blackouttuesday

“Enjoying success requires the ability to adapt.”

– Nolan Ryan

Nolan Ryan stayed on top of baseball – in one of the most taxing positions – for an incredibly long time. He says here that he achieved that with adaptability.

Sometimes a company comes out of the gate looking huge. They seem to be doing everything right. Their customers love them. But even if they had the right product or service mix to answer consumer needs for a specific time, they won’t last. Just as they analyzed and adapted, to their opening moment, they have to keep analyzing and adapting.

Sears. Kodak. K-Mart. JC Penneys. All retail giants, gone.

The one I find most interesting is Sears. One of the original catalog companies is flailing and failing in 2020. Because somehow, they have not adapted their catalog model to the Internet: the most recent catalog going to everyone in the world.

On the face of it, they should be perfectly positioned to OWN the Internet and Internet retail. And yet, here comes a book seller who puts them and all other book sellers out of business. It’s remarkable.

Adapt. Just like Ryan suggest we need to.

Adaptability: An Interfanatic Quality

Because there are so many companies that come out of the gate without any way to monetize but billions of fake dollars in investment, there are hundreds of flavors of the month in this bizz. I tend to ignore all of them at first.

Once a company has been around for a while, once I feel it will be a viable long-term solution for filling needs, I start to pay attention.

If we tried to adapt to every new flavor of the month, we’d never get anything done. But if we did not adapt to the time-tested shifts in our industry, we wouldn’t be in business for over 20 years.

So, we adapt. An in many ways, we continually innovate. What we do is work in a way that is beneficial for our customers to do so.

Peter Getoff, Psychotherapist, Corporate Consultant and Trainer – Continually Adapting

We’re working with Peter Getoff to help people learn more about his business. He’s a very successful psychotherapist, corporate consultant, and an nfp management trainer in West Los Angeles.

And after working with Peter for some time, it’s clear that he understands the need to adapt. More than most. Even though he’s already quite successful, he wants to do more for his community, and getting to that next level requires adaptation.

It’s a pleasure to work with Getoff, and in many ways it’s because he’s willing to listen and change the things that need to be changed.

“Even though he’s already quite successful, Getoff wants to do more for his community, and getting to that next level requires adaptation.”

Getoff’s industry is heavily influenced by the digital world, and he has chosen to embrace that digital world. To adapt – to work with it – to further his practice and his involvement.

By adapting to the world around him, Peter Getoff serves better himself, his customers, and his community. He acknowledges that things around him are changing and need more change. And he makes himself a positive part of that changing action.

Adapting to your Customers: Interfanatic Power Search Advertising with Setup

We have many great way to invest a small amount a learn a ton about your customers. One of the most efficient and enlightening is Search Advertising, like Google and Bing Ads.

You start with what you think you know about your customers. And sometimes you’re right. Sometimes you learn. And when you learn, you can adapt your business to better serve your customers.

For example, you run some ads for Product 1 you offer in Location A. But from running ads, you find that nobody in Location A is searching for Product 1. People in Location B are. Potential customers in Location A are looking for something like Product 1, but not exactly the same thing.

If you want to sell to the people in Location A, you can adapt your business by selling a different product. If you want to sell to people in Location B, you change your product to get them what they’re looking for. And, you can continue to run ads in different locations until you find a location with customers interested in your inventory of Product 1.

You might never figure this out if you never ran any ads. You can find out so much, so inexpensively, so fast. Search Ads are a great way to learn about your business so that you can adapt it to reach the customers are looking for.

And with Interfanatic, learning about your customers and product fit can be very, very inexpensive.

Interfanatic and Adaptability

After 20 years of working with many businesses, we have ideas to help you adapt. We can help you learn about where your business is failing, and where it is succeeding. But to adapt, you must first begin, and you must first show willingness to listen.

We’re here to be a resource to great businesses. To help them be greater.

Like Nolan Ryan, we’ve adapted to much, and we can help you adapt, too.

This week’s image:
Interfanatic‘s founder, Ryan Delane, takes or creates every image you see in our social feed.

The Long Beach Grand Prix. To win, these cars adapted. I took this photograph shortly after the conclusion of the sports car race on the Long Beach Grand Prix weekend. These cars are obviously designed to go fast. Their designers also created them to be elegant examples of adaptability. But so are all of the cars that raced. To win, engineers adapted these cars to the circuit and to their drivers better than any other cars. Just like business, these cars have strict rules they must keep. The cars that adapt best and stay quickest, longest, and adapt the most over the course of the race are the ones that win.