A new business is like any other complex organism…in order to survive in its environment, it needs to be perfectly adapted.

A business idea is designed by choice, not random selection. You look at the world around you and, hoping to give your fledgling creation the best chance of survival, you create your business based on the climate and conditions you find. Sure, it will hopefully grow and adapt on its own, eventually morphing into something hardly recognizable. But at the beginning, when it is young and weak and easy to kill, the better you design it to survive the harsh winters, predators and scarce resources, the higher the chances it will live to fight another day.

No guarantees, just a better shot.

“Let’s throw it against the wall and see what sticks.”

Great idea. If you have a lot of time and a lot of spaghetti.

Experimentation is critical, but it does not replace analytical thinking, research and problem solving. You don’t start with throwing stuff against the wall to see what sticks…

Unless you have unlimited resources, consider saving your pasta. Critical thinking and asking yourself the tough questions about your own ideas is never as fun or interesting as just running out and trying to make something happen. But by learning to take the time up front, you’ll become much better at selecting the right walls to start aiming for, and more will stick. Bon appetite.

The rain in LA reminded me of one of the most basic and straightforward examples of what makes a business, or businessperson, successful.

Rain, in a very narrow and specific context, is a problem. It makes you wet. Being wet in the rain at the wrong time (like when you’re in a suit on your way to a meeting) is no fun. So someone, somewhere invented a solution to this problem. The umbrella.

If you live in New York City, you know that the only time you see someone actively selling umbrellas is…when it rains. On sunny days, you never see someone on the street, trying to convince passersby that they should buy an umbrella in case it rains someday.

That’s because on sunny days, they’re too busy selling sunglasses and bottled water. They still have some umbrellas. They’re safely stored away somewhere, waiting for the right time when selling them makes the most sense.

When they are most needed…

When they have the highest value…

When they solve an actual, urgent, in-your-face problem. In other words, when people are most willing to pay for them.

What do you sell? How badly do people want it? If the answer is “not much,” ask yourself if you are trying to sell umbrellas on a sunny day.

Your marketing doesn’t work for the following reason: You haven’t identified a specific problem to solve, exactly why your solution has value today and to whom it matters most.

Which means you’re trying to sell a solution no one wants, can’t afford or can find cheaper somewhere else.

Fixing your marketing starts with:

1. Fixing your solution by first proving to yourself why your service or product is something people actually value enough to pay for.

2. Creating marketing campaigns that communicate the right solution to the right people and at the right time.

It’s easy to start from a solution idea that intrigues us, and try to work our way back to finding the right problem to apply it to. Certainly, that approach can work. But more often than not, as I have often learned myself the hard way, it doesn’t.

From the LA Times:

For photographers and graphic artists, not a pretty picture out there

Think it can’t happen to your industry? Think again. Solving the same old problems in the same way and expecting to get the same pay is a recipe for doom. Take for granted that your business will be radically changed, sooner or later, by technology and increased, cheaper competition.

Be at the forefront of that change, adjust your approach to focus on offering solutions people actually value, and be in position to change gears completely before the floor gives way.

American Express did. They used to be in the freight business. Then they invented traveler’s cheques. In other words, they’re still around because they found a new, better problem to solve.

30 years ago, the New York City garment industry occupied most of the real estate between Fifth and Ninth Avenues from 34th to 42nd Street. It didn’t change, didn’t pay attention, didn’t want to see the signs. Done.

Whether you’re managing a whole company or just your own career, it really doesn’t matter how badly you want things to stay the same. What matters is your ability to see when it isn’t, and then do something about it.

We think we know what people really want.

Few of us really do.

We’re all enigmas. We’re irrational. We make illogical choices, take actions that contradict our stated plans, and take the most useful things for granted while treasuring (and buying more of) things that shouldn’t matter nearly as much.

I hardly ever wash my car. I eat french fries in it while driving, occasionally dropping one between the seat and the center console, never to be seen again. I got the oil changed, finally, but only after weeks of annoying wrench shaped lights on my dashboard.

You will never see my iphone in public without its protective cover. I have 2. One for normal, every day use. One for running. I won’t use it with dirty hands, or let my 6 year old play with it (bad Dad!), or let too many days go by without cleaning the screen with an appropriately soft and non-scratching chamois. Same goes for my laptop (the not touching it with dirty fingers, not the chamois).

I love my car (it gets me to work and meetings and goes really fast). I merely like my iphone (it lets me make calls while playing Fieldrunners). If my iphone suddenly split into 2 equally shiny and pretty pieces tomorrow, life would go on. If my car blew up in a mushroom cloud of french fries and gum wrappers, I’d be in a serious bind.

Yet I continue to value my phone more than my car, at least in how I take care of them. I’m illogical.

So are you.

So are your customers, leads, prospects, bosses and coworkers.

Logic alone won’t tell us what people will value. What they’ll want. What they’ll respond to. Educated guesses just begin the experiment.

To find out what people really want, watch and listen for clues about what they already treasure, then give them more of that…