What My Customers Taught Me That No Business Book Ever Could

I have read a lot of business books. I have taken courses, listened to podcasts, and sat in classrooms at Georgetown picking apart financial models and market strategies. And none of it — not one page, not one lecture — taught me what my customers did.

What they taught me was messier and more honest than anything in a textbook. It came through late-night DMs, in the way someone went quiet after I dropped the ball, and in the comments on videos I almost didn't post because I thought I looked tired.

Here is what I learned.

THEY DIDN'T WANT LESS — THEY NEEDED IT SIMPLER

When I was running my juice delivery service, I assumed people weren't ordering because they didn't want it. I was wrong.

They wanted it. They just didn't know where to start, and the barrier to entry was quietly bankrupting them before they even got going. Customers would tell me they bought $50 or $60 worth of vegetables, didn't know what to do with half of them, and watched everything go bad in the refrigerator. They bought a juicer that was too complicated and it sat on the counter collecting dust. They wanted to be healthy — they just needed someone to make it feel possible.

That changed how I thought about everything. I stopped leading with what a product could do and started leading with how easy it was to use. I started telling people: buy the cheapest juicer first. Start with three ingredients — a water base like cucumber, a citrus for flavor, and one green. That's it. Don't complicate it.

When things feel overwhelming, people don't do them at all. My job was never to impress my customer. It was to remove every reason they had to stop.

 That lesson lives in every product I build today. Practical is not a compromise. It is the whole point.

THE WORST VIDEOS PERFORMED THE BEST

I had a modest following back then, and the content that stopped people in their tracks was never the polished stuff. It was the video I shot from my car where I thought my eyebrows looked off. The clip from leaving the gym with my hair everywhere. The moment I tasted a juice combination that was absolutely terrible and looked directly into the camera and said — I'm not going to lie to you. That was disgusting. Never doing that again.

Those were the videos that built trust. Not because I was performing vulnerability — but because I wasn't performing anything. I was just there, being honest, figuring it out in front of them.

People felt like they knew me. And when you feel like you know someone, you buy from them. Not because of the product specs. Because of the relationship.

I wasn't some influencer pretending things were perfect. I was someone who was trying something, sharing it honestly, and letting people decide for themselves.

 I have been chasing my way back to that freedom ever since. It is what I am building Earthkiss on.

THEY WEREN'T BUYING JUICE. THEY WERE BUYING ME.

My first major customer came through a woman who had been following me for a while. She had a meaningful following herself — her sister was a radio personality — and somewhere along the way they decided they liked me. Thought I was funny. Felt like I was someone they would actually want to sit down with.

She became a customer because she trusted me. Not because of my branding. Not because of a discount code. Because she had watched me show up consistently, be honest, and actually care about what I was sharing.

Women over forty have a finely tuned radar for this. We have tried the products that used twenty-two-year-old faces to sell anti-aging serums. We have watched influencers credit a supplement for a body they clearly built doing three hours of training a day. We are done with it. We know better now.

When a woman in my demographic buys a wellness product, she is not just buying the ingredient list. She is asking: does this person understand what I am going through? Do they live this? Are they for real?

 That is why being my own customer is not just a marketing angle. It is the foundation of every claim I make and every product I build.

I ALREADY KNEW. I JUST NEEDED PERMISSION.

When I started sharing my juicing journey, I was not trying to build a business. I was excited about what was happening to my body and I wanted to share it. The business part developed because people kept asking — and the more they asked, the more I realized I had been sitting on an answer to a problem I had not officially named yet.

Every customer who said I wish this was less expensive, I wish it was easier, I just want to know where to start — they were all saying the same thing. Over and over. And I kept hearing it and nodding along, but not fully trusting myself to act on it.

I even broke down the cost for customers so they could do it themselves and save money. That probably sounds counterintuitive for a business. But it was honest, and they remembered it. Some of those customers are still in my life today.

 The lesson was never about the product. It was about trusting myself. I kept needing my customers to confirm what I already knew before I would give myself permission to believe it.

 I am still working on that. But I am much further along than I was.

SILENCE IS DATA TOO.

There was a customer I really liked. She was a friend of a friend, and she ordered a juice package from me once. While I was dropping off her order, she complimented the jacket I was wearing and asked where I got it. I told her I would send her the link later.

I never did.

She never ordered again. When I followed up to see if she was interested in another package, she did not respond. No drama, no confrontation. Just silence.

That silence told me everything. She is now a personal trainer and we still follow each other — I am proud of her journey. But I never forgot what that silence meant.

 The biggest asset in your business is the trust of the people who chose you. Break it in small ways and they leave in small ways — quietly, with no explanation you can argue with.

 Keeping your word is not a values statement. It is a business strategy. And customers will teach you that the hard way if you let them.

WHAT I WOULD TELL EVERY FOUNDER

Build products based on what your customers actually need — not what you think they need, not what you think is a great idea, and not what looks good on a pitch deck.

That means sharing the journey before the product is ready. It means listening more than you talk. It means using the feedback you receive to make things better, even when it is uncomfortable. I am still learning this. It does not get easier, but it gets clearer.

The most important market research I have ever done did not happen in a classroom or in a spreadsheet. It happened in the comments section. In the DMs. In the quiet of a customer who decided not to come back.

Listen to all of it.

Your Turn

What has a customer taught you that no book ever could? Drop a comment or send me a message — I read every one.