No bird soars in a calm.
—Wilbur Wright
It was the perfect day for making history.
The sky brooded with heavy cloud cover, illuminated by the milky morning light. The chilly temperature, to be expected in the middle of December, hovered in the low 40s, although the 20 mph northerly winds made it feel colder. Propelled by these constant gusts, sand devils danced and dispersed among the many rolling dunes buffering the extended beach.
While these conditions may not sound particularly inviting for a stroll along the seashore, they were indeed perfect for two brothers that day, December 17, 1903, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. For you see, those conditions lifted their boxy flying machine off the ground until its engine sustained flight for a full 12 seconds before landing, the first of four successful flights for them that windy day.
Orville and Wilbur Wright knew they had improved their odds for success considerably by choosing such a location. They were not from North Carolina, and in fact had lived in Dayton, Ohio, most of their lives. But as they began tinkering and testing their oversized kites and gliders, mostly built from salvaged parts and what they had on hand at their bicycle shop, the Wright brothers quickly realized their hometown did not have the requisite conditions to get them airborne. They knew they needed a place with steady winds and soft areas for landing, as well as the privacy they desired to work and test their invention uninterrupted.
So they wrote to the National Weather Service and requested data on wind speeds and weather conditions at various sites along the East Coast. After studying the information and averages of potential locations, the Wrights chose a small group of mostly deserted islands, known as the Outer Banks, along the coast of North Carolina. With little to no buffer from weather coming off the Atlantic, these islands endured near constant, often gale-force winds. Mostly comprised of sand dunes and beach grass, the islands also afforded gentle landing strips for the likely abrupt descents the brothers might experience while perfecting their aircraft. And because the weather was so harsh much of the time, the islands had few inhabitants, providing the desired privacy to conduct their work.
If you’re like me, you probably haven’t thought much about why the Wright brothers chose Kitty Hawk as the site of their history-making milestone. Like many monumental moments from the high points of history, their triumph is one we all learned about in school. But rarely do we consider the years of painstaking work, heartbreaking disappointments, and furious determination that went into that first flight. And even if we know some of the trials the brothers endured before their triumph in the sky, we might not realize just how important locale and weather patterns were to their ultimate success.
The Wright brothers knew if you want to soar, you must study winds and trends.
Check the Weather
As I’ve already stressed, many people have a vision to become entrepreneurs but are unable to commit to the demands of building a business from scratch. The reality is you can’t be committed to the dream and attain it. You have to be committed to the process of putting your dream into practice. The Wright brothers obviously loved the idea of sailing through the skies with a bird’s-eye view of the world, but they had to commit to a long and arduous process to get there.
Like the Wrights and many other entrepreneurial pioneers of our past, when you commit to the process, you are promising to faithfully persevere when confronted by the problems that inevitably impede the launch of any new venture. Committing to the process requires understanding that the greatest education comes from the richest experiences. In fact, success without process will leave you unqualified to reign over what you’ve built. It is the process that builds your stamina, your insight, and most importantly your relationships, which are the lifeblood of any business.
Once you’re committed to the process, then you can begin defining your new venture and creating something that will get you off the ground. But this process begins by studying the economic and social weather patterns all around you, because in order for your business to take flight you must determine the best direction and identify the optimal conditions for launching your dream.
You must recognize, just as the Wright brothers quickly grasped, that the direction of the wind and its weather patterns not only determine if you get off the ground, but once you’re airborne, these same meteorological metrics greatly affect how long you remain there. Like the early pioneers of flight, you must learn to read winds and trends and adjust your flight plans accordingly.
Building your new venture and getting it off the ground, you will inevitably experience many of the same metaphoric obstacles the Wright brothers faced and eventually overcame. But you can also learn from many of their strategic decisions. You see, many new businesses fail not because they weren’t well designed or didn’t have a good business plan but because their owners overlooked the external environment where their products and services would fly. Successful entrepreneurs check the economic, social, and cultural weather before they design their business, let alone try to fly.
In this chapter, I want to share with you some of the winds and trends you must consider even before you design your business and attempt to get it off the ground. Intimately knowing the environment where your business will operate provides you with all kinds of data to help you make decisions about your design, your delivery, and your destination.
You can only ignore these factors at your own risk. Even if you become airborne flying against the wind, you cannot sustain your flight that way indefinitely. Today, more than a hundred years since that first flight, pilots still learn how to work with wind currents and weather patterns in order to fly successfully.
You must do the same.
Which Way the Wind Blows
What happened on the back of a breeze in December of 1903 a few miles from Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, was no accident. Two men dedicated themselves and their resources to doing the groundwork needed to get their flying machine off the ground. They knew where they needed to go to do what had to be done in order to fly. You, too, must investigate the conditions around you in order to determine the best direction for your dream’s ascent.
How can you make the winds and trends of your present environment work to give you the lift you need? And where can you land softly while you’re tinkering with operations to get the bugs out? Having a contingency plan for changing variables is always a good idea. We will explore such contingencies in more detail in Chapter 5, but it’s not too soon to be anticipating what could and might go wrong as you ramp up for takeoff. Whether you end up succeeding with your plan A or with plan Z, all your plans require paying close attention to specific details within your environment as well as identifying ongoing patterns.
Sometimes this means working from the inside out—knowing your ultimate goal and working backward from it. The Wright brothers knew they wanted to invent a sustainable, controllable flying machine, and as they worked through their process they identified the atmospheric elements required for the optimal opportunity to succeed. Then they researched their options and chose Kitty Hawk. Many times you know what you want to offer, sell, or provide but you haven’t considered what your business needs to flourish.
When I recently decided to dip my toes into the waters of daytime television with my own show, I approached it from the inside out. While I had experience with television, production, and generating inspiring content, I also knew there was still so much I didn’t know. My production partner, Tegna Media, excelled as a bundler of syndicated programming but had not created original content—my show would be a new venture for them as well.
We both had experience in the airspace where we wanted to fly, but neither of us had built and flown the kind of plane necessary to soar there. In order to gauge the weather in the daytime talk show atmosphere, I could think of no better forecaster than Oprah, who was happy to share her wisdom with me. As my friend, she encouraged me, but as a professional she also cautioned me about stormy weather at the altitude to which my show aspired.
“The winds have changed,” she explained, “since I started my show back in the day.” She went on to explain that when she first launched her daytime program, only three major networks controlled the majority of programming. Cable channels and independent programming were just starting to gain the momentum that would usher in a huge shift in viewing options and opportunities. The Internet and online viewing had not exploded into our cultural consciousness with the myriad of selections we have today. As a result of changing technology, most of the latest estimates reveal that traditional television channels have lost 30 to 40 percent of their viewership to streaming services from independent media providers such as Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon.
Oprah’s style of talk show was also something fresh and groundbreaking for its time. The competition she faced was mostly focused on the extremes of old-fashioned celebrity interviews or the new sensational tabloid-style shows bringing melodramatic outbursts to the small screen. While at first she flirted with both ends of this spectrum, she quickly realized she wanted to provide substance, inspiration, and encouragement to her viewers in ways they weren’t getting them anywhere else. Even though I aspired to similar goals with my show, I knew the potential audience was already aware of this style of talk show.
With this knowledge of climate change, I knew before I ever started that I would be flying against the wind. It wasn’t that I couldn’t succeed or wouldn’t reach my destination; it was simply going to require more effort and take longer to get there. For this reason, some sponsors and syndication clients chose not to purchase and broadcast my show. It wasn’t that they disliked me or the kind of program I offered. It wasn’t that they didn’t want me to succeed. It was simply their awareness of how this show would be flying against the wind.
It’s the same phenomenon you experience when flying against or with the jet stream. When I fly from my home in Dallas to Los Angeles, it usually takes around three hours. Flying west, my plane has to fight against a strong headwind that provides powerful resistance, forcing the plane’s engines to work harder and go slower to cover the same distance. On the return trip, however, it’s only about two hours or less because of the strong tailwind.
The winds had changed and were more erratic than ever for the kind of show I wanted to do. Because this was a new venture for Tegna and me, and because we knew we were going against the wind, we made sure we hired only the very best producers, set designers, tech operators, stylists, and support staff. We deliberately sought out experts with experience in daytime talk shows, people who could help us navigate the turbulence we were anticipating. These other team members were my Kitty Hawk, helping me have what I needed to get my show off the ground and providing soft spots to land when I made a mistake.
After completing one season, I decided the airspace was too crowded and the turbulence too great for me to continue. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to keep working harder than ever before or hated commuting between Dallas and Los Angeles, and it wasn’t that I didn’t believe we could gain viewership and improve the program. It was simply a matter of what Oprah told me: the winds had changed.
And because I have many other ventures that consume my energy and attention, I didn’t have the patience and drive to devote myself singularly to navigating that airspace. So I decided to take what I had learned and land the plane while the choice was still my own!
Your Slice of the Pie
The other way to explore your environment for clues on how to design your business plan is to look at what needs fixing, changing, or solving. This method looks from the outside in and isolates a problem or condition currently affecting the social and cultural climate around us. You may notice the need for a new product or invention to help people handle lifestyle changes due to technology, the economy, or migration patterns. You may see an opportunity that appeals to certain demographics or regional interests.
Similarly, you may see the spark of a new trend and fan it into a full-blown wildfire. This means seeing something good and knowing it can be made better, perhaps through exposure and promotion to a wider audience. It’s the reason we see so many copycat products and businesses follow in the wake of a major success. If a certain genre of TV show or movie explodes, then you can be certain that similar ones will follow.
Sometimes the weather changes to your advantage without any attempt to influence it yourself. You may not even know what caused the wind to shift until after the storm has hit. For instance, this kind of phenomenon recently occurred with the mega-talented Patti LaBelle. Known as the Godmother of Soul, she had enjoyed a decades-long career as a singer, performer, and actress. Not content to rest on her lyrical laurels, Patti drew on her culinary talents and closed a deal with Walmart to sell her delicious sweet potato pies. Like the talented entrepreneur she is, Patti used her brand identity to expand from making music to making dessert.
While the pies sold well, they didn’t explode until a superfan named James Wright posted a three-minute video on YouTube in which he hilariously tasted the pie and sang its praises like Patti—literally. Almost overnight, his post received more than five million hits and sent sales of Patti’s pies into the stratosphere. Suddenly, Walmart couldn’t keep them in stock and people were selling them for ten times the retail price on eBay! Patti said she knew something was up when she noticed she was selling more pies than records.
The best marketing genius probably could not have come up with a promotional pitch as funny and authentic as James Wright’s. But nonetheless, his online taste test changed the weather patterns around Patti’s pies. Not only did she increase production to meet customers’ demands, she launched an entire line of goodies called Patti’s Good Life, including other pies, cobblers, and sweets. Wright’s viral sensation changed the weather, and she changed to meet its new opportunities.
One Size Never Fits All
Many would-be entrepreneurs tell me they aren’t “creative” enough to come up with an original idea, invention, or innovation. And I always say, “No problem—just take something people want or need in your area and do it better than anyone else!” Scripture tells us that “there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc. 1:9), and I suspect this holds true for small businesses as much as for anything else. The basics that all humans need—food and drink, shelter, clothing—continue to sustain millions of businesses in the form of restaurants, hotels, and boutiques, just to name a few.
Just consider how many coffee shops there are near your home or office. You probably have more than one Starbucks within a five-mile radius, along with at least one other nationally franchised brewery such as Caribou Coffee, Gloria Jean’s, Death Wish, Costa, Biggby, and It’s a Grind. Then there are likely at least one or two independent shops, the kind where you might have met the owner, the kind where the pace is a little slower, the muffins a little fresher, the service a little better, and the atmosphere a little cozier.
I’m able to describe these little extras not because I’ve been spying in your neighborhood but because I know that in order to compete with the big chains, any locally owned business, particularly in the food and beverage service, must offer something extra—extra care, extra attention, extra service, extra quality—so as to compete for your regular business.
So think about something you either want or need regularly. Maybe it involves solving a problem you yourself face on a regular basis. For instance, do you lack the time to do laundry and ironing and wish there was a service that took extra care in making your professional wardrobe look like new? One that delivered to your home and made the process as simple and dependable as possible? One that recognizes and respects the differences in caring for linen versus Lycra?
Sure, there may be three other laundry services in town, but they serve corporate customers more than individuals. The issue, as we will see in a moment, then becomes the number of other customers like yourself within your area—as well as your new venture’s location and the overall economic outlook of your city. But the process often starts with identifying a business you yourself would frequent.
Surprisingly enough, one of the small businesses that’s recently started making a comeback is the local independent bookstore. From young millennials to older boomers, customers are realizing how much they enjoy having a family-friendly community gathering place that sells books, fosters relationships through reading clubs and study groups, and provides a relaxing atmosphere where people can enjoy a latte or glass of wine. Savvy bookstore owners are realizing their target customers may not be professionals seeking the latest business book as much as they’re simply younger parents looking for an alternative to the library.
Timing Is Everything
You can take any product, service, or consumer solution and improve upon it. And the best improvements customize it to your location and customer base and the overall context. Opening a high-end dress boutique for young professional women in an urban area where factories have closed and residents are mostly retirees who can’t afford to move obviously does not make good business sense. On the other hand, if you’ve noticed abandoned factories being converted into lofts downtown right next to new clubs and restaurants, then your boutique could be right on the cusp of a new wave of urban gentrification.
But you must do your homework and interpret the data with common sense, objective clarity, and personal instinct. When I got ready to buy my house, I wanted to check its value against others in the neighborhood, and I also wanted to determine the direction the city was growing. Was my investment in this house likely to retain its value, or better yet, yield an increase? Or was growth moving in a direction likely to cause this property to decrease in value?
Many cities seem to go back and forth, oscillating between a thriving downtown with minimal suburban residents and a city that has sprawled into its suburbs, leaving the downtown an empty shell. Dallas was built up in the 1970s, during the oil and gas boom, around a dichotomy between work and home. At the time, breadwinners would work downtown but didn’t want to live there, instead taking their families to the suburbs to live in a nice house with a two-car garage and a swing set in the backyard. That trend has now reversed at least a couple of times, and now condos and town houses have replaced the split-level ranch homes of a bygone era.
Timing is crucial when you’re trying to catch winds strong enough to get your plane off the ground. No matter how good your product or service, if there’s no wind behind it, you won’t succeed. What works for one season won’t work for another. I recall how years ago when my book Woman, Thou Art Loosed! was exploding, we had an opportunity to partner with Thomas Nelson to produce a special edition Woman, Thou Art Loosed! Bible. In addition to my notes, commentary, and questions, this Bible was packaged in the shape of a woman’s pocketbook in an attempt to make it unique, stylish, portable, and easy to carry. Response was tremendous and many people told me they were blessed by it.
Nonetheless, I’m keenly aware that the book might not have succeeded if launched in today’s cultural and economic climate. Ebooks have replaced hard copies, and now the YouVersion Bible app, a free version of the NIV Bible, receives more downloads than any other version sells. Also, with the popularity of designer purses by Coach, Louis Vuitton, and others, I’m not sure our unique design would be as appealing to women now as it was then.
We frequently see the way timing affects both popularity and the price point of products, particularly with technology. I recall reading that when Apple was first launching its unique computers, sales were sluggish, largely because the technology was still new and the price point was very high. As more and more people began using computers, new companies sprang up to meet demand, which increased competition and lowered prices. Over time, conditions changed and Apple computers became more affordable and established themselves as a unique brand.
As Malcolm Gladwell explains so brilliantly in The Tipping Point, there’s a pivotal juncture where a business goes from seeking new customers to having new customers seek it. You want to do all you can to design your business to survive until you reach that point and then to thrive once you’re on the other side of it. Yet one more reason to pay close attention to the entrepreneurial climate and economic weather of your environment. While you may not be able to control the clock with regard to all aspects of your product, you must still know what time it is!
Sizing Up Your Situation
Whether you’re responding to winds and trends from the inside out or outside in, both require you to be a problem-solver. No matter how much passion, hard work, and dedication you pour into your venture, if it doesn’t solve an identifiable problem for customers willing to pay for your solution, it will never get off the ground. Or if it does, then it will likely arc across the sky like fireworks instead of like an F-16. So I advise you to begin by recruiting a problem that a significant number of people would be willing to pay you to solve for them.
Even before you begin taking stock of your resources and building your business, the most important thing you as an entrepreneur must have is a problem to fix. Until your business is an answer, you will not be successful. Building a business because you want money will generally lead to failure. Building a business for the ego boost of saying, “I own my own business!” may make great conversation at social events. But if you want to build an equitable business, it isn’t capital that you need more than anything else to get started on the right foot—it’s a juicy problem. Once you find your problem, you will find an investor motivated to help you fix it.
The best kinds of entrepreneurial problems often revolve around something lacking within a specific region that could sustain a business. Whether it’s the lack of a dry cleaner in an area where many professional people have just moved or the need for a beauty salon within a diverse, predominantly female community, the need can be isolated and quantified.
On the other hand, you may have an extraordinary product or service that you believe transcends geographical or demographic limits. You know you want to launch this endeavor online to maximize your exposure and build the largest customer base possible. Nonetheless, you must still complete your due diligence and come up with the best strategy for reaching the customers or clients who need what you’ve got. While it’s true the Internet has opened vast territories of connectivity that facilitate incredible opportunities for commerce, you will still need to make a plan.
Whether you begin with a problem involving something lacking or something offered, your process must include market research to identify the area you anticipate serving, the size and demographics of your customer base, and your competition. Each is a vital piece of the puzzle that will become your flight plan and the blueprint for your business. Let’s briefly consider them.
Your Area of Service
What are the physical parameters of the area you want to service with your products? I encourage you to get a map and outline your territory in a bold color that’s easily seen. If you’re offering an online product or service and you truly hope to appeal to a global consumer base, I would still try to identify the countries, regions, and cities where your odds for success are greatest.
You must also keep in mind that all distances are not equal within the business world. Focusing on a five-block radius of service might keep your pizza parlor thriving in New York or Chicago, but you will more likely need to consider a five- or ten-mile area in smaller cities and suburban areas. Depending on your specific product offering, you must remember that distance is relative and must be measured through the eyes of your customers. Which brings us to…
Your Customer Base—Size and Demographics
No matter how large and broad you want your customer base to be, the reality is that most entrepreneurial efforts tend to attract one core group. “But, Bishop Jakes,” you say, “I’m wanting to sell my delicious pound cakes online. Everyone loves pound cake, right? So I need to target as many people as possible!”
While I appreciate the optimism of such logic, this thinking makes a crucial, erroneous assumption. Just because most people (not everyone—not the dieters, not the people allergic to gluten, not the people who simply prefer pie over cake!) seem to love your delicious pound cake doesn’t mean that everyone will find you online. And of those who do find you, not all of them will have the means or be inclined to order a pound cake they haven’t tasted yet.
In order to find the potential customers who do love pound cake and are looking to order one online, you must do further research and try to learn as much as possible about the current online baked-goods industry. Is pound cake really viable when everyone else seems to be succeeding with cupcakes? Are you prepared for large, corporate orders? What if American Express wants to order a thousand of your pound cakes to send to their best customers? Will you offer more than one flavor of cake? Will you allow customers to make special requests?
On and on the questions go, and as soon as you answer one question, two more pop up in its place. Sometimes you can narrow your scope and target a more select customer base by learning as much as possible about the core group of consumers you want to target. These may be the people most likely to purchase your product or the ones you believe would benefit from your product the most.
Let’s say, for example, you want to start small with your online cake business and appeal to families looking for sweets “like Momma used to bake” for special occasions—birthdays, anniversaries, family reunions, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and other holidays. You’ve eliminated corporate clients with large orders for the time being and instead want to connect with people too busy to cook who still want something delicious and home baked.
Such people are also going to want the cake to be affordable, because if your price is too much more than it costs them to bake it themselves or buy elsewhere, you will lose them. We’ll discuss production costs and pricing strategies in Chapter 5, but you still have to keep in mind what your customers will be willing to pay. You have to know how they perceive the value of what you’re offering.
Now that you’ve narrowed your target customer base, you would be wise to find out as much about the customer as possible: average age, marital status and average size of household, whether they rent or own their home, their ethnicity, average income, level of education, and number of hours typically spent working each week.
While these large indicators may be obvious to you, I encourage you to also consider trying to determine where your targeted customers tend to shop most—online or in a bricks-and-mortar store. How much do they usually spend on food each week? How often do they eat dessert or purchase sweets? Do their habits change for special occasions? What are the other brands they are likely to purchase? Which brings us to…
Your Competition
One of the most valuable assets you have for determining which way your wind is blowing comes from studying your competition. Learn as much about them as you possibly can. And don’t overlook experiencing your competition as a customer would, making note of all the details from the first contact until you conclude your transaction. How can you improve the way you interact with your customers? How can you train future employees accordingly?
Businesses that have failed while attempting to provide your product or service often prove as valuable as success stories in helping you learn what does and doesn’t work. If you can identify and talk with some of these other entrepreneurs, then all the better. Don’t assume that they will automatically refuse to discuss the business with you. You would be surprised how much they’re willing to share. Flat-out ask them to tell you what they wished they had known before they started their venture. There may be numerous ways you can help each other, increasing the profitability of both businesses.
Divine Design
When I first became a pastor back in West Virginia, I didn’t need a flying machine to minister to my flock. I preached God’s Word, helped those in need, buried the dead, and married the wed! It was all spiritual work and fit within the gravitational pull of the pulpit. As our church grew and opportunities increased, I realized I couldn’t keep doing things the way I’d been doing them. When I talk with young pastors today, most of them tell me they assumed they were starting a church that needed to function like a successful business. But back in my early days, I had to fly by the seat of my pants until I could build a plane big enough to carry my dreams.
With so many possible ways to affect our nation and the world, to minister through radio and TV and online technology, I felt very much like the Wright brothers must have felt. I needed to build something to get me from point A to point B. I had to add staff members, expand facilities, employ experts in technology, along with developing the various support systems needed to sustain them all.
Now, more than three hundred employees later, I have built a flying machine that serves both my ministry and my entrepreneurial endeavors. The employees’ skills include graphic design, shipping and receiving, catering, music and film production, and a variety of other areas I never imagined needing to support my work. But in order to grow, in order to fulfill the potential that God gave me and make the most of the opportunities He presented, I had to be willing to invent something all my own, a divine-inspired design.
You, too, must look at the distance between where you are and where you want to go. Then you can begin building your own machine to take you there. You won’t be able to do it all by yourself, but by the same token, it all starts with you putting your dream in motion. You can’t fly it, maintain it, and take it higher if you weren’t involved in its original construction!
Your machine must weather all kinds of conditions, some you know about already and others you can only discover once you’re in the air. That’s why you must keep your finger raised to gauge the force and direction of the winds around you. That’s why you must be prepared for changes in the temperature and weather patterns of your cultural climate. Winds and trends can cause something as formidable and seemingly indestructible as the Titanic to sink. But they can also be harnessed to empower your ability to take flight and soar!