You Think You Know, But Do You Really?

It turns out the ukulele is not Hawaiian; it’s Portuguese. Three men who emigrated from Portugal to Hawaii in the late 1800s brought the instrument with them, and the Hawaiian king embraced the music. The name ukulele is Hawaiian and actually means “a gift that came.”

Running across this little fact got us thinking about what business people think we know versus what we actually know.  After all, most people assume the ukulele is Hawaiian, don’t we?

It’s easy for business people to get into a groove, where everything seems familiar and even routine and predictable. But the deeper that groove gets over time, the harder it is to peek over the edge to see what’s going on outside the business, and the easier it becomes to think we  understand your business and the forces that affect it.

There are a few seemingly simply questions we ask ourselves and our clients to keep from getting too dependent on the groove, and in our next few blogs we’ll be exploring some of those questions and offering tips on how to approach answering them.

Are you taking advantage of the One-Person Focus Group? Can your significant other explain what your business does?

Do you know everything there is to know about your market? Are the size, dynamics, and sustainability changing?

Where’s the money? Do you really know what is most profitable?

Where’s the money going to be? Do you really know what’s next? Do you know what you should be tracking? Do you know what the next level of your business could be?

Do you really know your customers? Who’s buying what you’re selling? How do your customers really view your company? What makes people say “yes” or “no?”

Do you really know your competition? What strategies, tactics, marketing methods, and deliverables are they using to compete with you? What are their strengths and weaknesses? What are yours in comparison?