Brian Norgard’s got a lovely little piece on customers vs. competition — who should take priority?

I was once a competition addict. All that time and I could have been thinking about my customer, instead I was thinking about the other guy down the block. Boy am I stupid. Live and learn I suppose. In a startup the singular focus should be on the customer. What makes them tick? How do they use your product? Where are they going today for your product/service? What do they look like? Do they wear blue shirts and khakis? What kinds of cars to they drive? Did they go to college? What magazines do they read? Where do they vacation? Are they married? Are they creative? Seriously, you don’t know anything about your customer until you can ask all of these questions.

2Decide.com Election ‘08 Chart of Where the Candidates Stand

This is cool.

The irony is that many products and services that have reached huge masses of people actually have significant margins (Windows, for example, or a cup of Starbucks). They got the best of both worlds because first they focused on winning small communities over and that led to the larger market.

Listening to the remix of “Extreme Ways” by Moby.  It was re-done for the Bourne Ultimatum, the original song being featured in the first two movies of the series.  “Extreme Ways” was originally released on 18.

There’s times when I can’t sleep, even after watching endless Star Trek reruns off the DVR.  I find myself wide awake at 4, 5, 6 a.m. and I just end up running through everything I have in motion in my life.

I think at these points I really realize my full potential — and by “realize” I mean not recapture but in a sense of remembrance — and understand the areas where I need to step it up or shut down things and redeploy resources elsewhere.

I’m dreaming up big things for Fuego.  I can do a much better job there, especially on the marketing and content highlighting side.  I think it can be as big as Glam…but for dudes.

Consulting is going well. Had two new gigs this month (thanks to Noah are due, for sure).  This is something I really need to highlight.  One of my other consulting gigs needs to be restructured and given new life again, because it has such great potential.

…then inevitably I come to my overall happiness quotient.  Is it where it needs to be?  In a word, no.  It’s not.  Well, how can it get there?  Honestly…big changes would get it there.

This is a pretty personal post. So, just deal with it, friends.

Make it interesting.  What’s your happiness quotient?  What would it take to get it to your ideal happiness quotient?