In a blog post many years ago, Seth Godin declared the following 98% rule:
By a factor of three, what you do is not nearly as important as how it makes people feel.
That’s a rule I have to practice more. Sometimes, in the hustle of day-to-day details, I forget the larger picture — which, in my case, is this: Why I’m doing what I’m doing. In short, I’m doing what I’m doing because I want to help people. Everything else is secondary.
What is your big picture? Why are you writing books? Why are you doing what you are doing? Answer that. And, if somewhere in your answer, there are no people, put some people in. People matter. — John Kremer
Here is a short excerpt from Seth’s blog post in 2007:
Is it possible that people recommend a Mac so often because of things that having nothing to do with a side-by-side analysis of the speed of data entry in Word?
All a rhetorical way of pointing out that businesses (and people) do two things. Most focus on just one (at least when we’re doing the task at hand) which is the task at hand. But, there’s something else that’s far more important, something disconnected from what’s produced but certainly related: how you made the customer feel.
How’s this for a 98% rule: By a factor of three, what you do is not nearly as important as how it makes people feel.
If you buy that, then the question is this: why do you spend almost all your time on the wrong thing?
About John Kremer
John Kremer is author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, the Relationships Matter Marketing program, and many other books and reports on book marketing, Internet marketing, social media, and book publicity. -- John Kremer on Book Marketing.