Turning Business Into Legacy

Part 1 of No Idea How Many Posts - Disclosure… The more I wrote on this topic, the more I was compelled to write:

As you may or may not heard…. In February 2021, Zillow acquired ShowingTime, which is the leading home showing management and marketing stats technology provider. Real Estate Agents took to the streets shouting, “NO! This Can’t Happen!! What will we do?!?!” Actually, they ran to Facebook and posted what they believed was the good, the bad and the ugly of this merger. In 2019, Zillow also bought a Mortgage Company and expanded their direct-to-consumer services. Among the founders of Zillow Group, INC., or simply Zillow, are also some of the most well-known innovators in the online travel business.

Is this a Disruption or simply a Distraction?

What makes an event, or chain of events, a distraction or a disruption? A distraction is something that causes you to slow down, take notice, before typically continuing the journey. Myspace was a Distraction and united all of its users to our new friend “Tom,” that lasted until the actual disruptor Facebook showed up. Am I the only one wondering how come our first friend wasn’t Mark? An easy answer is clearly Facebook was light years ahead of Myspace. A disruption happens when it directly alters how you do business or potentially how you live life. So, how do you know if you are being disrupted or simply distracted? Innovation is a natural evolution of business. You constantly have to look to the future for clues what it holds. Nothing stays the same, we are constantly striving to improve and make whatever it is better. Today, the phones we hold in the palm of our hands are more powerful than the mainframe computers NASA used to send astonauts to the moon. Avoid the distraction and watch out for the disruption.

Questions of the Week

If the ability to serve your customer went away completely, how would you adapt so you stayed in business and continued generating revenue?

What else could you offer to the same database in addition to your existing services? 

What strengths did you learn about yourself during the pandemic, and at what level of grit and tenacity do you need to hold so that strength continues no matter the circumstances? 

If your business could talk, what would it have said to you about this past year?  

As you reflect back during the most challenging times, what were the top 10 most significant losses, mistakes, and lessons you have learned? How are you ensuring that you will not repeat them in the future? 

“Any Fool Can Make Money in the Good Times.” 

- Keith Cunningham 

“Go the Extra Mile, it’s never crowded.” 

– Jay Shetty

Zillow Shmillo – Let’s Drink Some Whiskey and Remember Longevity Isn’t About the Competition

Zillow creators Rich Barton and Lloyd Frink, both former Microsoft Executives and founders of the online travel giant Expedia, teamed up with Spencer Rascoff, co-founder of Hotwire, another online travel-agent killer. Their website says they are “Dedicated to empowering consumers with data, inspiration and knowledge around the place they call home and connecting them with the best local professionals who can help.” It’s no real surprise that the rest of the real estate industry would be a little cautious considering what Zillow company founders did to the once thriving Travel Agency business.Business disruptions have happened and will continue to happen. Rather than get all worked up about it, just grab a glass, a couple cubes of ice, pour some Jim Beam Kentucky Whiskey, and chill.

In 1795, Jacob Beam helped put Kentucky on the map when he sold his first barrel of Old Jake Beam Sour Mash. Beam INC. still uses that recipe to this day in its distillery and keeps it under lock and key. 

THE BIRTH OF BOURBON

By the late 1700s, German, Scotch and Irish settlers were already making rye whiskey in Western Pennsylvania with recipes they brought over from their homelands. But when the U.S. government began offering incentives to move west and grow corn, many packed up their families and relocated to the Kentucky region of Virginia (strange times, we know). Among these farmers was Jacob Beam who, like others, used his father's whiskey recipe to distill his excess corn into a new, sweeter kind of whiskey-bourbon was born.

You may be asking, what does bourbon have to do with Zillow? You mean other than the mere mention of their name to real estate agents causes them to grab their favorite Bourbon and toast to their own perceived demise? Zillow is simply one of many in a long line of tech disruptors, or a distractor one may argue, to enter a space and force those competing for business to either reinvent or die. Jacob Beam started a business that wasn’t without its own constant form of reinvention and challenges.

Reinvention might very well be defined by the Beam family, which is why I chose to profile them as one of the great historic companies who’ve turned business into Legacy. 

The Kentucky bourbon industry had been thriving for over 100 years until a little thing called the Volstead Act was passed in 1919. This was the beginning of prohibition and it basically shut down the whiskey industry. The closest equivalent would be the past year of COVID-19, and how businesses have been effected. Imagine that the business shutdown of 2020 lasted an additional 13 years. Knowing prohibition was coming, Jim Beam took great care to ensure his bourbon’s future. Knowing that their future relied on his bourbon’s signature flavor, he even brought a jug of his yeast strain home every weekend, just in case. To this day, they still use that same strain of yeast. 

 During that 13-year shutdown, Jim Beam attempted a variety of other ventures including operating a coal mine, a rock quarry, and even owned citrus groves in Florida. He eventually bought an old distillery in Clermont, Kentucky attached to a rock quarry. Since bootleggers, or moonshiners, were not exactly advertising their craft or documenting what they were doing during those 13 years, little is known if the family business ran outside of the law. According to Beam’s descendent and later Master Distiller himself, Fred Noe wrote in his book ‘Beam Straight Up,’ “I don’t exactly know what took place during that time. I do know that when we shut down in 1920, we had a lot more bourbon in our rack houses than we when we opened up some 13 years later.”

Interesting fun-fact, modern day NASCAR began when illegal bootleggers would get together on Sunday afternoons in their souped-up cars and race each other for fun. 

By the time Prohibition was repealed on December 5th, 1933, Jim Beam was pushing 70 years of age. Yet, in-spite of his age, he had fire in his belly and with combined family help, he got their new James B. Beam Distilling Company running in less than 120 days. They were selling their first post-prohibition whiskey about a year later. 

To learn more about the Beam family and how they turned business into Legacy…. Stay tuned for Next Week’s ‘Tuesday Newsday.’ Thank you for reading.

Jim Beam is the world’s largest bourbon brand. The classic American whiskey brand is owned by Chicago-based Beam Suntory, a subsidiary of Japan’s Suntory Holdings. 

Ref:

BEAM INC. 02/15/2021 Behind the Bourbon HTTPS://WWW.JIMBEAM.COM/EN/BEHIND-THE-BOURBON/OUR-STORY

Noe, Freddie (2012). Beam Straight Up – The Bold Story of the First Family of Bourbon. Wiley & Sons. 
Schreiner, Bruce AP Jul 03, 2019 at 3:06pm – 45000 barrels of Jim Beam bourbon destroyed Kentucky warehouse fire  https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-jim-beam-bourbon-fire-20190703-ohjryo7ctrbfblotuis5xuoeqm-ohjryo7ctrbfblotuis5xuoeqm-story.html