Greg's Right FIT #400

Quick notes to help you grow your business in less time with less effort. . . sometime next week. 

In this issue: 

- Thoughts on Perspective
- Being Human
- Random Stuff

Thoughts on Perspective

• I'm emphasizing perspective next week. Business is important, but spend four hours with a baby or an old person, and it doesn't come up. A good reminder.

• Don't think of your people as something to optimize. We optimize robots. Help your people offload tasks to the new technology while keeping them focused on what humans do best: being helpful, inventing, and deliberating with others. 

• It may be too late to become a child prodigy, but there's time next week to start learning a new skill. Try it. Take a class. 

• This month, when you're interviewing new teammates, don't be so serious. Research is showing that humor keeps people loose and aids productivity. Start during interviews.

Being Human - It's not the service, it's you

"In God we trust. All others must bring data."
– W. Edwards Deming

A synopsis of a recent conversation for you.

"Greg, among the things we're working on for 2024 is finding more customers for service X. Is that something you do?"

It is. Tell me more about the service. 

"We rolled it out a couple of years ago based on a project we did for a big client. They love it and get great results. We need more people using the service."

Besides that customer, are others using the service?

"Some, but not as many as we need. If you can help with that it would be great. It's the CEO's pet project." 

Tell me about the customers that say no. Have any of them asked for this service explicitly? Or is this more like an internal project everyone thinks should be a success? 

"Like I said, for the customers that use it, it's great. We just need more customers using it, so we can scale."

Is it possible mass adoption isn't possible? That customers don't want it?

"No. It's something they need. Again, we have customers using it right now."

As we talked, I listened for evidence that the target market wants the service. The reason my friend thinks adoption is low is that his people can't sell it. He may be right. However, it may be that a lot of people don't want to buy it. 

How do you know the difference?

Start by going to the target market without the intention to sell. Go to them to learn more about the problems/results this service provides. Sometimes the perfect solution isn't ready for mass adoption. Before you invest a lot in doubling down on the sales effort, invest a little getting some evidence. 

That's what we're going to do here. Target market interviews, current customer interviews, and recording current sales conversations. We're going to invest a little before investing a lot. 

(though they've already invested a lot. . .so, we're going to invest a little more, before investing a lot more) 

Sometimes the problem isn't them, it's us. 

Random Stuff

“The spider-web of protective forgetfulness is woven over the mouth of the cave which conceals the raw head and bloody bones of our misfortunes." – Mr. Crowley

The summer is coming to an end. Fall is around the corner. It's dry outside, so I get up early and wet down the garden and flowers. And every morning I get a face full of spider web. 

I doubt the neighbors are watching, but if they are, they get treated to the man next door jumping back, waving his arms, fending off some invisible foe, and doing a full body shudder. The dance of the guy stuck in a spider web. 

The webs are all over. The pergola, between trees, bushes, gates, doorways, everywhere. The most common one I get tangled in is a strong single thread across the top with a delicate bug catcher below. I only see the webs in the morning, but that strong single thread I may bump into any time. I like these big brown spiders. They're not like the tiny jumping ones. I turned over a garden bin and disturbed one of those little guys. I apologized and tried to move him out of harms way, and you know what he did? He jumped up on my wrist and bit me! Rude!

Partially to spite the bad spider, but mostly to waste a minute, I decided to learn more about the good spiders, (besides the web in the face thing) and you know what I learned about the Furrow Spider? 

They eat their webs every morning. Then make a new web overnight.

Fascinating. Like making the bed I guess. Or setting up and tearing down a tent at a festival. 

Years ago I did just that over this very weekend. Three days at a fair in Virginia Beach. I sold t-shirts, tropical shirts, and sarongs for the ladies (or the confident man). I lugged boxes to and from the rental van, setting up every morning, breaking down every night. Pretending to be the Mad Gringo, ditching neckties for tropical gear. 

It may be the spider bite talking, but I miss those days and wonder if I did it again, would it be different this time? 

Nah. That's dumb. Definitely the spider bite talking.