insights! – Episode #7: Likeability Factor

Fantastic that you are joining me again today for a new episode of Insights with me, Joubin Rahimi.

It’s about the seventh of eight parts: What are the GAFAs doing strategically differently from other companies?

One point is likeability, that is the seventh point.

We like the GAFAs, not everyone, because the GAFAs certainly also rub some people the wrong way, especially medium-sized companies. But generally we like them, and that is actually what I want to get at.

Do we like the company or do we like the person?

Most of the time, it is the people, and we see this with these GAFAs as well. Let us take Google as an example.

Google was founded by Larry and Sergey, and both are people that many users can identify with extremely well.

They come from university, invent something, tinker with it, work hard on it, write "Don't be evil" into the statutes of their company. These are all things that make us like entrepreneurs.

Zuckerberg also had to assert himself, fight, and build the whole thing up, even though he is very, very well cushioned. But he made it, also with his way of always wearing the same T-shirts and conveying a different, more level corporate culture to the outside world. And exactly the same happened at Apple and Amazon. The bigger the companies became, the harder of course it became to maintain likeability. De facto, it is the people, and we also see this in other areas – Tesla, Elon Musk, in principle likeable, even if he is polarizing. But fundamentally he is an interesting personality. You do not have to like weed, nor the laws that allowed him to do that in a radio show while being filmed. But it simply shows his entrepreneurial farsightedness, his understanding of freedom, which he occasionally claims for himself. Perhaps also his mistakes that he makes when he sends tweets. He is human in that respect, and that is what makes him special.

The question that companies can naturally ask themselves is: can I be likeable as a company? Or do I need a person for that? Do I need the founder? Do I need the CEO?

From my point of view, it is always people.

We can simply take a look into an industry that for a while was very strongly dominated by men and in which a woman fundamentally changed things: the sale of erotic products.

Beate Uhse revolutionized the industry. And the special thing is, above all because she was a woman. And interestingly, exactly the same story repeated itself in the online business 40 years later.

There were many companies in this business, like Eis.de and others, but in the end it was a start-up that did it, in which a woman was the managing director and the public face: Amorelie.

That shows again and again: people make the difference.

We love buying from people, doing business with people. And companies are just a vehicle. They can perhaps provide security, but likeability is created by people.

That is what attracts people.

How can I be likeable?

For that I need a story, and I need a story for the people, but also for the vision of what I offer. And that brings us to the eighth part.

I look forward to discussing this eighth part with you next week.

Until then!