Thanks for the comment and praise, and for your original article. And welcome to Tyner Blain!

Great points about people getting lost in the weeds and focusing on the yardstick instead of on the goal.

Good stuff. Love your seven steps … they are very closely aligned to what we found and documented in Tuned In. The thing about creating the kind of product success that was really stunning to us is what you are hitting at. So many folks do think that it’s largely luck, better funding or simply a great market giving rise to lots of successes. We found the opposite. You call it intentional, we call it getting tuned in. It’s a process that any of us can execute to create success but it does require a shift in perspective and where you spend your time.

As for simplicity of making that shift, well that’s a double edge sword. It IS hard work but most folks make it a whole lot harder than it really should be because they focus on the wrong things. The steps you outline are the right things because they connect what you are building to a real problem that buyers will pay money to solve. We see far too often folks ‘chasing outcomes’ vs. creating more value for their buyers. They use metrics to reverse engineer a strategy that says things like ‘we should add more product in a channel’ (or in Starbucks case in every single square foot of the store!). And they do this without ever stopping to ask if this made sense to the customers they want to satisfy.

At the end of the day, that’s the perspective that creates problems for companies and the ’simplicity’ we found over and over again as we studied companies was that those who were successful refused to fall into that trap. Might sound overly simplistic but staying focusing on what buyers want trumps other activities if you want to create a breakout winner or a business that sustains success.

Keep up the good work.

Phil