House Notes: Building A Home

I recently came across a quote that stopped me in my tracks.

“If you want to build a brand, you have to piss off 80% of people to connect with your 20%”  - Steven Bartlett (Diary of a CEO)

While I think this statement is dramatic, I felt both confused and confronted by it.  

Does this really apply to me?  Coffee is friendly.  Coffee is innocent.  Coffee connects people.  It doesn’t piss anyone off.  

At the same time, I also know that there are over 600 coffee companies in Colorado alone.  Sure, there’s plenty of business for everyone to succeed, but if I do what every other coffee company is doing, there’s a strong chance I’ll never find my 20% by trying to appease 100%.  

Yikes.  That was a gut check.

So I asked myself, “Ian, are you building a company, or are you building a brand?”

To some, this question may seem trivial.  But humor me for a second.  

I view building a company much like building a house.  If I identify all of the required pieces, find funding for the project, and hire the right labor, I have a pretty good shot at creating a four walled structure with a roof.  It may not look pretty, but it’ll do the job. 

I view building a brand much like designing the interior of that house.  I can buy all of the fancy West Elm pieces I want, but that doesn’t necessarily translate into creating the intangible “feeling” of being home when someone walks through my front door.  That takes something more intentional.

Put simply, four walls can make a house, but what goes inside makes it a home.   

When I started the Guesthouse, I established relationships and products that I started selling.  I use events as a way to meet customers face to face and get out in the community.  I try to stick to a regular schedule of posting on social media and linkedIn to connect with a wider audience and make people aware of what I’m doing.  I pay for certain services to help manage my finances, taxes, and advertising.  

These are all strategies that I’m using to build my house brick by brick.  

But I’m not in this to build “just another house on the block.”  I want to build a home.  

The Guesthouse has always been about more than just coffee for me. It has always been a mechanism for connecting with people.  I care about making sure my products are of the highest quality and I try my best to make my events “your next favorite Third Space”.   But so does every other coffee company out there.  Alarms started going off in my head when I realized how many other companies use these exact same buzzwords in pursuit of winning customers through the perception of a welcoming atmosphere.  

What hit me the hardest was that I thought The Guesthouse was unique, when in reality, how it currently stands, it’s not.

This pushed me to start thinking about the Guesthouse as a brand more than a company.  When I think of companies like Lululemon, Vuori, Fjallraven, Tesla and Apple (all companies I love), their customers are also followers who buy into a lifestyle that the company has created through their products, but that lives separately from their products.  Their brands create a culture that emotionally connect with their customers and they use their products as the connection point.  That doesn’t mean these companies are for everyone.  You can figure that out quickly by asking an Android user what they think of Apple.  But it doesn’t matter because they’ve risked pissing off the majority to find their die-hards.  That’s why Tesla can sell Flamethrowers and Apple could probably sell cars.  Because their customers love the brand more than the company and will stand by them. 

Developing The Guesthouse brand is the highest priority for me right now because I’m not interested in being just another coffee company that my customers try and then move on from.  Fortunately, I have some ideas that I’m incredibly excited to talk about soon. 

Sure, there’s a chance that my shifting identity will turn some people off.  

That’s ok.  Because I know that’s a worthwhile trade for finding people that will fall in love with what I’m doing.  

More to come soon.

Stay Positive,

Ian