Business Is About People

My gramps was a businessman. He started out driving an RV around the Midwest selling eyeglasses. He got his big break when he got a contract to provide all the lenses for all the soldiers in the U.S. Army.

Over the years, he moved up in the ranks until his was a VP at one of the biggest eyeglass manufacturers and sellers in the world. By the end of his career, he was giving sales seminars all over--places like Monaco and Paris and New York. Old school.

He never gave it up either. Right before the end, we sat in his home office until 4am listening to jazz records and chain smoking. His XVP plaque on the desk. He told me the whole story. Showed me his notebooks commemorating all the milestones. He was a great man and I miss the him every day.

Nowadays, it's all SQL queries and Google analytics. We're trying to distill human desire into a numerical formula--as if the hopes, wants, fears, insecurities, triumphs, secrets and mysteries of the human spirit can be expressed in binary. It's just not reality.

This isn't a call for relinquishment of the communication technology that has brought us the modern economy. That's about as likely as Trump bringing manufacturing back to the Rust Belt. It's simply a reminder that business is about people. And technology is a poor substitute for people.

I spend a lot of time wondering what combination of keywords, in what order, presented in what format, is going to generate the most leads--and that's perfectly legitimate in my opinion. But what happens when I get a lead? What's the formula?

Another story. I lived in Berlin, Germany for a few years. It was an epic disaster, but that's yet another story. I couldn't get a job for the life of me. My two main clients' businesses folded at just about the same time and I was in a bad spot, pulling all-nighters for a catering company to make ends meet. I got dozens of interviews, which I should take as a compliment, but I could never actually land the job. Finally, at the end of my rope, during an interview as a marketing coordinator at a video game translation company, I gave up the pretense. I was just a human being talking to another human being. This woman's boyfriend was a struggling journalist. I knew that story. Oh boy did I know that story. We told stories, this woman and I. We connected. Our conversation had so little to do with marketing or video games or translation. In fact, I think I even told her I didn't care much for video games. But that's the job I got.

That's what you do when you get that lead. Stories. They've got one, and that's precisely WHY they have become a lead. People don't click on your ad or call your sales number or go to your website because of your SEO score (well, that helps), they do it because whatever you said to them fit into their story.

I'm not interested in being your marketing abacus. I'm interested in what you want out of life. I'm interested in the story you want to tell your grandchildren. You can bet I know how to run a successful SMM campaign. I can find the best keywords for your SEO efforts. I'll give you a KPI report that'll knock your socks off, colorful graphs and all. And there is certainly value in those things, don't get me wrong. We need to know what's going on. We need an idea of what's working and what isn't. But at the end of the day, you're profitable because people decided to buy from YOU.

My gramps knew that. That's why he stressed the importance of knowing someone's name, a firm handshake, a genuine smile, a witty joke to get someone's attention. Don't make the mistake of thinking your iPhone 7 or the updates to your CRM software actually offers us anything new about what it is to be human. Edward Bernays figured out what makes a customer tick before WWI, long before the Internet was a twinkle in Al Gore's eye. And I'm here to tell you, it's nothing new.

People still want to be admired, validated. They're still afraid of missing out. They still want a good looking member of the opposite sex to pay attention to them. They're still afraid of death. They still want to quit worrying about money. They still want to fit in while at the same time be seen as someone who blazes their own trail. They still want to create something memorable. They still want the love of their kids, the respect of their wife, to hold the desires of their husband. They want joy and adventure and real friends. And they all hate the taxman. And as broad and general as that all seems, the truth is, they all have a unique story and a unique plan for getting those things. Figure that out.

That's the closest to a formula as you're going to get.