Rules of Thumb

That’s when I realized that, like many entrepreneurs, I’d been looking at the situation through the wrong end of the telescope. Absorbed as I was in the brilliance of my own idea, I’d overlooked the other end of the telescope: I’d neglected to consider how the world looked to the people I was trying to sell on my idea.

Somehow he knew that the most important thing a businessperson can do is to learn to see the world through the eyes of the customer.

“Dammit!” Tom shouts. “Enough of this weak stuff! Now’s the time to capture the imagination of the world! And if not the whole world, at least your world!”

If you want to get closer to your customers and see what they’re buying instead of what you’re selling, try this thought experiment. Take the metaphor of the telescope literally: which end are you looking through? Are you looking at your customers through your end, trying to size them up to sell them what you’ve got? Or are you looking back at your

The point is, capturing the world’s imagination is the only game that’s really worth playing.