What business are you really in? Yes, you offer certain products or services to your customers. But you need to think well beyond such transactional definitions and understand that your offerings must do something much more encompassing, much more fundamental: Enrich the lives of your customers, making their lives more fun, more thrilling, more simple, more comfortable, more liberating, more safe, more meaningful, more efficient, more harmonious.

This seemingly small shift in strategic thinking is actually profound. It allows you to establish and maintain a close emotional connection with customers, ensuring your ongoing relevance to them.

Consider this humorous illustration of such a mental shift. In the early 90’s, shortly after the fall of communism, scores of citizens from the former Soviet republics would travel in buses to Central European destinations such as Budapest, where they could buy all kinds of western consumer goods for the first time. These elaborate shopping excursions caught the attention of the criminal underground. Packs of modern-day bandits started raiding the buses in mid-journey, knowing that they were full of cash on the way out or full of goods on the way back home. 

As this ritual evolved, the most 'customer-centric' bandits began issuing certificates to their victims, stating that they had been robbed. This way, if the bus was to be intercepted again, the passengers could prove to the next group of robbers that they had already been cleaned out and were not trying to hide anything. As such, by understanding the broader impact on their target audience, the certificates saved considerable time and confusion, greatly enhancing the safety and overall travel experience of the bus riders.

Similarly, how do you think about and continuously nurture the full lifestyle impact of your offerings for your customers? 

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