After I got my degree in economics, I thought now I can go out and learn from the best. Since then I lost a lot of respect for my profession. The worst example was the „analyst“ who predicted 18’000’000’000$ of possible revenue for Transformer.
And now comes this: Sigri Surf
I have been there twice and since I am an annoyingly curios person, I talked to Marcel the owner quite a lot and asked him how he made his dream of owning a wind surfing station happen. He is an ex professional ice hockey player and windsurfing instructor expert. Not somebody a bank would give much credit for building a successful business in a country in deep problems and with almost no local personnel connections. But he did it, even though this year tourists thought Greece would just disappear in the Mediterranean sea after the elections (don’t buy that stuff from the the news. There are still people living in Greece, babies are born, food is eaten and the streets are also still there).
What did he do to be where he is? Planning. A marketing plan for three years and he stuck to it. Getting the 3style area cup on his beach was part of the plan. It worked.
And we had quite a good time, but the wind could have been better, but I have been to a few windsurfing spots in the last 20 years and never had 2 weeks of constant wind.
Today many companies change plans faster than yours truly his underwear. It’s all about the next quarter. We all have seen products coming to the market with a lot of announcements but there wasn’t a marketing plan behind it … or the plan was just based on hoping that it was such a good product, that it would sell like hot cakes, which in certain aspects it probably was, but nobody knew it. Sigri Surf made it happen against all odds and Marcel must now think of the next plan.
Planning is essential, sticking to the plan even more.
What they told me at the university actually works … if you are using it right. Funny, isn’t it?