Your Baby is Ugly

For the record, I don't condone smacking actual babies. Only the ones with a P&L.

I've spent the better part of eight years building Arcbound, through wonderful moments, incredibly difficult ones, and strong iterations that have given us a strong future ahead.

You become emotionally attached to what you're creating. You know the sacrifices, how far you've come, and everything happening behind the scenes.

But your customers experience what you deliver, how you make them feel, and whether you're helping them get where they want to go. And sometimes the best thing you can do is let them tell you what you've been unable, or unwilling, to see.

That’s exactly what happened to me this week.

Last Sunday night, I got a call from one of our clients, Steve Barth.

What I thought might be a quick conversation turned into a two-hour discussion about his experience working with Arcbound.

Steve is incredibly thoughtful and intentional. He's built his own methodology around helping organizations think more clearly about strategy, and he genuinely cares about what we're building. 

For two hours, he walked me through what he loved about working with us, where we could improve, and what he felt was missing from the experience.

😲

Some of it was encouraging. Other parts struck a nerve. 😱

I found myself thinking about the business I believe we're building and what someone actually experiences on the receiving end.

Those aren't always the same thing.

(What Steve did after we hung up surprised me even more. I’ll get to that.)

So, we opened things up.

After speaking with Steve, we spent the week doing customer discovery interviews.

We wanted a mix of customers. 

1. People who loved us,

2. People with concerns, and 

3. People who understood our potential and cared enough to help us improve.

We interviewed 10 more customers, spending 30 minutes to an hour with each.

We asked what was working, what wasn't, where we could be more valuable, and what their ideal experience would look like.

And we learned a lot.

First, a little context.

Arcbound has two interconnected offerings.

• Arc Launch helps leaders uncover their stories, define their brands, and build the foundation for how they want to show up in the world. We've spent years refining this process, and I believe we do it exceptionally well today, through a business model that makes thoughtful brand development more accessible.

• ArcBase helps those same people consistently bring their ideas into the world through writing, newsletters, social media, and other forms of thought leadership.

We have wonderful people doing this work, and a lot we’ve gotten right. But our ongoing delivery experience is where we have the most room to grow.

That’s where the interviews became particularly valuable.

Customers weren't simply asking for better content or more deliverables.

They wanted us to understand where they were going, bring them thoughtful ideas, connect the work to their larger goals, and take greater responsibility for making the experience feel effortless.

One wanted his content to evolve alongside his company’s shifting priorities and what’s happening in his industry. Others asked for more proactive recommendations, clearer planning, better visibility into results, or simply less work on their end.

But there was plenty of good news, too.

Several shared how much they valued the people they worked with and how our process sharpened their thinking. 

One customer, John Grover, described Arcbound as a self-discovery engine, helping him develop skills and understand what’s possible for his next chapter.

Still, what became clear was that producing great individual pieces of work and creating a great overall customer experience are two different things.

You can have talented people, good technology, and strong deliverables. But if your customers are still doing too much coordinating or figuring out what comes next, there's an opportunity to improve.

I suspect this is true for many businesses.

We get so focused on delivering what we've promised that we forget to examine what it actually feels like to be the person buying it.

There was something therapeutic about the whole experience.

I've thought a lot about this over the last few days.

When you go to therapy, part of the work involves examining things about yourself you'd rather not face. Old patterns. Blind spots. Ways of operating that once served you but aren't helping you get where you want to go.

Sometimes you have to open up a wound to understand why it's there.

I think building a company can be similar.

Your business becomes intertwined with your identity. Its successes feel personal, and its shortcomings can feel equally personal. When someone challenges something you've worked incredibly hard to create, the natural temptation is to defend it.

You want to explain why something happened, what you've been up against, and how much progress you've already made.

I've certainly felt that.

But I wonder how many businesses spend years protecting the version of themselves they've become comfortable with, rather than confronting what would allow them to evolve – and then consistently make hard decisions to do so.

The more I listened, the more I realized how much valuable information was sitting right in front of us. We didn't need to lock ourselves in a conference room for six months and dream up every possible improvement.

We had customers who cared enough to tell us EXACTLY where we could make their lives better.

We just needed to create the space, ask thoughtful questions, and be willing to hear the answers.

Then something pretty special happened.

Remember Steve, the client who called me Sunday night?

After our conversation, he went a step further.

He took elements of his own strategic methodology, applied them to our business, and shared documentation outlining how we might create a more thoughtful experience for himself as a customer.

Think about that.

This guy spent two hours helping me understand what we could improve, then invested his own time and expertise in helping us figure out how.

A customer had effectively become a teammate. 

When people genuinely care about what you're building, and how it impacts their very own success, the relationship can become far more valuable than a commercial transaction.

They become collaborators. They challenge your thinking, offer perspectives you haven't considered, make introductions, and sometimes help build the very thing they're paying you to use.

Where we go from here.

We're now translating what we learned into a more thoughtful roadmap for the customer experience.

There's plenty of work ahead, and I won't pretend we've figured it all out.

But what excites me is how much clearer our direction became after a relatively small number of meaningful conversations.

A challenge for anyone building something.

If you're a founder, executive, or someone responsible for serving customers, I'd encourage you to try this.

Find five to ten customers who genuinely care about what you're building. Include people who love you, people with concerns, and people who see your potential.

Give each of them 30 minutes to an hour of your undivided attention.

Here are four questions I'd start with:

1. If you could tear down everything we're doing for you today and build it back better, how would you do it?

This invites customers to think creatively and gives them a sense of ownership in the improvements.

2. If you were running my business, what's the first thing you would change?

This pushes the conversation beyond individual complaints to what matters most.

3. What's something you're still having to do that you expected us to take care of?

I particularly love this for service businesses. Some of the greatest opportunities come from removing work your customers didn't realize they'd still be responsible for.

4. What would make our product or service so valuable that you'd have a hard time imagining life without it?

One of our clients, Raj Singh, suggested twice-weekly progress updates showing what we'd accomplished, learned, and planned next.

He explained how proactive communication, performance insights, and thoughtful planning could make the experience significantly more valuable to him.

It's a relatively simple idea that revealed something important about what he values.

And that's the beauty of these conversations.

So here's my question for you this week:

Who are the customers in your business who care enough to tell you the truth? And when was the last time you actually sat down and listened?

Community Notes:

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   Or reach out to Alex if you have questions ([email protected]).
   

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