Arthur Blank and Evan Carmichael discuss why customer-focused businesses outperform profit-focused ones. A Toronto dance studio that added weekly socials and parties to its salsa classes saw deeper loyalty and new revenue streams. Put customers' needs first, and profit follows.
Good morning, Believe Nation! Today's message is make your customers' dreams come true. Over to you, Arthur Blank.
You know, to me, it was always about, you know, understanding where the customers were coming from, trying to satisfy their needs, making their dreams come true, making their problems go away. And we knew if we did the right things to support those kind of values, at the end of the day, we're going to produce the kind of financial results that we did, which were great for our shareholders, great for our associates, you know, great for our investors, and great for the communities that we serve in terms of giving back in a variety of ways.
I think it's a really important message because so many entrepreneurs that I find are just starting the business trying to make a lot of money, and that is not the path to success. Really what you want to do is think about your customers, right? Think about what your customers want. Think about what their biggest pain points are, what their biggest needs are, and solve it for them, right? What dreams and ambitions and desires do they have, and how can you be a part of a solution? And doing that will make you not just a lot of money, but also make you feel good, like you are adding value to the world. You are helping somebody's life become better. I look at Toronto Dance Houses where I am right now, the, the TDS Studio, and The mantra here is all about family. And you look at people who come, nobody comes to this school trying to become the best salsa dancer in the world, right? People come for a variety of reasons. People come because they want to meet somebody. People come because they want to develop new friends. People come because they want to stay fit. People come because they're bored with their life. You know, a lot of the people who come, this is a highlight of them for the week, right? This is something that they look forward to because They may not be growing in their regular life, and this is a way for them to grow and learn and meet somebody and have fun and be a part of a community. And when we recognize that, then it's not just about, hey, how much can we charge for a class? How much money can we take from these people? Right? It's much more about if we can give them a positive experience, if we can connect them with other people, if we can make them feel like they're learning and growing, they're going to want to come back. And that's a service that people will pay for. And then we've just extended the business based on the needs and wants and the dreams of our customers. So as an example, it started off just being salsa classes, right? You come, you learn a class, you come for 1 hour a week. People found that they wanted time to practice in between, they wanted more social aspect to it, they wanted to connect with other people. So we started hosting what are called socials, where every Wednesday night we have a bachata social, every Sunday night we have a salsa social. and then twice a month we do a party at a local club. And it's just basically an opportunity for people to come practice their moves, meet each other, have fun, connect with other students, and just have a deeper and more rich experience through our salsa classes. And that's an opportunity to make more money too, right? Like, people come and they pay to come to these events. But the reason to do it was, hey, how can we milk more money out of our customers, right? How can we increase our revenue? It was What are the problems that our students are having? How can we make our customers' dreams come true? And a lot of them have gone on. You know, I met Nina through Salsa. Alex, who's been on the channel, he's my operations manager, actually just proposed to his girlfriend on New Year's Eve. So he met his now fiancée through Salsa, right? Where people are losing a lot of weight, people are making new friends, people feel like they have meaning and purpose, people are having a lot of fun, and we're making their dreams come true and we're profiting from it, but it's the reason to get into it isn't because we're just trying to make a lot of money. We're trying to help our customers, and by doing that, you end up making a lot of money. So the question today is, how do you make your customers' dreams come true? Leave it in the comments below. I'm really curious to see what you guys are going to write, and I will join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
