Next up in our Small Business Inspirational Series is Don Shapiro, President and Founder of First Concepts Consultants, Inc., a leadership based consulting company focused on increasing employee retention by leading through voluntary influence. Don shares how adapting to customer feedback has seen his businesses flourish throughout the decades.
"The best advice I've ever gotten in running a business is to not be married to the product or service you want to offer and the plan you have for offering it to customers. Then listen carefully to what the customers tell you and revise your business according to what they're saying. I've launched four businesses from scratch myself and have one I’ve continued to operate for over 30 years. This advice more than anything else I've ever heard makes the biggest difference in the success or failure of a business.
When we come up with these great ideas, sometimes they could be brilliant ideas, and your friends, your family, and professional associates you know say this is a great idea. But you don't know whether the idea is a good idea or not until you find out whether customers are actually willing to pay money for it. That's the test. It's not how brilliant the idea or how wonderful it sounds.
So you come up with these great ideas and you launch your business by interacting with prospective customers to get them to buy the product or service. Then you find out they don’t want to buy it. They like the idea but they don't want to put the money out for it. It just doesn't have enough value or importance for them. But there's something else you learn when listening to them that they would pay for. Then you adjust and modify what you're doing in order to do that for the customer. That's where you find your market and get your business going.
I’ve found this over and over. The first business I started was a bakery. I was offering mail order pastries that I advertised in Bon Appetit and Gourmet magazine. It was a wonderful concept. I was generating good sales but only during the holidays. Somebody said, Don, what are you going to do the other 11 months of the year when very few people are actually buying this gift item? I realized I have kitchen with cooking equipment. I ended up moving into catering and I generated a lot of business 12 months out of the year. This ended up being more a catering business than a baking business. The change made all the difference in the success of that business.
For over 30 years, I’ve been a management consultant and professional speaker. When I started this business, I said I'm going to be a professional speaker and that's all I'm going to be. I'm not going to be anything else. I didn’t even want to use the word consulting anywhere in my promotional material. I just want to speak before people to educate and inspire them. Every time I gave a speech, I got a consulting assignment over and over again. The audiences were telling me, “we want to hire you as a consultant. We want you to help solve our problems.” Slowly I was forced to change everything I was doing and ended up becoming a strategic management consultant with the speaking business being secondary. That's how the business became the most successful.
Here’s what I learned from all these experiences. Everything you plan in advance, everything you create, no matter how brilliant and wonderful it sounds and how much positive feedback you get about it, until you ask customers to pay for it, you don't know whether you've got a viable product or service or whether you need to make adjustments and changes. The most important thing is always listen to your customers. Even when you find a viable product, something that is successful, something that people are buying, listen for the changes and what customers really want. Look for the future opportunities that they may be offering you so you can develop another product that's similar or better or different and continue to grow. These are the lessons I have learned through all of my career that make the most difference in the success of a business."
- Don Shapiro
Thank you for sharing the greatest insights behind the success of your businesses over the years Don Shapiro. Congratulations on many successful businesses and thank you for sharing your story with the Community!
🖱️ Visit Don at his website
📱 Connect on LinkedIn for leadership content
⬇️ Download the booklet: Deliver Better Results through Higher Employee Retention and Engagement
Please share your thoughts, comments, questions, encouragements or congratulations with Don and the community below!
