Why you need to create a remarkable business

Throughout this course, and in much of the advice I give to vegan companies, I talk about being remarkable.  This is not a throw-away phrase.  To be successful, your product or service must have something that truly makes it stand out.  Imagine your company is a person standing at a bus stop with 10 other people. To be successful it has to be the one person that someone would have to remark on if they walked past the queue.

“Did you just see that woman at the bus stop carrying a pink penguin on her back?!  Mum, look, there’s a woman giving a piggyback to a penguin!  Dad, you will never guess what we saw when we were out today, there was a woman waiting for a bus with a penguin on her back.  And it was BRIGHT PINK!  Please, let’s go back tomorrow and see if she’s there again, you need to see it!”

How many other people at the bus stop did that person take notice of?  What about the guy wearing the red hat?  Well, he had something noticeable about him that you might come to recognise if you walked past the same line of people everyday, but it was only penguin lady that was remarkable.  Most of us create a company and are happy to be the man in the red hat and think that’s enough to make us remarkable.  But it’s not.  How many people would you tell if you saw someone wearing a red hat at a bus stop?  Probably no-one.  How many people would you tell about pink penguin lady?  Probably everyone you met that day.

Your company needs to be THAT remarkable.  It needs to make someone stop in their tracks and double-take.  You need to have something so different that everyone who comes across your company tells everyone they know about it.  They have to share it on Facebook, bring other people to see it.  You might be thinking that doesn’t apply to what you sell, but I guarantee that it does.  It also doesn’t have to be a gimmick like giving your pink penguin friend a piggy-back, it can be a really amazing difference about your company.  It can be that the story you have to tell, or the difference that you are trying to make, is so remarkable that people have to talk about it.  That’s what we mean by creating a remarkable company.

Think about your business now.  If someone met your company at a trade fair, or if they visited your website, or if they listened to an interview of you talking about your origin story, would they rush off and drag other people back to come and see you also?  Would your company make them get their phone out and share it on Instagram because it was so remarkable?  Would they talk about you over the dinner table that night because it was a highlight of their day?  Would they keep sharing a link to your business in response to other people’s Facebook questions saying that they needed to hear your story?  Can you see that if your company was TRULY REMARKABLE you would have to do no marketing at all?  A comet shooting across the sky doesn’t need to pay Google for people to see it.  A lady who walks around all day with her pink penguin friend on her back doesn’t need to pay to get into her local newspaper.

At Vegan Business Tribe we look out for these companies and stories all the time.  They are the new members that jump out at us in the from the forum and get 100s of views when they introduce themselves, compared to the ones that only get a handful.  They don’t necessarily have a better product, they are just more remarkable.  Take for example Miss Beth Hart.