In Beyond the Brand I wrote about the fact that having the experience of engaging with your customers is a lot like surfing:
In 1998, I sold the consumer magazines that I had owned for ten years and took an extended sabbatical. I went to Mexico to learn how to surf. Surfing has taught me that there is no substitution to repetitive practice. Many of the lessons I’ve learned from the sport of surfing are at the core of this book.
Surfing is one of the iconic alternative sports representing not only the youth culture but also the beach culture. Many companies have used surfing to leverage their brands into household names in every town across the country. Everybody loves the image of surfing. Yet, I’ve discovered there are very few people who actually surf. Why is that? There is one simple answer: surfing is hard.
I have a personal theory about surfing. It takes riding a thousand waves to become a surfer. It doesn’t matter if you catch 20 waves a day for 50 days or one wave a day for a thousand days; you just can’t get around the experience of learning the hard way.
Just as in surfing, there is no substitution for one thousand waves, or in this case, a thousand personal interactions with your customer. I know it seems like an overwhelming number, but there is just no way around it. Mastering the seven steps above takes lots of practice. And practice will give you the chance to develop your own style of engaging in a bottom-up strategy with your customers and the marketplace, giving you the opportunity to drive real innovation.
Well, after a thousand waves I learned last week that there’s still a lot to learn. Surfing in a place called Ticla, a big south came in last week producing 15-20 foot waves, much bigger than I’ve ever been in. Surfing these big waves was a fresh experience. To be in the ocean with such power was inspiring and made me use all of the surfing tools I’ve learned. It forced me to take off much deeper on these big waves, commiting to a much bigger ride. This experience got me a lot more excited about surfing.
Just like engaging with your customers, once you’ve had a thousand personal interactions with your customers things can start to feel stale. Up the ante. Try new ways of engaging them in a dialogue. Get them more involved in creating your marketing and product development.
As Mark Parker, CEO of Nike, told me when I was writing Spark:
Shake it up, amplify the focus, energize the sense of urgency, get on a mission, get each other excited, and create momentum.
Try taking off deeper.
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