The Wizard Chronicle

We're Getting Mall-ed Again

2010-09-02T05:19:39Z

The Web Follows the Pattern of Brick and Mortar

The Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams

“Over the past few years, one of the most important shifts in the digital world has been the move from the wide-open Web to semiclosed platforms that use the Internet for transport but not the browser for display. It’s driven primarily by the rise of the iPhone model of mobile computing, and it’s a world Google can’t crawl, one where HTML doesn’t rule. And it’s the world that consumers are increasingly choosing, not because they’re rejecting the idea of the Web but because these dedicated platforms often just work better or fit better into their lives (the screen comes to them, they don’t have to go to the screen). The fact that it’s easier for companies to make money on these platforms only cements the trend.” - Chris Anderson and Michael Wolff, Wired, Aug. 17, 2010

Anderson and Wolff are talking about app-driven* destinations like Facebook, Twitter, Pandora, the New York Times, Netflix streaming videos and virtually anything that appears on an iPad or an iPhone.

Not only is Facebook more than just another Web site, but with 500 million users it’s “the largest Web site there has ever been, so large that it is not a Web site at all.”
- Yuri Milner, the investor that bought 10 percent of Facebook

Today’s top 10 Web sites account for about 75 percent of all US pageviews**. This leaves just 25 percent of pageviews to be the web traffic coveted by websites number 11 through 80 million***.

Forty years ago we quietly abandoned Mom’n’Pop businesses on Main Street America and went to the malls, semiclosed worlds that “had it all.”

Sites built on semiclosed apps are the new malls.

Facebook is its own semiclosed little world. But so was America Online, remember? AOL offered ease of use and a walled garden. But their lack of diverse content soon made the walled garden feel like a prison. AOL lost subscribers by the tens of millions.

Thirty years ago we saw the rise of the category killers, superstores like Circuit City, Toys’R’Us, Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Barnes and Noble and Home Depot. Category killers aggregated our choices to a single location and offered us convenience.

Amazon.com is one of these. One out of every four online transactions occurs on Amazon.com. Yes, you read that correctly.

Malls and superstores are back again. Go figure.

You’re probably not going to build a semiclosed, app-driven destination this year and neither am I. And few of us have the connections to become worldwide aggregators. So how does all of this new information affect your business and mine?

1. Monitor the web for mentions of your company.

“The internet makes you transparent whether you choose to be or not,” says Jeffrey Eisenberg. “Your only remaining choice is whether to be authentic, that is, to deliver on your promise.” What you say about yourself in your ads will be accelerated or obliterated by what your customers say about you on Facebook and Twitter and Yelp and Angie’s List. Are you delivering what you promise?

2. Be available through Social Media.

The single greatest deficiency of Wizard Academy right now is our lack of a Vice Chancellor, someone to stay in touch with our alumni, to know them and be known by them. It’s a full-time job. Who in your company is the relationship development officer?

3. Don’t troll for customers on Facebook.

Social media is about connecting on a personal level. If you think of it as an advertising medium you will damage your company’s reputation more than you will help it. Searching for customers using social media is like trying to sell insurance at a dinner party. You may sell the occasional policy, but everyone will think you’re an ass.

4. Pay attention to your status on Google Maps.

Type a business category into Google and it will show you the locations of about half a dozen area businesses in that category.**** The listing hierarchy for Google Maps is completely different than the hierarchy in basic search and these map references appear ABOVE the balance of the search results. Becoming one of those half-dozen businesses isn’t as difficult as you might think.

5. NEVER write phony testimonials.

(A.) They don’t work and (B.) you will get caught. Phony testimonials are detected by the reader a high percentage of the time.

NOTE: This is why Wizard Academy posts unscripted videos in our course descriptions that let you meet our students and our faculty “unposed.” DISCLOSURE: The video firm that does this for us is owned by my sons. SECOND DISCLOSURE: To avoid any taint of self-dealing, I pay for these videos from my own pocket – as a gift to the Academy - rather than from Academy funds. THIRD DISCLOSURE: The classes with course descriptions that feature these SUNPOP videos always fill up quicker than the classes whose course descriptions don’t yet have them.

Take a look. You’ll see what I mean.

Roy H. Williams

* Apps or “applications” are third-party software programs designed to perform specific functions. “Apps are the layer that connect us all through our mobile devices,” says app creator Seth Goldstein, “This is the age of pervasive computing.” Many apps provide the same sort of freedom people felt when phones became cordless, then wireless. “The app world is all about you,” says Peter Sealey, a Silicon Valley tech advisor. “From the way we use our apps to the way they seem to spread … by word of mouth, this represents a new level of cultural and social empowerment for the individual.”

** According to Compete, a Web analytics company

*** More than 240 Million domain names have been registered, but only about 1/3 of these - 80 million - are attached to a web site.

****

Are You Asking Your Customers For Referrals?

2010-08-31T01:40:06Z

By Tom Wanek, Wizard of Ads Partner

What to Write in Your Ads

2010-08-31T00:19:18Z

If you want to grow your business, don’t target age, sex, income or education.

Target according to buying motives.

The question isn’t, “Who is my customer?” but rather, “Why does my customer buy my product? What does it do for him or her?”

The answers to these questions will tell you exactly what to write in your ads.

Roy H. Wiiliams, The Wizard of Ads

Do You Deliver All You Promise in Your Ads?

2010-08-30T05:43:15Z

Communication is powerful when actions and words agree.

Is there a conflict between what you are saying and who you are being?

Remember, your company’s credibility is at stake here.

Tom Wanek, Wizard of Ads Partner

Left Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

2010-08-23T07:27:05Z

The Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams

Listen to memo.

I’m going to explain a sophisticated ad-writing technique to you today, but I have confidence you’ll understand it perfectly.

Learn to incorporate it into your writing and your ads will produce better results, generate more comments and make people smile.

Tight-asses will criticize you, of course, but hey, they’re tight-asses.

We’ll begin with a couple of examples from a flyer I edited recently for a fish market that donated $500 to help finish the tower at Wizard Academy. The flyer offered a complete fish dinner for 4 for just 39.95, including gourmet salads and side dishes. When I finished my revision, the last 2 points made at the end of the meal description were these:

Fresh-baked homemade bread.

(Be sure you’re sitting down when you take your first bite.

This bread is so amazing that people have been known
to pass out from the sheer wonderfulness of it.)

You got questions? We got Answers,

and much better fish than you’ll find at the grocery store.

No pesticides, No growth hormones, No color added.

Fish so healthy you’ll live forever.

The left hemisphere of the brain wants facts, details, descriptions and benefits. Lefty is all about sequential logic and deductive reasoning. Lefty looks for loopholes and discrepancies and is full of doubt.

But the right hemisphere cares for none of that. The right half of the brain is where fantasy lives. And Righty doesn’t know fact from fiction.

If you merely exaggerate, your customer’s left brain will shoot your claims full of holes. But if you go beyond mere exaggeration – so far beyond it that the left brain knows you’re just clowning – the right brain will happily embrace your glowing fantasy in all its positive glory.

This is the technique:

Open with 2 or 3 quick jabs of fact:

1. “fresh-baked”

2. “homemade bread”

Then hit the right brain with everything you’ve got: “Be sure you’re sitting down when you take your first bite. This bread is so amazing that people have been known to pass out from the sheer wonderfulness of it.”

Again, 2 or 3 quick jabs of fact:

1. No pesticides,

2. No growth hormones,

3. No color added.

Then electrify Righty with an impossible dream: “Fish so healthy you’ll live forever.”

Yes, we’re speaking to the unconscious. We don’t need the customer to believe our silly, over-the-top promise. They don’t even have to think it’s cute.

All they have to do is hear it.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is deep branding.

One last benefit of this technique is that Right Hooks often become “word flags” that are repeated by smiling customers. As they place their orders, they’re likely to say, “Make sure you give me some of that bread that makes you pass out!” And as they lift their fish dinners off the counter and turn to leave the store, they’re likely to smile again and say, “Fish so healthy you’ll live forever.”

You gotta love it when customers quote memorable lines from your ads.

Anyone who has been in advertising longer than 10 minutes knows that saying, “Mention this ad and receive 10 percent off,” doesn’t work.

My theories are:

1. It makes people feel like Oliver Twist asking for another bowl of porridge.
2. Customers fear they’re going to mention the ad and some mouth-breathing employee is going to say, “What ad?” If they answer, “The ad that says I get ten percent off for mentioning it,” they risk Mouth Breather saying with a snort and a sneer, “Nice try.” Or worse, MB throws his head back and shouts across the store, “Ralphy! Do you know anything about an ad that says this guy gets ten percent off?”

Play it safe. Plant a word flag with a Right Hook. Customers mention word flags because it’s fun; a moment of friendly connection that’s guaranteed to make 3 people smile:

1. The witty customer who repeats the line.
2. The happy advertiser who hears it, and
3. The above-average writer who wrote it.

Be that above-average writer.

Roy H. Williams

Advanced Thought Particles! Sept-21-22
Learn how to stack shape, color, shadow and metaphor so they affect how others think and feel. Artists, retailers, interior designers and advertising pros should take this class. Taught rarely. Definitey not a class for the shallow and twitchy.

Want to know additional techniques that speaks to Righty? Enter the rabbit hole by clicking the image above the title of today’s MondayMorningMemo and you’ll find a couple more examples.

How The Quest For Growth Can Be Disastrous For Your Business

2010-08-20T06:03:44Z

Two valuable lessons for all business owners.

By Craig Arthur, Wizard of Ads Partner

Starbucks. The rise. The stumble. The back to basics.

*(Bolding in all quotes by editor)

In his 1997 book “Pour Your Heart into It” then Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said…

“A company can grow big without losing the passion and personality that built it, but only if it’s driven not by profits but by values and people.”

Schultz went on to say…

“The number-one factor in creating a great, enduring brand is having an appealing product. There’s no substitute. In Starbucks’ case, our product is a lot more than coffee. Customers choose to come to us for three reasons: our coffee, our people, and the experience in our stores.”

“We could save millions of dollars every year if we bought even slightly cheaper coffee. If you can raise profits by shaving costs on your main product and 90 percent of your customers wouldn’t even notice, why not do it? Because we can tell the difference.“

”Higher profits, at the cost of poorer quality? The best people would leave. Morale would fall. The mistake would eventually catch up with us.“

”Every business has a memory. The memory of sacrificing quality for profit would have been fixed in the minds of Starbucks people forever. It would have been an impossible price to pay.“

Starbucks success was built on a Memorable Customer Experience and Prime Locations.

Aroma
”What’s the first thing you notice when you approach a Starbucks store? Almost always, it’s the aroma. Aroma triggers memories more strongly than any of the other senses, and obviously plays a major role in attracting people to our stores.“

Baristas
”The hiss of the expresso machine, the clunk-clunk as the barista knocks the coffee grounds out of the filter, the bubbling of the milk steaming in the metal pitcher, and, at the bean counter, the swish of the metal scoop shovelling out a half-pound of beans, the clatter as they hit the scale - for our customers, these are all familiar, comforting sounds.”

Brand
“Authentic brands do not emerge from marketing cubicles or advertising agencies. They emanate from everything a company does, from store design and site selection to training, production, packaging, and merchandise buying. In companies with strong brands, every senior manager has to evaluate each decision by asking: “Will it strengthen or dilute the brand?”

The CEO’s who followed Schultz should have had that quote etched on their desks.

Schultz stepped down as CEO of Starbucks in 2000, with a total 2,498 stores.

Orin Smith took the reins and at the end of his 5-year term (2000-2004) the total number of Starbucks stores stood at 8,569.

Under new CEO Jim Donald, (2005-2007) the push for expansion accelerated sharply. He added 6,414 stores in three years, bringing the total to 15,011 stores worldwide.

But in the race to please shareholders with increased turnover and increased profits, Starbucks made the major blunder of diluting the customer experience and opening stores in less than prime locations.

On February 14 2007, Schultz sent an email to the Starbucks executive team, with a subject line, “The Commoditization of the Starbucks Experience”.

Here are a few excerpts:
“Over the past 10 years, in order to achieve the growth, development, and scale necessary to go from less than 1,000 stores to 13,000 stores and beyond, we have had to make a series of decisions that, in retrospect, have lead to the watering down of the Starbucks experience, and, what some might call the commoditization of our brand.”

“For example we went to automatic expresso machines, we solved a major problem in terms of speed of service and efficiency. At the same time, we overlooked the fact that we would remove much of the romance and theatre that was in play with the use of the La Marzocca machines.”

“This, coupled with the need for fresh roasted coffee… moved us toward the decision and the need for flavour locked packaging.”

“We achieved fresh roasted coffee, but at what cost? The loss of aroma-perhaps the most powerful non-verbal signal we had in our stores; the loss of our people scooping fresh coffee from the bins and grinding it fresh in front of the customer, and once again stripping the store of tradition and our heritage.”

Luckily for Stabucks, Schultz took back control, and once again they are back on track, but only after a mighty big scare.

In Smart Growth, Building an Enduring Business by Managing the Risks of Growth, author Edward D. Hess wrote, “Starbucks shows that: (1) small changes can add up and can have a big impact; (2) rapid growth can dilute a company’s culture; (3) rapid growth can dilute the customer proposition; and (4) the pressure from the public market to grow can cause dilution of quality controls. All of these outcomes can result in a competitive position vulnerable to attack by new competitors.”

Business success can breed arrogance and give business owners a sense of invincibility.

And the race for business growth and increased profit can lead to business failure.

Lessons from the Starbucks experience:

1. Even a strong brand struggles in a poor location. Remember, expensive rent is the cheapest advertising your money can buy.

2. Dilute the customer experience and watch your business collapse. As a business owner you must evaluate each marketing and cost saving decision by asking: “Will it strengthen or dilute our brand?”

How to Spot a Wiener Dog... And Make Lots of Money

2010-08-04T06:30:21Z

The Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams

Hear memo.

I concluded a recent Monday Morning Memo entitled “Melvin the Lion” by saying,

“We won the game when we picked the wiener dogs. This is the dirty little secret of advertising: you determine the success of the campaign when you pick what you’re going to promote. Have you been settling for precision lawn chairs and lawnmowers? Repent of your sin. Demand the wiener dogs. You’ll be amazed how much better your ads work.”

An old friend emailed me the next day to say, “Please forgive me for being grumpy… but in the memo you gave no explanation on how to distinguish between wiener dogs and lawnmowers.”

My friend makes a good point. Not every idea is a wiener dog. Sometimes it’s just a dog.

Each of us has 2 kinds of blind spots. The first blind spot is a negative trait of which you are unaware. Everyone around you sees it, but you can’t. The second blind spot is a talent or gift you assume to be common to everyone, but it isn’t. It’s your gift and yours alone.

I’ve always been able to spot a wiener dog. My ability to pick the winning idea from a shuffled deck of mediocre ideas is so completely intuitive and effortless that it annoys me when other people can’t do it. Even more annoying is when they ask me to explain how I do it. “It’s a wiener dog! Can’t you see it? Open your eyes, man! It’s a freakin’ wiener dog!”

The bottom line on the home page of the Wizard Academy website says,

“The faculty of Wizard Academy studies what gifted people do when they’re feeling inspired so we can reverse engineer their unconscious methods. We teach you how to do consciously what a gifted person does unconsciously.”

I’ve spent decades studying other people’s gifts but I never once considered I might have a gift of my own.

The day after I received that email from my friend, I met Ray Bard, my publisher, for lunch. Ray immediately bopped me with the same question. “Roy, when I read the memo this week I couldn’t help but notice that you never told us how to spot the wiener dog. Why did you leave that part out?” Part of me stood up, clenched my fists and screamed in frustration. But that part of me is invisible.

The visible part of me said, “Ray, you gave me the formula for spotting wiener dogs 10 years ago. Don’t you remember?” Ray looked at me quizzically, so I continued. “Puddles, Bayous, Wells and Oceans… Question 1: How widespread is the interest? Question 2: How deep is the interest?”

Ray got it and smiled but I was on a roll, so I continued, “Spotting the winning idea is all about identifying
(1.) Defining Characteristics and
(2.) Limiting Factors.”

The Defining Characteristics of the Precision Lawn Chair Drill Team idea were irrelevant because the Limiting Factor was that each team would need a talented choreographer and members who were willing to practice relentlessly. And we know that’s not gonna happen. The Precision Lawn Chair idea was a puddle. It could never trigger more than narrow, shallow interest.

The Defining Characteristics of the Riding Lawnmower Races were

(1.) gasoline and
(2.) testosterone, so basically, it’s a poor man’s NASCAR. As such, it would trigger deep interest, but only to a narrow section of the population. Riding Lawnmower Races were a well.

The Defining Characteristics of the Wiener Dog Races were
(1.) Dogs. Everyone loves dogs. Kids love dogs. Families have dogs. Dogs have personalities. They’re cute. People love to show off their dogs and don’t hesitate to spend money on them.
(1a.) The dog is usually considered a member of the family.
(1b.) Dogs don’t have to rehearse to be dogs.
(1c.) Long and skinny on short little legs, wiener dogs are funny looking and have a funny name. A bunch of wiener dogs is like a barrel of monkeys; instant, guaranteed fun.

The Limiting Factor of a Wiener Dog Race would be:
How many people own wiener dogs?
Answer: Lots. More than enough. It’s a very popular breed.
Result: Widespread interest that will be deep enough to cause large numbers of people to actually show up for the event. The wiener dog idea is an ocean idea.

Question 1: How widespread is the interest?
Question 2: How deep is the interest?

Narrow, shallow interest is a puddle. Few people are fooled by puddles.

Narrow, deep interest is a well. You can make money with “well” products because their customers are highly motivated and easily targeted. Cult brands are built on wells.

Widespread, shallow interest is a bayou. Entrepreneurs and advertisers see a bayou and think it’s an ocean because they really want it to be an ocean. They lie to themselves about the depth of the public’s interest.

Widespread, deep interest is an ocean. That’s why each year’s Wiener Dog Races in my little town of 2,404 people has been bigger than the year before. This year we raced more than 600 wiener dogs and raised $120,000 for the Buda Lions Club. Next year’s profits will likely be $150,000.

Want to make a lot of money?

Learn how to spot a wiener dog.

And don’t be fooled by bayous.

Roy H. Williams

BIG NEWS - Digital Marketing - After building and exiting a NASDAQ-traded company, Wizard Academy’s beloved Jeffrey and Bryan Eisenberg will be back on campus for 2 days in November. Will you be one of the lucky 50 to snag a seat at the all-new Wizards of Web 2010?

Are You Hiring The Right People For Your Company?

2010-07-05T23:53:56Z

A Guide To Better Hiring

By Wizard Partner Tom Wanek

Answer 13 Again

2010-07-05T11:18:05Z

“Do It Backwards”

The Monday Morning Memo by Roy H. Williams

Hear memo.

I was explaining to my apprentices the difference between cost-based accounting and customer-based accounting. “Cars in 1908 sold for about $2,500 apiece. Nearly 2,000 entrepreneurs became car builders between 1886 and 1908 and each of them began with the question, ‘How can I build a stronger, faster, more desirable car?’”

But none of them could build and sell a car for less than $2,500. Consequently, cars sold in small numbers and only to the very rich.

But Henry Ford wasn’t product-focused, he was customer-focused. Henry asked, “At what price could I sell a lot of cars… a whole lot of cars?” Henry decided upon the price of $849 and it became his non-negotiable, his North Star.

Designs A through S were impossible to build and sell for $849 so those designs were scrapped. But the Model T at $849 swept America like a prairie fire on a windy day and left 15 million Americans smiling happily in the smoke of identical, black cars. (The bestselling car in the world today sells about 400,000 units per year worldwide, so 15 million is a lot of cars… a whole lot of cars.)

Henry Ford developed the assembly line using the same sort of reverse logic. While visiting a large meat-packing house in Chicago, Henry was impressed with the efficiency of their disassembly line: a pig carcass hung from a hook that rolled along an overhead rail in front of a line of workers, each of whom cut off a piece of pork with a specialized knife. Whoosh. The pig was skeletonized in less than 2 minutes.

“Instead of a rail overhead, I’ll have a conveyor belt underneath. And instead of taking off a piece, my workers will add a piece. Instead of ending with a skeleton, we’ll begin with a skeleton.” Whoosh. By 1920 a new Model T rolled out of the factory every 60 seconds and 1 of every 2 cars on earth was a Ford Model T.

Sam Walton was Henry Ford with a different haircut. Sam taught his buyers to look at an item and ask, “At what price could I sell a lot of these… a whole lot of these?” Then if the item could be bought for less than that amount, the buyer was told to buy a trainload of them.

“Roy, I can corroborate that story.” All eyes turned toward Norm, one of my apprentices. “I was with Fred Meyer in 1980 and Wal-Mart was part of our buying group. A man at the front of the room held up a rug and began explaining its features. The Wal-Mart buyer on my right leaned across to ask the Fred Meyer buyer on my left, ‘How much do you think we could sell those for?’ My buyer whispered back, ‘We don’t yet know what they cost.’ The Wal-Mart buyer cocked his head and responded, ‘What does that have to do with anything?’”

Fred Meyer and Sam Walton simultaneously broke the 1 billion-dollar mark in 1980. Fred Meyer now sells 7 billion dollars a year.

Wal-Mart sells that much every week.

Henry Ford and Sam Walton became ecstatically wealthy because they had an instinctive understanding of Genrich Altshuller’s Answer 13: Do it backwards.

Bad marketing is focused on the product. Good marketing is focused on the customer. It’s a subtle shift in perspective, but a vital one.

Wizard Academy graduate Kary Mullis understands Answer 13, just like Henry and Sam. “Geneticists were looking for a needle in a haystack, so I said, ‘Why not turn the haystack into needles?’” The year was 2004. Kary was telling me how he invented Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR,) the scientific breakthrough that won him the Nobel Prize and opened the door to genetic research.

Kary then showed me a scale model of a new, organic molecule and said he was using that same inverted perspective – Answer 13 again – to eliminate bioterrorism. “We know all about this powerful immuno-reaction because we’ve been suppressing it during heart-valve transplants for decades. So I said, ‘Suppress it hell, why not aim it?’”

Kary is holding the molecule he showed me in 2004 in the 2009 TED video in which he announces the success of his experiment to make a vaccine for anthrax. Take a look.

Answer 13: Do it backwards. Reverse it. Turn it upside down. Backwards thinking is what made Henry Ford and Sam Walton rich and won Kary Mullis the Nobel Prize.

Think of a limiting factor, something that’s holding you back. Now sling a little Answer 13 on the problem. What does it look like now?

After Norm finished his Fred Meyer/Wal-Mart story, each of my apprentices was tasked with studying a specific client through the lens of customer-based accounting. A second apprentice spoke up: “My client sells lighting fixtures and wants to target 30 to 50 year-old women who are in the process of building a new custom home. But why not target women who already own a home? And instead of these women having to find an installer, why don’t we send an installer home with them to install the light fixture immediately? All the lights in the showroom could have price tags showing the price of the light Installed Today.”

Anyone with half a brain can think of several reasons why this is an unworkable idea. But what do you think will happen when a person with a whole brain works out how to do it? “You Buy It Today, We Install It Today.”

The trendy thing among furniture stores right now is to let customers choose the stain f or the wood and the fabric for the cushions and then deliver this quasi-custom furniture to their homes in about 10 weeks.

But my friend Jim McIngvale takes the opposite approach. Jim doesn’t do special orders. “You see it? We got it. Buy it today and it’s in your home tonight. My guys are ready to load the delivery truck and follow you home right now. No, you can’t order it in another color. That’s the color we got, right there. D o you like it?”

Henry Ford offered a similar choice on his Model T. “You can have any color you want as long as it’s black.”

Jim McIngvale is a furniture-selling legend. “Mattress Mack” sells $200 million per year in a single location, the highest volume per square foot of any furniture store in the world. His Gallery Furniture store is in Houston, his city of choice.

Like Henry and Sam and Kary, Jim McIngvale understands the power of Answer 13.

Forwards is fine but backwards is better.

What might you do better backwards?

Roy H. Williams

PS - Answer 13 is just 1 of the 40 universal answers of Genrich Altshuller. Mark Fox will teach you the other 39 world-changing answers of Genrich Altshuller in his FREE book, Da Vinci and the 40 Answers.

That’s right. Mark will let you download it for free. He asks only that you give him your email address but you don’t even have to do that. The free download button will work even if you give Mark nothing in return. (But if you don’t give him your email address, he can’t tell you about other free offers.)

Mark Fox isn’t an idiot. He’s a rocket scientist, the youngest chief engineer in the history of the Space Shuttle project. He’s just an Answer 13 guy.

Staff Churn Can Change The Very Heart of Your Business

2010-07-02T05:27:00Z

“When people who strongly exemplify a (business) culture leave, that culture can go out the door with them. When people are brought into an organization, they bring with them different cultures.” - The Heart of Change by John P. Kotter

Make sure new staff know and accept the values of your business.

Otherwise, the business you have taken so long to build will begin to decay, one new staff member at a time.