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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:

1. Do customers recognize the problem?
2. Would they buy a solution?
3. Would they buy a solution from you?
4. Can you build it?

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