Bringing up a business

Now it was some time since I referred to something from one of my favourite authors – Seth Godin. Strange, as I actually have a category here which I call Godinism – stuff inspired by or linking to Godin. (There is more Godinism, in Swedish, on my old blog).

But, here is yet another interesting thought from him – Don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone:

In a world where consumers have so much power, we now have two responsibilities:

* If you don’t like what an organization stands for, work actively to spread the word and force them to change

and

* If you will miss a product, a service, a book, a site or a professional when they close up shop, stand up, speak up and bring them masses of new business.

We get what we promote.

In many ways, interacting with businesses is like bringing up kids – they learn to act the way you teach them to act. Rewarding or punishing behaviour controls future behaviour. It doesn’t just apply to kids of course, but to any kind of relationship, and as Godin mentions, to relationships with businesses as well.

And, with this power, just as parents have a responsibility to do the best they can raising their kids, we as consumers have a responsibility. Collectively, we can now influence the future of business, and the future of this very earth, more than ever before.

Word of mouth is leverage. A good business benefits from word of mouth. A bad business suffers from it. It basically just speeds things up. So, let’s speed up the future and move faster to the world we dream of living in! =)