“There is only one boss: the customer.” -- Sam Walton

A successful business should be honest to its customers, good to its employees, and well-organized in its management. And when I say this, I mean that a successful business has to be all three of these things. I have seen too many businesses focus on one too much and insist that it is the most important part of their business model. No matter how good your model is, if you do not take steps to balance these three areas of required excellence, then you are not maximizing your potential.

In this post, however, I am going to focus on the customer. The customer has more power than any single person in the company. It is the customer alone that has the ability to put everybody in the company out of a job, from the janitor to the CEO. Business originated from the demands of customers, and a good business should always go back to the demands of its customers. Whether you have a few or a few thousand different customers, the same princ...