New is always better.
At least that’s what we’ve been told. But the more I think about the past, the way our grandparents would have approached life. I start to think that maybe “old” has something to it. That maybe the thing we’re missing most in our lives and businesses is quality over quantity.
Take for example the principles of business.
I used to be that the customer was always right. That quality won out over quantity every time and that your goal was to make a product that lasts. One time use or one size fits all wasn’t a thing.
I was talking to my husband the other day about ’90s music and movies. I made the point that in our lifetime, the best content came out in the ’90s when we were kids. Maybe it’s nostalgia, but to this day I love listening to Incubus and watching old Denzel Washington movies. They hold up.
Instead, since the boom of the internet and the rise of social media, quantity has been the main focus. More content created faster in order to appease the 5-sec attention span of our world.
This content can be good. But in most circumstances, it won’t be perennial. It will last as long as a fad lasts these days and then be forgotten about. It’s so rare to see an album that will stand the test of time like the Beatles or Fleetwood Mac (which I actually listen to on vinyl.) Or a movie that’s talked about 1 year after it comes out. (Like what ever happened to Tiger King from the beginning of quarantine? Looks like he’s already been kicked off his thrown).
When it comes to your conscious business it might be time to start thinking of it the way your grandparents thought about business. How do you make something that lasts? How do you put quality first? and most importantly how do you show your customers that you value them the most?
At the end of the day, that’s what made a business successful. Valued lifetime customers that spread the word and always came back. It’s how our grandparents did business, and it’s about time that we did business that way too.
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