Your product doesn't matter until churn and retention. This is a truth that's been burned into my head over the last several years of doing my best to build various businesses– some on my own, some from within, some as a consultant, and doing that work in multiple verticals all over the world. One thing consistently, and annoyingly, rings true... the biggest determination of success in nearly every business is the effectiveness and focus on marketing and sales (okay fine, unless you're OpenAI).
Quick note: Keep in mind this article really is to be read from the perspective of a business owner, CEO, or up and coming business owner, so if you're an operational person reading this, STICK AROUND! But also know that as far as you're concerned, the most important thing in the world is crushing operations. You doing that is what gives the owner/CEO the luxury to read and pursue what I have to say next, but knowing how the owner/CEO has to think should be some good awareness for you.
No one has any idea if your product is any good...
Great products do exist, and do matter if you can manage to sell that product, but the problem is that no one has any idea if your product is any good until they actually buy it, and no one will ever buy it unless you've successfully marketed and sold it to them. This is what I'm getting at when I say "until churn and retention". If your product is a subscription or ongoing relationship, people will notice after purchase that it's not any good... but, would they notice if it's 70% good? What if you spent all of your time trying to make the perfect product, could you ever really get past maybe 85% of a "perfect" product? Most importantly, how much would that improvement from 70% to 85% decrease churn and improve retention? 10%? 15%? How much time does it take to get from 70% to 85% of a "perfect" product? Does it make sense to keep pursuing a more perfect product, or should you just absolutely step on the gas on marketing and sales as the most important thing in your business? Would that gas into marketing and sales be a more significant impact than the 10-15% churn reduction? I believe that's an absolute, indisputable yes.
The truth I see on repeat
The truth I see on repeat that feels painful from a largely "operational" person's perspective (me 👋🏻), is amazing sales forgives all sins. Dumping cash on problems in business really can make things better. You can buy the talent you need, you can pay to create the systems and automation you don't have, you can buy better customer service, you can buy resources to refine your product, you can pay a consultant (me again 👋🏻) to buy much faster product delivery maturity. In short, amazing sales will out-perform an amazing product (nearly) every single time, but an amazing product can't do anything to out-perform a lack of sales.
You should be a sales company, that also provides a product
Which brings me to my point... what even is your product? If you have a great marketing and sales machine, I challenge that it doesn't really matter. If you can successfully build a marketing and sales machine that truly works, you can decide your product is... whatever you want it to be. You can even resell someone else's product. At the end of the day, nearly the only truly great thing about your entire business is your ability to sell whatever product you decide you sell.
It's all the same
New business owners get caught up on what sort of business they're passionate enough to build, sometimes spending years pining over the right decision of what they want to make and build for the rest of their life. Seasoned business owners pine over what product they want to pivot to, or add, or change, or what branch of their business they should expand or create. I challenge that it's all the same. No matter what product/business you decide to build, what do you have to do?
- Market it
- Sell it
- Deliver it
- Support it
- Repeat
There's these short intervals where your specific thing you do really matters and that's often just up front thinking about it, then everything after that is... the same. So, if that's true, are these product improvements, changes, pivots, new businesses even necessary? Could we just gas whatever it is we already do with a better machine to present it and sell it? How much do you already do that you've failed to tell your customers about and you've already moved on to what you need to add next?
What is the next big thing? AI?
An over focus on product gets us stuck on speculation like– what's next in the world? What is AI going to do to everything that we do now? Does my business hold up in an AI world? Does my job hold up in an AI world?
I think the best AI proof thing you could possibly do is to learn how to market and sell your ass off. If it turns out your product or business does die off in the changes AI brings, who cares? Sell the next thing, because you can build a machine to sell anything– and that's your real value, your differentiator: your ability to build a machine and SELL whatever you decide you want to.
Where do you really put your time and attention?
Other businesses you compete against, friends, peers, mentors, what trends do you see if you look through this lens of product focus vs marketing and sales focus? Do the best operations seem to make the biggest most successful businesses, or the best marketing and sales? How many times have you been beat by a business with a much worse product than you? How did they do that?
Be very honest with yourself... if the sales focused businesses/people are beating you but you feel proud of your "best" product, which one is actually better? Do you believe a lie about what really moves and grows your business, or what your value really is?
Love it so much that you can never do it again
I always tell the analogy of the photographer that decides they love photography so much they want to start a photography business... so they can actually now be a business owner and do as little photography as possible, stop doing what they actually love in order to grow the business, and be completely miserable.
I think a lot of us forget that, the act of running a successful business means we need to love and be passionate about building a business the same way that we were the passionate photographer, and pivot to abandon the idea of the "thing"– being the photographer. You're a business builder now. You need to make sure you enjoy building the business as your new passion, or you'll spend your time in the product... which, as I've beat into the ground at this point, doesn't really grow you effectively. You hire people to be passionate about the product. It's not you anymore. You end up IN the business, never working ON the business, and that's the slowest most frustrating version of what you dreamed you could build.
Wrap up
These are a bunch of reflections from a long time thinking. I know there's caveats, exceptions, and nuance all over the place to what I'm saying so if you made it this far, cut me some slack. This is a brain dump of my own experiences I hope helps someone out there that feels stuck in growing their business.
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