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Bianca Del Rio

Building a Business from Hate

Bianca del Rio didn’t set out to be “the nastiest bitch on the planet,” but she kind of is–and it’s really working for her career.

Del Rio, formerly Roy Haylock, is the crowned queen of the 6th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. One key to her success has been simply embracing who she is and not copying what everyone else in her industry is doing.

The queens on RuPaul’s Drag Race were all competing as queens. Bianca Del Rio realized that she needed to stand out, to do things differently. Her management recommended that she record an album. Her reply: “I’m not going to do an album. There’s enough horrible drag queens singing.”

And Del Rio’s intuition is spot on. When everyone else is zigging, zag.

What Del Rio is doing is quite expansive. Since RuPaul’s Drag Race, Bianca has headlined and sold out standup comedy tours worldwide, starred in two feature films, released a satirical self-help book, and created a line of no. 1-selling makeup removers.

“It kind of snowballed. I didn’t plan to be a comedian. I didn’t plan to be a drag queen. It just kind of evolved,” says Del Rio, who was a professional costume designer before doing drag full-time.

As a host for drag shows Del Rio got a lot of stage time, dealing with back-stage delays, hecklers, and impatient patrons. She seized the opportunity and integrated insult comedy into her hosting routine.

Since then, Bianca Del Rio has bloomed and business has boomed.

“Everything is offensive, so I’m enjoying the fact that I’m anti-kind. You’ve got to go out and just speak your mind. It needs to be heard,” Del Rio says. “There was a young boy who was 13-years-old who was in drag with his grandmother that came to see me [during a comedy show] and I was nervous because he was like, ‘me and my grandma love Drag Raceand we watch the show together!’ And I looked at [the grandma] and I said, ‘you do know my show’s going to be a little racy?’ She goes, ‘well, what the fuck do you think I came for?’ So I’m bringing families together–through hate.”

Find your niche – no matter how offensive or off the beaten path.

[Photo: Daisy Korpics for Fast Company]

Hooters "Hooters Girl"

Increasing Hooters Utilization

WeWork has new competition in Tokyo – Hooters. It’s all about utilization.

Hooters in Tokyo’s Ginza neighborhood has teamed up with Spacee – a space-matching service – to rent out work areas during the restaurant’s downtime.

Hooters has over 400 locations worldwide and they, like all brick and mortar businesses, have a utilization problem. After lunchtime traffic at the Hooters in Ginza dies down, 20 seats open up for rent via Spacee until the dinner rush begins.

While WeWork may not be worried about the competition yet, it’s going to be hard to beat the Hooters price. Spacee members pay only 50 yen, or about 48 cents, for a 30-minute work block, and that includes a discount on some beverages and an atmosphere that some will undoubtedly find truly inspiring.

(Oddly enough, students don’t have to pay the 50 yen fee. But if they’re under 18, then they have to be accompanied by a parent or guardian. Glad someone’s thinking about the children..)

Utilization

From an entrepreneurial theory perspective, one enormous path for adding value is to reduce inefficiencies. Low utilization – especially for capital intensive goods – is a huge contributor to inefficiency. And over the past 10 years, a new wave of utilization-focused start-ups have flourished on the shoulders of both the internet and mobile phones.

AirBnB increases the utilization of your spare bedroom or couch. Getaround increases the utilization of your car. Lyft and Uber increase the utilization of your time (and your car).

What’s interesting is that these companies are all marketplace plays. The business is in connecting parties with spare capacity with parties who need capacity. Bring together both parties in a trusted forum and you’ve got yourself an interesting business.

Look around you: What inefficiencies do you see? Where is utilization low? Is the value being squandered worth recovering? Can you create a trusted marketplace? Can you acquire customers at a reasonable price?

PS: In other WeWork news, the company is continuing to expand very rapidly. You may have seen some misleading headlines about $18 billion in leases, but that number is the sum of many years of leases, $13.2 billion of which is for 2023 and beyond. Their 2018 and 2019 lease payments are for $706 million and $984 million respectively. Bloomberg covers the story here and here.

PPS: Hooters and strategy. Strategy and Hooters. Are you not entertained?

(Photo Credit)