It’s consequential to love, honor and cherish someone. If you choose your partner wisely, your capacity to act and take of your concerns, whatever they may be, is increased exponentially. If you choose poorly, it can lead to unprecedented despair and breakdowns that affect your whole life.

I was talking to my teacher the other day and she told me that the same is true in business. You must love, honor, and cherish your customers as well.

Your customers don’t care about the breakdowns you face. They care about their own needs, their own concerns. They are trusting you to take care of them. In fact, they are paying you to do so.

We could write for days on the philosophy of money and what it means when a customer transacts with you. Suffice it to say that it is a unique and wonderful relationship because money allows us to take care of our own families.

As I begin to talk to small business people and how busy they are, they seem to have an attitude like they are entitled to the money BECAUSE they are working so hard instead of focusing, not on what the customer wants, but rather what is the customer concerned about that ONLY YOU can help them with because that’s the business you are in.

This applies to employees too. Your boss is your customer. They need to be loved, honored and cherished too.

What do you think? Can you love, honor and cherish your boss? Your customer? How you think customers should be feel after doing business with you?

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1. Think before acting – In the case study, my friend had already made a decision, long ago actually, that having an app on the iPhone was the right place for his business. There’s so much talk about the iPhone these days but ultimately its still a “walled-in” platform where only a subset of users have access. There’s lots of data out there to suggest that other platforms or architectures should also be considered.

In general, thinking is a good practice but one that small businesses rarely give themselves the space to do. Startups give in to the pressure of acting quickly and decisively. The premise of “Ready, Fire, Aim” (Aim is the thinking part here) is to do something quickly but also inexpensively in order to get some necessary feedback about your application. This iPhone experience for my friend was EXTREMELY expensive. But it might have all been avoided if they looked at other less expensive mobile platforms than just the iPhone.

“Aiming” is actually the most important part of the equation and not the “Firing.” In that scenario, you’re only doing something so you can begin to think . . . powerfully. If that’s the case, “firing” had better be low cost.

2. Be alert for what you are paying for – In general, the least expensive way to transact for something is with money, but keep in mind what it is, exactly, that you are transacting for. When you pay someone to build an application for you, are you just paying for the application? Here’s what you should also pay for:

a. Take care of your concerns – Your primary expertise is probably not Mobile application development or any type of development. These are rough and savage waters and you need someone to lead you and take care of you until the application is complete. You need someone competent and mature enough who knows how to move you and your business to a safe place.

b. Integrity – Dealing with people of Integrity is low cost in any of the ways we transact in business. As I mentioned earlier, this application has become extremely expensive for my friend. First, they still have no application that was contracted for months ago, all due to the cost of that developers integrity. What is the cost? Time? Money? Energy? Resources? All of the above. He spent his time worrying and waiting for the application to be finished. He paid the developer money that he’ll never get back. He spent energy trying to find someone else who will finish the application. And he’s trying to find resources to fund an activity (family, friends, business partners, etc.) that will help him achieve his business goals. Not to mention all the time he’s spent talking to his loved ones about how stressed he is that he can’t get his business to place he envisioned over a year ago.

c. A Partner – You may have contextual needs that you need to transact for as well. For instance, you may wish to project manage the activity yourself or you may not. You may need some help thinking and acting in other parts of your business. A partner is someone you can trust and can turn to when you face a breakdown. It’s better for your business to have really smart people around you no matter where you turn. Knowing those that help you think are powerful people to have around.

3. Understand the business opportunity – What is an average customer worth? How many more customers do you expect to have after your application is finished? How grounded are those expectations? Business owners who look only at what they can afford are typically only interested in earning what they need to make a living. If you have grounded an assessment that within a year you can expect to make 60,000 dollars and it will cost you 20,000 dollars to do it, 20,000 doesn’t seem like much of a cost at all. Many business owners, though, have no clear picture of the business opportunity before them and when they see a cost figure like 10k or 20k they might scoff and try to find anyone who will do it for a much lower price. See items #1 and #2 above.

What have I missed? What’s flawed? I’d love to read your thoughts.

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The iPhone developer “flaked” out. He couldn’t finish the application.

After installing the incomplete application on my phone, I could see first hand what was finished and what wasn’t. I saw some functionality was complete, but after talking to my friend about the capability that was most important to him, I soon realized, it was noticeably missing from the application.

Also, the User Experience was extremely poor. What my friend thought was 80% complete was actually, in my assessment, maybe 50% complete and that’s generous. The capability they longed for was missing and their user experience was non-existent. My friend needed help. I approached this problem in the following ways.

1. This iPhone application was critical to their business. Their business was social media and their users would use the iPhone to interact with their friends in real time and record things as they happened. This capability was a cornerstone of their strategic differentiator. This had to be completed.

2. I didn’t want to be responsible for code written by someone else. The lack of attention given to the user experience meant I was going to have to refactor most of the code anyway.

3. I wasn’t sold that the application should necessarily be an iPhone application. “Smartphone” users account for 40% of all cell phone usage here in a America. Of those, around a fifth of users have iPhones. And of those who own iPhones, according to Forrester research, almost 70% are those making over 70k a year. I wasn’t sold that the demographic of their business fits that category.

I offered him three options:

A. I offered to finish his iPhone application. In spite of the fact that I didn’t want to be responsible for the code, this potential client could really benefit by getting the app out into the world and observe his users beta testing how they use it. The business needs of my client come before mine.

B. I offered to build his iPhone application from scratch. My client needed something different than what he paid for and received. He needed to be taken care of and he clearly wasn’t. The process and tools my partners and I use are geared to take care of a clients needs.

C. I offered to help him analyze his mobile/technical strategy. The problem with startups/small companies is that they are always in “do” mode. They don’t often stop to “think” about what powerful options are available to them next week, next month and the impact of those choices for next year. I don’t necessarily think that the iPhone is best option for this company going forward. After a week or so, I would have the answers he could use to make a powerful decision on his own. *This was my recommended option*

I also threw something extra into my proposal. Integrity is important. When you give your word on when you’ll have something done, others will not have to wonder if you have integrity or not. You either complete it or you don’t. Not having integrity is costly for everyone. So I also offered that if he cooperated with me as a stipulation in the contract, and I didn’t deliver when I said I would, I would waive my fee.

This way, he didn’t have to worry if his partner would “flake” out. It’s written into the contract that delivery is guaranteed. “Not worrying” is low cost for everyone. My friend can concentrate on his core business and help me with the planning and design of the application and can rest easy knowing that at a certain time, the work would be complete. If you’ve ever transacted for something to be done, you know, first-hand, how low cost that is. But its also profitable for those for whom are willing to have Integrity be a strategic differentiator.

Tomorrow, I’ll provide some key learnings that small/medium businesses can take away from this case study.

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