SAMBA Blog

The Best Kind of Education

Is the kind that forces you to interact with the real world.

For me, college operated inside of a bubble.  The campus wasn't the real world.  Neither was the work we did inside of class.  It was safe.  But I've done other kinds of eduction that weren't so safe:

At SRI Coaching's Masterneurostrategies course, they dropped us off in downtown Las Vegas and asked us to find our way back to the hotel without any money (just our skills of persuasion).  

At Landmark Education, the homework assigment during our break times was to call people we were having real problems with, and resolve them. On the spot.  

At Seth's Alternative MBA, we built real businesses.  We made real sales calls, resulting in real money changing hands.    

So often education is about learning how to do things in the real world, instead of actually doing them.  But it's overcoming the fear to act that people so often need help with.  

A Letter to the Daily Deals Industry

You've seen breathtaking growth over the past couple years, but I (along with many others) see an impending bubble on the horizon.

Recently, I tried using a Groupon for headshots I bought 3 months prior.  No dice. The photographer was evasive, didn't return my calls, seemed to be dodging me.

Groupon customer service gladly gave me a refund, and assured me I wasn't the only one having this problem with that photographer.

My Mistake:  Waiting 3 months to use the Groupon.

When a business decides to work with one of your companies, they usually do so with the magical assumption that it's going to guarantee them a boatload of new business.  When your customers pour in the door and they don't come back, businesses get jaded. I suspect my photographer was one of these businesses.

On one hand, businesses that use a Daily Deals service should stop whining.
 

After all, every small business dreams at night, "If only I could get people to try my product, they'd fall in love!".  You guys are only calling their bluff.

I understand that you're not guaranteeing them profitable new business, what you're guaranteeing them is a shot.  A shot to wow the customer, to show them a remarkable experience they can't get anywhere else.  That's an amazingly valuable service for the business.  I get it.

On the other hand, I'm pointing the finger right back at you.

Groupon used to be one deal each day (something different).  A service for adventure seeking people willing to try and be exposed to new fun things in their city.

But with Groupon, Living Social, and other sites on a frenetic race to see who can conquer the globe first, you're like tornadoes leaving a trail of destruction in your wake. You're creating a hyper efficient marketplace that is becoming such a good deal for the end consumer at the sacrifice of the businesses.

Once, a sign of prestige to be featured, now, you seem to be featuring any and every business under the sun.

The number of deals going on at the same time is increasing, with no end in sight.

Now, people are using the daily deals space as a marketplace to get services they were going to get anyway, at half of the price.

There's a real opportunity here.

Opportunities for innovative new sites like Jon's Moolala, to not be driven by the allure of quick scale and growth but to a return to a real authentic focus on customer service.

But that means treating the business as the customer, instead of the end consumer (the end consumer wins no matter what anyway).  Here's what I think you can do:

1.  Focus on businesses and services that lend themselves to repeat business.  Refuse to work with business types where you can't imagine consumers coming back for more (and where you have data to back it up).

2.  Pick unique businesses.  Screen businesses ruthlessly like Oprah does books for her book club.  Find the true undiscovered gems, the special ones that you can't find on every city block.

3.  One deal a day.  Focus all your time, energy, resources, and most importantly your audience's attention, on just one business.

4.  Teach business how to keep the customers that walk in the door.  I mean REALLY teach them.  This should be at the heart of what you do, not just an obligation, but your core skill set.

Your industry isn't young anymore.  You're growing up fast.  That's no question.  The question is will you mature?

Regards,

No meeting is absolutely necessary

By now we know the enormous costs of holding a meeting.  Would a memo suffice?

NO, we rationalize.  What we have to say is too important, so we go ahead and schedule a meeting instead.

But is your meeting really necessary?

Every US president before Woodrow Wilson delivered the State of the Union as a written report - our founding fathers never required it to be a meeting.

If the objectives of this country’s most important meeting can be achieved through writing, maybe yours can too.