david hieatt
Do one thing well
My Do Day course: “How to build a great brand with very little money”. Friday,Feb 22nd
“How to build a great brand with very little money”.
David Hieatt is co-founder of The Do Lectures. And Co-Founder of Hiut Denim Co. He has built companies with strong brands using some simple rules that anyone can use.
What you will learn?
How to tell your story?
How to give your brand a voice?
How to get people to love your brand?
The importance of 1000 true fans.
How to use the real advantages of being small?
Is your idea going to change anything?
How to put a moat around your idea?
How to identify a niche before others?
The importance of being first.
How to fund it without losing control?
How to build a great team without employing anyone?
Price - £200
Limited to ten people.
Price includes – Great lunch with the best local ingredients.
Plus teas, coffees and snacks throughout the day etc.
Location: Cardigan, West Wales
Friday Feb 22nd. 10am-5pm.
Mark Shayler's Do Day course: How to develop a world beating strategy from your bedroom? This will take place on Thursday Feb 21st. Same location. If you attend both courses, you can purchase both for £350 combined.
Email: Anna.thomas@thedolectures.co.uk
Ideas are messy
Last week we tried something new.
The Do Lectures turned into something else for 72 hours.
It became a place to start ideas.It became a place of doing.
It was an experiment. And the experiment was to see if you could take ‘time’ out of the process of the starting new companies. Can we accelerate them?
Like anything when you try something new, there is resistance.
But you have to let the experiment take its journey: Judge it at then end, and not before it starts. And not even halfway through.
Over the 72 Hours I saw people pitching their ideas via Ipad’s on Facetime to some amazing business guru’s while standing in a field on the western edge of Wales.
I saw websites being built.
I saw hackers building working prototypes on the spot.
I saw logo’s being crafted.
I saw people lose confidence and then bounce right back. I saw groups come together and I saw them fall apart. I saw frustration and elation.
I saw ideas being pitched and funded there and then.
But what I really saw was a glimpse of what the future looks like. And it is exciting but it won’t be easy, simple or predictable.
Ideas are messy.
23 Laws of Creativity.
1, Don’t follow.
2, Don’t seek consensus.
3, Trust your instinct.
4, Look for what isn’t there. But should be.
5, Ideas make you stand out. Great ideas make you standalone.
6, Ask dumb questions. They are not that dumb.
7, Most great ideas have difficult births.
7, Inform your ideas from what you see, what you hear, what you feel.
8, Don’t chase a fashion. Go where others haven’t.
9, Remember, ideas are plentiful. People who make them happen are not.
10, Don’t let your idea down: Execute well.
11, Good execution is hard.
11, Find the very best people you can and work with them.
12,Timing is important.
13, Love what you do. Or don’t do it.
14, Answer common problems.
15, ‘Standing still’ is just a nicer way of saying ‘going backwards’. Don’t stand still.
16, Fallow. Creativity needs rest.
17, Some ideas look good on paper and suck in real life. And some suck on paper but work in real life. Don’t be quick to judge your ideas.
18, Disrupt the status quo, or you’ll soon become it.
19, Failure is informative.
20, Optimism helps.
21, There are no short cuts. Do the work.
22, Luck matters.
23, "If you are going to try, go all the way. Or don’t even start." CB
Finding your Horse to ride.
Some books are more important than others. That’s because they contain an irrefutable truth. And once you know that truth and what it means to you, and how you need to use it in order to change things, then it is indeed life changing.
Many, many books claim that. But few really are.
‘The 80/20 Principle’ by Richard Koch is one of those rare books that you can indeed call life-changing. And business-changing too. It has a simple premise: 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. This thinking originally came from an Italian economist called Vilfredo Pareto. In 1906, he created a mathematical formula to describe the unequal distribution of wealth in his country, observing that twenty percent of the people owned eighty percent of the wealth. It became known as Pareto’s law. But it was actually an American Dr. Juran's observation of the "vital few and trivial many" that gave the principle a broader spectrum. And so the principle that 20 percent of something always are responsible for 80 percent of the results came to be.
If you think about your business, and apply the 80/20 principle, you will see that how uncannily accurate it is. 80% of your businesses revenue comes from just 20% of your customers. 80% of your businesses biggest successes come from just 20% of your people. Once you are aware of this truth, you can start to focus and spend more time on what matters: The 20% of the vital few.
Just imagine if you spent more time on the things that made the biggest difference and not on the other stuff that really doesn’t matter as much to your business. So anyway, go buy the book. It’s great. But the reason to write this today is he has a new book out called the 80/20 manager. So watch out for that.
Here is Richard’s blog: Find your horse to ride, which is a great read. And gives you an idea how good the book is going to be.
http://www.richardkoch.net/2012/12/17/find-your-horse-to-ride/
The Laws of the Kitchen
You are now at the point of your life when you are developing your professional reputation. You are doing so at the top tier of restaurants in New York City — make it count. Only your work ethic will speak for you, not past chef’s or friends. You must love the do this for a living — no question. You must love to stay late or come early if it is necessary to get the job done. You must love to practice only the best. Most perfect techniques in order to produce a product you are proud of.
Your end product is a direct reflection of how much love and respect you have for yourself and your work. All cooks must work in the most efficient manner, with full regard to producing the highest quality product possible. Responsibility of each and every cook to keep any area at which they are working spotless, regardless of its condition previously. Responsibility of all cooks to know everything about their stations. What is it? Why is it here? How long has it been here? Who made it? Each cook should familiarize himself with every product they are using on a hands on basis. Learn its origins, its classic uses in the French kitchen, and how we use it here at Cafe Boulud.
Each cook should know and record all recipes and techniques that are applicable to their stations. All cooks must think ahead and anticipate. Having your stations set up completely, with back up mise en place close at hand is anticipation. Doing small projects during service lulls is a way to think ahead for your partner. Always think about the next project, doing mise en place for the next day, work to keep your partner set up, start breaking down your station early, etc.
All cooks must watch each others back. If you are done setting up, see who needs a hand. If someone is in the shit do extra chives or shallots for them. Split common jobs between stations. Work for the team so we can have the tightest kitchen in New York.” These rules were posted in the kitchen of Cafe Boulud in New York, during Andrew Carmellini’s tenure as chef de cuisine.
They are still up today.
(Thanks to Mark for sharing this.)
Hey Fed Ex, You struck gold.
I just had a delivery from my FedEx man.
It’s pouring with rain. And it’s pitch black. But this guy is still smiling.
He helps me with the boxes. And points out that some the boxes aren’t very strong.
I sign the gadget thing with my signature and I ask how it was all going?
He said apart from one, all of it was under control.
He said it was from the Welsh gold centre, and so he knew it was someone’s Christmas present. But he had tried for 3 days to find the address.
He had tried directory enquiries. He had Googled it. But just couldn’t find the address.
So on his day off tomorrow, he had decided to knock on every door in the village until he finds someone who knows the person.
I guess the real gold is him, not the packet he is delivering.
72 hours of disruptive thinking
If you use Social Media, I urge you to sign up to this workshop. Money Ball changed baseball. Sam Bell is changing Social Media.
Here’s the deal. I thought I was pretty good at Social Media. Then Sam Bell came over for a month to help The Do Lectures, and I quickly learnt that I knew next to nothing. I was doing it. But what I wasn’t thinking.
I had no clear strategy. And, when I had great results, it was mostly down to luck. But what Sam has taught me has been invaluable, important and will help us for years to come.
I urge anyone who is involved anyone in the Social Media world to sign up to her Do Workshop in London. November 15th. 9.30am-5pm. More info on http://dolectures.com/do-workshops/
At the same time as Sam was over here, I was reading Money Ball. A book about thinking differently about baseball. Basically they had been measuring the wrong data for 70 years. And someone came along and said you are measuring the wrong thing. This data is the thing. This data determines the result. And that insight changed baseball.
That is what it felt when Sam started explaining how to be strategic about social media, how to think up a plan for growth, and how to execute on that plan. I was blown away. I had been working hard at it for years. But I had been working dumb on it for years. Then Boom, Sam explains her insights.
Sign up folks. It will pay you back for years to come.
It’s Money Ball for Social Media.
Why Love Pays Well. (In the end.)
This is the first poster in a series of 10 that aims to pass on some pearls of wisdom learnt from sitting and listening to half a decades worth of inspiring talks at The Do Lectures.
Each day you’re given 86,400 seconds from the ‘Time Bank’. Everyone is given the same. There are no exceptions. Once you make your withdrawal, you’re free to spend it as you want.
The ‘Time Bank’ won’t tell you how to spend it.
But there are some simple truths: Your time is limited. And one day you will go to the bank and it won’t have anymore for you. Time poorly spent will not replaced with more time. Time is precious. Indeed, it is more valuable than money as you can make more money but not more time.
Time spent doing something you love is the best investment you can make. Time will fly when you do that. You will practice. And practice. And practice. And all that hard work will never feel like hard word. And by heck, you will get good at it. Malcolm Gladwell was right, ‘Talent is the ability to practice’.
Don’t listen to your excuses about not following your heart. You have put those barriers there. So you will have to remove them too.
Don’t have a deferred life plan. That time will never come again.
And don’t be frightened to start at the bottom. Just make sure you start at the bottom of the thing that matters to you.
You see, love pays well. Not just in a pay cheque but in your health, in your happiness, and in your family life.
Life is short.
Tomorrow you will only get 86,400 seconds.
Just like the rest of us.
The 'Love Pays Wel' Poster is available at www.thedolectures.co.uk
“The problem is no one is stealing the pepper pots.”
Every business has to make a decision of how good it wants to be.
People forget that the people who run the business decide this. Just like picking which product or service to make was a decision. Or which people to hire. Or what colour to paint the walls was.
It’s not luck. It’s a show of hands. It’s a board meeting. It’s written on the back of a beer mat. But, someone,somewhere makes that decision.
And once your intent for the business has been declared, you follow that path. You hire accordingly. You choose your products or services accordingly. And yes, you even paint the walls accordingly.
If you choose to be good at something, you take the left turn in the road. And if you choose to be great at something, you take the right turn in the road. They are two different businesses on two different journeys.
Around a year ago, I helped to start a Local Eating House called The 25 Mile. It would source the main ingredients from within a 25 Mile radius, hence the name.
It bugged me that on a Sunday in a local lay-by from the back of a lorry, you could find some of the finest fish in the world. The fish was on its way to Spain, Japan and North Korea. But there were no fishmongers in town.
And it bugged me that a pub on the high street had been closed for close to 3 years. I just felt the town needed a place to show off all the great ingredients that it is surrounded by. So we took the plunge.
Like any business in its first years, it has not been easy. But the desire from day one has been to be great at it. That’s our map. So we hire people who want to be great, we work with the best growers, we buy only the freshest, tastiest ingredients that we can find within our 25 mile circle and cook it as simply as we know how.
And it's beginning to take off. But, everyone in the team knows how much harder we have to push to become great at this thing. Most people would settle for where we are now. But our decision was to be great. So we can’t stop here. We have to push on.
So when I am sitting in a meeting at The 25 Mile and someone mentions that some of our customers are stealing the Salt Pots. I love it. I know we are doing something right.
The salt is from the iconic Halen Mon. The ceramic pot comes with a little dinky wooden spoon. And the salt inside is amongst the best in the world. It’s crazy good. People leave The 25 Mile and tell their friends about the salt. They remark upon it. So in the true sense of the word, the salt is remarkable.
So I tell everyone in the meeting why I think this is great thing. And we shouldn’t be concerned by it. In fact, we should be proud of it.
But, I tell them, we should be very worried that no one is stealing the pepper pots.
