My best week ever started with a single email from a customer in Portland.

They wrote a long note about how our product helped their small team, and I shared it with our whole company. That email sparked a new idea for a referral program we launched just two months later. What's the most unexpected thing a customer has ever taught you about your own business?

3 comments

3 Comments

christopher9521mo ago

Realize that your best ideas are literally in the trash. That's hilarious and kind of perfect. You spend all this time and money trying to figure out what customers want, and the whole time the answer was just the stuff you were throwing away. It's like finding money in the couch cushions, but for your whole business model.

grant_wilson721mo ago

My buddy runs a small coffee roastery. A regular customer kept asking for the leftover chaff, the papery skin from the beans. Turns out she was using it as mulch in her garden, said it was amazing for her tomatoes. They never even thought about selling it before, but now they bag it up and it's a whole extra little side thing.

jamiegreen11d ago

Hold on a second though. Just because one person had a weird use for a waste product doesn't mean it's some hidden goldmine for everyone. A lot of these "trash to treasure" stories are just that - stories. Most times it's a few bags sold to a handful of hobbyists, not a real side business. I've seen people try to sell their sawdust or eggshells and it just sits there taking up space. More often than not you spend more time and money cleaning, bagging, and marketing the stuff than you ever make back from it. It's a nice little novelty, but not the kind of thing you want to build a plan around.