Addressing Irritation

Hey there,

It has been a bit of an irritating week. BYU lost by one yard. I’ve had weird jaw pain. And Brandon Sanderson’s new book, while excellent, keeps having flashbacks that I really don’t care about, forcing me to read EVEN MORE to find out what happens to Kaladin.

So where am I going with this? I had a point in the back of my mind when I started, but that one yard loss keeps playing on repeat.

I’m not sure if this is an American thing or a Western Civilization thing or just a human thing, but so often we’ll think of our lives like a sports game: if you win, I lose. It’s a zero sum game, and there’s only so much of the pie to go around.

Fortunately, that’s generally not how things work. 

While I was growing up, Walmart was seen as the villain of the piece who was killing off the hapless Mom & Pop stores. That crown has sense been stolen by Amazon. Walmart was winning, Amazon is winning, so now we have to go find the losers and put them on public display so everyone knows who is getting replaced.

It makes for a nice story that fits our sports mentality, but it’s really not true. Walmart found an annoyance (small towns not being able to get the goods they need for a reasonable price), and solved it. Amazon found a way to do that without the customer having to step into the store.

They found an annoyance and they helped make it slightly better. Yes, a couple people lose out, but they lose out because they were set up to perpetuate the annoyance.

Walmart brought annoyances of its own, which Amazon lessened. At some time in the future, someone will figure the way to solve the annoyances Amazon brings and potentially supplant them (assuming the market continues to function in a relatively frictionless and free way, which isn’t necessarily a given).

Now, I could go on an on (and on). But my point isn’t to talk about the relatively merits of companies out there. It’s to point out why these businesses succeeded: they found an annoyance and made it better. Yes, it made them wealthy. But, more importantly, it made their customers better off.

And THAT’S why they made so much money.

That’s the challenge going into the end of the year: find one annoyance for your clients (or potential clients) and find a way to make it better. It doesn’t need to be a huge change like Amazon made to the retail world. Just something small. Something that will make your client better off.

And, yes, it just so happens you should reap so economic benefit from that change.

The Links

• My latest: It’s coming to the end of the year. If you or someone you know started up an independent entrepreneurship this year, read these 6 tax tips to keep in mind.
• The next season of The Expanse comes out on the 16th. If you haven’t watched it yet, it gives you just enough time to get all caught up.
• Now you can pretend to be Professor x with this brain computer.

Service Dog Update

With the increase in COVID-19 cases in our area, the training center no longer allows us to go inside for training. Instead, the center has its own trainers come out and take Sherman to work with him. So unlike before where we were acutely aware of the things he was doing wrong, now it’s just a black box where dog goes in and report comes out.

This was the first week we did this new arraignment (after missing last week due to the vomit/diarrhea fiasco, almost certainly caused by getting into the children’s candy. Thankfully, they are not allowed to eat chocolate right now, so it’s only too much sugar for the dog, not poisonous chocolate). Anyway, the report from the trainer said he was a “rockstar.” So that’s good! Hopefully it’s actually true, too, and not her just being nice.

It’s hard to see some of that at home. I mean, he does really well most of the time. But it’s the getting into the candy that really sticks out. Especially when cleaning up a long dribble of the after effects.