Watt - Business for Punks: Break All the Rules–the BrewDog Way

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The overwhelming likelihood is that your business will fail. The cards are stacked against you. Eighty per cent of new businesses fail in their first eighteen months. Thats 800 out of 1,000, 8 out of 10, 4 out of 5 start-ups, which crash and burn upon launch. Fact. No matter how you write it, its not a pretty read. This staggering mortality statistic is a stark reminder of todays brutal commercial environment. So if youre thinking of starting a business, the chances are it will fail. And its not just your business that will get a good and proper kicking your future, your confidence, your dreams, and of course your bank balance, are all going down with the good ship Failure.

Lets say youre one of the tough ones and you make it through the first eighteen months. The chance of becoming a sustainable long-term business is still less than 1 in 20. Another clarion wake-up call.

With only a 5% chance of survival you better make damn sure youre focused, ruthless, driven and motivated from day one. Then maybe, just maybe, youll make it.

The decisions you make during your businesss formative months will define your place in the world. They will be the most monumental decisions you will ever make, shaping your fledgling business in ways you cannot yet imagine. So youd better buckle up, hold tight and step up to the challenge. You will need to make sure your ideas, and their realization, are nothing short of awesome. It is a chilling paradox that the decisions you make when things are at their toughest and you are at your greenest are ones you are going to have to live with for years to come.

You need to earn the right to exist and find a reason to be even remotely relevant. Brace yourself for the grittiest, toughest and most intense few years of your life. Youll need to be multifaceted, learning to do, and doing, everything. And youll need to learn how to cope with rejection after rejection, learn to love being relentlessly kicked in the teeth and youll need to revel in finding opportunities in the bleakest of adversities.

Starting your business will be savagely brutal and yet somehow enjoyable and fulfilling. This section is about laying the foundations, nailing the groundwork and ensuring the decisions you make during those very early days will stand you in good stead and help ensure your start-up will only blow up in a positive way. The rest of the book will build on the fundamentals outlined in this section.

Time to move upstream and test your mettle.

Businesses fail. Businesses die. Businesses fade into oblivion.

Revolutions never die.

So start a revolution, not a business.

It is no longer enough just to start a business. You need a clear purpose, a mission, and a reason for existing. Martin and I did not just start a brewery we set out on a mission to make other people as passionate about great beer as we are. This promise and premise underpins every single thing we do and acts as a resolute reference point for every single decision we make.

Whatever type of business you start, it is your responsibility to ensure it is anchored by a strong, eminent, readily comprehensible and entirely encapsulating mission. For example:

• Zappos did not start an online shoe business. They started a crusade to elevate customer service through treating their staff amazingly well.
• Noma did not start a restaurant. They embarked on a mission to reinvigorate Nordic cuisine, complete with their own Nordic Cuisine Manifesto.
• Apple did not start a computer business. Their mission was to change the world through technology.

Having a mission enables everything you do to be placed in the context of a higher meaning and aligns everyone within your business towards a common goal.

Your mission needs to be singular and compelling. Your team and prospective customers need to be able to buy into it. It is your mission that will set you apart. Your biggest challenge from day one is to give people a reason to care, and that reason has got to be your mission. In todays saturated reality the market for yet another brand, another business, another product or another service, is pretty much non-existent. Yet the market for something to believe in is infinite. You need to give people something to believe in.

You need to ensure you are starting a business for the right reasons. If you just want to make money and be a big shot, go join a desperate corporate. Sell your soul to the devil and be yet another rat-race contestant in an expensive suit. Start-ups are incredibly tough environments and you will need something to sustain you. And the thing that will sustain you and your team is your mission. If money is your motivation then you need to be the greediest, meanest son of a bitch on the planet to make a business work. Solely money-focused businesses do exist, but I dont like being around them or their people. As customer savviness increases, purely money-focused businesses will go the same way as the dinosaurs. Good riddance. If your main reasons for starting a business are financial, please stop reading this book now.

Do something you love and have a clear mission. The tighter everything revolves around your raison dtre, the more your offering will resonate with customers, and the easier it will be to turn customers into fans.

Assume no one will care, assume no one will give a damn, assume no one will want to listen. Then figure out how to make people want to care about what you do. If you cant, then your business is doomed.

• Dont just start a bakery in Idaho. Start a crusade to educate people about the health and taste benefits of fresh small-batch sourdough bread.
• Dont just start a hairdressers in Berlin. Start a quest to see how much fun it is possible for a customer to have whilst getting their hair cut.
• Dont just start a mechanics in Manchester. Start a mission to redefine peoples expectations when it comes to customer service in auto-care.

You have to stand for something over and above your core competency to have any chance of standing out.

People no longer just want to buy a product or service. Twenty-first-century consumers increasingly want to align themselves with companies and organizations whose missions and beliefs are compatible with, and enhance, their own belief systems. Your customers will need to be actively complicit in helping you to succeed and you need to give them a compelling reason to do so. You can make people care and make them evangelize by having a strong mission.

Having a captivating crusade at the heart of your business is the first step to ensuring your business sticks around for long enough to make an impact.