Daily Lab: Your customers don’t care about your costs

Short summary:

• Your success may annoy other people.
• Ignore them and focus on your best customers.
• Because what’s best for them is best for you.

In Home Economics class in middle school, I learned one of the most important lessons about business.

That’s the class where we learned how to cook, clean, sew, and manage household finances.

And, for one short project, we learned to start a business.

In groups of three or four, we had to figure out what we could make during class that we could sell to our schoolmates during recess and lunch.

Some groups made complicated snacks. Some sewed or crafted ornate trinkets.

My group? We sold popcorn: 25 cents for a small bag of plain, or 50 cents for flavored.

And we made a killing.

Some of other classmates got annoyed, though.

We were, first, the un-serious group who talked during class—so it was completely unfair that we were succeeding.

And, second, even our teacher thought the money we were making was a little too much. How could we charge 50 cents for something that cost us next to nothing?

But you know who didn’t complain? Who didn’t care about our costs or profit at all?

The rest of the school, snacking away on popcorn, having the best day of the year.

Your peers, your competitors—they have opinions about what you’re doing.

But they don’t want what’s right for you—they want what’s right for them.

Ignore them. Focus on providing the best possible experience for your best possible customers.

And they’ll keep coming back for more.