“Good frames won’t save bad paintings.”

If you read only one thing I write, let it be this. The quote that is the title of this piece is from the album, The Shape of Punk to Come, which in 1998 was considered one of the most influential rock albums of all time. None of that is important. What is important is the line, “Good frames won’t save bad paintings.”

Business isn’t typically as purely heartfelt or impassioned as music, art, or literature. Just not the same vibe. It’s rare to hear deliberate points of view or noteworthy thinking or compelling product ideation. When ‘Refused’ broke up upon the release of The Shape of Punk to Come, vocalist, Dennis Lyxzén, said, "In the world around me people were squeezed into this idea of getting their shit together, but I never did." This is how most businesses operate. They are squeezed into this idea of getting their shit together. 

People that create something remarkable, meaning something worthy of attention, don’t do it because they are squeezed into getting their act together. They do it almost in opposition to getting their act together. I’ve worked with a lot of founders, known and not known, Jeff Krasno, Yvon Chouinard, Jake Burton, Gwyneth Paltrow, Barbara Close, Will Connor, Angela Scott, the list goes on. Without exception, they wish to see a change in the world. In the beginning they witness an opportunity to make something better, or someone’s life better. And so it begins. The quest to serve. That’s where it starts. Sure, maybe the idea is simply a better mousetrap. The founders of Solo Stove, two brothers, saw an opportunity to make a better thing, but they did so in the interest of making life work just a little bit better. They also were steadfast in their consideration of their customer. In the early days they touched every product before it shipped to assure it was worthy. Little things. Barbara Close of Naturopathica made remedies and tinctures that solved skin problems for people. She helped people. Goop was founded on the simple premise of sharing unique discoveries. Discoveries that made life more interesting, more enjoyable, and sometimes more healthy, but almost always more beautiful (see Goethe and Tartt on the topic). And, famously, Patagonia started maybe more simply than any, just making stuff for climbers that withstood the rigors of the environment while being conscious of the environment. 

So, where am I going with this? Sadly, what I’ve come to witness is that the spark of life and enthusiasm that launches a business tends to become less and less the focal point as the business is required to “get its shit together.” As things evolve and grow, the logistics of running the business steal the attention away from why the business mattered in the first place. Businesses matter to people. What they make and the services they provide matter. To us customers businesses are the means by which we live our lives. They make the stuff we use to commute, compute, transact, eat, sleep, play, clean, you name it. Businesses are important. And, we customers decide which businesses fit into our lives and which ones don’t. We form relationships with the ones that do and we spurn the ones that don’t. 

But businesses forget about us, just like they stop paying attention to why they started in the first place. Businesses get all busy being businesses. They have to manage their supply chains, and they have HR compliance to attend to, and they have accounting and bookkeeping to get done so they can manage the money. Marketing has to let all of us customers know about the business and branding has to make it seem cooler than it is and sales have to figure out how to convince us customers that the business is the best. It’s a very busy thing being a business. It’s busy-ness and it gets busier every day with merchandising, marketing, inventory, payroll, social media, ad spends, financing, hiring and firing and managing and systematizing. And the competition is intense! All of the other businesses want the business’ customers, which means the business has to find a way to make its customers even happier. Promotions and sales and discounts and loyalty programs are required, seemingly so. And, then it’s the holidays and oh my. 

But I digress. “Good frames won't save bad paintings." This is where I began. As businesses become businesses the attention shifts from the art that started it all to the frame that holds it all together. Unfortunately, it isn’t the frame that counts. It’s the art. “Good frames won’t save bad paintings.” 

Prioritize why you exist. Build everything around the relationship the business forms with its constituency, with its customer. Make everything else #2 on the list. Do that every day, day in and day out. I listed a bunch of remarkable, yes, remarkable, founders and brands above. That’s what they do. They steadfastly maintain this priority. It’s the one thing that matters.