The Underdog Effect

How indispensable are you?

[This is not a political post, so please don't send me notes or comments about politics. They will be ignored. :)]

Actual (but perhaps not 100% accurate) conversation that I participated in this weekend at a BBQ with someone I just met. You enter in the middle of a 5-minute conversation about technology...

Guy I just met: I couldn't live with out texting. Makes like so much better.

Me: I've never really texted much since I've always stuck with a basic cell phone, though I did just breakdown this week and get an iPhone. Maybe I'll start texting more now.

Guy: Oh man, I'd love to get an iPhone, except that Apple is--I probably shouldn't start talking politics, I just met you--but Apple is waaay left. In terms of their politics, I mean. Way left.

Me: Well, you know, they're in the Bay Area, so our way left is like their center.

Guy: Still, I don't think I could buy one of their phones because they are so left. But so is Google and I'm not going to stop using Google. [smiles and nudges me.]

[scene.]

Substitute any objection for this gentleman's aversion to "leftist" corporations. Are you Apple or Google in your customer's mind?

How indispensable are you?

Or put more directly: are the tangible benefits of your product so great that people will continue to do business with you even if they disagree with you?

How indispensable are you?

Don't get me wrong. I don't think your values should be out of step with those of your customers. That'd be dumb. I'm just saying that creating a kick-ass, truly remarkable product goes a long way. Start there.

Only the average care about averages.

David over at 37 Signals has a great post today about the problems with averages. It boils down to this: making decisions based on averages (average wait times, average turn-around, average production) means your making decisions on flawed data.

If a call center answers its first 900 calls in 1 minute and its next 100 calls in 20 minutes, it's average pick-up time is just under 3 minutes. Not too bad. Problem is, 10% of its customers waited a painful 20 minutes. Not too good.

Reading David's post will give you some better metrics than averages for measurement. I just want to point out that no underdog brand ever got anywhere by focusing on averages.

Underdog brands focus on outliers.

They measure where they are having the most success and they do more if it. They find where they are failing miserably and they learn from it. And though it may not be wise to get mired in analyzing extreme outliers--Black Swans--you can usually learn a lot more from outliers than averages.

Don’t mistake habit for loyalty.

Most of your customers are not loyal.

They are lazy and self-centered. (We all are.) This doesn’t make them loyal, it makes them habitual.

Your customers did not make their first purchase from you out of some deep-seeded personal devotion (that’s loyalty). They bought because they thought you could solve a problem or reduce a pain or provide some pleasure . And they continue to buy from you because you met or exceeded expectations or because it is too much of a pain in the ass to find another alternative (that’s habit).

Buying from you is a habit.

Habits are not always bad. Exercising is a good habit. But being delusional about having loyal customers, when you actually have habitual customers is dangerous. 

What Jeff Bezos knows and what challenger brands can learn from it.

Today, as you most certainly know, Amazon bought online shoe powerhouse Zappos for over $900 million. Pretty cool.

Despite being the largest online retailer in the universe, Amazon has always kept an underdog mindset. This is demonstrated well by the video Jeff Bezos made for the employees of Zappos (and the rest of us). In it, he lays out "everything he knows."  It's a short list:

1. Obsess over customers.
2. Invent.
3. Think long term.
4. It's always day one.

The complete video is below and worth watching. But before we get to that, I want to make three thoughts of my own:

1) These  truisms are guideposts for every underdog brand, whether you're Zappos, rizen, or Joe's plumbing.

2) Isn't it amazing how simple and easy-to-understand "everything" Jeff Bezos know is? Life ain't that complicated. Business is even less so. Keep it simple and you'll be amazed how far it takes you.

3) Jeff's point #4 is like a self-help book in just four words. You are only trapped by the inertia of the status quo if you to choose to be. As Seth point's out, there are dozens of ways you can change everything. But it is up to you.

Here's Jeff's video. It's worth watching.

One (remarkable) thing a year.

[It’s been awhile since I’ve posted here. Sorry about that. Been busy with our other blog, Slingflower and the joys of running a business. Now back to your regularly (un)scheduled content…]

What if every year between now and your death you created something truly remarkable?

Something—a book, company, a non-profit organization, a better way of doing business, blog, a conference—that was a gift to the world, but also a gift to yourself. Something that you would look back on fondly regardless of whether or not it was a commercial success.

The results would not be only life altering, they would be life confirming. Start at age 40 and die at age 75.2 and you’ll have chalked up 35 amazing projects. Not bad. Most people haven’t accomplished that (or at least they can’t remember them). One remarkable project a year is do-able. You can break it down into small pieces and attack day-by-day or just dedicate a week a year to creating it.

The probability that one or more of those projects will have a positive impact on the life of at least one person is huge. Heck, with 35 projects, the chances that one or more of them impact 10 or 10,000 or 1,000,000 are pretty damn good. And the likelihood that of one of those 35 projects (or your overall effort) will inspire one of your future ancestors is nearly guaranteed.

And what if they don’t? Say (however incredibly unlikely) that all of your efforts are completely ignored.

It won’t matter. You will still have given something incredibly significant to the world: your best.

Stop talking. Start doing.

I'm very proud of my wife. A couple of days ago she joined the entrepreneur club with the launch of Slingflower, the world's first social media-driven floral delivery service. (If you live in the Boise area, check it out on Twitter or Facebook.)

While it has only been a couple of days, she has deemed it a success based on her number of sales, Twitter Followers, Facebook Fans, overall buzz, and amount of fun she's having. Here are some things any would-be entrepreneur can learn from her approach:

1) Stop talking. Start doing. Nothing happened until she started, slowly but surely, putting in the time and effort to stop planning and start executing.

2) Have low expectations. Jennifer's not trying to get rich, she's just trying to build a cool little company.

3) Keep the overhead low. She's using PayPal while she's in Beta. She's using GoDaddy hosting. She's doing everything she can to keep expenses down.

4) Have friends. Many of her early sales came from friends who want her to succeed. As Seth Godin said, the first thing you need is 10 customers. Several of Slingflower's first 10 were friends. THANKS!

5) Be different. And not marginally. If people can't see your difference and can't express it themselves, then your story is too difficult to share.

6) Focus on today, tomorrow will take care of itself. She's taking it one delivery at a time. Get through the first one, then think about the next. No rush. Things will be fine. (see #2)

7) Don't let perfect stand in your way. This doesn't mean it's OK to suck. It just means that it is OK to launch fast and get input so you can...

8) Be flexible. Jennifer already has plans to tweak the service based on customer input. Now, she's not going to change her vision. Slingflower is not meant to be for everyone. But she is going to adapt were it seems appropriate.

RFPs and underdogs don't blend.

[This post was also posted on Rizen's 314 Blog.]

This one is tough to write. A couple of my favorite clients are the result of Rizen Creative responding to an RFP (that’s "request for proposal," for those who don’t speak in acronyms).  RFPs are used by organizations to efficiently (for the RFP issuer, at least) get details about services, prices, etc. from vendors and ostensibly initiate a sort of bidding war.

In an effort to prove accountability and reduce favoritism/corruption/nepotism government organizations are often required by law to go through the RFP process. Fine. So what I’m about to write only applies to those NOT forced by threat of arrest to issue RFPs:

A true underdog should never issue an RFP.

Underdogs and RFPs don’t mix for many reasons:

1| RFPs are inherently selfish. 90% of the effort, thinking and creativity involved in RFPs is pushed from the issuer to the respondent. Healthy relationships (with your girlfriend, parents, friends or creative agency) don’t begin so one-sided.

2| RFPs attempt to get something for nothing. Or at least something for real cheap. TANSTAAFL: There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. It’s a law of economics. Sorry.

3| RFPs encourage bait and switch. What is promised and what is delivered often bear no resemblance. RFPs encourages those who respond to act as politicians – what great ideas come from politicians?

4| RFPs reward the wrong things. Answer right, win the business. Firms who are forced to respond to a lot of RFPs hire specialists who know little about the craft, but do know how to write RFP responses. In even more cases, RFPs reward “gamblers” who have the time/insanity to throw man hours at responding to an RFP.

5| RFPs ignore the most important part of any working relationship. The relationship. As in a state of connectedness between people. Remember those? You like the good ones.

6| RFPs are inefficient. The basics (How much does this sorta thing cost? Do you have capacity? What’s your approach? Are you qualified?) can be answered through referrals, web site research, and a couple of emails. If you're in charge of your organizations marketing and don't already have a focused list of companies that would likely be a good fit for you, you're not paying enough attention.

7| RFPs make everything a commodity. By definition, extraordinary service and work isn't.

8| RFPs provide false sense of impartiality. Points or no points. Committee or no committee. Process or no process. The decision will be made by humans. Humans suck at impartiality. In fact, that's what makes us useful. To pretend otherwise is idiotic.

9| RFPs provide a false sense of confidence. Just because you put a lot of time, energy and money into something doesn’t make it great. It just helps you to convince yourself that it's great.

10| RFPs limit your options. To those that are on your list. To those that actually have the time and inclination (at that very moment) to respond. To those that don’t despise RFPs.

I know what you’re thinking: sore loser. Damn right!

I am sick and tired of selling my soul to complete RFPs when the decision was really predetermined (*shock*). I am sick of being asked to solicited for estimates and proposals with no opportunity to meet the humans I’m going to be working with. I am sick and tired of being asked to give my team’s brilliant, money-making, customer-endearing ideas away for free.

So I’m not going to do it.

But please, still send us your RFPs. We promise you will get a response, just not the one you expected.

Buy The Hole

This may be another crazy idea. But some of the best ideas start out that way. I want the citizens of Boise to consider buying the hole at 8th & Main. Learn, contribute your thoughts, etc. here.

Information revolution is (finally) here.

There's a whole lot of energy being wasted debating whether or not newspapers should disappear. It's a waste of energy because there are bigger forces at work here. Yes, Virginia, the information revolution that we've been promised for so long is finally here.

Just as the industrial revolution began in the late 18th Century, but wasn't felt until the mid-19th Century, the information revolution began in the late 1970s (yes, I know computers were invented almost 50 years before that, but they didn't have mass impact until the introduction of the PC) and we're just now feeling its most dramatic impact: a mass shift in how receive and share information.

And we're just at the beginning.

Just as the timber industry held on for about 50 years after the adoption of mechinized logging, many newspapers will likely cling to a challenged existence for a number of years. But their fate is sealed: the democratization of information is here -- for better or for worse -- and newspaper closings are simply a the canary in the mine.

Local TV stations, radio stations (including my beloved local NPR affiliate), and magazines are all in danger of becoming absolete, first to their respective audiences, then quickly to their advertisers, if they can't get back to the primary purpose of any business -- creating substantial value.

Duh, right?! I wish. Instead of focusing on creating value, too many media outlets (yes, you can extrapolate this to many companies -- including creative firms) are focused on cutting costs, reducing risk, etc. But no matter how fast they run, they won't get anywhere until they get off the treadmill.

Underdog brands, being offensive-minded, get it. They are using the perceived market chaos to seize opportunity. To jump off the treadmill. To run freely. They (you!) aren't looking to be the last logging company. They're looking to be the first in something new, something fresh, something...

Ignite Boise -- it's not just for geeks and marketers anymore.

I've unintentional neglected to mention on this blog that I am actively involved with Ignite Boise. More importantly, I've failed to mention that you're invited. While tickets are long gone, you can still come by showing up at the Egyptian Theatre in downtown Boise at 5:30. Just wait in the general admission line and, viola!, you're in.

I hope you can make it. It's gonna be serious fun.

-Jeff