At the end of the day, what ever product you sell or service you provide, you are selling an emotion.
Apple is a great example of this. You are emotionally sold when you open their deliberate packaging. When you interact with their friendly software. When your problems are solved at the Genius Bar. You get to experience wonderful emotions over and over.
If you are a consultant you sell emotion through your integrity, when you show up early, or fished a project under budget. These are all emotional wins and you are selling them constantly.
Saving someone money. Making someone money. Offloading work for someone. A firm handshake. Listening with intent. These are all emotional wins.
It is you job to find all the places and moments in time where you can provide emotional wins.
Gatekeepers no longer exist, but their idea still persists. We see them in shows like American Idol, the workplace, and even friends and family. This idea that you need to take a set of steps in order to please the gatekeepers to let you move forward.
It is still within people to believe that you need someone else’s permission, approval, or blessing before doing something great. This may have been true at one time, but now you have no other choice.
I was at Target the other day picking up some vitamins when a group of teenage kids started popping open boxes of diet pills and cramming the bottles into their jackets. Shouting, literally throwing the empty boxes around, just causing a scene the entire time. All right near an employee filling shelves at the other end of the asile. I informed him, but he just shrugged. I informed another employee who aimlessly pointed in the direction of a manager. So I gave up.
If a business doesn’t care, imagine how little a customer cares.
When caring becomes no ones job things start to fall apart. Soon quality suffers then customer service. Then a business will scratch their heads wondering why they’re failing. Everything will be undone, and it can happen overnight.
A maze has rules that are easy to define and those rules don’t change. Come to a wall, you can either go left, right, or turn back.
A labyrinth may look like a maze so it may seem like there are rules, but a labyrinth is dynamic and can change as the last second. Come to a wall, maybe it can be smashed. Maybe you can go under it. Maybe the wall disappears every once in a while. Maybe you can turn it into a unicorn and ride it away. It may not even exist. There truly are no rules.
Startups are like labyrinths, there are no rules and everything is coninously changing. You have to be ready for what comes and even then you have to make sure you truly understand what you are faced with.
Even the roles of its players is not easy to define and changes often. There is no easily defined pipeline of work for people in a startup to pull from. There is just this big pile of a mess that needs to be picked up and organized. And it’s done by everyone.
One of the easiest hacks I learned for impressing customers, partners, and people in general is to follow up with them as fast as humanly possible. The moment you receive their ping, ping them back.
This does not mean completing the action that they may require of you. It simply means acknowledging them and their request.
People generally do not like confrontation and will go out of their way to compliment you even when you have totally screwed up. The easiest place to catch yourself doing this is after a mediocre meal. I’ll too easily let the owner know “it was great” when in fact the meal was a barely edible.
It is critical to be honest with yourself, how you run things, and the product you push out to customers. Whether it is software, physical goods, or a service, never blow smoke up your own ass. Listen to the negatives. You know where most of the rough edges are, which ones to keep and which ones to round out. But there are hidden ones, which is why secret diners are such a great way for restaurants to truly get to the problems they never knew existed.
It is hard to learn form the positives. One, because you accomplished something you already knew. But more importantly, you will actually be paying attention when a negative is brought to your attention.
People who are openly negative are rare, but honest. Listen and determine whether action is required or not.
I think that the focus on finding a tactic to solve the drug problem, quantity based offenses for example, is one that will not work. I also think decriminalization will not work.
Yes, I believe there would be progress, better services for addicts and lower incarceration numbers for example, if we were to decriminalize the buy end. But I do not believe that it would put much of a dent into criminal enterprises if we were to decriminalize the sell end. The idea that if you take away a criminal’s prime opportunity, he’ll go away, is foolish.
A real solution will be things like education, literacy, mentorships, and other such opportunities across the globe.
