Starting Your Own Business, Part II

If I had an entrepreneurial mantra it would be: Business isn't about products and services, it is about  people and their experience with your business.

To start and maintain a business, we produce and deliver high-quality products and services; that is a given. Customers and other businesses expect us to have something to sell. But at the end of the day, our products and services won't grow our business to greatness, no matter their quality. At the end of the day, people buy experiences and they differentiate our businesses based on the quality of those experiences.

Here's a good example. Starbucks doesn't sell coffee, it sells the Third Place Experience--not home, not the office, but a place to get away, relax, read, listen to music or converse. That experience is what differentiates Starbucks and fuels its growth. We expect the coffee to be good, whether or not we purchase at Starbucks. But we return to our favorite coffee shop because of our experiences with the place, not the coffee.

My first question to any entrepreneur is "Do you have the capability, the ability, the vision, the personality and the attitude to create and deliver great experiences for every person your business touches, from the cleaning service people, to your employees, to your customers and to your community? If not, you better hire someone who possesses those characteristics and give them free reign to do so, or you risk dumping lots of money into a big hole from which you won't be able to dig yourself out.

Here are some of the necessary elements to create a business that produces and delivers great experiences:

• Leadership that believes good and great businesses place people above products, services and the bottom line.
• Leadership that has a vision to see what those experiences look like.
• Leadership that walks the talk and invests heavily in building the experience from the inside out by hiring for a business culture that places people first and then putting in place the ongoing training and communications to inspire and motivate every employee to take responsibility for creating great experiences.
• Leadership that puts in place a monitoring process to watch over the experience and to ensure it becomes and remains the best it can be.

According to an article in today's Customer Think, written by Simon Kriss, the president and CEO of the Sagatori research that he has gathered from executives reveals that the customer experiences boils down to three things:

1. The expectation (Do we disappoint, meet or exceed customers expectations?)
2. The knowledge (Do we have the knowledge to meet or exceed the customers wants, needs and desires?
3. The person (Does each experience produce a perception that the experience is personalized?)

No matter whether or not you launch a one-person or a tens-of-thousands-of-persons business, the quality of experience will determine your success. How you treat every person your business touches is what makes your business different from your competitors. Do you have what it takes to become great? Or is your business about putting money in your pocket and not about reaching out to others in ways that benefit everyone? Although these are not the only two pictures of a business (experiential vs. bottom line), they are at each end of the spectrum.

I believe that those who choose people first may grow more slowly in the beginning but, like the turtle, will pass the rabbit and benefit from great riches, both personally and monetarily.

P.S. Check out Seth's [More] or (Less), where he talks about how people interact with the world. It's just a different way to discuss putting people, their experiences and how they view them.