“Do I need to get coffee cups with my store’s name on it?” Anna asked me as I was paying for my coffee. “That depends on what you want to achieve” I said. She had hoped for  simple yes or no, she wanted me, as a “marketing guy”, to simply tell her what to do about advertising.

Anna runs a small and growing coffee shop & bookstore in Cronulla. When she first asked me this question she worked 7 days a week from 6am to 7pm at the store and employed 5 par-time staff to assist her. Anna was burning out.

I asked her if she wanted to have a chat about her business and so we set a date. This was really the first time that Anna had thought about her business in the two years that she had been running it. She’d been too bussy working in it to work on it.

At our meeting we worked through her goals & her objectives. In the end Anna realised that advertising on her coffee cups was not the most important thing she could do to grow.

We worked on an action plan, obtained some missing data and were able to make some sound decisions which have freed Anna up to continue to grow and to spend time on her business rather than in it.

Anna didn’t need advertising and media buying advise, she needed someone to help her to see the big picture.