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Are You Smarter Than Your Customers?

Brands are acts of co-creation.
& brands are built upon and defined by what they sell.

a “product” or a “service” is defined by the customer, not by the producer.
It needs to work continuously on challenging itself in respect to the utility and value that its products or services contribute to customers.

As the old saw goes, the customer is always right.

The greatest danger…is to “know better” than the customer
what the product or service is or should be, how it should be bought, and what it should be used for.

The act of shopping is the seeking of transformation, but one of their choosing. Not one that is defined for them (that is for doctors and advisors).

Businesses are not paid to reform customers. They are paid to satisfy customers.

The real work is not in finding customers. It’s in embracing the customers that find you.

via The Daily Drucker by Peter F. Drucker 📚

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What stays internal?
What stays in the inner circle?
What gets shared wide?

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Is everything SEO now?

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Never underestimate the value of showing up.

Tech may be the medium of most interactions, but we still believe there are people behind (most) brands.

People who care show up.

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But what if you focused?

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Candidate’s follow-ups are a key signal in our hiring process. The badger quotient.

When determining whom to hire, employers care about how quickly they receive replies from the job seekers and service providers they contact.
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Fast replies signal a provider’s future responsiveness and increase hiring likelihood independently from other signals of future responsiveness, such as a worker’s quality (Study 2) or the content of the message sent (Study 4). Together, our studies identify a distinct signal that employees can control to increase their hireability: replying to messages quickly. Empirically, every minute counts.

From the paper: Speed Is a Signal: When Faster Replies Increase Hiring Likelihood

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Things can look great on paper. But paper isn’t reality.

The longer something is just on paper, the less you’re learning.

As Jaylen Brown said, throw the ball up.

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What’s Your Strategy In 3 Words or Less?

Many strategies contain multiple ideas, but cohesive strategies can boil everything down to one organizing principle.

There is no universal principle*.

It is hard to both focus and diversify.
Or expand and simplify.
Or change the experience and create a new primary channel.

If the principle changes, your strategy needs to change too.

*growth doesn’t count. It’s the outcome, not the foundation.

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Sometimes you don’t need to strategize or analyze or “dig in and ideate a plan.”

Sometimes you just need to put your head down and grind.

Ideas without execution are like opinions; everyone has them and few people care.

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Everyone focuses on preparing for the moment.

But what happens after the moment?

When it’s not longer new and the excitement’s worn off. But you have to keep going. Because you promised you would.