in Flamingo Estate's expansion as Christiansen realized that the company could help farmers make higher margin products by taking food grade ingredients into areas like household goods, beauty and the kitchen pantry. Many celebrities have endorsed, or directly worked with Flamingo Estate, starting with Chrissy Teigen and John Legend. Gwyneth Paltrow's Goop and Oprah have both featured its products. "Many were customers, just really happy customers and said we like what you are doing, can we get involved?" Christiansen said. That led to Flamingo Estate transporting bee hives to the homes of celebrities to harvest honey for charity, with maybe the most famous example the hives on the roof of Lebron James's house. Julianne Moore has also produced honey, while Laura Dern has made olive oil, and next up, Christiansen said, is growing pickles with Pamela Anderson. Christiansen said if we want people to think about the environment differently, we have to show it to them differently. "Taking unexpected faces and getting their hands in the soil," is one way to accomplish that, he said. One thing he did learn from work on Hermes branding was what it takes for a brand to hold "the test of time," he said, which has led Flamingo Estate to closely control its messaging, or as Christiansen said, "police the brand cues very tightly," with his partner Aaron Harvey overseeing all of the design and Christiansen all the writing. "There are so many people making things but not building brands," he said. In the way every product is made, bottled, and packaged, Christiansen says he sees "real magic" and a question that many bigger-scale product companies never even consider: "Is there a true story to tell?" Christiansen boils down his approach to building a broad consumer products company to "making things I use every day at home. One great coffee, and one great product for skin, and one great thing for being in the sun all day." "Even though it is broad, we have a really sharp focus on utility," he said. Christiansen also said he is a big fan of being "radically inconsistent," an idea which is recognizable in the wide variety of products that the company now offers. "We expect that from wine, season to season it's different and we celebrate it, but something made well like hand soap should be different season to season because botanicals will change and ingredients will change," he said. "It's a little bit of calculated madness." That approach may have reached its peak with a $75 compost bag that was produced as a Mother's Day-timed gift and got a much larger reaction than the company anticipated. There was utility in the idea, in that farm goats were producing so much manure, but Christiansen said it was also born of a belief in "the power of play and trying things." "Just to work seasonally and pivot and try and have fun. There is joy there that many brands don't have," he said. Flamingo Estate has dreams of being a billion-dollar company. It is not close to that yet, but it is growing, doubling sales this year to $30 million and forecasting $50 million in sales by early next year, according to Christiansen. The company has already expanded to Australia, is about to launch in Japan, and will enter the European market next year, he said. One of the biggest hurdles was finding investors. Christiansen says it took several years to find the right partners and get properly funded, a process that included over 60 pitch meetings. One issue, he says, was the fact that Flamingo Estate is not a "single SKU" product company. The venture capital community loves one-product companies, but Flamingo Estate is doing food, beauty, and household goods, and efficiently running the different businesses, which Christiansen said is "a riddle" for many investors. He said many of the initial investment meetings would always circle back to the "exit goal," a topic that Christiansen was not interested in. "I would say 'we started running, why are we talking exit?'" he recalled. Many investors also wanted the company to focus on beauty because it has the highest margins and "kill everything else," he recalled. "Not following other people's playbooks, I think not doing that set us up well," he now says. "There are lots of entry points into the brand," he added. That leads Christiansen to say the one piece of advice he has for all business owners is to find the right partners, and in his experience, that meant people who have already built their own businesses, "people who know what it's like to be in the thick of things," he said. "They've made the best partners," he added.
CNBC
5 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Wharton word guru on 3 simple language fixes that can turn failure to communicate into success
Wharton School marketing professor Jonah Berger has advised Google, Nike, Apple and Coca-Cola, among other major firms, on how small language choices can be the difference between failure and success with customers and partners. The same is true for any individual, he says, whether it be at work, in business, or when seeking to influence those who surround us in personal life. "We all use language all the time, when writing emails, making presentations, talking to clients and team members," Berger said at CNBC's Small Business Playbook virtual event on Wednesday. "We think a lot about ideas we want to communicate, but we think a lot less about specific words we use when we communicate, and unfortunately, that's a mistake," he said in an interview with CNBC's Kate Rogers at the small business event. "Small shifts in language we use can have a big impact," he said. In fact, according to Berger, adding one word to a request — recommend, as in "I recommend" — can make the listener about 50% more likely to say yes. Berger's research, covered in his book "Magic Words," shows that language choices can be make-or-break when it comes to everything from office conversations to applying for loans, but we are often under-prepared to choose the right words to get what we want. Berger, along with a larger team, has analyzed the language of customer calls, sales pitches, and tens of thousands of written content pieces to analyze how to increase the odds of success. "At core, what we find is that it is not random, it's not luck, not chance. There is a science of how language works, whether trying to get a colleague on board or a client to say 'yes' or someone in our personal life to agree or support what we are going after," he said. Berger provided three examples of how to make small changes in the words we use to get the results we want with the "Small Business Playbook" audience. One easy change to make is based on research conducted years ago among pre-school children, which Berger says applies equally to adults. Researchers wanted to know how to increase influence over others and get others to support initiatives, and used classroom cleanup duties as the laboratory. What they found was that when children were asked to "help" rather than to be "helpers," they were less likely to willingly follow through on the task. That "infinitesimal difference in letters," according to Berger, just adding the "er" to the end of the word, made one-third of children more likely to say yes. That research was later corroborated among adults who were either asked to "vote" or be a "voter." "A small one-letter difference," according to Berger, "led to a 12% increase in willingness to turn out." He explained that what the research reveals is that people are more likely to respond to an identity they desire to be known for rather than an action they are asked to take. "We all know we should take certain actions ... but we are busy. What we care a lot more about is holding desired identities. We all want to see ourselves as smart, engaged citizens," he said. When actions become a way to claim a desired identity, through a shift from action language to identity language, we are more likely to follow through, he said. While doing work for a large consumer electronics firm analyzing social media language and what got attention in a world where competition for attention is intense across cold calls, emails and social, Berger says research showed that use of "you, you'll, your" — all the second-person pronouns — can make a big difference. "It acts like a stop sign," he said. "Imagine reading the headline of an email '5 tips to save money,' but if it says '5 tips to save money,' you pay more attention," he said. It doesn't matter whether you are trying to reach one person or many, he said. "It acts like a stop sign to dial in and pay attention and it gets more engagement," he added. Berger said there is one important caveat. In some situations, the use of the second-person pronouns can become accusatory and work against the intended goal. Personal life is one example, he said. "Did you make dinner? Did you walk the dog?" In Berger's analysis, this is not the way to frame such questions, as they will lead the person being asked to think (if not also say) "Why is it my job?" And there is a parallel in the office world, the difference between "Did you do that report?" and "Did that report get taken care of?" "You can suggest blame in ways you don't intend," he said. "You need to be careful of accusatory use of it." Berger said it also doesn't work in the context of customer support pages. "Yes, 'you' is good at getting attention, but for the customer support page, where you already have given your attention, the benefit is not there," he said. In fact, Berger says that this is one more use case that can lead people to think they are being blamed. Research on the way financial advisors discuss investments with clients found that the more certain an advisor is in the language they use, the more likely a client is to take their recommendations and stay in business with them. An advisor who is 95% sure a stock will go up is preferred to an advisor who is 65% sure, even if both are proven correct with their recommendations in the end. This may seem obvious: more certain language, words that clearly suggest something particular will happen, are what others want to hear. But according to Berger, the issue is that this approach is in direct contrast to how most of us speak. When we inevitably use "probably" and "potentially," we undermine our impact on listeners, Berger said. "Ditch the hedges," he said. "We hedge because it's convenient, filling conversational space. What we need to do is pause instead. Pausing can be beneficial. It shows people we are thinking about what they might have asked," he added. "People talk about being overconfident, but there is also the danger of being under-confident." Berger says it can be instructive, if painful, to record yourself and listen to how often you hedge, and also how often you use filler words like "err" and "like." "I've done it before with myself and it's cringeworthy," Berger said, but he added it is important to understand the difference between a practiced pause that shows you are paying attention and thinking, and a filler word that leads a listener to doubt your certainty and knowledge. This doesn't mean it's never a good idea to communicate uncertainty. As in the financial advisor example, there are times when a range of variables exists that could influence outcomes. But Berger said there are good ways to say "Hey, I am not sure." "I think this is a great course of action, but for this to work, these three things need to happen. I'm confident, but I can't predict the future." Or as Berger put it, "Be clear about where the uncertainty is and where it isn't."
CNBC
5 days ago
- Business
- CNBC
Wharton's Jonan Berger on the tiny language fix that can lead others to do what you ask of them
Wharton marketing professor Jonah Berger shares his research on the simple word choices and language changes we can make in everyday interactions that can turn failure into success at CNBC's 'Small Business Playbook.'
