What Your Customers are Really Buying
Every customer is buying care regardless of what you are selling. They want you to hold their hand, make them feel good, or important, or beautiful, or smart.
They want you to communicate with them and treat them with respect. Customers know when you truly want to take care of them. They can feel It.
Care is more important than the product or service you sell!
Is your business selling care to your customers?
Read more: Business Rule #1 - Care for Your Customers
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The Truth about Working for Yourself
Break the chains! Become self-employed! Start a business! No more bosses. No more pointless meetings. Work when you want and how you want. You decide. Sounds exciting. Wouldn’t it be great to say, “I quit! I’m breaking out on my own. I’m in charge.” Very romantic but not very accurate.
Working for yourself and building a business can have huge rewards - financially and personally. I encourage everyone to investigate starting a business and I also encourage everyone to understand what comes with business ownership.
What is it really like to work for yourself? What is it really like starting a business?
When you work for yourself, you are in charge, but not as you think. You are in charge of satisfying your new bosses. Yes… Your new bosses!
“Wait a minute!” you are thinking. I work for myself. I set myself free.
Now that you are free, free of your old boss, you have replaced this person with dozens of new bosses. Who are these bosses? They come in four groups. Fail them at your peril.
Meet Your New Bosses
1. The Government
When you start a business you must consider the government first. Federal taxes, state taxes, municipal taxes, labor laws, health codes, business licenses are some of the countless ways the government shows you who is boss.
Do you want to do things your way? That’s great as long as you do it the government’s way.
2. Customers
They can hire you and they can fire you. Cater to their needs or you are out. Customers are still much better than your old boss.
In almost any business you will have many customers. It’s unlikely that all of your customers will dump you at the same time. When you had a job there was probably only one person who was directly responsible for your fate. In business, many customers decide your fate.
Customers are the easiest of all bosses to deal with. Offer them good value paired with good service and your chances of success are also good.
3. Employees
“My employees are my bosses? What? I pay them. I’m in charge!” You are in charge, in some ways, but… You do not have absolute control. At times it will feel as if you don’t have any control at all.
For your business to truly excel, you must create a working environment in which you employees want to contribute, not just put in their time so that they can cash a paycheck. You work for them so that they are able to do their work.
If you still don’t believe employees are bosses, be late one day with the payroll and you will understand who’s in charge.
4. Financial backers
Lastly, if you have investors or bankers who have given you money to launch and grow your business, you have just added another layer of bosses.
Your investors want to profit from their investments in your company. To ensure that they profit, the will stipulate how the money is to be used and how it will be paid back. You have to play by their rules.
Money from others always comes with strings attached. Always!
Where You Have Control
Now that you have so many new bosses, it may seem that you have no control whatsoever. You do have control over many critical aspects of the business - product and service, pricing, marketing, and operations. You have control in the areas most people think of when considering starting a business.
The coolest part of working for yourself is that you have total control of how you handle your new bosses.
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What really counts.
Money isn’t important to a startup. Huh? You are probably thinking, “how could he say that? I can’t possibly start a business without money.”
Drive, creativity, and the ability to make magic happen are far more important than money. Too much money is a detriment. You lose the hunger because you have money to back you up. Plus, the only way to create a great product or service is to throw your brain into it, not your money at it.
Do you have the ability to make the magic happen?
Photo credit: Kevin
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Which road?
The road to business success is not clearly marked. Every business book, business website, and business guru makes the process of launching a business seem like a simple step-by-step progression. You think, “if I perform Step A, then Step B, then Step C, as proscribed, my success is guaranteed.” It’s not.
You must choose your own road and it’s never easy. Many roads will take you to your destination, but, which one is best? Choose one and you may have to double back and start again. Choose another and you reach a dead-end. Choose a third and you hit a fork in the road. One will take you directly to your destination.
At every step you must choose. So which road will you take?
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Word Cloud Visualization
Curious Business represented as a word cloud. Very cool! A word cloud is a great visual representation what your site is really taking about.
I like what Curious Business is talking about. What is your site talking about? You can find out at Wordle.
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People say, “don’t start a business!”
You might think, why would people be against me starting a business? Don’t they want me to realize my dream?” Keep in mind, most people are risk averse. They are afraid you might lose money or fail somehow and they don’t want to see you get hurt. They have heard that 95% of all new businesses fail within the first five years and wonder why would your new business would be any different.
Some people you know will be secretly jealous. You are working towards a dream and they are not. They will try to convince you not to do it so they don’t feel bad about themselves.
Big Giant Warning!
Sometimes, when people try to dissuade you from starting a business, they are doing it because your idea truly stinks and will never fly. Don’t be so blinded with love for your new venture that you are unable to recognize when others are right. This is very hard to do!
You make the call. Are you ready to start a business?
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Does it all really suck?
A few days ago, a good friend and I were bitching and moaning about why people always seem to be bitching and moaning about about how everything sucks. Did you get that?
My friend stated that, ‘today the average Joe has life better than the King of England did one hundred years ago. We have access to antibiotics and elastic in our socks. I don’t know what everyone is complaining about.’
Now I haven’t the slightest idea if the King of England had access to elastic in his socks but I get the point. Today we have innumerable inventions, products, services, conveniences, and modes of travel unparalleled in human history. Historically everything rocks! - las Vegas, iPhones, antibiotics, and Jet Skis. Just for kicks toss in washing machines, automobiles, air conditioning and the Snuggie. Not even the King of England had a Snuggie.
Think about modern travel. Today, I can board a plane in Los Angeles and arrive in New York in about five hours. Add two hours for the tedious lines to show i.d. and remove my shoes for inspection and my total travel time comes to seven hours. While, I am performing the required tedious acts, everyone around me is bellyaching about how travel is worse than it ever has been. Worse than it’s ever been?
Take the Stagecoach
When I am in a pissy mood, I feel like screaming at them for God’s sake if an extra twenty minutes in the security line offends you so profoundly why don’t you take the next stagecoach out of town? You should arrive in New York promptly in three months. Of course I don’t say that. I grumble along with them that travel used to be so much better.
If everything really sucks more than it’s ever sucked before, I propose that we do things the way they were done before all this suckiness started. Our butter should come from a churn not the Safeway. Travel should be done quickly and safely on horseback. Communication should be done by smoke signals not by iphones. And when you need surgery, anesthesia will come in the form of a bottle of rum. How does that sound?
You might be thinking what does this have to do with curiosity? Isn’t the blog about curiosity? I am fascinated as to how we all decided that life sucks more than it has ever sucked before. Don’t people ever stop to think how things really were in the past? I agree that some things do suck a bit more compared than they used to in the very recent past. But do things truly suck historically? Being curious as to how things in life truly compare might just give you a new perspective.
Just remember, you have elastic in your socks. Is everything really all that bad?
Photo Credit: StickBus
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A Business Question for the Ages
What will make your business successful?
a. a smile
b. cheap beer
c. free food
d. all of the above
Let’s review your answers.
If you answered c. free food, you missed the mark. Free food might help your business but alone it won’t make it successful. Why? Because it’s free. There’s no profit in free. You have to match your free offering with something that makes you money. Free food is the extra value you add.
If you answered b. cheap beer, you are getting warmer. People will give you money for cheap beer. Now you have a chance to make a profit because some cash is coming in. Cheap beer and free food make a good combination. The free food will help you sell more cheap beer. Cheap beer is your good product.
If you answered c. a smile, you almost nailed it. Great service – a sincere smile counts as great service – sells more to your current customers and keeps bringing them back. Good service is a least as important as a good product.
If you answered d. all of the above, you obviously know what it takes to make your business successful. If you don’t combine all elements - good product, extra value, and great service - you won’t earn any new customers and will find it difficult to maintain the customers you do have.
Are you forgetting a smile, cheap beer, or free food in your business?
Photo credit: Unhindered by Talent
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Love Taking Care of People. Really! You have to.
Business is about people, yet the majority of businesses treat people as an afterthought. Product, systems, marketing, ROI, procurement, payments, profits, and busy-work consume the energies of business. Where are the people? Customers get factored in as an afterthought. Employees? Well squeeze them a little harder. They are on the payroll after all. Suppliers? We can’t worry about them. We’re the customer.
Care for people. The most important rule in business.
If you plan to start a business, stop and think about your motives. People often start businesses because THEY love something; gourmet coffee, restoring cars, or developing software applications. In the end, their businesses struggle and then fail. Why? Because they don’t love taking care of people. They love their product or the process or the idea of profits, but they don’t care enough about people.
If you are currently employed, where does the business focus its energies? Do people matter? Or, does the almighty that’s-how-we-do-things take precedence? How can you take care of people to make things better?
If you own your own business? Do you love taking care of your people? Or, are you like many business owners who are so busy just trying to survive another day that you don’t focus on people? As a business owner, you would probably love someone to take care of you for just one day. Take care of people better and they will eventually take care of you.
How do you care for your people?
Read More: Every Customer is Buying Care
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Applied curiosity will take your business and your life from just getting by to thriving, from just fine to the best in town. It’s your curiosity of what is possible that makes the difference and propels you ahead.
Curious Business provides tools and inspiration to harness the power of curiosity.
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