File Power, an Introduction

People follow me on Twitter. I'm like "who is that??" So I'll check the bio. "SEO. SEM. Digital Expert responsible for growing more than 70 brands."

Holy cow!

I'm thinking that this person is following ... me. Impressive.

Then I start really thinking.

This person is responsible for growing more than 70 brands.

Assuming that 500 people work for a small brand, this person is taking credit for growth ... this person > 500 people. Or at least that's what my brain starts thinking.

I don't stop thinking it. 500 people working terribly hard, and then there's this person sitting at home, working for an agency, growing the brand. All because this person somehow caused an algorithm to redirect customers who were interested in cashews to "a brand".

Growing more than 70 brands.

Then I start thinking, "how does this digital expert know that these are the 'right' customers"??

Or more importantly, "does the digital expert care that these are the 'right' customers"??

This digital expert ... SEO, SEM, that kind of stuff ... gets paid if the prospect purchases something. That's it. That's the end of the transaction. Move on to another customer. Keep tricking the algorithm to redirect customers. Transaction after transaction after transaction. Growing brands.

Imagine if you couldn't leave your home for a year, and you were dependent upon somebody to bring you food. This person always delivered. You paid her, and she brought you food. Cheetos! She kept you alive. But at the end of the year, at the end of a thousand transactions, your Doctor loses her mind. You blood sugar is 1,293. You've gained 65 pounds.Your skin turned orange. Orange!! And you have a strange affection for somebody named Chester Cheetah.

But the person who brought you food completed the transaction ... she "grew your brand" (to the tune of 65 pounds). She got paid. And she got to put that fact in her Twitter bio.

This story has been nagging at me for two months.

It's clear to me that we've calibrated modern business to measure the fact that the patient was fed a meal. Not "the right" meal, just "a" meal. And we pay third parties handsomely for getting "a" meal to the patient.

What would happen if we fed our business the "right" meal?? What would happen if we worked hard to get the "right" customers, not just customers who respond to algorithms?

Some call this "lifetime value" or "CLV" for "customer lifetime value".

But it goes so much deeper than that.

Tomorrow, I begin a series where I address what I call "File Power". File Power is simply a measure of how strong your business "can be" over the next year. Based on the project work I've performed over the past two years, it has become clear that many of you are managing brands that have serious health issues.