So, you want to grow your business; make more money.
You hire a consulting firm, a branding agency or do a bunch of workshops with your team discussing complex business strategies, distribution strategies, online opportunities and, eventually, expensive promotional strategies and advertising campaigns.
And as you get lost in endless discussions, complex growth projects and interminable task lists you end up forgetting the basics, what really matters.
The point is: no matter if you are a dentist, a lawyer, a carpenter, a manager, a CEO, a counter clerk, a business owner, you only make money, in the long term, when you help people.
Think on this:
You only make money when you help people.
In fact, there is another alternative to make money, but it works only in the short term: steal.
And many times, as people get lost in complex discussions about business growth strategies, the line separating the two alternatives get blurred. People start pushing services and products their customers don’t need and making promises they can’t deliver.
This is “marketing” some will say. But it is not. Unfortunately due to bad usage, this word has lost its original meaning. Once it was about better understanding your customers and truthfully trying to help them, not about misguiding them.
It is easy to get lost in semantic wars and complex business pseudo-science. It is easy to lose sight of what really matters. Complexity is part of life and you have to embrace it, but you must keep a compass at hand to keep you on track, back to the basics, when you get lost. When the goal is to grow your business you should always ask a simple question:
How
the plan I’m building,
or the communication I’m making,
or the promotion,
or the distribution I’m establishing,
will TRULY help my customers
?
If it is hard to find the answer, maybe you are wasting your time and resources, because you probably won’t make money, in the long term, with such investment.