Customers are always right.

I've been an entrepreneur since I was a child, & what separates the successful businesses from the abject failures is the degree to which I listened to what customers were telling me — and how early I heard it.

The edict that "the customer is always right" is often misunderstood to mean that any one customer is right in any given situation. That's ridiculous. But all customers are right when taken in aggregate, because that's why we're in business — and how we stay there.

That sounds like we have to wait until the market delivers its judgment to hear what customers are telling us. We don't.

Customers will tell us everything we want to know, if we ask them.

We just have to learn how to ask them. Here are some examples:

1. What problem should we solve? Interview people to hear about their journey & the pain they experience along the way.

2. Is this the right way to solve it? Put various kinds of prototypes (back-of-napkin to clickable to Wizard-of-Oz) in front of the customer to elicit reactions — and maybe purchases.

3. How much should we charge for it? Create an offer and a way to opt-in for a set price, & see if they do.

Figure out what you need to know, & find the smallest way to ask for it.

It's not so hard.