Show Notes
How much of your time is spent obsessing over your customers' problems? Or how much is spent on the stuff you want to build?
**The conference room story:** A business owner spent 45 minutes showing Scott everything he'd built. Impressive. Then Scott asked: "What does your customer need next?" Pause. "I don't know."
**The problem:** We build things that meet our goals. But the thing that makes a business operate is the customer opening their wallet.
**Scott's quick fix:** When things feel stuck, ask: "How can I serve my customer better?" It flips the focus outward.
**The Doc story:** Scott was selling rural land. A buyer named Doc asked, "How close is the nearest Walmart?" Scott assumed close was good. Doc said: "Please tell me it's more than 20 minutes away." He was an Afghanistan veteran. The city was too loud. He wanted to take his son somewhere quiet—to be one with nature. He bought the property on the spot.
30 months later, Doc called. "I'm ready to be back in the city. The property served its purpose." He gave it back.
**The lesson:** If Scott had assumed remoteness was bad, he would have carried that wrong inference into every future sales call. By staying open and asking why, he discovered that what he thought was a weakness was actually the feature.
**The principle:** We cannot serve everybody. Find the people who want the solution you can offer. Obsess over their problems, not your goals.
**The result:** The guy in the conference room went back, talked to customers, found out what they needed next, and built that. His business took off.
Got a business question? Ask Scott here: [scotttodd.net/ask](https://www.scotttodd.net/ask)
📜 Full Transcript (Click to expand)
Scott Todd (00:02.722)
I have a question for you. How much of your time or your team's time is spent obsessing over your customers' problems or their pain points or their hopes and dreams and all of the other stuff that's on them? Or how much of the time is spent focusing on the stuff that you want to do, want to build? That's the question we're gonna answer in this episode. I'm Scott Todd, welcome to Fix My Business.
The show that helps you build and design a business that you love. I have built multiple seven-figure businesses after leaving my corporate 300 job, Fortune 300 job. I was a VP over there. And I want to help you do the same thing. And a couple weeks ago, I was meeting with a business owner, and he was basically going through and telling me all of the stuff that he was building or wanted to build.
I'm doing this and we're doing this and we're doing this and look at all this, and we've got all this stuff. All like they he was in my conference room showing me everything that he had built. And basically, we we went on like this for about 45 minutes, and it was all very, very impressive stuff. And look, with the evolution of AI and the ability to build basically whatever is in our brains today, it's super powerful. And I said to him, hold on a minute, let me ask you a question. He's like, What? And I said,
What does your customer need next? And he paused and he's he looked at it. He's like, I I don't know. And I'm like, okay, look, we can go build all this stuff. We can go build all of these plants for us that makes us feel good. But until we know what our customer truly needs from us, what do they need?
Next. When we find out what they need next, then we can start to build that solution. But until we know the next thing that they need or what they need at all, we're really wasting our time. And oftentimes what happens is we begin to build or work on things that meet the goals that we want to achieve. As business owners, we all have goals. Look, you don't own a business unless you have goals. I don't own businesses.
Scott Todd (02:24.991)
Because I I have goals. I have financial goals. I have things I want to achieve and I I want to help people, but at the same time, yeah, I have goals too. Everybody has their goals. And you see the thing is that it's so easy to go out and go do all of this activity and build things and try to build a life that we want that we sometimes forget about the fact that the thing that makes a business operate.
Is the customer. It's the customer's ability or desire to open their wallet and pay us for things. So he took that question to heart and he went back and he started talking to his customers. Hey, like what what problem are you trying to solve now? And basically he was able to come back to me with a whole different perspective. He said, I got it. My customers are trying to solve this problem. And
That's the challenge for all of us. I don't care if you're a real estate investor. it doesn't matter to me if you own a car detailing business, a computer consulting business, computer training, anything. It's always what's next comes from what your customer truly needs. And when we begin to build a around that element, well, magic begins to happen.
Because we become obsessed with what they need. And I think that that's what often gets missed when we're designing and building our businesses. The customer obsession. What is it that they need? And when you have that in mind, now all of a sudden you've kind of unlocked the door for them because you're helping them to achieve the goals or to solve the problems that they want to have. So how do you go about doing this? Well
It's easy to say, well, I don't know. Though especially if you're new in a business, you're like, I don't really know what they what they need or what they want. I I know what I can provide. Well, you sometimes have to go do some uncomfortable work and talk to the people that you want to sell to. Talk to the people that you want to sell to. And when you do that, you begin to understand what it's like to walk in their shoes for a day.
Scott Todd (04:43.368)
And the minute you can walk in their shoes, now you we can have that conversation. So for you, where you're where you're if you're not obsessed with that customer's problem, well then you go back and you begin to solve your own problem. And the one thing that I know is that whenever I begin to kind of feel I guess doubtful about what I'm trying to achieve, or maybe I'm not seeing the success that I want to achieve.
The one thing that I do to always flip it back is say, How can I help them? How can I help that person? You see, in business and probably in life, I'm I'm speaking from this from a business perspective, not some life philosopher. In business, I know that whenever I am feeling like I'm not achieving the things that I want to achieve, I begin to look at it and say, Well, I'm not getting these things that I want.
And my instant quick fix is to always say, How can I serve my customer better? How can I help them better? How can I help move them in a way that they haven't thought about yet today and solve that problem for them or be some some ray of hope for them that they want to come back toward me? See, it's easy to look inward at your goals.
And it's harder to look outward. So sometimes that means having to pick up the phone and call your customer. Sometimes that means having to have uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes that means putting yourself into a situation that you really don't want to be in, only to hear the things that you don't want to hear. But without that information, you can't truly move forward. Let me give you a perspective from from me as a real estate investor.
When I s when I left Fortune 300, I went off and became a land investor in real estate. And one of the biggest challenges for me early on was who wants this stuff? See, I was buying rural land and I was thinking, like, who, who wants this? Like w what is it that they're like, what do they want? And I had made a couple sales and finally one day I'm talking to this to this guy. He's he's talking to me about buying some land.
Scott Todd (07:03.281)
And his question to me was, his name was Doc, his nickname was Doc. He said to me, How far is the how close is the nearest Walmart? Now, I took that to to think about the question. I took that to say that he was looking to s to see how close he could how fast he could get to Walmart. And I really didn't know the answer to that question. And I said, Well I can find out for you. Let I can look at it. Let me look at it real fast.
And he said, please tell me it's more than 20 minutes away. Notice what he said. See, I'm thinking that he wanted the Walmart to be close. At the same time, he's saying, please make it further away. So I look at it, I said, Well, guess what? You're in luck. The Walmart's 45 minutes away. He said, Good. Now I'm confused.
I'm completely confused because I was going down this path that Walmart being close was a good thing. He's going down a path that says Walmart being close is a bad thing. And I said, Doc, why is that a good thing? Like, in my mind, it's a bad thing. See, I had to be honest with him because I'm trying to understand why he's thinking differently than me. And he said, because
I don't want a lot of traffic around me. I don't want a lot of activity around me. I said, okay. See, he wanted somewhere that was quieter, somewhere that wasn't as busy. And then I said to him, why are you looking at this property? And he joked, Well, because the Walmart's not close by. I said, No, no, no, I got that. But like what are you hoping to solve here? Like what problem are you hoping to solve?
And he began to tell me his stor his story. He had gotten back from Afghanistan. He had served the in in the military. he felt like the city was was too loud for him. He felt that the city was too too busy for him. And he just wanted a place, these are his words, he just wanted a place he could take his son and show his son what it was like to be one with nature.
Scott Todd (09:29.247)
So he didn't want all the activity. He didn't want all the all the all the stuff that what you and I might want if we were buying something close by. He wanted something that was difficult to get to. He wanted something that was a challenge to get to. And I basically said, guess what? This is your lucky day because this meets everything that you want. And he bought the property on the spot.
Now, after about I think it was around twenty four or thirty months, somewhere around thirty months, he called me up one day and he said, Hey, I don't want to pay for this anymore. He was doing owner financing. He said, I don't want pay for this anymore. I said, okay. Now, look, I was disappointed. And I said, hmm, okay, well, we can take it back. He's like, Yeah, I just want the payments to stop now. I said, yeah, I can do that, no problem.
And I said, can I ask why? Like what changed? And he said, I'm ready to be back in the city again. I'm ready to be back around people. The property served its purpose for me. Okay, no problem. But see, if I would have gone down the path of that this property was bad because it was further away from Walmart.
Then I would have taken that bad inference into every single kind of sales call that I wanted or had. But by being open to it could be good or it could be bad, depends on how your mind thinks, then ultimately what happened was I was able to have this open mind and this open conversation with him about the the why and the problem that he was trying to solve.
And I learned something about him, and I learned something about a lot of other people that were in his situation. That sometimes remoteness is good. So I can lean into that and help them solve that problem. For other people, that remoteness would not have been good. And then this comes back down to truly refining who your customer truly is. Because at the end of the day, we cannot serve everybody. We have to find the people that want to hear the message.
Scott Todd (11:41.17)
that we can deliver. We have to find the people that can solve that that want the solution that we can offer and we can't offer every single solution. So I I hope that that challenges you and your team to go back and think about this desire to obsess over the problems that your customer has. And I can tell you for the guy that was in my conference room, when he began to obsess over what they needed next,
And he truly built what they needed next, his business has completely taken off. So I hope that's what you do as well with your team. And I will see you in our next episode.
I have a question for you. How much of your time or your team's time is spent obsessing over your customers' problems or their pain points or their hopes and dreams and all of the other stuff that's on them? Or how much of the time is spent focusing on the stuff that you want to do, want to build? That's the question we're gonna answer in this episode. I'm Scott Todd, welcome to Fix My Business.
The show that helps you build and design a business that you love. I have built multiple seven-figure businesses after leaving my corporate 300 job, Fortune 300 job. I was a VP over there. And I want to help you do the same thing. And a couple weeks ago, I was meeting with a business owner, and he was basically going through and telling me all of the stuff that he was building or wanted to build.
I'm doing this and we're doing this and we're doing this and look at all this, and we've got all this stuff. All like they he was in my conference room showing me everything that he had built. And basically, we we went on like this for about 45 minutes, and it was all very, very impressive stuff. And look, with the evolution of AI and the ability to build basically whatever is in our brains today, it's super powerful. And I said to him, hold on a minute, let me ask you a question. He's like, What? And I said,
What does your customer need next? And he paused and he's he looked at it. He's like, I I don't know. And I'm like, okay, look, we can go build all this stuff. We can go build all of these plants for us that makes us feel good. But until we know what our customer truly needs from us, what do they need?
Next. When we find out what they need next, then we can start to build that solution. But until we know the next thing that they need or what they need at all, we're really wasting our time. And oftentimes what happens is we begin to build or work on things that meet the goals that we want to achieve. As business owners, we all have goals. Look, you don't own a business unless you have goals. I don't own businesses.
Scott Todd (02:24.991)
Because I I have goals. I have financial goals. I have things I want to achieve and I I want to help people, but at the same time, yeah, I have goals too. Everybody has their goals. And you see the thing is that it's so easy to go out and go do all of this activity and build things and try to build a life that we want that we sometimes forget about the fact that the thing that makes a business operate.
Is the customer. It's the customer's ability or desire to open their wallet and pay us for things. So he took that question to heart and he went back and he started talking to his customers. Hey, like what what problem are you trying to solve now? And basically he was able to come back to me with a whole different perspective. He said, I got it. My customers are trying to solve this problem. And
That's the challenge for all of us. I don't care if you're a real estate investor. it doesn't matter to me if you own a car detailing business, a computer consulting business, computer training, anything. It's always what's next comes from what your customer truly needs. And when we begin to build a around that element, well, magic begins to happen.
Because we become obsessed with what they need. And I think that that's what often gets missed when we're designing and building our businesses. The customer obsession. What is it that they need? And when you have that in mind, now all of a sudden you've kind of unlocked the door for them because you're helping them to achieve the goals or to solve the problems that they want to have. So how do you go about doing this? Well
It's easy to say, well, I don't know. Though especially if you're new in a business, you're like, I don't really know what they what they need or what they want. I I know what I can provide. Well, you sometimes have to go do some uncomfortable work and talk to the people that you want to sell to. Talk to the people that you want to sell to. And when you do that, you begin to understand what it's like to walk in their shoes for a day.
Scott Todd (04:43.368)
And the minute you can walk in their shoes, now you we can have that conversation. So for you, where you're where you're if you're not obsessed with that customer's problem, well then you go back and you begin to solve your own problem. And the one thing that I know is that whenever I begin to kind of feel I guess doubtful about what I'm trying to achieve, or maybe I'm not seeing the success that I want to achieve.
The one thing that I do to always flip it back is say, How can I help them? How can I help that person? You see, in business and probably in life, I'm I'm speaking from this from a business perspective, not some life philosopher. In business, I know that whenever I am feeling like I'm not achieving the things that I want to achieve, I begin to look at it and say, Well, I'm not getting these things that I want.
And my instant quick fix is to always say, How can I serve my customer better? How can I help them better? How can I help move them in a way that they haven't thought about yet today and solve that problem for them or be some some ray of hope for them that they want to come back toward me? See, it's easy to look inward at your goals.
And it's harder to look outward. So sometimes that means having to pick up the phone and call your customer. Sometimes that means having to have uncomfortable conversations. Sometimes that means putting yourself into a situation that you really don't want to be in, only to hear the things that you don't want to hear. But without that information, you can't truly move forward. Let me give you a perspective from from me as a real estate investor.
When I s when I left Fortune 300, I went off and became a land investor in real estate. And one of the biggest challenges for me early on was who wants this stuff? See, I was buying rural land and I was thinking, like, who, who wants this? Like w what is it that they're like, what do they want? And I had made a couple sales and finally one day I'm talking to this to this guy. He's he's talking to me about buying some land.
Scott Todd (07:03.281)
And his question to me was, his name was Doc, his nickname was Doc. He said to me, How far is the how close is the nearest Walmart? Now, I took that to to think about the question. I took that to say that he was looking to s to see how close he could how fast he could get to Walmart. And I really didn't know the answer to that question. And I said, Well I can find out for you. Let I can look at it. Let me look at it real fast.
And he said, please tell me it's more than 20 minutes away. Notice what he said. See, I'm thinking that he wanted the Walmart to be close. At the same time, he's saying, please make it further away. So I look at it, I said, Well, guess what? You're in luck. The Walmart's 45 minutes away. He said, Good. Now I'm confused.
I'm completely confused because I was going down this path that Walmart being close was a good thing. He's going down a path that says Walmart being close is a bad thing. And I said, Doc, why is that a good thing? Like, in my mind, it's a bad thing. See, I had to be honest with him because I'm trying to understand why he's thinking differently than me. And he said, because
I don't want a lot of traffic around me. I don't want a lot of activity around me. I said, okay. See, he wanted somewhere that was quieter, somewhere that wasn't as busy. And then I said to him, why are you looking at this property? And he joked, Well, because the Walmart's not close by. I said, No, no, no, I got that. But like what are you hoping to solve here? Like what problem are you hoping to solve?
And he began to tell me his stor his story. He had gotten back from Afghanistan. He had served the in in the military. he felt like the city was was too loud for him. He felt that the city was too too busy for him. And he just wanted a place, these are his words, he just wanted a place he could take his son and show his son what it was like to be one with nature.
Scott Todd (09:29.247)
So he didn't want all the activity. He didn't want all the all the all the stuff that what you and I might want if we were buying something close by. He wanted something that was difficult to get to. He wanted something that was a challenge to get to. And I basically said, guess what? This is your lucky day because this meets everything that you want. And he bought the property on the spot.
Now, after about I think it was around twenty four or thirty months, somewhere around thirty months, he called me up one day and he said, Hey, I don't want to pay for this anymore. He was doing owner financing. He said, I don't want pay for this anymore. I said, okay. Now, look, I was disappointed. And I said, hmm, okay, well, we can take it back. He's like, Yeah, I just want the payments to stop now. I said, yeah, I can do that, no problem.
And I said, can I ask why? Like what changed? And he said, I'm ready to be back in the city again. I'm ready to be back around people. The property served its purpose for me. Okay, no problem. But see, if I would have gone down the path of that this property was bad because it was further away from Walmart.
Then I would have taken that bad inference into every single kind of sales call that I wanted or had. But by being open to it could be good or it could be bad, depends on how your mind thinks, then ultimately what happened was I was able to have this open mind and this open conversation with him about the the why and the problem that he was trying to solve.
And I learned something about him, and I learned something about a lot of other people that were in his situation. That sometimes remoteness is good. So I can lean into that and help them solve that problem. For other people, that remoteness would not have been good. And then this comes back down to truly refining who your customer truly is. Because at the end of the day, we cannot serve everybody. We have to find the people that want to hear the message.
Scott Todd (11:41.17)
that we can deliver. We have to find the people that can solve that that want the solution that we can offer and we can't offer every single solution. So I I hope that that challenges you and your team to go back and think about this desire to obsess over the problems that your customer has. And I can tell you for the guy that was in my conference room, when he began to obsess over what they needed next,
And he truly built what they needed next, his business has completely taken off. So I hope that's what you do as well with your team. And I will see you in our next episode.