Brands That Thrive In Lukewarm Cultures: Of Chrissie Hynde’s Upscale Misfit, Creating a Mini Culture For Your Right People, Coffee Gone Cold, & *Your* Most Powerful Voice

My own instant black, in my favorite Eiffel Tower Mug.

Yesterday I had a lively {per usual} Twitter convo with a friend of mine, a guy who used to shop at my now-closed indie retail boutique. Our topic: the closing of a trendy, upscale Vegan restaurant about 15 minutes from the town where we each live, owned by Pretenders frontwoman Chrissie Hynde. Businessweek even named her spot, VegiTerranean, one of the nation’s top 5 vegan eateries. The sub-head to the WKSU article my friend cited? Prolonged economic downturn convinces celebrity owner to close the doors.

But is that the whole truth? We know it’s not.

The truth, as I see it, is this: the area where Hynde planted her business {her hometown} is a lukewarm culture for upscale, trendy, progressive indie businesses.

If Hynde had opened a pizza parlor and kept the word ‘gourmet’ off the menu, she might’ve been in it for the long haul.

Because the area is quite a friendly culture for more middling brands that fall into these categories: tween apparel retail, burger joints, salons, craft emporiums.

My intent is not to slam the area’s demographic, but simply to notice what works and what doesn’t when serving a community.

Upscale and trendy works well in some locales. Just not in this particular one. The individualistic, high quality, bespoke-but-not-necessarily-bank-breaking brands that would thrive in Chicago or Soho or perhaps even half an hour north of Hynde’s restaurant in Cleveland are misfits here.

Still, people in the area say they want to support innovative, creative local business — the lip service faction is fairly audible. And yet the ones they keep in business are the ones that connect them to the traditional lifestyle they settle here for.

Now, to be fair, because I don’t want to diss or downplay former supporters, like my friend above, for one: some shoppers actually put their money where their mouths are. For instance, my relatively progressive lifestyle retail boutique turned a profit three out of its four years of existence, the first year being the only one we didn’t. But thriving in this lukewarm culture was, realistically, years of toil away, and I didn’t have the stomach for it. Call me a freedom-lover, but I didn’t sign up to suffer for my entrepreneurial dreams. Did you?

So yes, it’s possible to survive during an economic downtown. Small businesses are doing it everyday. I look around at the 27-varieties-of-hot-dogs places, the lightly used clothing resale shops, and the pizza joints that clutter my current homebase’s strip malls and I see that it’s the case.

But survival is not a sustainable life phase for any business, least of all a creative one fronted by a passionate entrepreneur who wants a healthy non-business life, too.

There’s a culture that indie business needs to sup on to truly thrive. The culture has a climate, a marketplace, a right people profile, values and mores, advocates and tastemakers, and a community-defined trajectory for emerging businesses to take flight and wing their way to success. {Note: Trajectories are not blueprints.}

My caveat to today’s brick and mortar businesses: plant thyself in a lukewarm culture — read, a town or neighborhood that lacks the rich, indie-supporting elements listed above — and subject thyself to a life of sheer survival. Thinking you could do well because ‘there’s no one else doing this here’ is not a sign of potential. If you want a brick and mortar to thrive, get thee to a richer culture. {Note: ‘Richer’ does not necessarily mean a higher tax bracket. Customers/clients with thicker pocketbooks can certainly support your thriving, but remember that even economically depressed communities are keeping some businesses hopping — the ones they need or rely on. Right-size your business and you can always turn a profit.}

Now, let’s talk about our reality as online entrepreneurial realm builders.

Online, we accept that the culture is by definition lukewarm. And we work with it.

Barring a shopping compulsion, people don’t come to their computer with credit card in hand, searching for something to buy.

As a creative entrepreneur selling ‘non-essential goods’ like jewelry, handmade children’s toys, or organic goat’s milk soaps, or services like life coaching, virtual prenatal yoga, or fiction writing workshops, you are automatically carted into the Better Win Me Over category in your prospects’ minds.

Yes, your right people’s lives will be enhanced by your soap. Yes, they and their work will be richer for investing in a workshop with you.

But the culture of being online — at least the way most people use it — is lukewarm by design.

Distractions abound: ads tickertaping, a song on Pandora Radio that must be thumbs-upped, fifteen other tabs open in her browser, instant coffee dinging in the microwave. Online is not a climate that supports focus and falling in deep.

Fortunately, we know that once they land on your site, we can create a mini culture that supports the conversation you want to have with your people, those people you adore and know just how to serve, for those who are ready to have it with you. {Those would be your Right People: not just Likers, but Wanters and Needers.}

And we know a thing or two about getting those people to your site because we study the culture of Google.

And we know that branding is a suite of signals that tells people look over here, keep looking, I’m talking to you, I want to understand you better.

You rule the realm of your own mini culture, as told through the suite of signals your brand presents, one of them being the copy on your site, and your voice through it.

You and me: we’ve got a lot of smarts, savvy, and inborn sensitivity to work with around here.

Let’s start creating that mini culture for your right people on your site together.

For the past several months, I’ve been working with new clients exclusively via my Lustermaker brand editing service, a signature experience that includes decoding, translating, and luster-ing up your brand to ready it for market and your next big move. It’s for entrepreneurs who are primed for what’s next and who want to get it right before they get on with it. ;)

There’s an unanswered piece, though, that you’ve been asking me for. It’s your voice, your brand language, the words that alight off your web pages.

Yes, while I stopped accepting new copywriting clients some months back, I’ve still been writing copy for a number of my already-established clients on the side, while referring out new inquiries to other writers. You know this if you’ve been hanging with me for a while.

Now with six months of Lustermaking to bring to the table, I’m opening my schedule for a new wave of copywriting projects.

And my new wave of clients will get the full benefit of my brand editing experience.

Brand editing is the perfect complementary asset to the work I do for you when I write on behalf of your business. The approach I offer is voice-centric, visionary, and all about a conversation with your right people. The copy I write for you couldn’t possibly belong to anyone but you. {As one client told me upon seeing her 1st Draft, “Ummm, this is more me than I sound when I write for myself!”}

Take a look at what I’m talking about here. Let’s warm up your site’s culture.

Let her coffee get cold in the microwave. {She can always reheat it.} Your most powerful voice, as fully expressed through your conversation, can be that compelling.