Shama Hyder:
Moment of truth. Let’s be honest. You don’t have to be honest with me. You’re just honest with yourself so that’s okay. How many of you have visibly sighed when Amazon couldn’t get you something by next day delivery? Okay.
Shama Hyder:
How many of you have been like, “Ah, two days.” Right? You’ve done it. How many have ever ordered an Uber or a Lyft and it said seven minutes? And you said, “Seven minutes. I thought it was going to take two.” Think about that, right? I think one of the things that’s very easy to forget when we’re a small business owner, is that we’re also the consumers and customers, right? So how we think as customers, as consumers, we almost forget when we think about the business, because we’re so close to it. My goal today is also to give you a little bit of distance so you start to see how that customer is changing. Very, very important. I won’t play this video for you, but I absolutely do love it because this lovely little girl who is about two, so a little bit older, is two thinks that magazine is a broken iPad. Right?
Shama Hyder:
The iPads easy for her. Mom gives her the iPad. She knows how to make things bigger and smaller and everything. It’s a lot of fun. Mom takes away the iPad, gives her a magazine. She can’t figure out what to do with it. She flips it over. She doesn’t understand why none of the graphics move, why she can’t do anything. And because she’s two and she’s really just figured out how to use her digits, she tests the finger from one hand onto the Palm of her other to make sure that her finger is still working. An entire generation that would think that their anatomy had given out on them before they think the technology is defunct. Right? Because that could never be. How crazy is that? And yet, when I asked the question, how many of us visibly sigh when Amazon couldn’t deliver something two days, almost all of us kind of had that chuckle and said, “We’ve been there.”
Shama Hyder:
So the connected consumer isn’t necessarily a generation, which by the way I do think is changing. I’m amazed to watch my son, I don’t know if you guys see this with your little one, but I feel like swiping is a developmental milestone now. The pediatrician is going to be like, “Well, he’s crawling but is he swiping yet?” I feel like it’s just a natural thing like he just waved his hand in front of the TV. I’m like, “I don’t know what he’s doing, but I really think he expects Elmo to move.” Right? So, it’s really amazing where that basic line is right now. So all these things that we thought were nice to have or cool. How many of you get still kind of excited when you take your smartphone out or are able to do things with it?
Shama Hyder:
Just me? Maybe you sir, since we seem to be kindred souls. All right. So the two of us really do love it. I do. When I look at my smartphone and the ability to text someone or email them, I get a little giddy. I’m like, “This is so cool.” Because for the longest time in history, we’ve never had that. Right? And now all of this technology that we have, that has almost become the baseline for us. How many of you can honestly say you’ve scrolled through Netflix and have struggled to find what to watch? And how many millions of shows are on there? Very different world that we live in now. So I want to give you top five, my top principles for how you start leveraging all of this to make a difference. How do you start to get momentum going in your businesses?
Shama Hyder:
So the number one thing I want to talk to you about is the importance of customer focus and it has nothing to do with what you’re thinking about. When I say customer focused, you’re probably thinking the old adage, the customer’s always right. Putting the customer first. Not necessarily in that way. Do you remember when I told you I did my thesis on Twitter? I did guys. It was like 10 minutes ago. All right. Did my thesis on Twitter. One of the things I wanted to know was why people use social media. For all of you who said, “I kind of love hate it.” Haven’t you ever wondered why someone puts up a picture of, “Here’s a banana I had for lunch.”? Although if they tag your place, that’s kind of cool. Or walking my dog, good for you.
Shama Hyder:
And while we make fun of the selfies, we do it ourselves, right? We’ve all done it. We’ve all done this stuff. And they’re like, “Oh, I make fun of other people for doing it but here I am.” So, why do people use social media? That was my number one question. Would you like to know what I found out? Here’s what I thought it was. I’ll tell you that first, just to build up a little more mystery. So, I thought it was to connect with each other. To have a sense of community, but I was wrong. That’s the secondary reason. The primary reason people use social media is to showcase their own identity. To showcase their own identity. I can hear some of you thinking right now, “Narcissists. I knew it. I knew you were narcissistic.” Right? The age of the Kardashians, but it’s bigger than that. How we connect with each other started a long time ago, long before technology was ever there. Do you remember how meet your first best friend in kindergarten?
Shama Hyder:
I can tell you, you probably sat next to someone. They had a blue crayon and you said, “Oh my God, I like blue crayons.” Right? You had a PBJ sandwich. And they said, “Get out of here. My mom makes me PBJ sandwiches.” That’s how we make friends. That’s how we develop. That’s how we grow technology didn’t change that. It just amplified it. So if you understand this, that people use social media to showcase who they are. You have to start asking a very different question of yourselves. Anybody done a brand building activity at any point in their business, by the way? Like, what do we stand for? What’s our brand? Thought about it, or maybe do a little more of that. Okay, cool.
Shama Hyder:
But if you really think about your brand, whether you’ve actively called that or not, the question you’ve always been asking is what do we stand for? What do we want to be known for? But what if I was to tell you, that’s the wrong question. Based on what this research shows us, what you really should be asking is what does doing business with us allow our customers to say about themselves?
Shama Hyder:
Okay? It’s a game changer. You agree? I know, I know. What is doing business with us allow our customers to see about themselves? There is a local shop in my neighborhood where my parents live and it has the most basement beat prices for clothes that you’ve ever seen. My mom and I would never shop there. Right? My dad on the other hand, loves to shop there. He takes great pride in being able to buy a shirt for five bucks. He tells everybody about this place. People who don’t want to hear about this place hear about this place. People who never shop up here hear about this place. You know why? Because it lets him say something about himself., doesn’t it? “I find a great deal. Boy, I am the best bargain hunter out there. You guys just keep going on to your Macy’s and your Nordstrom’s, that’s not where I go.”
Shama Hyder:
When your customers shop at your place, it says something about them. There’s a great little grocery store, locally owned in my neighborhood. I live in Miami. I just moved there. Anybody familiar with Miami or South Florida? It’s warm. You guys should come visit. It’s nice. But it’s also extremely Latin. Okay? To the point where everybody speaks Spanish, except for me. Luckily, my husband has lived there for 20 years and he’s fluent, but it’s sometimes hard to get by. I literally feel like I live in Latin America. Like, I call home Depot, it’s like, “Hola?” I’m like, “Hold on. Here you go.” Right? I don’t fully understand. So a lot of what you also see has Latin flair, a lot of the food has Latin flair. That’s great. I enjoy Latin food. Sometimes, I really miss a good mac and cheese.
Shama Hyder:
Now there is a local grocery store supermarket, a mile from my house in the middle of South Miami. The only challenge is you can’t find parking because it’s always so full. This place has great mac and cheese. In fact, the way they differentiate themselves is that they’re very Americana. The stuff that I can’t find anywhere else in Miami, that reminds me very much of Texas, of home where I’m from, they have. They have peach pie, right? They have German chocolate cake. They have all these things that I really loved that I grew up eating. They has Mississippi mud pie. Anybody have Mississippi mud pie, by the way? Please, like you you’re not living your best life if you haven’t had some by the way, it’s really that good. But you can’t find that in Miami. Norman Brothers, however, understands that. They’re feeling a key need that no one else really does.
Shama Hyder:
And you would think, well, that’s not really their audience. Yes. But there’s plenty of people like that who want that. Right. I love it. I go there. I enjoy my time. It makes me feel like I’m back home in Texas for the 20 minutes that I spend there. Makes me feel good. That’s really what customer focus is about. I’ll give you some examples. What does that look like to you guys?
Shama Hyder:
I will take that. Break room?
Speaker 2:
Break room.
Shama Hyder:
Break room? Okay. Coffee shop? Does it look like a coffee shop? Oh, speaking of which. I have my latte. Coffee shop. What else?
Speaker 4:
Restaurant.
Shama Hyder:
Restaurant. How many would guess a bank? The future of banks, ladies and gentlemen. And I’ll tell you why this matters so much. How many of you now do most of your banking on your mobile? I know it’s still a cash business so you got to go out there and you probably go into banks more than most, but how many of you would say a lot of the stuff you could do on your mobile phone now? Do you think that’s changing how banks function? The only time I ever went through a drive through at the bank, and the only reason I would go to the bank is because they gave my dog treats. My little one, my malti-poo, not my giant schnauzer. I have three dogs, two malti-poo’s, and a giant schnauzer named Bootsy. Bootsy could not get through the window of the, he’s just giant. My little malti-poo Snoopy really loves it because he would get a little treat.
Shama Hyder:
So I went to the bank just so he could get a treat. Banks have to change a lot of what they’re doing. This is called a society for grownups, nice name right? They created this because they figured out, hey, listen. People don’t really care so much about where they bank in terms of where they put their money as long as it meets certain needs. It’s safe. It feels like it’s a good, it’s FBIC insured and so forth. But one of the things they care about, especially millennials paying off student loans, maybe traveling the world with a best friend. What do you think all these things cost? Money, right? All of these things take money. So they started saying, “What if we started educating people on the things they want to do?” And by the way, when you have those financial decisions, guess who’s here to help? The bank.
Shama Hyder:
Hi there. This is Shama Hyder again. Thank you so much for watching my videos. I super appreciate it. Please share if you find this information valuable, do comment. I love hearing from you and be sure to subscribe. That way you don’t miss a single thing.
