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Micro Business is the New Small Business
We are seeing the death of traditional career paths. Now, micro business is the new small business. Instead building a hulking beast of an enterprise, we start by building something simple, like an app or a website or a piece of software. Then, instead of searching for some magical distribution channel, we just ship it. We make it available, and other people come and get it. Then, if it…
How Bonobos Apparel Converts Interaction to Income
The best way to get more business from your customers is by intelligently interacting with them. For example, one fourth of all Bonobos customer service is publicized. Consider the implications of this. First, it multiples their reach. Exponentially more people can experience and benefit from a single act of service. Even if they’re not customers. Second, it creates an apparatus of accountability. Each interaction requires thoughtful consideration on the…
Listen Loud, Wait Long, Think Hard, Speak Last
Synthesizing is an underrated talent. If you can become known as someone who boils down complex ideas to a bare, yet highly memorable minimum, creates labels for things that make it faster to classify and understand what’s going on, packages truths as meaningful concrete nuggets that give meaning to human experiences, delivers micro masterpieces of clarity and brevity to help others structure and interpret reality, helps people make sense…
Just Talk Like People Talk
Purpose is easy to over complicate. Organizations spend thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours creating purpose statements full of expensive, opaque, altruistic, exaggerated jumbles of corporate buzzwords that, in the end, mean nothing and inspire nobody. When the reality is, purpose is best stated when it’s simple, specific and meaningful to the people who matter most. That’s enough. We make our clients look like heroes. We bring fun…
What Your Company Outsourced Its Policies?
Most company policies coincidentally favor the company. Instead of respecting customers, they’re more about making excuses, creating insurance, inhibiting creativity, controlling costs, avoiding accountability, building deniability, protecting executive egos, appeasing shareholders and covering corporate asses. But what if, once a year, companies held an open forum for customers to submit ideas for new company policies? What if, instead of operating solely inside their own heads, organizations let the people…
Client Service? Try a Little Amnesia
If you can help the client forget she’s a client, everybody wins. Try a few of these. Instead of applying your rigid methodology, just sit down, look people in the eye ask them what they want to do, and what would make them happy. Instead of bludgeoning people with facts and theories, just talk like people talk, listen as loudly as you can, and remember that they’re human just…
What Do You Make People Believe In Again?
The problem is, they did not come away believers. When your customers finally finish the transaction, sign off, shut down, wrap up, peace out, pay the check, walk out the door and go back to their busy lives, here’s powerful question worth asking: What did the experience you offer make people believe in again? What did your company restore people’s faith in? What idea, that customers were convinced was…
Work Without Clarity, Isn’t
John Jantsch is a marketing consultant, speaker, author, dad, yogi, guitarist and good friend of mine. The ideas in this post are drawn from his most recent book, The Commitment Engine. * * * * Strategy, purpose, and passion are integral to success, but none of them really matter without clarity. Clarity is the strong and unwavering sense that our daily choices are grounded in an authentic sense…
What Does Your Brand Take Out of the Equation for Customers?
Smart companies take something out of the equation for people. Not immeasurable elements like friction, time, energy, work, risk, taboo, fear, embarrassment, inconvenience, complexity, stress, guesswork, legwork, hassle, frustration, pain and mystery. They actually delete something measurable, visible and tangible. Something annoying and big enough that customers wouldn’t just notice if it were gone, but would be delighted to find out it’s gone, excited to tell people it’s gone,…
Create Social Meaning Above and Beyond Your Product
Interaction is the agent of human decision. If someone decides to pay attention to, press the like button for, buy something from, become a follower of, or tell others about your brand, it’s likely because of an interaction they had with another human being. Namely, not you. Real marketing isn’t about what you do to people, it’s about what you enable people to do each other. It’s about creating…
