A WARM HAND IN MINE
We'll be entering October in a couple of days and I suddenly became curious about how the past year looked in the eyes of the trendsetters a year ago. For...
We'll be entering October in a couple of days and I suddenly became curious about how the past year looked in the eyes of the trendsetters a year ago.
For my part, it feels like it was the day before yesterday that it was reported that Russia had declared war on Ukraine. Then and there I realized that the year will be another "pandemic year" from the entrepreneur's point of view. We have two years behind us that have been unreliable, strange, sudden throws, hope and despair. We have experienced things and events that in our eyes would be totally unreal and so impossible that even in our wildest imagination we could not have had nightmares about. And yet. Here we are today. We have experienced total travel bans, visitor bans, closed countries, restaurants and shops due to a virus. The sick days among my staff were more than Sundays in the past three or four years. But we got through the stone shortage. And then, when we catch our breath, start playing, longing, planning our first vacation trip in years... then Putin starts shooting from the hip.
I'm on the run in my entrepreneurial career. I've been at it for 20 years and have been through most of it. Everything, EVERYTHING - I have put in my valuable experience chest. Good to have now as I train my son in entrepreneurial leadership. And not once during these 20 years have I renounced my basic philosophy; to create a sustainable vision, tattoo it under the skin and never ever abandon it. Respect your customers' choices and learn to listen to the movements in the far distance because they will come fluttering here when you least expect it.
An article about the trends for 2022 appeared in my feed.
One of the first points:
"Customers will no longer see merchants as companies that offer a product, but want deeper relationships with brands they trust."
I sat and stared at the words that I had never seen before but thought about every day since I started in 2003. Running a business for me is about creating relationships. When I studied advertising and marketing 35 years ago, they talked about lifetime customers. At my advertising school, they calculated what a lifetime customer was worth and these were to be cherished tenderly.
I'm probably a dinosaur in many ways, but relationships beat most - whether it's at RMI Berghs in 1986 or at Österlen in 2022. And respect. And to learn to listen without always rhetorically comparing your own misery in the middle of the conversation with someone who needs a shoulder to lean on.
I realize now that my vision from 2003, lying on the floor where I cut and pasted and created and absorbed everything the Danish KAOSPILOTS taught - it says there in black and white 20 years later:
"Customers will no longer see merchants as companies that offer a product, but want deeper relationships with brands they trust."
Having work as a lifestyle. To bet everything. To always solve problems regardless of what time of day trouble arises. That is the reality of the entrepreneur. And the sweetness, when will it come? It comes every day when a customer walks out of here with a smile. It comes when I see a guest sitting for a long time at a cafe table and writing, reading, thinking. It comes when the computer beeps and you have placed a web order. It comes when I see my staff double down so that our customers can trust us and what we stand for. We create deep relationships with our customers so that they feel safe, seen, invigorated, satisfied, happy, inspired and long to return. I realize now, we nurture our lifetime customers. The good old honest road without shortcuts.
Pandemics, Putin, gas leaks, electricity chaos and hell and his aunt will always be around in some form of satan. But also warmth, love, longing, kisses, laughter, moments of happiness, chocolate with sea salt and a warm hand in mine.
With love. m.