hey it's patti scharf CPA and co-founder of catching clouds the leader in e-commerce
accounting welcome back to another Saturday slow down where I'd like to
remind everybody to work on their business and not just in their business
all right today I want to talk about one of the things that kind of stuck with me
from when I was an MBA student and that is that businesses should always be
looking for their customers next best alternative so it's much more important
to be thinking about that than to be thinking about your competition because
if you're thinking about your competition and you're not thinking
about what your your customers are thinking about you might miss the boat
entirely so let me let me tell you something for example so so I think the
first time that I really got hooked on Amazon was back in like 2002 my son was
a toddler and it was Christmastime and I just couldn't even imagine how I was
going to get out and do my Christmas shopping and I discovered Amazon and I
think we bought all of our Christmas presents off of Amazon that year and it
was life-changing for me like I don't like shopping anyway and to be able to
go online and just go this for my sister and this for my brother and this for my
parents and this for Patrick and this for you know it was amazing it was it
was great and it's clear like from from that time till now Amazon really has
their fingers on the pulse of what their customers want to need I mean they
started out with the subscription of Amazon Prime just to get you to day
shipping which was amazing and it was worth the subscription price all on its
own now they've had other competitors who are also doing 2-day shipping now
they're doing next day shipping now they're like talking about putting
groceries straight into your apartment which hello kind of creeps me out but
you know but for some people it's appealing right the the point is that
Amazon knows what drives their customers just the checkout process is so clean
and smooth and easy and they do whatever they can to make it easy for their
customers to buy from them or if you take a look at like who remembers
Blockbuster Video and Netflix just like wiped them out overnight practically
because why would why would you want to go to the
video-store when you could just sit at home and have movies show up in your
mailbox and then eventually streaming and so on and so forth
uber did a similar thing Airbnb did a similar thing these companies were just
revolutionizing their own independent industries because they were focused on
what customers really wanted and needed and what resources they had available to
make that stuff happen so Blockbuster Video shouldn't have been worried about
Hollywood video they should have been worried about Netflix and you know
picking up their head and looking at the industry around them now you chances are
you are not going to be in charge of a business that is revolutionizing any
kind of industry anywhere you can still have a big impact in your own small
corner of the world as long as you're paying attention to what your customers
want and need so always be thinking about what their next best alternative
is so when I'm thinking about my customers I'm not thinking about other
accounting firms I'm thinking about how maybe their next best alternative is to
hire some a team of bookkeepers in the Philippines it might be software that's
been developed to automate their process and make things easier for them it might
be the chances are it's not going to be their spouse doing their books I don't
see that as a threat I don't see QuickBooks live as a threat here's the
thing the customers that we serve their complex businesses they're they're big
they've got big complex problems around cash flow and inventory and sales tax
and yes we do their bookkeeping but which honestly is really hard in and of
itself when you're an e-commerce business but it's all of these different
things that they would have to go out and hire a bookkeeper and then a
controller and an IT person and make sure that they all understand the
e-commerce industry oh and then somebody who specializes in sales tax like we
provide all of these services kind of bundled together so
that they don't have to worry about their back office and can focus on
growing their businesses and this is what they want to need and so when
people call me up and they're like what I would never spend more than like 200
bucks on bookkeeping it's like that's okay because what you want to need right
now is to you have a tighter budget you maybe have a spouse who you trust to do
the books and you're just not ready for that or your problems aren't big enough
or complex enough yet for what we have to offer so if you have your own small
business be thinking about your place in the world what is it what product you
offer what service do you offer to the world and what makes you special what
problem are you solving for your customers if you are focusing on solving
your customers deepest pain points then you're going to be able to beat the next
best alternative I guess that's it for today I hope you liked my video please
like comment and share if you haven't already please subscribe and I'll catch
you later