He told me that I was never going to be successful with that understanding. He went on to explain what was then the obvious to me, but it’s definitely a point worth repeating in this blog. 

 

So what business was I / am I in? I am in the personal service to my customers business. When I remember that principle, I am successful. When I forget it, I am not successful. It’s that simple. 

 

What does it mean to be in the personal service of my customers? It means to put service to them ahead of making money. The funny thing is that when you do that, you are more profitable in the long run because you will retain customers longer, and you will get more referral business. 

 

It means that you design your service business around your customers needs. That means you need to know what they want and need. One of the big lessons that many people have forgotten from the dot com bubble is that many on-line business went crazy developing products that people weren’t asking for because it made sense in the minds of the developers. 

 

Intuit poured millions into developing an on-line version of quicken that nobody wanted. It bombed. You can read more about that story in the book “The Breakthrough Company” by Ken McFarland. 

 

Perhaps you remember the on-line grocery delivery business. Utter flop. Nobody wanted it. 

 

One of the big winners from the dot com bubble was Amazon.com. Why did Amazon prevail? It served an actual need (huge selection of books to anyone with on-line access). 

 

So the question is, what business are you in?