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This year we’re celebrating a very special birthday — 2022 marks 10 years since we started Good Things. It’s been a stressful, challenging and at times tough journey, but my co-founder partner, Tim, and I wouldn’t change a thing.
Many people have commented on our nice offices in Surry Hills, particularly our new office in South Yarra. However, what many people don’t see is that we rose from the ashes of a failed retail business — in the back of a tiny office, off a small fish shop in Brunswick, with nothing but a blank spreadsheet and determination.
I’ve had the privilege of speaking on a few panels recently for small businesses and startups, and the most frequently asked question I get is, “What is one thing you would attribute to a business’s success?”. Funnily enough, it was a question I used to ask myself — a way of ‘hacking’ or going for the quick big win or ‘needle mover’. There is no single big thing, but dozens of things that all add up and before you know it, it creates momentum. Jim Collins references this in his epic book Good to Great known as the “Flywheel effect”.
What advice would I give to business go-getters?
Invest in marketing
Be open to experimentation and tinkering. When you’re starting your business, you may not have the funds to explore a fully-fledged digital marketing campaign — that’s ok! We started with simple SEO tactics for our website, but things really kicked off when we decided to rebrand from our original Promotive, to what we know as Good Things. Strong branding made investing in marketing 10 times more valuable.
Invest in people
Make people a priority. Invest in them and they will invest in you. We’ve learned that understanding people’s needs is what drives respect and company loyalty. In return, we give our people the best in-house training and provide opportunities to learn more in short courses and training courses. We then delight the team with great Christmas parties and retreats. After all the hard work and dedication our people give to the company, it’s only right we show our appreciation.
Obsess over it
When a job becomes a passion, you’ll find yourself obsessing over improvement. From our experience, the highest performers are entirely dedicated to nailing their role and KPIs. It’s not simply a nice to have or a “job”. When you and your people are passionate about the job and the company, you will naturally obsess and fine-tune areas that need improving. When this happens, you get effective and efficient work done.
What’s next for Good Things?
Now we’re 10 years old, we’re a big kid, ready to take on the world. With a decade of promotional product and merchandising experience under our belt, we’re proud to announce that we’re moving out of home! As of 2022, we’ve officially landed in Hollywood. We’re taking Good Things international and making our way to the US.
This is just the beginning of our next chapter. We can’t wait to see what the next 10 years has install for us.
