Book Review: Roasted Passion
Posted on September 11th, 2009 by Paul McArdle – 1 Comment.
Following Stephen’s review of the presentation made by Phillip Di Bella, I was pleasantly surprised to see that he had also bought us a copy of Phil’s new book “Roasted Passion”.
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Binary Review
The book was a quick read (over and done with in 4 hours flying time to and from Melbourne this week).
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The Book |
What we thought |
 “Roasted Passion” by Robert Norton |
 .. Not a classic, but gets a gong as it has a few good points, and is a quick read |
| Full Disclosure – oops, Amazon does not seem to stock this one (yet?) so the link here is to the AIM’s Management Bookshop. |
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The book is part historical review of the coffee industry (globally, but in Australia particularly), and part management insight.
As someone who drinks the stuff (probably too much) but does not approach it with quasi-religious fervour, the historical review read a bit like the Book of Numbers to me.
Yes, I know I would not be given a job with Di Bella for a comment like that one!
However, in terms of a quick read for a few pointers about how one guy approaches managing a start-up business, I drew some good points from the book.
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Points that Resonated
The specific points I want to bring out are as follows:
1) There’s that 10,000 hour concept again:
The author makes a point that Phil learned as much as he could in the long period of time (almost 10 years) he worked as an employee at a cafe in the Valley – longer, if you count the time spent at other cafes beforehand.
2) Starting business is hard work! There’s mention of 120-hour working weeks (starting at 3am), and a bed in the office.
Enough said about that one – anyone who has actually gone down that road knows that one.
3) Ultimately, employees (at least, the ones you want to keep) don’t come to work (just) for a pay-packet. The company they work for has to stand for something.
In our case, we’re continuing to strive to “make the electricity market understandable” in order that it can deliver sustainable value to all stakeholders.
4) The bus analogy again.
Without citing Jim Collins’ book, this author (from p157) provides a similar analogy to the way in which Phil has built his business – in terms of getting the right people on the bus, then arranging them in the right positions, etc…
This is something we are getting better at doing, but still have a long way to go until we have our bus running at optimum performance.
5) Choose your customers, and serve them well.
Yes, choose them. Don’t chase them all – just the ones who are aligned with your vision for the business.
Then bend-over-backwards to make your customers successful.
The book provides some good, practical examples of how Phil has done this.
6) Focus on your customers needs:
The book clearly notes (p122) that “Marketing begins with focusing on the customer’s needs” – and I could not agree more (as I previously noted this in my comment to Stephen’s review).
For us, it means that (if we want to develop good software) we must first have a very good understanding of what our customers needs are – these might be spoken, or unspoken (or even not consciously recognised)
7) Provide education to the Influencers, the Purchasers and the Users (p126)
8) “Phil showed his insatiable desire to learn and expects the same from his staff” (p115):
I am in total agreement with this one – hence my philosophy of life-long learning.
9) Put your guarantee on every invoice.
That’s a great idea that we will implement, in our own style.
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Lessons Learnt from Starbucks
One very useful (and unexpected) benefit from the book was that the author has listed his own views as to a “top 9” lessons to be learnt from Starbucks’ rise and more recent stumble.
You’ll have to buy the book for that one – its on page 61 and 62.
Hope this helps!
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