Clouds / Thunderstorms

It's a Monday, and you're not doing anything productive today anyway, so take a few minutes and watch this video ... watch how all the clouds evolve / adapt / change over time.

Your business is like a cloud (no, it isn't "in the cloud" like vendors want it to be). Your business is a dynamic, changing ecosystem ... while at the same time, it is part of a much larger ecosystem ... the upper level low in the Pacific Northwest fuels the low level winds that interact with the jet stream and create severe weather across the Plains and Midwest.

Do you treat your business like a dynamic, changing ecosystem that is part of a much larger ecosystem? Well, yes and no.

In most cases, the answer is no. We treat our businesses like a snapshot. We execute an email campaign. Or we mail a catalog. We change the home page and landing pages and the retail floorset. All are snapshot executions of our business ... a picture at a point in time. Is the picture pretty? Yes? Then we succeeded. Never mind that the pretty picture becomes a tornado at a later point in time ... the picture is pretty.

Sometimes, the answer is "yes". When we change our bidding strategy on various keywords, we're treating our business like an ecosystem. When we offer 30% off plus free shipping in response to a competitor offering 25% off plus free shipping, we are treating our business like an ecosystem. Whether we positively or negatively impact our ecosystem, well, that's another story.

But the problem with business today is that we treat too many aspects of our business like a snapshot, and not like the videos shared with you in this blog post.

When we don't generate enough new, winning products, we stop fueling the thunderstorms in the video above.

When we don't generate enough new customers, we stop fueling the thunderstorms in the video above.

When we don't run the best selling items in the front of the catalog because we want to "make a statement", we stop fueling the thunderstorms in the video above.

When we put 25% off plus free shipping in an email campaign to generate more opens and clicks, we stop fueling the thunderstorms in the video above.

Do you understand the message?