Today's Guest Post
by Craig Lieberman
10/23/2009
When I think about the importance of having nerve in my business, I think of three distinct periods. The first was the nerve it took for me to leave a comfortable job with benefits to pursue my passion and create my own specialty food company in 2003. That experience was everything that you'd expect starting a business would be &mdash exhilarating, terrifying, etc. When I launched 34 Degrees, it was initially an importing business specializing in gourmet foods from Australia. By 2006, we had established our brand and its reputation for high-quality specialties from the Southern Hemisphere. Then I had a life-changing realization: My business wasn't working the way I wanted it to. There were many inefficiencies and elements of the business that were beyond my control, such as a fluctuating exchange rate, customs issues, and all the headaches associated with importing products being made a half-a-world away.
Summoning my nerve again, I decided to completely transform my business. My desire to bring my work and my love of food closer to home ultimately inspired me to discontinue my importing venture and become a manufacturer focused exclusively on making my own product — 34° Crispbread — in Colorado. The idea was to focus on a single product, make it locally and make it the best cracker available.
We began making our 34° Crispbread in 2007. By 2008, our transition from importer to a local manufacturer was complete. That year, we tripled our business.
Now it's about keeping or exercising my nerve on a more daily basis. With the country in a recession, I think it takes tremendous nerve for business owners and professionals to strive for success each day. But I also think there's a silver lining in these trying economic times in that they motivate you to continually assess and reassess every aspect of your business. I ask myself every day: How can I have an even more polished, more efficient, more innovative business? When you're flying high, you may not scrutinize the specifics of your business the way you would in a challenging environment.
For example, we've been focused on cost-effective and creative ways of adding value to our existing products (we currently make four flavors of 34° Crispbread: Natural, Rosemary, Cracked Pepper and Sesame — and we're about to launch a fifth). In the last year, we've created a dynamic new shipper for the crackers that allows retailers to merchandise them more effectively. We also created a foodservice pack. Thanks to the new shipper, we won the business of a major supermarket chain — getting into their 1,200 locations nationwide.
If you know you have a great product or service, growing your business may be a matter of tweaking it in an innovative way or adding value by repackaging or repurposing it to better meet your clients' needs.
I think finding or keeping your nerve is even more important in tough economic times. That said — I wouldn't do anything differently in my business if the recession were over. We don't make major business decisions based on outside events. Our business is driven from the inside — from a belief in taking calculated risks, from continual research, from our collective experiences and a constant desire to innovate and improve, regardless of external factors.
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