I've been studying business most of my life. I just didn't always know that's what I was doing. A lot of what I learned about business didn't come from a classroom. It didn't come from a business book. It came from working, selling, trying things, failing at things, and mostly from watching people. I've always been a people watcher.
I watch what people say. I watch what they do. And I've learned to pay attention when those two things aren't quite the same. That's taught me a lot about business.
Retail Taught Me About People
I spent years in retail, and retail will teach you about the public pretty quickly. You're dealing directly with people all day long. You learn what makes people happy. You learn what frustrates them. You learn how they make decisions. You learn how differently two people can react to exactly the same situation. Retail also taught me something else.
I decided I didn't want to spend the rest of my life working with the public. And I didn't particularly want employees, either. That may sound like an odd business lesson, but knowing what you don't want can be just as important as knowing what you do want. That helped move me toward business-to-business sales. And B2B taught me something that has stayed with me ever since.
I Didn't Have to Sell First
When I started selling to businesses, I discovered that I could teach people what they needed to know before they bought anything. That fit me. Instead of starting with, "How do I convince this person to buy what I'm selling?" I could start with, "What does this person need to understand?" That's a completely different conversation. A business owner has a problem. Maybe they don't fully understand the problem yet. Maybe they know something isn't working but don't know why. Maybe they don't know what's available to them.
If I understand something that could help them, I can explain it. Then they can decide what to do. Looking back, I can see how much of New Tech Advertising started right there. Teach before selling. I didn't invent that idea when I started NTA. I'd already been learning it for years.
People Will Teach You If You Pay Attention
I've known business owners, salespeople, employees, customers, managers, entrepreneurs and people trying desperately to become entrepreneurs. I've also been many of those things myself. And people are interesting. We don't always do what we say we're going to do. We get excited about something and then don't follow through. We resist changing something even when we know it probably needs to change.
We sometimes buy things we don't need and put off buying things we do need. We worry about money. We worry about making the wrong decision. We don't want to look foolish. Sometimes we don't even know exactly what we're afraid of. We just know we're uncomfortable. I've seen those things in other people. I've seen plenty of them in myself.
That's important. Because understanding people isn't about standing outside the crowd and deciding you've figured everybody else out. I'm one of the people I'm watching.
Business Happens Between People
Technology changes. Advertising changes. The Internet changed business. Social media changed it again. Now artificial intelligence is changing it. But underneath all of those things are still people. A customer has to trust somebody. An employee has to understand what they're supposed to do. A business owner has to make a decision. Someone has to listen. Someone has to explain.
Someone has to follow through. That's one reason I'm careful about putting technology ahead of people. A piece of software can be impressive and still be completely wrong for the person expected to use it. I've seen that more clearly as I've worked with AI. The best system isn't necessarily the one with the most features. It's the one people will actually use.
Listen Before You Build
That has become increasingly important in the way I work today. Before I can help a business owner build something, I need to understand the business. And before I understand the business, I need to listen to the people who actually live inside it. How do they work? What frustrates them? What keeps getting forgotten? What do customers keep asking?
What has the owner been trying to fix for years? What does the owner absolutely not want to change? Sometimes what isn't being said is just as important as what is. I can't learn those things by walking in with a piece of software and telling everybody how they're going to work from now on. I have to listen first.
Maybe That's Been My Business Education
I've tried a lot of things during my life. Some worked. Plenty didn't. I've worked in different kinds of businesses and studied many more. But when I look back now, one of the most valuable things I've done is simply pay attention. Retail taught me about people. B2B taught me that I could educate before selling. Trying to build businesses taught me humility.
Customers taught me to listen. Failure taught me to look again. And all those years of watching people taught me something I still use every day: Before you try to sell somebody something, understand the person sitting across from you. That's still where I think good business begins.
NTA Point of View
Technology should adapt to people whenever possible—not force people to become something they're not. That's why we start with questions, conversation and discovery. The technology comes later. First, we listen.