What is the Secret of Our Success?
What is the secret of Chris & Marie's success? In 1997 Chris & Marie were invited by Gold FM to attend a seminar in Hong Kong entitled 'Thinking outside the square'. At this stage we had a backlog of unsold stock and we were a struggling corner nursery going nowhere, we had a large inventory of stock & a giant overdraft. At the seminar we learned three things that completely changed our lives.
1. Concentrate your firepower. Like a lot of small businesses we spent our money on a little bit of radio, a bit of newspaper, some on magazines and some on television. Larry & Jason said take your entire budget and spend it all on one medium that you can dominate and have presence on.
2. The more unbelievable the offer the more it has to be grounded in reality. Like lots of retailers we would say "It's Easter and we are selling silver birches for half price, 6ft silver birch $5". Instead we learned that it's better to say, "We've grown a large field of silver birches and because we've grown them we can afford to sell them for half the city prices, 6ft silver birch $5".
3. Create a franchise in the minds of people. Larry & Jason told a story about a Cadillac dealer from Chicago who used the one slogan on every piece of advertising for 30 years and became so well known and successful he was able to sell his dealership for 10's of millions of dollars.
Taking these three simple ideas we created the "hello hello" advertising campaign. We concentrated our entire advertising budget in either radio or television at any one time, we grounded every offer in reality and we kept a consistent theme in every ad, turning our nursery into the busiest & best known plant retail outlet in Melbourne.
Since that time Chris and Marie have attended further seminars & had further coaching with Larry & Jason. Lots of people ask us how we did what we did, now the secret to our success is available to all in a book entitled:
"It's not the Big that Eat the Small it's the Fast that Eat the Slow"
by co-authors Laurence Haughton and Jason Jennings.
The principles discussed in the book are simple and easy to understand. We have worked together as a team to achieve "being fast" and have held cause community meetings where we discuss our ideas and plans with relevance to our cause which is - Providing The Experience Of Adventure, Beauty and Abundance. Our staff have also completed a course run by Chris on how to become really successful in your job & how to create your own job.
By using Larry & Jasons principles from the book you can take the smallest business and watch it grow to number one in its field or area. Our business has grown dramatically over the past four years and we will continue to do so for the next four years.
Readers who wish to read more about the new book "It's Not What You Say… It's What You Do".
The success of Hello Hello does not lie in it's plant stock, equipment or property. It lies in our cause, the team of people and the culture, product, customer relationships and the franchise in the minds of the people of Victoria, that this team has created.