Stay hungry, stay foolish is the closing line of Steve Jobs famous
speech to the graduating class of Stanford University. This was a
powerful call to some of the brightest brains in the world to have an
unquenchable thirst for learning and ambition to achieve more.
It is a call to everyone in business- entrepreneurs, managers and
employees. We should be always learning, adapting to changes and
innovating. This is the surest way to survival in a world that is
forever fluid.


Those who ignore this call have short lifespan in business. They are
excited by ideas that have no place in the market, fail to position
themselves so as the winds of the market drive their businesses. Look
at the world of technology today and you will see how some of
yesterdays successes (like Nokia, Yahoo) are today’s strugglers
while today’s successes are the guys you have never heard of at least
in the area you know them to be great in today – example being
Google’s Android in the Mobile Telephony.


One area that you need to keep on learning about is your customer’s
needs. You cannot have enough knowledge about your customers needs.
Many people are in love with the wrong things in business. They are
obsessed with their products, systems, processes, traditions, rules,
policies and procedures. It is good to have all these but only when
they don’t come into the way of satisfying customers’ needs. You
should not have any emotional attachment to them; discard them, break
them, change them if they don’t make your customers happier.
The only thing, idea or person worth being emotionally attached to in
business is your customer and his needs.


If you really loved someone you would be obsessed with getting to
know him, what his highest needs are , how they prefer those needs
satisfied, when they want those needs addressed. You will desire to
know what irritates your love, what makes her uncomfortable, what are
her fantasies.


You will break all rules to make your object of adoration happy: You
will add variety to your offerings, you will adjust how you
communicate to them, you will dress to please them, their convenience,
their happiness your obsession, you will bend and break all rules to
serve them, you may even change your business in a way you don’t like
to please your lover. If you don’t do whatever matters to keep your
lover, just know there will someone who would be happy to serve their
needs and if he is not their now, he will surely come soon.


Someone once told me that if I ran their business it would shut down
because I would be thinking about the customer rather than the profit.
It was an intended criticism, I was happy of the sincere compliment.
My belief is that if you gave the customer what he needs, the way he
wants it, he will pay me handsomely since profit is my compensation
for the value I give. The higher the value the better the cheque I get
and the more the often I will get it.


It is said that Steve Jobs did not trust traditional market research
to tell him what the customer needs were because he believed customers
sometimes never knew what they wanted. Some considered this arrogant.
But Jobs loved his customers so much that he would always be thinking
on what are their deepest needs even if they were not be able to
articulate them. He would spend his lonely moments try to imagine what
that unspoken need was. That is why whatever he made every seemed to
like it since it got the customers thinking- yes that is what I want.
When you love someone you try to anticipate their unexpressed desires
and when you surprise them with it they will truly feel loved. The
surprises sometimes might not work but, if you seek to know your lover
this will be the exception.

If you fall in love with your customers you will be surprised the
places they can take you. At the end don’t be surprised if that is not
the places that you first wanted to go but, you wont complain because
of the profits you make and the fulfillment you get.

Don’t fear falling in love with your customers.