Your Moat is the Hard Thing

The other day, I heard the story of Jimmy’s Iced Coffee here in the UK, how an entrepreneur took it from an idea inspired by a hangover in Australia, through being on the shelves in our supermarkets, to a profitable, life-changing exit, having been acquired by a major soft drinks firm.

One of the decisions was the packaging, and their choice to use a bottle-shaped can, inspired by a soft drink one of Jimmy’s team brought back from Japan, that not only looks different when alongside the many, many competitors on the fridge shelf, but its wide opening means it’s also very chuggable.

Choosing the regular kind of packaging, from an existing supplier, would have been easy, the sort of decision that clearly other brands had made, but choosing the bottle-can meant working with a specialist supplier, which was difficult. It was time-consuming to source and negotiate the deal, and expensive.

It was difficult to the point that, according to the founder’s story, competitors tipped their hats in private conversations, recognizing the challenge.

A decision that turned out to be commercially successful, but at the time, they did the hard thing.

There is a lot of talk right now about “moats”, whether it’s about personal brands, the services you provide, or about how we promote our B2B businesses - the question is, what’s your moat?

What is the clear and different thing you do that your competitor can’t do?

The moat for Jimmy’s Coffee was not a bottle-shaped can; it was the decision to do the hard thing, which seemed to be part of a series of hard things, from how the founder hustled to get their first high-end supermarket to this packaging decision.

It’s a commitment to consistently doing the hard thing.

That hard thing your competitor can’t do may not be some patentable IP, something it would take a competitor 2 years to build, or something you can defend with a trademark.

It could be the thing they are not willing to do.

The thing that is not the “regular kind”.

Yes, it’s a risk, the idea will make you pause, from a personal brand perspective, you could look like a bit of a cock, and in business, it’ll bring on some serious FOFU (Fear of F’in’ Up) that I have written about on here before).

But, it’s worth taking a swing, especially in B2B, where being conservative rules.

We should be asking, what is the hard thing we can do that our competitors can’t or are unwilling to do?

You can learn more about the story of Jimmy's Ice Coffee on one of my favorite podcasts - Uncensored CMO