What I Believe
The President of the United States is mocking people who can’t afford groceries.
A generation of young people who’ve done everything they were told to do: worked hard, studied, chased the right credentials.
They feel like they’ll never own a home, have a stable career, pay off their debt…never catch up.
The economy is growing…at least the numbers say so.
The market is hitting new highs.
These numbers are amazing.
And it feels like everyone seems to know, quietly, that something isn’t right.
We are living in a mass delusion.
This delusion says that the market is god.
Numbers are the correct measure.
Growth is the goal.
More is always the right answer.
“Everyone is doing it.”
“It is what it is.”
The delusion is so complete that a company can post record profits and still lay off thousands of people…with a straight face about “efficiencies” or something.
The delusion is so powerful that the President can stand at the podium and tell struggling families that the economy is booming…and half the country will believe him no matter what their bank account says.
I don’t believe any of it.
I don’t believe it has to be this way.
The Link We Forget
Henry Ford understood something our “leaders” have forgotten…or want to forget.
He paid his workers enough to buy the products they built.
This wasn’t charity.
I’m not going to argue that Henry Ford was a saint.
He paid because of strategy.
Henry Ford knew that a business can’t survive for long unless its customers have money to buy the products they are building.
The customer in the showroom was also the worker on the assembly line. The link between the person making the product and the person buying the product was the foundation of the entire enterprise.
That idea is foreign today.
The Extraction Economy treats workers as a cost to be minimized. A commodity to be controlled for.
Wages are suppressed. Work conditions cut to the minimum acceptable standards…and, often enough, below.
On the flip side, the customer is just as disposable.
Prices are raised. Quality is cut.
The business extracts from both sides and calls it “efficiency.”
The same company that lays off thousands of people while posting record profits is just following the logic to its endpoint.
The work is a cost. The customer is a resource to be mined.
Neither is a person the business depends on for its long-term survival.
This isn’t a political observation. It is a business observation.
The Check Casher breaks the connection and books the short-term gains…
#Winning
The Relationship Builder restores the link and builds a long-term asset.
“In this economy?”
One extracts. The other builds.
The difference is the entire story.
A Broken System
No workers. No business.
No customers. No business.
The entire system is designed to discard two of the key components of any business: the workers and the customers.
We live in the hollowed remains of this system. Businesses limping along, chasing the market.
The numbers are going up.
Everything else is off.
This might feel like success in the short term.
But eventually these short-term tradeoffs will catch up with everyone.
The last easy sales will dry up. Institutional knowledge will evaporate. Brands that meant something…poof.
A rotten husk remains.
Don’t believe me.
Look at the stock market. More companies can’t service the debt they carry, let alone turn a profit than we are willing to admit.
That’s not success.
That’s a casino. The wheels keep spinning because the game must go on.
The House wins…duh.
Everyone else…
This is the broken link between Wall Street and Main Street made tangible. The Check Casher’s entire playbook made clear.
Extract from the worker. Extract from the customer. Book the short term win. Move on before the bill comes due.
#Winning
What’s strange is that in many corners of life we’ve stopped seeing this as some kind of cancer on society…a disease.
Instead, it’s branded as “just business” or “just capitalism.”
This illness: the normal state of affairs.
In America especially. The logic of hypercapitalism has taken hold. The rot at the core is “invisible” to many “leaders.”
It isn’t invisible. It is the point. The “leaders” choose not to see it.
We’ve been propagandized to the point where we can’t see anything different.
The extraction is inevitable.
“It is what it is.”
But…the alternative never disappeared. We just stopped celebrating it.
Patagonia gave the company away. Called earth its only shareholder.
Pearl Jam fought Ticketmaster…lost. Then built a career on serving a core group of fans who stuck with them.
Taylor Swift stared down business as usual by re-recording her masters.
The Grateful Dead built a parallel economy.
The Minnesota Timberwolves held the line on price integrity and building a fan base when #sportsbiz wants everything to be a commodity.
These aren’t experiments. They aren’t naïve holdouts. They are just examples of businesses that understand that sustainable businesses are built on a fair exchange of value.
Business to customers. Band to fans. Team to fans. The business serving the community it exists in.
Henry Ford knew this.
That communist, Henry Ford.
The Relationship Builders still know it.
The list of businesses restoring that foundation continues to grow. You don’t hear about them as often because the drumbeat on the other side is so loud.
And, for a lot of people, it is just more profitable.
The Check Casher, the Extractor, is the norm now. The Relationship Builder is treated as an outlier.
But the Relationship Builder isn’t the one building on a flimsy foundation. That’s the Check Casher.
Easy come. Easy go.
One extracts. The other builds.
The difference is the point.
Two Postures
“The Market” is a god to many folks.
“The Market” dominates everything…it is inevitable like a deity.
We have no choice. We must succumb. Get over it.
That doesn’t hold up to any real interrogation.
America didn’t build the world’s strongest and largest middle class because “The Market” said it was okay.
America didn’t create Social Security because “The Market” wanted to help senior citizens have a more stable retirement.
The Scandinavian countries aren’t more secure and happier because “The Market” picked them.
As a former congressional staffer said on Twitter, “Every billionaire is a policy failure.”
Put it another way, every outcome is the result of decisions made, or not.
The Check Casher hides behind “The Market.”
It is the perfect alibi.
Nothing is in their control.
“The Market demands it.”
“We are just responding to The Market.”
“It’s what The Market will bear.”
The Market is infallible. The Market can never be wrong.
The Market is a god that has a convenient bias to do exactly what the Check Casher wants it to do.
The Relationship Builder understands that “The Market” is a choice.
Relationships are the strategy. Choosing to do more than extract is a decision that everyone can make.
The question isn’t “What will The Market bear?”
It’s “What did we promise, and are we delivering that value?”
Every business operates from one of these positions.
The Check Casher extracts at all costs…value be damned.
The Relationship Builder delivers value that is rewarded with customers who pay a fair price.
The Check Casher treats everyone and everything as a resource to strip-mine.
The Relationship Builder treats everything as a resource to develop.
This posture isn’t a branding exercise. It isn’t an empty mission statement. This posture is visible in every decision the business makes.
Pricing. Wages. Scheduling. Everything.
The way that the business treats the people who make it work. And the people who buy what it makes.
Actions > words.
Diagnose This
Before you can begin building a business that builds relationships instead of extracting, you need a baseline.
You have to know where you are…before you can start working in a new direction.
The Check Casher always skips this step.
The numbers the Check Casher tracks- revenue, transaction volume, market share…they never look at the health of the relationships.
Often, they don’t even look at the true stability of the business…but that’s for another post.
The only numbers the Check Casher worries about are the ones related to extraction.
The Relationship Builder starts somewhere else.
Both internally and externally.
They look at the people who do the work and the people who buy what the work produces.
Internally, they ask things such as:
- How long do our people stay?
- Do they leave because they want to? Or do they leave because they have to?
- What’s our employee turnover rate? What does this turnover cost us?
These are random questions. They are strategic. Each person that leaves is a cost to the business.
You lose something.
The Relationship Builder knows this and accounts for it from the start.
Externally, they ask things like:
- How many customers buy repeatedly?
- How many would recommend us to someone else?
- How much does it cost to acquire a new customer? Is that number rising?
The Relationship Builder knows that a business’s job is to create and keep customers.
They also know people talk.
All of these answers are feedback.
The Relationship Builder listens. The Check Casher can’t be bothered.
The uncomfortable truth will show up in the numbers. You may not see them immediately. But they will show up.
High employee turnover. Customer dissatisfaction. Employee dissatisfaction. Rising customer acquisition costs. Low repeat purchases.
All of these are feedback.
But you can’t do anything with them if you don’t look for the feedback.
This diagnostic isn’t a judgment. It isn’t a condemnation. It is about clarity.
You can’t fix what you don’t realize is broken.
You can only act afterwards.
Actions > Words.
The real work begins with one simple question: “What does success look like?”
The Strategy Stack
“What does success look like?”
Such a simple question.
Too often, the simplicity provides an excuse to jump to the easy answer…something like “GROWTH!”
More. Bigger.
The Check Casher hears the question and jumps at the opportunity to recite the rote answer.
But growth could mean anything.
More sales. Better margins. Higher profits. Expanded customer base. Increased revenue.
If you push just a touch: “What does growth look like, specifically?” The mask slips.
The leader who can’t answer the question is common. They are chasing numbers but can’t even be sure why.
The number may go up. But the meaning is empty.
The Relationship Builder answers differently.
I learned this at my first job in nightclubs. Our answer was to try and throw the best party in town…every night.
That wasn’t some throwaway metric.
It was an intangible. It was about an experience.
You could make a decision and answer yes or no…because every decision was based on throwing the best party.
What kind of music do we have? What kind of drinks do we serve? What do we do to make this the hottest party in town?
The numbers serve the experience. The experience doesn’t serve the numbers. You have to make the numbers work, but you have to begin with giving people something worth buying.
The Check Casher doesn’t answer the question like that. The Check Casher doesn’t care.
The only reason the Check Casher is there is to collect money.
The business. The brand. The experience…be damned.
That’s the first question The Strategy Stack answers. The rest follows.
Who is your customer?
Not “everyone.” The specific people you want to serve…not the generic.
The Relationship Builder can name specific people. The Check Casher defaults to “everyone.”
Why us?
Why is that person working with, partying with me and not the other options…including staying home?
The Relationship Builder can answer this with specificity…usually with tangible and intangible ideas.
The Check Casher will probably default to something like, “We’re the cheapest.”
What resources do we need?
Your brand is a promise. Your strategy is more than just a wish list.
What does it take to deliver?
The Relationship Builder will make those investments or make tradeoffs, understanding that there are costs involved.
The Check Casher expects everyone to do more with less and doesn’t care if it detracts from the experience.
What actions will we take?
No actions. No impact.
The Relationship Builder builds their strategy and realizes that actions mean more than words. So, they commit.
The Check Casher…probably starts with PR, comms, making promises. Empty, empty words.
The questions you have to answer are simple…on the surface. But the collisions that help you get to the answers are where the work happens.
The leader who jumps to “GROWTH” is stuck on the treadmill of the Extraction Economy.
“Number go up. #Winning.”
But that path eventually runs out of road.
To sustain a business, you have to build something more than a money vacuuming machine.
You might want to throw the best party in town or something else…
The diagnosis of your business helps you see the path to something different. It shows you the gap between where you are and where you want to go.
The Strategy Stack closes the mental distance.
But action closes the real gap.
Examples
You don’t have to believe me. This isn’t theoretical. The evidence is there…if you look.
Patagonia said, “Earth is now our only shareholder.”
The founder looked at the Extraction Economy and said no. They gave the business and the value back to the planet.
The Check Casher calls this a stunt. The Relationship Builder sees it as a strategy.
Pearl Jam fought Ticketmaster and lost.
They didn’t just lose the fight on tickets. Their fight cost them scale. They nearly broke up.
They made a trade. Biggest band in the world for sustainability.
They’ve served a core group of fans for decades. People who stuck with them. Pearl Jam won on their own terms.
The Check Casher says, “You left so much money on the table.” The Relationship Builder sees a career that lasted decades, generations of fans.
Taylor Swift did it by re-recording her masters.
She saw the investors who bought her life’s work and said, “Screw you. I’ll make the old ones worthless. Watch this.”
The Check Casher said its sour grapes; exploitation is part of the deal.
The Relationship Builder took back what was taken.
The Minnesota Timberwolves answered the question in their own way by holding the line on price integrity.
#PaysToWait and all. Fans don’t buy early because there will always be a better deal.
The Timberwolves broke that cycle by making a promise to their fans and ticket buyers…and standing by that promise.
You might pay more for the tickets, but you know the team is trying to win and you know you aren’t going to see tickets for $1 on the secondary market.
The Check Casher says that you need to discount because “market clearing prices.”
The Relationship Builder recognizes that each event has value. Don’t undermine it by making it a commodity.
I can go on.
The Grateful Dead built a parallel economy.
A youth soccer club, DC XI, turned its back on the pay-to-play model.
None of these are charities. None of them are struggling. None of them accepted the “market will decide” logic.
All of them asked, “What does success look like?” Then, answered it on their own terms.
They are all still standing.
The Check Casher limps along. Knowing that for a time you can have rising prices in a dying business.
Eventually, this catches up to them. They become a rotting husk of a business.
The Relationship Builder throws the best party in town.
They have stability. They have customers. They have a career.
The evidence is there.
It is a fork.
Your choice.