GarthBox

An often-used distraction around value creation is asking your customers or hopefully-soon-to-be customers questions about your value. To survey and learn how you’re making an impact in their lives.

After all, customer feedback is the best data you can get your hands on, right?

Here’s an answer from Seth Godin, hidden in the depths of the interweb, but vital to acknowledge and share.

“I don’t think asking helps. People lie. A lot. To themselves as well.
We learn a lot by watching. By asserting. By putting ideas into the world and watching what people do with them.”

Perhaps the new year isn’t about asking more right questions, it’s about watching more of the right people.

 

Stay Positive & Time To Pull Out The Binoculars And The Microscope

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Three words: Life time value

What is yours? What is the average $ you’ll make from a customer, and over time; one year, five years, 10 years, what does that add up to?

An employee (dare I say even the owner) may look at a customer and see that if the customer were to walk out without buying, they would be out $8.

But the reality is, if read correctly, if engaged with, if sold to, that customer would actually be worth $12,480 in ten years assuming they bought three of your products a week, and 100 of those customers would be worth $1,248,000 in ten years.

The stakes are high and the penalty for letting a customer go… well, nowadays that means your brand might be dead with ten years (more likely 10 months).

You’re in it for the long run, right? Your customers are.

 

Stay Positive & Careful Customer Service Isn’t A Choice; It’s A Necessity

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The onus isn’t on your competition to challenge you or those in your industry.

The obligation is yours.

And the strongest way to bring an entire industry up a level is to be critical of all those within it.

Too many pander. Too many stay in their comfort zone. But, most importantly, too many don’t realize their mistakes–they need someone to point them out.

Your challenge isn’t to keep up with the Joneses, it’s to point out their faults and ensure you (and your competitors) move forward.

 

Stay Positive & The Quickest Way To The Top Is To Go Together

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The beauty about doing anything is that you can always change to doing it right.

Of course, there’s an ample supply of digital influences that will tell you you’re doing it wrong.

Culture (especially digital culture) changes and it changes frequently. What was shunned by some four years ago, no longer is. Likewise, what was once revered by millions is now valued by a few.

What you need to decide is if what you’re doing is right for you. Then stick with it until it doesn’t.

Turns out the ones who will experience a product are more fickle with their worldviews than the maker of it. So it should be. You’re in control.

 

Stay Positive & Start By Doing, Then Make Sure It’s Right For You

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What if you decided now that all you would ever talk about would be meaningful.

If you could only say what would help you or others move forward, what would you talk about?

It’s difficult to answer. Uncomfortable, even.

Your lizard brain considers that kind of talk to be risky.

Surely you don’t want to put yourself out there. You don’t want to make yourself vulnerable. Conditionally speaking, there will always be outside resistance when you talk about what truly matters. (An Amazon Go depot on campus sounds like it would be beloved by all, but the idea springs conversations around money and available space. All the sudden there are naysayers everywhere. Better to not even mention the depot, huh?)

If you find talking about progress to be an uphill battle, what if you decided now that you would simply pay attention to what you say and realize when it’s not worth talking about.

We can all agree what you had for lunch doesn’t matter so much. The weather, traffic and certainly a broad assortment of political conversations don’t make an impact.

If you concentrate on the language you use, there’s no doubt you’ll overcome the lizard brain’s power and you’ll begin to say less of what doesn’t matter and more of what does.

Anyway, you’ve never seen a remarkable project completed by someone who only talks about what the temperature was last weekend, have you?

 

Stay Positive & Choose Your Words Wisely

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Not everything you create needs to be for the marketplace.

Creating a product everyone will pay you for isn’t the only way to make an impact.

You don’t need to have a book published to be considered a writer.

Better to maximize what really matters like spreading ideas horizontally, giving thorough and honest feedback to other makers in the world with a review, reflecting on what has helped you make a meaningful dent in the universe so others can follow suit.

There’s no blogging just for you, there’s only blogging for others…
you just happen to benefit from it.

We’re getting close to a new year.

You might consider blogging.

You might even consider starting now: https://wordpress.com/

 

Stay Positive & Why Wait?

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With any new venture, its first about surviving, showing proof to a concept, breaking even so you’re not in the hole.

Then it’s about growth, scale, leverage, profit, expansion, market domination–a tall order.

There’s a critical shift in thinking between these two endeavors and many-a-business fails because they can’t retain alignment on what the business is there for through the transition.

• The new manager you hired at your second store thinks you’re in it for X when you are really in it for Y.
• Your sales team thinks they have all the right answers because they’re interacting with the customer.
• The marketing team thinks they have the right answers because they’re aware of the latest tactic in messaging.

This is why a business needs a mission statement. Not the generic “we make things accessible, easy, fast, cheap or reliable,” but the detailed job a customer is hiring you specifically to do.

Once you’re aligned, it’s likely you’ll also be unstoppable.

 

Stay Positive & On The Same Page

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