Deep Service as a Competitive Advantage
Thoughts on how to grow and sustain a service business over time.
Dear Friends,
When I was a kid growing up (and melting) in Tempe, Arizona, I suspected that one day I’d be a teacher of some kind. I also harbored a secret hope that I’d be a writer. I am grateful to anyone who takes the time to read my writing. Thank you for subscribing!
Training Zen is in the final stages of production. I just approved the final proof and the production team has started preparing it for print. It’s already available on Amazon if you’d like to pre-order. If you do, consider yourself virtually hugged.
A Conversation with Joeri, the Dutch Mensch
If you don’t know Joeri Schilders, I hope you get a chance to meet him. He’s as Dutch as they come, but underneath that candor and pragmatism is a deep well of kindness that allows him to bring out the best in people. That’s what he did with me on his podcast, The Solo Sauce1.
Service as a Competitive Advantage
Joeri asked me a lot of questions about how my wife and I built a leadership development consultancy that has remained robust over 13 years.
When we started True Development in 2013, many of my friends in the industry urged me to rethink our plans—the market was already saturated; clients wouldn’t want our type of training; it is very hard to start from scratch, etc. One of my closest friends, a former McKinsey consultant, listed at least a dozen serious risks. I am glad he did, because I went into this with clear eyes.
We said thank you for the advice, and then got to work. A year or so later, we were working with a group of clients we loved. We grew quickly, year after year, adding team members and expanding our office space. The pandemic changed the industry, but by then I had already shifted into more executive and team coaching work. We survived and then figured out how to thrive again in the new normal, as well as the new normals that followed and continue to follow.
As much as we have changed and will continue to change, I hold firm to a belief I developed early in my career as a trainer and coach: If you serve everyone you work with—your buyers, your participants, your coaching clients, your HR partners, your own team members—with everything you have, if you put their interests first, above your own, you will thrive.
Doing that takes a degree of humility. Plenty of training companies have died because after a period of success, they got too proud of themselves and lost their most critical competitive advantage—deep care for the people they serve. If you care deeply, you pay attention to little details. You upgrade and refine your content, even when it is working. You keep learning and improving yourself so you are at your best for your clients.
How Can I Serve You?
Once more, thank you for following me and for reading. If I can help you with something, I hope you’ll reach out and ask. I’m here to serve.
Yours in deep service,
True
If you’d like to watch the episode—my Heisenberg hat makes an appearance toward the end—it’s here on YouTube, and here on audio.
True, the world is a better place with your consultancy in it. I’m glad you were forewarned but not dissuaded by the critics.