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Ma5: Nobody Cares Why no one cares about your business, and no one should, and that’s a relief.
Air date: Friday, 23rd Oct. 2020, 08 : 40 AM Pacific/US.
1 You You care You care, in your own way, about your business. But it’s good news that no one else does, because there are lots of downsides, and few upsides.
On early adopters, see Ries.1
On wireheading, see Russell.2
There’s not enough care to go around Do you care about the things you pay for? Probably not, because there’s not enough care in a person’s life to go around.
On social vs. market norms, see Ariely.3
People who care pay attention. At first that seems great. But what if it goes away? Or what if it becomes a distraction? What if they see things you don’t want them to see?
Going live, humility If you imagine a big launch, a big day, you’re going to do strange things in anticipation of that, like getting strangers’ email addresses.
The Dai-ichi Life Insurance saleswoman, Mrs. Shibata As a counterpoint, see Broughton4 on Mrs. Shibata and her excellence at sales—and getting contact information.
Entrepreneur meet-ups Don’t say ‘that’s a good idea’ or ‘I’d pay for that’, because it’s hard to know whether such things are true.
Experiments on customers On experiments on customers, see Ries.5
On Intuit and Turbotax experiments, see Ries.6
Site note: On Intuit and OKRs, see Doerr.7
2 Friends and Family—‘you need to get a job’ On telling friends and family about what it’s like, see the Cathy Hughes interview:
“That’s when I was in a sleeping bag and cooking on a hotplate and washing up in the public bathroom in the radio station…. And when you’re starting off in business, you have to be so very careful about who you discuss your hard times with because those who love you and care for you the most like your mother, like your best friend—they’ll give you the worst damn advice in the world. ‘You need to get a job! You shouldn’t be sleeping on the floor in a sleeping bag!’ ”8
Friends and family pay attention to your business not because they care about it, but because they care about you.
If there were people who cared The attention might be more distracting than profitable. Do you want more founders, owners, shareholders? Or people who act like they are those things?
You want good shareholders, like Bill Campbell9, not bad shareholders.
And you want your mistakes to be missed and forgotten, not brought to your attention two hours (or two weeks) after you already fixed them.
Fans vs. customers Apple crazies are fans, and only customers incidentally. You don’t want your fans to convince you something is good when it’s not.
Fishhooks You have to get rid of the 50,000 things that will stick into a customer and prevent them from getting to your shop.
Anecdote: Bonefish Grill vs. Chili’s.
Customers don’t have enough care to overcome the fishhooks themselves.
3 Customers Site note: we need better words than ‘employee’, and ‘team’.
Customers don’t care, mountains don’t care Customers don’t care.10
The mountains don’t care—but we do.11
You can deal with most dangerous things that ‘don’t care’ by a modest effort. Customers (who don’t care) are much harder to deal with. That’s (perhaps) the whole subject of business.
4 Nobodies I.e. people who are not in your business, your family, your circle of friends, or your customers or prospective customers.
You’ll probably hear a lot from these people, if you’re doing something worth doing.
Toxics Consider the difference between (really) good employees12 and bad employees, toxic people. Toxics are nobodies.
5 Weekend thought It’s Friday, so we want to give you something to chew on over the weekend.
Mark Cook’s four prudent, unanswerable questions Consider Ries13 on (Kodak Gallery VP of Products) Mark Cook’s four questions:
The Steve Jobs approach Compare Jobs (as quoted by Isaacson):
“Some people say, ‘Give the customers what they want.’ But that’s not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they’re going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, ‘If I’d asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, ‘A faster horse!’ ’ People don’t know what they want until you show it to them. That’s why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.”14
If you’re trying to build something really new, perhaps Cook’s questions don’t matter.
They don’t know Consider cars vs. horse and buggy: how would the buggy owners have known?
Consider motorcycles vs bicycles: how would the bicyclists have known?
An invention on the spot Powered monitor speakers with LED levels on the front. Right??
6 Friday It’s Friday—time to catch up, get ahead. Go to work.
References Ariely, D. (2009). Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions. Harper Perennial, Kindle ed. ISBN: 978-0061958724. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0061958724
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0061958724
https://lccn.loc.gov/2008273863
Broughton, P. D. (2012). The Art of the Sale: Learning from the Masters About the Business of Life. Penguin. ISBN: 978-1594203329. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1594203329
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1594203329
https://lccn.loc.gov/2011040209
Doerr, J. (2017). Measure What Matters: OKRs: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth. Penguin Random House. ISBN: 978-0241348482. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0241348482
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0241348482
https://lccn.loc.gov/2018002727
Hughes, C., & Raz, G. (2017). Radio One: Cathy Hughes. NPR’s How I Built This with Guy Raz. 14th Aug. 2017.
https://www.npr.org/2017/09/29/542650845/radio-one-cathy-hughes Retrieved 23rd Oct. 2020.
Isaacson, W. (2011). Steve Jobs. Simon & Schuster. ISBN: 978-1451648539. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1451648539
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1451648539
https://lccn.loc.gov/2011045006
Molenaar, D. (2009). Mountain’s Don’t Care, But We Do. Mountaineers Books. ISBN: 978-0615293240. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0615293240
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0615293240
Norris, D. (2014). The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch. Dan Norris. ISBN: 978-1502472397. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1502472397
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1502472397
Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup. Currency / Crown / Penguin Random House. ISBN: 978-0307887894. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0307887894
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0307887894
https://lccn.loc.gov/2011012100
Russell, S. (2019). Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control. Viking. ISBN: 978-0525558613. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0525558613
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0525558613
https://lccn.loc.gov/2019029688
Salter, A. (2003). Predators. Basic Books. ISBN: 978-0465071732. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-0465071739
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-0465071739
https://lccn.loc.gov/2002015846
Sutton, G. (2012). Run Your Own Corporation: How to Legally Operate and Properly Maintain Your Company Into the Future. BZK Press. ISBN: 978-1937832100. Searches:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=978-1937832100
https://www.google.com/search?q=isbn+978-1937832100
Index Bill Campbell, 1
Bonefish Grill, 2
Chili’s, 2
Dai-ichi Life Insurance, 1
Henry Ford, 2
Intuit, 1
Mark Cook, Kodak Gallery VP of Products, 2
OKRs, 1
Shibata, Mrs., 1
Steve Jobs, 2
Turbotax, 1
wireheading, 1
1Ries (2011) pp. 94-95.
2Russell (2019) pp. 205-208.
3Ariely (2009) p. 75.
4Broughton (2012) p. 81
5Ries (2011) p. 4.
6Ries (2011) p. 33.
7Doerr (2017) p. 102 ff.
8Hughes & Raz (2017) at 24:00 min to 25:20 min.
9Doerr (2017) p. xii and p. 247 ff.
10Norris (2014) p. 39, p. 101, and see also the Audible edition for elaboration and commentary on the text.
11See Salter (2003) pp. 159-160, and Molenaar (2009).
12On ‘regular’ employees and ‘key’ employees, and employment agreements and considerations, see Sutton (2012) pp. 84-85.
13Ries (2011) p. 64.
14Isaacson (2011) p. 567