BACK TO THE FUTURE:
LESSONS OF VISION, PASSION, AND RESULTS
INTRODUCTION
Earning consumers’ trust through
demonstrating your company’s real integrity
is more important then ever in times of great
social and economic turmoil, according to
Nancy Koehn, Ph.D. Koehn, Professor of
Business Administration at Harvard
Business School, has studied entrepreneurial
companies from the 18th century to the
present. Her recent book, Brand New: How
Entrepreneurs Earned Consumers’ Trust
from Wedgwood to Dell, takes advantage of
her training as a historian to uncover lessons
learned by visionary start-ups that succeeded
in business during “key inflection points” in
history.
Key Historical Junctures
The three turning points she considers are
the first industrial revolution in England in
the mid-eighteenth century, the
transportation and communication
revolution in America at the end of the
nineteenth century, and our current
technological revolution. In the first,
transformative changes included the steam
engine, the textile industry, an emergent
middle class, and new occupations, such as
merchants and lawyers. In the second, the
telegraph and the railroad enabled new
connectivity, larger-scale manufacturing,
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unprecedented business expansion, and new,
national markets. In our current revolution,
the PC and the Internet have changed our
reality yet again, enabling national markets,
immediate connectivity, and even larger-
scale business expansion.
For Koehn, studying the past enables her to
see “rhymes” with the present, rhymes that
echo past events. She noted that our
“irrational exuberance” in the 1990s has
been supplanted by equally “irrational
pessimism.” She believes that we would be
less indulgent in extreme viewpoints if we
could frame the present moment in terms
that recollect similarly critical, past
moments of change.
“The big question is how do you connect
with your customers—your employees
inside the organization and your external
customers.”
Today in Context
In terms of your business, Koehn pointed
out, “The big question is how do you
connect with your customers—your
employees inside the organization and your
external customers—how do you connect
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with them in meaningful, profitable,
strategically effective ways with integrity
when the social and economic context is
accelerating into turbo-charged change?”
Noting the current absence of a social leader
(such as Winston Churchill or Teddy
Roosevelt) who can define our moment for
us, Koehn warned against learning about the
world exclusively from the media. She sees
today’s media as fluctuating between
extreme perspectives at a frenetic pace,
simply following whatever “story” arises.
Reframing our current “moment,” Koehn
said, “The information age is at least a 10-
chapter novel, and we’re just finishing
Chapter 3. How do I know that? Because I
spent the last 20 years studying two
moments just like this. And those moments
were as capricious—in terms of the stock
market and socially—they were as scary and
exhilarating. There are so many rhymes.
And the computer revolution was just a
prologue.”
Having contextualized the discussion
historically, the rest of Koehn’s talk focused
on the stories of three highly successful
entrepreneurs: Josiah Wedgwood, Esteé
Lauder, and Howard Schultz, whose
collective careers spanned from the 18th
century to the present.
The Making of Josiah Wedgwood
Josiah Wedgwood was born in 1730 to a
lower working class family. He surpassed all
odds by living beyond the average life span
of 36, by moving into the top of the middle
classes, and by creating an entirely new
niche of high-end pottery. At 12, he was
crippled by small pox and so was no longer
able to work on a potter’s wheel in his
father’s pottery shop. He nonetheless
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pursued his craft, becoming an “intern” in an
established potter’s business.
In the 1750s and 60s when he was beginning
his career, society in England was
undergoing massive change, moving from
an agrarian economy to an industrial one. In
this new economy, nations were fighting for
resources, manufacturers were suddenly
employing an unprecedented 200 or more
employees simultaneously to mass-produce
goods that had heretofore been produced
individually by the consumer. Income
differentiation and income inequality
became realities.
“A brand is a promise based on an
acknowledged set of things people of a
company deliver to a customer.”
Wedgwood’s Wares
Wedgwood created fashionware for a new
class of consumer, the city-dweller. His first
unique line was “pineappleware.” As
Koehn’s pictorial slide demonstrated, these
pieces resembled pineapples, both in color
and in texture. Pineappleware was a far cry
from the wood and pewter food containers
people had been using, and it was readily
embraced by those with disposable income.
Next, came cauliflowerware. Though
considered unattractive by some in today’s
audience, it too was popular in the mid-
eighteenth century.
In 1759, Wedgwood decided to venture out
on his own with borrowed equipment to
establish the Josiah Wedgwood Company.
He began to sell his wares in three cities.
Through customer word-of-mouth, his china
became popular. In the history of capitalism,
Wedgwood was the first one to mark his
product with his name, signing the bottom of
each piece to establish his china’s identity.
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He was also the first one to offer a money-
back guarantee, thus increasing customer
trust and loyalty. Wedgwood was also the
first to offer free shipping.
He created a new market with new business
practices, and he courted early adopters. He
consciously sought to build a reputation with
a clear identity attached to his products. In
other words, Wedgwood established a
brand. According to Koehn, “a brand is a
promise based on an acknowledged set of
things people of a company deliver to a
customer.” And Wedgwood delivered on his
promise.
Attracting the Aristocracy
In 1762, Wedgwood set up a partnership
with an aristocrat, Thomas Bentley. At that
point, seeking an even more affluent
consumer base, he put out a line of pottery
called Queensware. His beautifully wrought
saffron yellow china was durable, and
clearly identified as targeted toward the
upper-level market. Wedgwood remained
uninterested in appealing to the lower
classes. In fact, he never discounted a piece
of pottery, but rather priced his china at a
premium and continued to differentiate it
from all others.
Recognizing that the royalty in England set
the fashions for all other aristocrats to
follow, he sought to make them his market.
As the social pecking order shifted during
the industrial revolution, people sought ways
to validate their new money. Owning
Wedgwood china rapidly became part of
that validation.
Aspirations Drive the Market
As an aside, Koehn noted that “aspirational
branding,” such as Wedgwood practiced,
becomes even more important during
economic contraction, such as during a
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recession or depression. For instance, after
9/11, Koehn reported that more alcohol was
bought, more babies born nine months later,
and more videos watched in the subsequent
eight months than in any other eight-month
period in the US. Additionally, more
diamonds were bought in those eight months
than in the preceding 45 years in the US!
These trends reflect people’s grasping new
priorities. Koehn explained the diamond
surge as testament to the fact that jewelry is
an emotional purchase and ties in with
consumer’s sense of enduring values.
Creative Marketing
Wedgwood was ahead of his time in many
ways. Understanding that women were—
and are—the primary decision makers on
household decisions (71% of household
decisions today), he marketed toward
women. He also employed women as
craftspeople; indeed, 10% of his
craftspeople were female, which was
unheard of at that time.
By 1768, he was the most successful potter
in the world, selling all over North America.
He continued to take chances. Spending ¾
of his annual revenue, he sent out
unsolicited pieces to the 700 top aristocrats.
The risk paid off—all but two of them
subsequently bought from him. He began to
leverage his brand across products, creating
Jasperware belt buckles and broaches, for
instance, beautiful white carvings inlaid in a
blue background.
Wedgwood produced prestige pieces, which
were basically “money pits,” as Koehn put
it. However, they served an important
purpose, much like Nike Town and Neiman
Marcus’ impossibly extravagant items
today, prestige pieces build brand
recognition. When these prestige pieces and
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experiential stores complement what you do,
they become a launching pad to success,
assured Koehn.
In the 1760s, Wedgwood built a
showroom/factory that remained viable until
1942. In it, consumers (primarily women at
that time) could browse freely, even
touching pieces (another first), in a large,
well-lit space with friendly, knowledgeable
salespeople. All aspects of this showroom
were unprecedented. Pointing out yet
another critical piece of Wedgwood’s
success puzzle, Koehn explained that
Wedgwood’s sales force was able to
communicate the values, benefits, and
mission of the company. And his
distribution point itself was well-aligned
with his brand identity in its uniqueness and
grandeur.
To date, Wedgwood has never operated at a
deficit. Eventually, Waterford Crystal
bought Wedgwood in order to gain financial
stability. Wedgwood remains successful, its
brand connoting prestige, durability, and
elegance, and its merchandise returning a
10% profit on sales.
Application Points
1. How well is your distribution
strategy synchronized with the core
attributes of your brand?
2. What is the experience of your
customer—internal and external—
with your service?
3. How empathic is your organization
toward internal and external
customers?
4. How effectively engaged are your
human resource initiatives in
supporting your brand, reputation,
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and customers’ feel for your
company?
5. In this moment of geopolitical
turbulence, what do your customers
think about themselves, their
possibilities, and your organization?
The Making of Esteé Lauder
Esteé Lauder was born in 1908 in Queens,
New York, as Josephine Esther Mentzer.
She was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, at a
time when 1 million immigrants per year
were entering the US. Her father owned a
hardware store, and her uncle was a chemist.
In the midst of the second industrial
revolution, the health and beauty aids
industry did not exist. (To compare, today
the prestige cosmetics industry is a $90
billion enterprise, fragrance is a $40 billion
industry, and hair care is a $70 billion
industry.)
As a child, Josephine Mentzer played with
skin care products from her uncle’s
laboratory. An unseemly beginning for an
entrepreneur whose company yielded $5
billion in 2002, her uncle specialized in lice
killer, mustache remover, flea powder, and
eczema cream. A creative, savvy girl,
Mentzer sought to create a new niche, one
which provided products that would allow
women “to enhance their own beauty by
themselves.” If they used her products, they
wouldn’t have go to a special salon to be
“made over.”
In 1929, at 21 years of age, Esther
Mentzer—one of six name changes before
she settled on her famous moniker—married
Joe Lauter. At this point in US history, only
one in 10 women used lipstick. More
surprising, only one in two Americans
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owned a toothbrush. However, times were in
flux, as the railroad and communications
technologies prompted the emergence of
new industries and larger organizations, and
consequently, new employee positions. With
women in the paid work force, ideas about
women’s appearances in public shifted.
Esther Lauter, as she was became known,
was poised to take advantage of this shift in
perceptions. She was “a curious, dramatic—
sometimes slightly melodramatic—warm
and charismatic child,” according to Koehn,
who was fortunate enough to have gained
entrée into the secretive beauty industry.
Establishing a Sales Strategy
In another identity shift, Estelle Lauter
began visiting beauty shops, where women
had their hair and nails done. Despite hard
economic times, with unemployment at
32%, and business investment having fallen
18% from 1929-32, these particular beauty
enhancements were in wide use. Using an
approach that her sales force adopted for
decades to come, Lauter took a woman’s
right hand and said, “What beautiful skin
you have. May I show you a lipstick that
will complement it?” Her “hands-on”
approach cost her very little, and she had a
bored, captive audience as women sat under
hair dryers in hair salons.
“Try it first, then you decide if you like it.”
Like Wedgwood, she lays claim to many
firsts. She was the first person to give away
free gifts. She gave women a dollop of
cream or a sliver of lipstick on a piece of
wax paper. This was brilliant marketing in
that it said to women, “Try it first, then you
decide if you like it.” A gift also creates an
obligation, and the gift’s story is more likely
to be passed on to a friend. Lauter’s beauty
business, like Wedgwood’s china business,
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expanded initially by word-of-mouth. From
1930-40, the emergent Esteé Lauder saw a
20% expansion in her business.
Shifting into High Gear
When World War II began, and materials
were rationed, Lauder had difficulties
getting the oils, lanolin, and packaging she
needed. Still, she persisted, through
hoarding and innate resourcefulness, having
moved from her kitchen stove for product
preparation to a rented restaurant space
between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m. Despite hard
social and economic times, from 1939-44,
the cosmetics industry increased more than
25%.
In a study done in England during WWII,
female factory workers were shown to be
35% more productive at work when they
were provided makeup mirrors and free
cosmetics. Taking notice of these results and
the fact that women had become
“productive, economic actors,” in 1941, the
US War Production Board took core
cosmetics materials off the rationing list as
the US was about to enter the war.
As the war came to a close, in a tenuous
economy, Lauder decided that she could
build a national prestige brand; she wanted a
large margin on her sales. Consequently, she
did not want her products in drugstores, nor
was she interested in company-owned
salons, like Helena Rubenstein or Elizabeth
Arden had. Instead, she was targeting Saks
Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf’s,
and that ilk of department stores. Lauder
knew, and Koehn concurred, “the
distribution channel matters.”
In the 1950s, women dressed up to go
shopping in department stores, and they
luxuriated in their time there. If she could
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get her line into a prestigious department
store, then her products would be granted
automatic respect and validation in the right
circles. With the popularity of department
store charge cards, much spontaneous point-
of-purchase decision-making occurred in
those stores. Lauder wanted to take
advantage of these wealthy women’s buying
power.
In 1946, she aimed for the biggest
department store: Saks Fifth Avenue. With
no reputation and in competition with other
well-known brands, Lauder had to prove
that customers wanted her products. In an
instance of creative and audacious
marketing, Lauder attended a charity
luncheon with 80 wealthy women. She
handed out exquisitely packaged lipsticks to
each woman. Subsequently, they all
marched over to Saks a few blocks away and
requested Esteé Lauder products.
Having clinched Saks, she was then able to
leverage her way into Neiman Marcus and
others. For the next five years, she traveled
around the US at least 26 weeks each year,
representing her beauty care products. She
built her brand around herself. For
advertisements, she used a gorgeous, female
model, whom most consumers believed was
her.
“They put people first.”
Not only did she expand her distribution, she
also pioneered an extraordinary sales
training program. Her sales people, who
were actually the department store’s
employees, used her gentle, complimentary,
hands-on approach. And, like other brilliant
entrepreneurial companies after her, Lauder
employees at every level, serve at a sales
counter before they work elsewhere in the
company. The sales force was carefully
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filtered, loyal to the company and its
products, and fit in with the Esteé Lauder
culture. Today, Esteé Lauder still boasts the
lowest turnover in sales and manufacturing
of any retail company. “They put people
first,” reminded Koehn.
Creating a Million Dollar Company
If Wedgwood’s catapulting product line was
Queensware, Lauder’s was Youth Dew. She
called it “bath oil” rather than perfume, in
another brilliant marketing move. Whereas
90% of women’s fragrances were bought
predominantly by men for women on special
occasions, bath oil— priced more
moderately—could be bought by the women
themselves at any time of year. Women
needn’t even think of it as an indulgence.
Lauder had tapped into the appropriate
marketing psychology. Youth Dew went
national in hundreds of elite department
stores, and the Esteé Lauder company went
from a $200,000 a year company in the early
1950s to making well over $1 million.
Esteé Lauder wanted to expand her
distribution abroad. Encountering resistance
among foreign shopkeepers, she again
resorted to creativity. For example, she
broke a bottle of Youth Dew on the floor of
a store she wanted to be in. For the rest of
that day, customers inquired about the smell.
Within days, Esteé Lauder products were
represented in prestigious European stores.
In the 1960s, the Esteé Lauder Company
began experimenting with new lines, buying
other brand names and product lines in order
to compete with itself and appeal to different
groups of customers. In 1969, Esteé Lauder
bought Clinique. For three years, Clinique
did not turn a profit, but Esteé Lauder
learned from customers and from mistakes.
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In reflection, the company chairman,
Leonard Lauder, Esteé and Joe’s son,
remarked that had they been a public
company at that time they bought Clinique,
they could never have taken that riskier path.
“Clinique is the fastest selling SKU in the
beauty business today,” noted Koehn.
“There is one sold every three-and-a-half
seconds somewhere on the globe. There is a
Big Mac sold about every nine seconds
somewhere on the globe. Clinique is the
single fastest turning product in US
department stores of any product category.”
“Information flow is like a circulation
system.”
By 1989, women were not shopping in
department stores as frequently, so the
company began to search for new channels
of distribution. After going public in 1995,
Esteé Lauder began acquiring small,
entrepreneurial brands. Leonard Lauder
remarked to Koehn that the biggest
challenge now is to translate the company’s
organizational capabilities and philosophy
into the younger start-ups, and at the same
time, to bring the younger one’s knowledge
back to the larger company. Clearly, the
Esteé Lauder company understands the
value of information flow. As Koehn put it,
“Information flow is like a circulation
system. It’s has arteries, veins, and a
grapevine. Information, good and bad, true
and false, oxygenates your system.”
Application Points
6. Who are your brand validators?
7. Where are your touch points with
your customers?
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8. How well do you hire people? (What
financial, human, and other resources
do you put into hiring?)
9. How well do you compete with
yourself? How do you learn from
that?
10. How well do you know and use your
company’s “circulation system” in
order to know about your internal
and external customers?
The Making of Starbucks
In the 1960s and 70s, American coffee
meant Maxwell House, Folgers, and Hills
Brothers. The pre-crushed beans came in 13-
ounce cans, and there was very little brand
differentiation. In 1971, three male Berkeley
dropouts founded Starbucks. At the time,
their main products were coffee, tea, and
catnip. They were pioneers in the health
foods movement, purists, at a time when the
fashion center happened to be moving from
East to West—New York to Los Angeles
and Seattle.
Starbucks has not only exceeded these three
men’s visions, but also that of Howard
Schultz, the man who in 1985 bought out the
remaining founders and pursued his vision
of an Italian-style American coffee bar.
Schultz, the only one of the three
entrepreneurs discussed by Koehn in her talk
to have earned a college degree, put himself
through school as a sales person.
“Sales is critical. It’s not about
manipulation, but about listening.”
The Essential Role of Sales
As a relevant aside, Koehn mentioned her
belief that sales is vastly underrated as a
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necessary skill for business success. All of
the brilliant entrepreneurs she has studied
are empathic sales people. “Sales is critical,”
asserted Koehn. “It’s not about
manipulation, but about listening. It is about
figuring out a fit between what your
customers want and what you have.”
Enter Howard Schultz
By 28 years of age, Schultz was the vice
president of marketing for a major house
wares company. He noticed that a small
company in Seattle named Starbucks was
ordering more plastic coffee filter holders
than his much larger accounts were. So, he
set off to investigate. He found out that they
were offering free, on-site, sample coffee
drinks. He was hooked. For a year, he tried
to get a job with Starbucks. Eventually, he
began working for them and attempted to
convince the founders to build into a larger,
national operation. They were completely
uninterested, preferring instead to focus on
their small coterie of sophisticated
consumers.
In 1983, Schultz traveled to Milan, Italy, and
experienced his first coffee bar. He felt
certain that the idea could be replicated
successfully in the US. Returning home, he
broke off in 1985 to found his own coffee
bar serving “great coffee,” not “swill,” as he
referred to the popular coffees of the day.
His bar was successful in that “people
poured in,” noted Koehn. However, he made
a lot of mistakes. For instance, as in the
Italian prototype, there were Italian language
newspapers, no chairs, opera music, and
some other characteristics Americans found
unpalatable. He quickly changed those. At
the same time, he built upon people’s
positive perceptions of coffee houses—
inherently social, community experiences.
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The two remaining Starbucks founders
eventually left, one for Redhook Ale and the
other for the highly esteemed (among coffee
lovers) Peets Coffee. Schultz then visited
247 “angels” to try to get funding for his
venture. Thirty-seven fortunate people
agreed. In 1992, the stocks appreciated
several thousand-fold.
Starbucks Statistics
Through her studies of successful
entrepreneurial companies, Koehn has
become an expert in corporate trivia, which
she shared with the audience: Each
Starbucks store is approximately 1,000
square feet and costs about $350-400,000 to
establish. From 1987-90, during the dot-com
boom, Starbucks lost money.
In 1991, however, Starbucks “popped,” said
Koehn, in its West Hollywood location.
High-profile celebrities began to mention
Starbucks on television. By 1992, Starbucks
was experiencing a 40% compound annual
growth rate on revenues.
Today, there are 6,600 company-owned
Starbucks stores in the world—1,500 of
those are outside North America. Individual
customers visit a Starbucks an average of 18
times per month, spending an average of
$3.50 each time. Aside from the regular
morning coffee buyers, those who decide to
buy a Starbuck’s drink do so within six
minutes of purchase. In sum, 25 million
people a week buy from a Starbucks.
Additionally, it is the second most popular
place for a non-office-based business
meeting.
In fiscal year 2002, Starbucks’ revenue was
$3.3 billion, in large part reliant upon its
gross margin of 80% on specialty drinks.
Sixty-eight percent of those specialty drinks
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are no longer made with whole milk, another
of the changes that Schultz reluctantly made
to appease American consumers.
Starbucks Strategy
The locations of Starbucks stores are
decided based upon a number of criteria—
among them, where mail-order catalog
customers are already located, also
demographics such as income and education
level. Starbucks aims to be America’s “new
front porch,” so the company looks for
mixed residential and commercial areas.
Apparently, it finds the areas it prefers quite
readily, as a new Starbucks store is opened
every eight hours.
Although Schultz has made a number of
concessions to American tastes since his
original idea, he has refused to sully the
brand by selling flavored beans. Starbucks
uses only Arabica beans in pure form.
Recognizing its dependence on these beans
and the farmers that produce them,
Starbucks invests regularly in the
infrastructure of coffee-producing countries
around the world. They call the farmers
“stakeholders” or “farmers of origin.”
As the average consumer has noticed,
Starbucks clusters its stores. This purposeful
cannibalizing of itself along with that of
spending on foreign infrastructure is
unpopular on Wall Street; nevertheless,
Starbucks remains committed to its vision.
With multiple Starbucks in a single area, no
other coffee shops have a chance.
Additionally, they become even more visible
as the gatekeepers of fashion.
Another aspect of Starbuck’s success that
defies Wall Street expectations is its
investment in managerial infrastructure.
Every employee gets 24 hours of training
per year and makes at least $1 more than
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minimum wage. Employees working 20
hours or more receive stock options and
health insurance. As a result of its emphasis
on employees, Starbucks experiences
relatively low turnover. In fast food
restaurants, turnover is approximately 250-
300%, whereas at Starbucks, the turnover is
around 40%. Starbuck’s turnover rate is
even lower in these harder economic times.
When Schultz came to speak to Koehn’s
class at the Harvard Business School, he told
them, “My priorities are, in this, order:
1. employees (called “partners” in
Starbucks lingo)
2. external customers
3. shareholders
He explained that if he treats employees
well, the other priority people will also
benefit in the long-term.
Starbucks has spent less than $1 million on
advertising since 1987, and yet it is
considered “the world’s most powerful
young brand.” Once again, word of mouth
proves to be an irrepressible marketing
strategy.
Starbuck’s latest move has been to
selectively buy other independent coffee
places as entry points into certain cities. The
company has also branched out a bit in
terms of new products—decaffeinated
drinks and limited merchandise, for
instance—but for the most part, the
company is careful not to leverage the brand
on diverse offerings.
As was true with Esteé Lauder during
WWII, Starbucks has not suffered from
recent difficult economic and political times.
In fact, Starbuck’s bottom line went up 25%
after 9/11.
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Koehn concludes, “These are stories not
just of vision and passion, but also of
extraordinary operational results.”
The Context for Your Business
It is important for you to understand what
your customers and employees face. For
most of us, it is very similar to what we all
face in our lives.
• Time constraints.
People are working 170 hours more per year
than they did 20 years ago.
• Information overload.
The average American sees 58,000 TV
commercials each year. “We are desperately
trying to cut the chaff from the wheat, and
figure out what matters and what doesn’t.”
• Convenience.
We live in a time-pressed, stressful society.
If you can provide better convenience, you
can gain the competitive advantage.
• Meaningful Experiences.
Again, in the fast pace of our society,
providing a meaningful experience to people
will go a long way toward securing their
loyalty. “Think about how powerful it would
be in this environment to actually deliver on
what you promise.”
• Income inequality.
In 1979, the top 1% of the wealth
distribution in the US controlled 25% of the
assets. In 2001, the top 1% controlled 49%
of the assets. And in 2003, the top 1% is
slotted to get 28% of the pending tax cut.
“The tide is not pushing all boats up at the
same rate.”
• Globalization of commerce and
communication.
New challenges and opportunities abound
in the potential for customers, employees,
and business partners in other countries.
Also significant, information travels quickly
and often through unexpected channels
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10
(e.g., Internet chat rooms, television
shows).
• Business values and practices.
“There is a huge opportunity for competitive
advantage,” said Koehn, “by investing long-
term in service.” Koehn believes that
“people vote with their dollars” on your
business values and methods. If you have
strong corporate integrity, then she
recommends that you make it known to your
constituents. They will value you for your
good practices. This consumer response has
been borne out for the last four centuries.
“There is a huge opportunity for
competitive advantage by investing long-
term in service.”
Koehn concluded that smart companies
never forget the demand side of their
business. Organizational empathy means
understanding consumers’ needs. “A brand
is a two-way relationship,” said Koehn.
“You invest in it, and you get returns on it. It
endures if you can steward it well. It is
created by earning customer’s trust in big
and small ways, not once but many times.”
“A brand is a two-way relationship. You
invest in it, and you get returns on it.”
Application Points
11. How often are you going on missions
of learning? How are they working
for you?
12. How well do you run experiments in
your organization?
13. How well do you learn from your
mistakes?
14. What is your primary offering? What
are the advantages of your offering?
15. How clean is your shop? Who knows
that story?
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