Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Snap Out of It

Snap out of it and stop feeling sorry for yourself. I say this because every day I hear how bad things are going. Right now I am creating a video companion for a Pearson Prentice Hall textbook about entrepreneurship for high school and college students called How To Start and Operate a Small Business. The author, Steve Mariotti, is the founder of NFTE, the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship. I've already done video companions for over 40 college books but reading Steve's book and thinking about his target market put a smile on my face.

That smile caused me to snap out of it. Like so many people, I've had a strange dull feeling that perhaps my work isn't very important and that maybe I should just give up. The smile came to me because Steve's book reminded me of why I'm in business in the first place. We all must be in business to create and keep customers. Actually that is Peter Drucker's definition of business and I memorized it years ago.

When things get hard and you get discouraged, it is best to go out and talk to customers. When Don MacInnis did this, his customers told him exactly what new product they wanted him to develop. That product is now his number one seller.

Snap out of it and go talk to your customers.