3H Company Business Model

The mission of this new company is to invent and or find those product, services, and events that will help us live in what can be best termed, Paradise on Earth, and bring these things to people. If you have a product, service, or event idea that fits in with our mission then you may want to let me know so we can offer your item to others. All of the products, services, and events listed on this site is what I plan to grow into doing, beginning small, like growing the inner growth partner website service. Here we aim to match people up so inner growth is made more clear with a non basis helper. In short, I am to grow all these things as fast as I can, it all depends on funding, we shall see how good i am at raising capital to get these things going, wanta help?

The reason I want to see this umbrella company get off the ground to advance said products, services, and events with said focus or purpose is because it needs doing. Why you ask? Because everyone who gets educated to higher spiritual matters claims to want it above all things, to live in Paradise, some are even dying for it. Well, we have the power to make it in the here and now, so why not get on with it, one day at a time, making the life we want to live here on Earth, Paradise for one and all. This is what we are doing anyway, now I simply want to bring a better focus on this for all of our sake. From there we can ascend to higher levels of personal fun and feel totally good about it rather than guilty as we do now, if we have any sense of proportion and measure when it comes to human equity.

I say we can have our Paradise on Earth, but we must work for it, not like when we had to to get and keep this country, but in another way, in a way of wisdom, in a way that seeks to always choose the right thing, like always NOT spending more than you make. I want to surround every area of thought with my suggested wisdom so that this path to Paradise that we all subconsciously want can be seen, even realized once the ball rolls far enough in this direction. I hope you will join me how ever you can to help make Paradise on Earth a reality for us one and all.

Please contact me at michaellongo@ymail.com for more info.

Your Culture Is Your Brand

by Tony H. CEO on Jan 3, 2009 in CEO and COO Blog56 comments

Building a brand today is very different from building a brand 50 years ago. It used to be that a few people got together in a room, decided what the brand positioning was going to be, and then spent a lot of money buying advertising telling people what their brand was. And if you were able to spend enough money, then you were able to build your brand.

It’s a very different world today. With the Internet connecting everyone together, companies are becoming more and more transparent whether they like it or not. An unhappy customer or a disgruntled employee can blog about bad experience with a company, and the story can spread like wildfire by email or with tools like Twitter.

The good news is that the reverse is true as well. A great experience with a company can be read by millions of people almost instantaneously as well.

The fundamental problem is that you can’t possibly anticipate every possible touchpoint that could influence the perception of your company’s brand.

For example, if you happen to meet an employee of Company X at a bar, even if the employee isn’t working, how you perceive your interaction with that employee will affect how you perceive Company X, and therefore Company X’s brand. It can be a positive influence, or a negative influence. Every employee can affect your company’s brand, not just the front line employees that are paid to talk to your customers.

At Zappos.com, we decided a long time ago that we didn’t want our brand to be just about shoes, or clothing, or even online retailing. We decided that we wanted to build our brand to be about the very best customer service and the very best customer experience. We believe that customer service shouldn’t be just a department, it should be the entire company.

Advertising can only get your brand so far. If you ask most people what the “brand” of the airline industry as a whole is (not any specific airline, but the entire industry), they will usually say something about bad customer service or bad customer experience. If you ask people what their perception of the US auto industry is today, chances are the responses you get won’t be in line with what the automakers project in their advertising.

So what’s a company to do if you can’t just buy your way into building the brand you want? What’s the best way to build a brand for the long term?

In a word: culture.

At Zappos, our belief is that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff — like great customer service, or building a great long-term brand, or passionate employees and customers — will happen naturally on its own.

We believe that your company’s culture and your company’s brand are really just two sides of the same coin. The brand may lag the culture at first, but eventually it will catch up.

Your culture is your brand.

So how do you build and maintain the culture that you want?

It starts with the hiring process. At Zappos, we actually do two different sets of interviews. The hiring manager and his/her team will do the standard set of interviews looking for relevant experience, technical ability, fit within the team, etc. But then our HR department does a separate set of interviews, looking purely for culture fit. Candidates have to pass both sets of interviews in order to be hired.

We’ve actually said no to a lot of very talented people that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line. But because we felt they weren’t culture fits, we were willing to sacrifice the short term benefits in order to protect our culture (and therefore our brand) for the long term.

After hiring, the next step to building the culture is training. Everyone that is hired into our headquarters goes through the same training that our Customer Loyalty Team (call center) reps go through, regardless of department or title. You might be an accountant, or a lawyer, or a software developer — you go through the exact same training program.

It’s a 4-week training program, in which we go over company history, the importance of customer service, the long term vision of the company, our philosophy about company culture — and then you’re actually on the phone for 2 weeks, taking calls from customers. Again, this goes back to our belief that customer service shouldn’t just be a department, it should be the entire company.

At the end of the first week of training, we make an offer to the entire class. We offer everyone $2000 to quit (in addition to paying them for the time they’ve already worked), and it’s a standing offer until the end of the fourth week of training. We want to make sure that employees are here for more than just a paycheck. We want employees that believe in our long term vision and want to be a part of our culture. As it turns out, on average, less than 1% of people end up taking the offer.

One of the great advantages of focusing on culture is when reporters come and visit our offices. Unlike most companies, we don’t give reporters a small list of people they’re allowed to talk to. Instead, we encourage them to wander around and talk to whoever they want. It’s our way of being as transparent as possible, which is part of our culture.

We’ve formally defined our the Zappos culture in terms of 10 core values:

1) Deliver WOW Through Service
2) Embrace and Drive Change
3) Create Fun and A Little Weirdness
4) Be Adventurous, Creative, and Open-Minded
5) Pursue Growth and Learning
6) Build Open and Honest Relationships With Communication
7) Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit
8) Do More With Less
9) Be Passionate and Determined
10) Be Humble

Many companies have core values, but they don’t really commit to them. They usually sound more like something you’d read in a press release. Maybe you learn about them on day 1 of orientation, but after that it’s just a meaningless plaque on the wall of the lobby.

We believe that it’s really important to come up with core values that you can commit to. And by commit, we mean that you’re willing to hire and fire based on them. If you’re willing to do that, then you’re well on your way to building a company culture that is in line with the brand you want to build. You can let all of your employees be your brand ambassadors, not just the marketing or PR department. And they can be brand ambassadors both inside and outside the office.

At the end of the day, just remember that if you get the culture right, most of the other stuff — including building a great brand — will fall into place on its own.

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Do you have a story about how your company’s culture has positively or negatively impacted your company’s brand? if so, leave a comment below!

You can also find more information about how we manage our company culture at Zappos at: www.zapposinsights.com

Follow me on Twitter: @zappos