I often get asked why another start-up?

My answer is always the same. The only way to keep my skills sharp is to spend some time in the trenches. The best way I can serve our WPP clients is to keep it real. We have many local clients who live in the retail and eCommerce space. What better way to stay grounded than to create a product, (ours is a facial mist made with coffee), create an eCommerce system (and the CRM that goes with it), drive traffic to a site and then fulfil that product from warehouse to customer smoothly. It takes brains and guts and patience.

One of the most honest things we’ve done is sample our product. We could have outsourced it to a fancy sampling business but instead we elected to do it ourselves. A 5ml vial of Koffee Fix to potential customers in key high traffic areas – beach promenades, shopping malls and local markets.

We confirmed two things we felt we knew (though only hypothetically) about our target audience. Our core audience is mums with toddlers who need as much help as they can get feeling energised in a busy, often sleep-deprived day and twenty-to-thirty-something women who love the latest in skincare and cosmetics. Sampling to thousands of people is often the best (and most immediate) market research you can do.

But here’s what we also found out. People fall into three categories.
1. They will happily take a sample and be kind and gracious.
2. They will avoid you in ways that make you feel radioactive.
3. They are rude in a way you hope you never are.

Sampling has become a fantastic study in human behaviour. The other useful by-product is that it toughens you up. Hearing ‘no’ (rudely) many times over a weekend, is bracing. It is also a study in just how competitive any category (especially skincare and cosmetics) really is. No sale can be taken for granted. Customers have a million different ways they can spend their money.

Whatever it is you are selling needs to be meaningful for them and make their lives better. The attention you get can be measured in seconds.

Being in the trenches is the best education. No matter what your particular trench is. Keeping it real and keeping it human is invaluable for any business. Mixing with thousands of your potential customers in the real world is irreplaceable. You’ll always learn something new. Even if it’s hard to hear or see, it will sharpen your knowledge about your business and guide you to refining the strategy you’ve undertaken and the course correction you need to make. No matter how senior you get, don’t ever make the mistake of removing yourself from the trenches. It will always be your best friend.