Christopher Carfi

I don’t understand why Seth didn’t link to the Lynx Transport website in his recent post, 478-PETE. It really is a great example of something that we’ve been talking about for a long time…everything commoditizes over time except for you.

Differentiating on your product speeds-and-feeds? Any viable competitor is “close enough” in capabilities, and can likely do the job well enough.

Differentiating on your processes? There are only so many ways to do things, and processes can be replicated. (They’re probably hardcoded into your ERP system, anyway.)

Differentitating on your infrastructure? Another competitor can get the same hardware and software from the same vendors that you did.

I’m not even going to talk about competing on price.

There really are two big long-term differentiators. One is execution, naturally.

The other is the people in the organization, the unique collection of personalities and personal reputations that are the soul of the business.

What Pete at Lynx Transport has done is bake his personality and his personal stake into the organization, and that commitment rings through, loudly and clearly. The company’s about page reads like a blog entry. It’s refreshingly basic and B.S.-free. First person writing. Firsthand accounts of what’s gone on in the company. It’s a glimpse into the “who” and the soul of the organization.

All business is personal.

UPDATE: Just found this in Pete’s FAQ list

Q: Pete, could you sum up your business philosophy?

A: I’m glad someone asked that question. We work hard to please our customers. We have experienced employees and purchase and maintain a fleet of late model trucks. We have all the boxes, packing supplies, moving pads, dollies, ramps, liftgates, etc. to do your job professionally.

I, as president of Lynx Transport Company, try to put myself in the customer’s shoes. I try to service their needs and address any problems as if I were the customer. This has proven successful since I started the business in 1981 – Good ideas don’t go out of vogue.

Go, Pete, go.

Neat collision of a bunch of things happening here. My friend Ron “Chai Guy*” Tetirick is walking the Pacific Crest Trail from end to end, a journey of about 2,650 miles. On foot. Solo.

Dave Gray, who regularly appears in this space, is all about the cult of paper. He even has a hipster PDA.

The neat collision: Ron can’t always post to his blog since he’s, you know, dodging rattlesnakes and bears and stuff. But he’s still keeping a journal. He’s sending the pages to his friend Blue, who is posting them for him on his blog.

(click pages to view Ron’s entry)


Great stuff. And, yes, sometimes paper is better.

* – if you’ve gone to that thing in the desert any time in the last couple of years, Chai is responsible for the “Free Chai Revolution” that takes place near Center Camp.

John T. Unger responded to the post on creativity in the comments. He’s so spot-on that his whole response is reproduced here. John writes:

“Inconceivable!

I think my take would be that there’s no point in even doing something if you don’t in some way improve on the existing concept or structure or practice… I mean, who wants a motorcycle that’s only as good as new or maybe not even quite that good? *I* want a motorcycle that does something the others don’t do, whether that’s flying, making espresso or shooting jets of flame from it’s headlight. My basic criteria for accepting a new design brief is that it should at least in part be “impossible” or inconceivable. Where’s the fun in doing something you know will work? The learning curve is all about doing something that should never work, and doing it in an elegant way.

Conservation of mass? Pshaw. I make something from nothing all the time… In fact, the world is so full of nothing, I find that using it as my primary source material gives me a constant supply. Not nothing in the sense of a lack of atoms, but nothing in the sense of matter undesired by the masses. There’s plenty of that stuff, and I can make it very desirable with a little application of creative reorganizing.

The first rule of creative living is that breaking the rules is the first step to fixing the problem. When you can break the higher order rules of physics, or at least bend them a bit or make them dance unexpectedly on pins, you’re almost certainly on to something.”

What does John create out of “nothing?” Things like the Great Bowl of Fire, and things like these.

Bonus question: What movie inspired the headline of this post, as well as the original one?

Scott Reynen:

“Education also involves getting people’s attention. But so does electroshock therapy. No one makes a living saying nonsense like ‘Marketing, at it’s core, is electroshock therapy.'”

(via doc)

Today I’m at the Business Marketing Association conference in San Jose, and just had the chance to hear a great presentation by Justin Crotty, who is the VP of Channel Marketing for Ingram Micro, a $28 billion technology distributor (#72 on the Fortune 500 last year, for what it’s worth). A few bits of Ingram’s strategy were communicated. Why does this matter? Because Ingram is in perhaps the most “commodity” business in the world. What do they do to differentiate?

They connect with their customers.

At first, Ingram was going to do an ad campaign around “partnering” with their customers. They pulled some prospective ads together.

The ads were abysmal. Stock shots of the attractive business people of all genders and races, smiling cheerfully at the camera. Ingram knew their customers would (rightfully) call B.S. on them. So, the drawing board was revisited. Here’s the result:

In other words, it’s not that the strategy is aimed at the customers…the customers ::are:: the strategy

Crotty brought up a number of very salient points. In particular, he shared another insight that was spot-on, especially in a commodity business. “If you can get customers to help you develop your go-to-market strategy, the you don’t need to sell to them anymore.” Think about that for a second.

Now, check this out. Last year, CRN (one of the go-to resources for Ingram’s industry) did their annual “Top 25” executives list. Number 19 on the list was Scott Goemmel, one of Ingram’s customers. They promote their customers, relentlessly, according to Crotty. (Apparently this ruffled at least one set of feathers…Ingram’s CEO was listed at #20, behind Goemmel on the list. Heh.)

A couple of other key quotes from the presentation:

• “Relationships create emotional barriers to exit.”
• “Supermarket card programs reward card ownership…they don’t reward loyalty.” (For example, how many times has the checker at the local supermarket swiped a “dummy” card for you?)
• “Every business is a small business…your word is everything.”

Good stuff. Whereas a number of the other presentations have been a little too close to “marketing business as usual” throughout the day, Crotty’s presentation was an unexpected oasis of clue.

I like words. I mean, I really like words. And yesterday, something happened that rarely occurs…the meaning of a word changed for me. It wasn’t that I learned a new word, or that I learned an obscure definition that consisted of a word I already knew. Instead, a common word, a word that I’ve uttered and heard probably thousands of times, has been changed in meaning, likely forever.

photo: elisfanclub

That word is “creative.”

Now, as someone who has been on the sales and marketing side of the business for a long time, I used to map the word “creative” to something pretty close to the answers.com definition of the word. I used to map it to:

creative: characterized by originality and expressiveness; imaginative: creative writing.

Or perhaps this one:

creative: one who displays productive originality: the “creatives” in the advertising department.

The word used to mean something akin to the above definitions. It also had a number of other overtones: the “creatives” were the people in vintage, mismatched clothing who were “fun to be around” but…ultimately…well, they were the flighty, flaky folks. (You know, the ones who couldn’t hold a steady job.)

This changed yesterday at MeshForum.

Over the course of a conversation, I came to realize that there’s another, truer, sense of the word. One of the other participants stated that he had made a decision to “live a creative life.”

When I first heard that phrase, I naturally mapped the word “creative” to the definitions above. And, since it was uttered by an artist, everything seemed to fit. My worldview was secure in its assumptions.

And then the conversation progressed, and I realized that I had completely missed the point. The word “creative”…perhaps it’s better to explicitly enunciate it “create-ive”…was not meant to indicate “expressive” or “imaginative.” Instead, it was tied to the root meaning of the word create…to fabricate out of undifferentiated raw materials, to bring something new to the world and to bring to life and fruition and success novel, tangible things that have never been seen before.

This idea of “creation” is in stark contrast to the common business tactic of fixing problems. As was stated yesterday, “when you ‘fix’ a broken motorcycle, the best that you can hope for is to end up with a motorcycle that is as good as it was before it was broken.” When you are being create-ive, you bring to life something that is additive, something that propels you, and your company, and society forward.

So…were you create-ive today? Or did you just fix things?

(Dave…thanks.)