How Uber Eats almost destroyed a small business

We have to be careful of the shiny new toy. My local cafe has started doing Uber Eats deliveries. Good for them! Well….. not so fast. The wait times jumped to 20 minutes and then 40 minutes. My big cycling group worth $600-$700 per month has slowly moved to another cafe (despite many second chances). […]

The iconic brand doing a Blockbuster

An iconic Australian department store (DJ’s) is doing its best Blockbuster impersonation. They are reducing two Sydney flagship stores to 1, and eliminating 6 floors. Profits have been declining every year for 15 years (lightening reaction times). Online sales rose 46.8 per cent and now account for 7.7 per cent of total sales. But they […]

The purpose of surveys is not to measure service

What’s the purpose of customer surveys? If you think it’s to measure customer service you may want to re-consider. Surveys measure what the customer thinks they thought. Those thoughts can be wrong, and more importantly, they don’t measure what makes you money. Customers are so easily swayed by a nice employee and nice environment. They may […]

6 steps to move from price selling to brand selling

Chinese shoppers are renowned for their price sensitivity and intense negotiations. I spend a lot of time there, yet I’m constantly surprised at the pace of change. Big changes are afoot. Consumer behaviour have caught up to the West in a matter of years and blown past us. There has been an explosion of brand […]

What can Lego, Cycling and IKEA teach us about meaning?

Meaning is possible even in the most frivolous (Lego), painful (cycling) and frustratingly mundane jobs (IKEA) and can be lost in the most complex and career building activities. See full post on Steven’s personal blog here or watch the 7 minute video below.

Episode #14 – The one thing more important than profit

The greatest frustration of most leaders is to get your people to go the direction you’ve set. To bring strategy and execution together, the two things overlooked are Purpose and Personality. Sure there’s more to business than that, however, these are the two rarely spoken about missing pieces. Let’s start with Purpose. I know, your […]