Many years ago I wrote about the concept of voting with a wallet which basically means that as a business owner you shouldn’t care about praise and rewards, but you should focus on providing value and being paid for it. Talk is cheap, but being paid with customers’ hard-earned money is the ultimate compliment you can get. Here are 3 compliments I received from our customers over the past week as we announced we were raising the prices:
Compliment 1: “Your service is worth paying for”
Instead of backlash, we received more than 500 new orders for Nozbe accounts for years to come. Quite a few customers paid for several years in advance!
This means to me that - both Nozbe Personal and the new Nozbe bring value to our customers and they’re prepared to pay for it.
This is not obvious. Most businesses fail. Having a product-market-fit, or a product that people deem is worth paying for, is really rare and special. I’m so blessed people believe in Nozbe as much as I believe in it.
And they voted with their wallets that what we’re providing is worth paying for! I never take this for granted!
Compliment 2: “We want you around for years to come”
When I see next renewal dates for many customers in 2025 or 2026, this sends me a clear message that they believe in us and they want us around for years to come.
We’re in this together and we’re here for the long haul!
By pre-paying for their accounts they send us a strong signal that they really want Nozbe around all these years. It’s an investment on their part. It’s also a duty and obligation I take very seriously.
This is what small businesses should be all about - we should support one another - I pay a fair price for your service and you pay for mine, and we stick around for many years, giving each other value worth much more than the sticker price.
Compliment 3: “We hear you. We got you”
As I mentioned, we had to raise the prices to be able to keep this team on board and offer our customers the same or even better quality of service.
After all, they know we’re in an economic downturn. They know the inflation is accelerating and they’re not surprised we had to make a hard decision to keep things going!
By extending their accounts now, in June, I hear our customers saying that they understand it and they appreciate the heads up. This is a sign of mutual respect ✊.
Roller coaster 🎢 of a week is going much better than I anticipated!
It’s hard to describe how anxious I was when deciding on raising prices and spending the entire month of June communicating this to our customers. I just want to provide them with the best productivity app while taking care of business side of things. It’s been hard. Seeing these first 500+ orders coming in over the last 7 days made all of that anxiousness go away. And made me even more grateful and feeling blessed by having so many amazing customers who would truly miss it when we’d be gone.
These 3 compliments are all the motivation I need to keep things humming and developing in Nozbe.
This is the reason that after 16 years I’m still excited to be the CEO of Nozbe.
Thank you 🙏
I truly appreciate each and everyone of you that upgraded or extended their Nozbe account in June. You’re the best!