Lecturing at Harvard Business School

Recently, The Octopus Solution gave a lecture to a great group of international business students who attend the Harvard Business School. The lecture consisted of our background stories, the global impact on our businesses and successful strategies we have implemented. One of our key talking points was:

The Three Hearts

One of our main foundational systems of The Octopus Solution is The Three Hearts. Did you know that an octopus has three hearts? Each heart pumps bright blue blood to different parts of the body, constantly renewing oxygen and other nutrients vital to the survival of the octopus. In the same way, the three hearts within The Octopus Solution function together as one for the constant renewal of customers vital to the survival of the small business. These three hearts: the potential customer, the established customer, and the repeat customer, are responsible for pumping and renewing blood and oxygen through out the small business. Without a customer, regardless of location, funding, and staff, there is no business.

The Potential Customer: The first heart beats within External Marketing, where the potential customer is driven to the company through marketing efforts.

The Established Customer: The second heart beats within Sales, where the potential customer is turned into an established customer by closing them on your product or service.

The Repeat Customer: The third heart beats within Internal Marketing, where the established customer is turned into a repeat customer because he or she is highly satisfied.

These three hearts represent the source of life responsible for the survival and growth of your company. Therefore, your knowledge and understanding of customer flow must be mastered. Most business owners, as they should be, are fixated on driving customers in the door. Without a customer, as common sense would tell you, there is no sale and without a sale, you have no business. Unfortunately, most business owners forget that once they have a customer, they must focus the same amount of energy on keeping them as they did to initially attract them.

The better you are at creating repeat customers, the more successful your business will be in the long run. “Acquiring a customer costs five to ten times more than retaining one. Repeat customers spend, on average, 67% more. After 10 purchases a customer has referred as many as 7 other people.”

Bottom line: keeping customers satisfied will pay massive dividends in the end. Making sure customers come back means knowing exactly what they want. Consequently, the more you can profile the potential customer and established customer, the better chance you have at catering to the needs of a potential customer and maintaining the needs of a repeat customer.

Don't let running a business become a nightmare.

Starting a business can take you from zero to 180 miles per hour in the blink of an eye. Once you start speeding down the decision making path, it becomes more and more difficult to turn the wheel in another direction without time, money, and resources. Correcting a mistake wastes all three of these assets, which means making an effort to get things right the first time around is crucial. Whether you are starting a business or have owned one for 25 years and are now starting to implement The Octopus Solution, everything starts with planning and strategy. Making decisions that can make or break your company is one of the most challenging and exciting aspects of being a business owner; the freedom to do what you what!

Early in our careers as small business owners we ran our companies by the seat of our pants. When problems arose we dealt with them; when things didn’t work, we fixed them; and when money didn’t flow, we worked weeknights and weekends to boost revenue. Reacting to competition, customers, employees and all the other things that can jump out of the wood-work will get you no where fast. Instead of focusing on growth and expansion, you will be running from one problem to the next like a chicken with its head cut-off. If you have been through this frantic chase, you already know that it’s not fun. The Octopus Solution can help you avoid those nightmarish days that run swiftly into the deepest hours of the night.

Even thought we don’t prefer working seven days a week, we sometimes have no choice in the matter. Owning a small business is by no means a 9-5 job; it’s a lifestyle and one that you must be committed to in order to make it work—at least in the beginning stages. After you have our Success System dialed down, you will be able to remove yourself from running a reactionary business to running a business that more or less runs itself. We have removed ourselves and you can too.