Richard’s weekly emails

By Richard Cook, Managing Director, Shirley Aquatics

Why a smoothie told me to “stop looking at its bottom” #

This week I sat around a table with five of the team, and my goal was simple. To come up with a set of company values for Shirley Aquatics.

Building our company values #

It’s new territory for me. I’m very much a “just get up and do it” kind of person, without asking why.

Sarah, my wife, on the other hand, has worked for a national organisation for over 30 years and has had this kind of values-led training and ethos well and truly drummed into her. So she was thrilled when she heard I was doing this.

The main thing for me was to make sure this wasn’t just another Richard-led team meeting, with me delivering a witty, insightful, should-be-on-the-stage type monologue, while everyone sits around in open-mouthed amazement.

Sorry… admiration.

I have to say, it was one of the best experiences I’ve had in a long time. Everyone truly mucked in. We came up with two lists, likes and dislikes, which we all agreed on, and from those we built a set of values.

One of which was humour.

The Innocent way #

That brought me straight back to a talk at the Entrepreneurs Circle National Convention by Helena Langdon, which had us laughing for the whole 40 minutes.

Helena was in at ground level with Innocent Smoothies and ran their social media for seven years. Very much humour-led. In her own words, she got paid for messing around and having fun on the internet.

Innocent used to print “Stop looking at my bottom” on the base of every bottle. They don’t anymore, but they always used every opportunity, on packaging and on social media, to have a laugh.

The Floor Four Stapler #

Then there were ridiculously memorable campaigns like the Floor Four Stapler. Somebody had taken the time and effort to print out a label and stick it on a stapler: “Floor 4. Do not remove.”

Helena made it her mission to take that stapler as far away from floor four as she could. Others jumped on the bandwagon, and there are still photos online of it underwater, by the Eiffel Tower, in Piccadilly Circus, and as you can see above, even at Disney. It even got into the national papers!

All for the sake of a good laugh.

Why humour made the list #

If we look at the content we value online, a lot of it is information and learning led. But equally, if it’s funny, we’re more likely to like it and share it.

So when someone round our meeting table suggested humour (straight after another of Connor’s dry-witted comments had us all in stitches), I was absolutely made up.

If Helena’s talk hadn’t already convinced me to bring more humour into every day, then the values-led team meeting certainly did.

If nothing else, it was laughable.

Speak soon,
Richard