I find it fascinating that so often people will come up with a great idea or product, put all of this time and effort and consideration into making it the absolute best that it can be…and then they watch it fail because they never gave it a good name. And I don’t mean that they thought about it and chose a bad name. In my experience, people simply don’t name things or give them an easy, thoughtless label that doesn’t create any sense of identity or purpose.

I’ve been guilty of this in the past. When my children were younger, they adopted a cat and my wife and I generously (perhaps foolishly) let them name it whatever they wanted. They chose Pud. Why? I could not begin to imagine, but I share this to illustrate the importance of getting out in front of naming something rather than leaving it to chance.

Early in my career, I took over management of a media company where they established a smart program of pre-booking an interesting collection of fixed and unique spots, which had to be reserved on a long-term basis. The very wise concept was to lock in recurring revenue so you started each month with a solid base, in exchange for a discount to the customer. 

When I got there, they were only half reserved and the sales team groaned if you asked about it. Digging into the program, I was handed the log that tracked it, the “Base Revenue Worksheet.” 

This was the name given to it by the accountant who set it up, and it turns out the sales team just took that exact page out as support material. I mean no disrespect to accountants, but if you’re a retailer and someone comes to talk to you about this great, game-changing product that they should definitely buy right now, how excited are you going to be when that product is called the Base Revenue Program?

Understandably, the company struggled to keep the spots filled. When I had control, we burned the worksheet, rebranded it, and moved some of the styling around so that sales would see it as a brand-new product with a catchier name like Sales Success Features. Suddenly the Sissyphian task of selling it became much easier, and spots started selling out consistently. Just by changing the name…

The topic of naming came up for me recently while sitting around the table with my family. My daughter talked about her coffee with oat milk and how great it was. I said that I didn’t understand — words mean things, and mammals produce milk, whereas vegetables and fruits can be made into juice. To me, she was more accurately putting oat juice in her coffee.

My daughter disagreed, so I sought support from the very educated members of my family. I was, however, summarily thrown under the bus, saying that the meaning of the word milk was sufficiently malleable to encompass byproducts of oats or almonds.

For the record, I still disagree.

Nevertheless, this did get me thinking about how much a single word can matter. My personal feelings aside, we can all acknowledge that adding oat juice to your coffee would be unthinkable, but adding oat milk to your drink feels natural and easy. The manufacturers certainly could have tried to market oat juice, but because they put in the time to think of a clever name, Starbucks now has a new way to increase the price of your already overpriced morning beverage.

As you look at your own business and product/service offerings, how well have you done at creating thoughtful, compelling labels? One company I work with was contemplating a live training series, but nobody seemed inclined to give it a name beyond Live Training Series. When I insisted, despite pushback, that it did in fact need a name, they took some time to consider how they wanted to position this offering.

This was during the height of the pandemic, and the name that they came back with was perfect — Thrive. Because at that moment, nothing sounded more compelling than the idea of not just surviving, but thriving. 

The series was a great success and went on to spawn more conferences and live training events. Do I think that this was wholly due to the name? Certainly not — a lot of intelligent, talented people put hours of work into making a great product that did exactly what it promised to do. But the name gave the program an identity, a life, a purpose. 

So as you work on developing your own products and advancing your company, pay close attention to how you’re naming (or not naming) things. Regardless of the specifics of your business, words matter. Because nobody has ever wanted to put almond juice in their coffee.

In the early days of the internet, its prophets preached that it would bring freedom — a specific kind of freedom that they called disintermediation. In addition to being a very attractive buzzword, disintermediation describes the process of cutting out the middle man. Disintermediation, they promised, would get you the best prices on what you wanted to buy, unfettered access to information, and eliminate any and all barriers between you and the product/provider/information that you were looking for.

The role of the middle-man, though, is a time-honored tradition. While examples undeniably go back further, the first example that I think of is traders who used to run ships from Continent A to Continent B, buy a product, hope they didn’t die on the trip back, sell their product for 20x the price they bought it for, and repeat until they were either rich or dead.

This role of the intermediary would later be seen in print media via priests who could read books (although primarily the Bible) and tell you what it said — or at least what they decided you should think it said. This made them some of the earliest editors and gatekeepers of information, and they used it to great effect in controlling local populations.

As literacy became a tool for the common people instead of just second and third sons of noble families, though, things changed. People were able to interpret books for themselves, which gave rise to newspapers, radio, television, etc. In all of these mediums, though, you still had the middleman deciding what you needed to see and why, effectively standing between you and information.

In the same vein, retailers may have stopped risking life and limb, but Macy’s and JCPenny still served the role of the intermediary. They sourced clothing from providers and exercised a level of quality control that, in theory, meant you knew what you were buying and had some amount of certainty in your purchase.

Things are different in the age of the internet, though. Now, I go online and buy things directly from my preferred brand, but this hasn’t resolved all my problems as a consumer; rather, it’s shifted them. Now when I order a shirt, it inevitably arrives either in the wrong size because it uses another country’s sizing chart or it’s of such a poor quality that I’m not realistically going to wear it. Without an intermediary, the impetus is on me to figure out what the right solution is and who I can trust to sell a high-quality product.

We see the same issues in media and information; disinformation has replaced disintermediation as the word of the day, and many consumers aren’t happy with the state of things. People are starting to miss being able to reliably get products and information that has been vetted and provided by an intermediary.

This leads to an important question: Is the pendulum about to swing the other way? Could we be seeing a shift in thinking that leads us back to the era of the intermediary and gives consumers an easier, less-stressful way to buy t-shirts and obtain information?

As you’re planning the direction that your business is going, it’s important to be aware of this shift in thinking and to try to position yourself advantageously. This is a broad question, so to avoid going too macro with it, I find it helpful to think about what you can do to anticipate and adapt to these kinds of changes.

For instance, look back at what your industry was doing in, say, 1950. Then ask yourself, what had changed by the time 1975 came around? What about the year 2000? And what does it look like the situation will be in 2025? These kinds of broad, major shifts take about a generation to move their way through the zeitgeist and become ingrained.

As you ask yourself these questions, also consider where your business fits in the intermediary vs. no-intermediary debate. Personally, I have a foot in each world, with some businesses that can operate great on the 1-1 exchange and others that function as a middleman for consumers. There isn’t a “better” camp to be in, but if you want to be ready for coming changes, then you certainly need to know which approach you’re currently in, decide where you think the trend is going, and plan accordingly.

So, as you contemplate your next strategic move, remember: Whether you're betting on disintermediation or embracing the comeback of the intermediary, just be sure your business isn't caught standing in the middle of the road. Because that's where you get run over.

In this column, I spend a lot of time talking about the things you should be doing. And I’ve gathered a lot of this advice by doing the wrong thing and learning the hard way over the course of the past 30 years. The crux of the issue is that I can give that kind of advice because it’s within the context of, “I did this wrong, but I learned my lesson and you can too.”

This time, I didn’t learn the lesson. Or at least, not as fast as I should have. Early in my career I worked in advertising with retail clients, our sales team would sit around a table and talk about all the things our customers foolishly weren’t doing: they weren’t merchandising correctly, missed advertising opportunities, and were just generally behind the game. If only they’d listened to us, we cried, they’d all be doing so much better!

Well, that was an attitude that I carried to other places in my career, including when I was buying and managing businesses as an executive. I say this to emphasize that I absolutely had the following events coming to me.

I recently jumped into operating a franchise with my son. And we chose a franchise specifically for all the guard rails and guidance that came with it. This gave us a long road map of how to get from our concept to our official opening, and when we picked out a date to launch six months in advance, we felt like we had the situation well in hand with our spreadsheets and weekly plans.

I believe it was Mike Tyson who said, “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.”

As we got closer to the grand opening, we started running into more and more problems. While we had very sound, well-researched plans, for some reason that didn’t seem to matter to the permitting department, vendors, the utility company, or literally anybody but us, in fact. 

As the date got closer, we were quickly running out of time to actually get the doors open. At one point, my son and I were so close to getting mad at each other that we just broke down laughing. We were both giving it our all and our staff was doing great work, but there were about eight things that were supposed to be ready by then that just hadn’t come through due to a smattering of logistical issues.

Looking back on it, some of what got in our way around this pinch point was that we just weren’t using the playbook. That’s a little embarrassing because, as I mentioned, we chose a franchise operation specifically to have access to that kind of instruction. But as we got busier and busier, it became easier to skip the extra instructional videos because we knew better and already had so much on our plates.

Now, it seems obvious that doing the extra training would have saved us more time in the long run — you’d be shocked to learn how much faster inventory goes when you know how to do it the right way. And I’m mostly kicking myself because this was a lesson that I already knew.

Throughout my career, I built a record of success by sticking to the playbook. And that didn’t mean just following it myself — it also meant making sure that my team knew the playbook and knew how to use it. Because there are times and places to be innovative or creative and make big, sweeping changes. But when it comes right down to it, almost any business’ core operations can be written down in a playbook and followed. 

The point of this exercise isn’t just to offer some long-overdue apologies to my former clients who were going through something that I didn’t understand at the time. I also want you to consider, do you remember your playbook? And if you do, are your people still following it? I know how things can fall to the wayside as new ideas take up focus, but don’t forget to stick to the core practices that keep your business afloat.

In the end, we had a successful launch that could have been a bit better but was still good. We were able to dig ourselves out of the hole we found ourselves in, but if we’d followed the playbook from the beginning, we wouldn’t have had a hole to dig out of. We’d be on a hill and have a better vantage point to see further and with more clarity. 

Revisit your playbook and make sure that you’re not accidentally getting lost like we did and losing sight of your business’ core processes.

In my career, I’ve closely examined many different types of organizations working in different areas. But for all the many differences I see in business perspectives and how an organization is run, I find that businesses tend to fall into one of two categories: yesterday businesses or tomorrow businesses.

A yesterday business falls back on “well this is how we’ve always done it, so this is how we should continue doing it”. And for a lot of American history, this strategy has been enough for plenty of businesses to succeed.

But in the last 20 years, we’ve seen a growing class of disruptors who take the old model and find a way to change it for tomorrow. Think of how money-transferring services like PayPal have all but replaced paper checks as an example.

When discussing this dichotomy, it can be easy to think that the default is that everyone should be a tomorrow type of business. But at present, the old school and the new school are coexisting more or less peacefully in most sectors. 

That likely won’t last forever, but if you’re not worried about what could change in 20 years, then you may not have a reason to be concerned about looking into the distant future.

I recently saw an example of this dichotomy when my most recent car lease ended. Yes, every financial advisor I know hates my three-year leasing cycle, and no, I do not plan to change it, so please be kind, readers who work in finance.

In my leasing cycle, I’ve seriously considered going electric many times, but I felt that the industry needed more time to mature. So when my lease ended, I decided to look at Tesla.

This experience was completely at odds with every car-buying experience I have ever had in my life. I’m used to the poorly lit car dealership where they try to upsell you on packages, nudge you into something else, and then send you home so you can come back in a couple of days to sign a mountain of paperwork.

My Tesla experience barely involved talking to other human beings. It started by going on their website to schedule a test drive, putting in my driver’s license information, and selecting my location (depending on where you live, they’ll even bring it to you).

When I arrived for my appointment, I didn’t even need to show my ID. Instead, they gave me a card to start the car, and away I went because the car had GPS and they already knew who I was.

So I went out to the lot, found the car that I’d scheduled a drive for, and I was off. I came back and told them I was interested and wanted to hear what they had for sale. The associate told me that they had no idea what was currently available, so my best bet was to check the app.

Thus ended the human interaction portion of buying a Tesla. I went on the app, picked a car that I liked, and was pleasantly surprised to find that everything was simple and clean without any “comfort packages” or other upselling opportunities.

While I could’ve had it delivered to my door, I decided to go to the service center to pick up my new Tesla. After giving them my credit card number and some basic leasing and insurance information, I was all set to pick up my new car.

The point of all of this isn’t to endorse Tesla or anyone in particular. It isn’t even to say that you should get a fancy app or a shinier product. 

The point is that Tesla has combined a shiny new product with an entirely new experience that makes you feel like you’re shopping in the space age fantasy of what the future will be like. 

After all, Tesla is far from the only manufacturer of electric cars. But the reason they stand out, and why they’re undeniably a forward-looking business, is that while other organizations are selling new products the old way, Tesla has invented a completely new way to sell that matches their futuristic product.

This is what a tomorrow business does. It takes risks and it isn’t afraid to start over from scratch to be unlike anything else a competitor can offer.

Does this guarantee that Tesla will one day vanquish the old guard? Not necessarily. And I wouldn’t say that every business needs to reinvent the wheel (or the whole car in this case). 

Rather, the message here is that a sufficiently inventive organization can change the game and quickly acquire vast amounts of market share. And whether you ultimately decide to be an inventor or a member of the old guard, it’s important to know which direction your business is heading and what’s on the horizon for your industry.

As we wrap up 2023, many of us are looking forward to what we can expect in 2024. And given the lack of any credible psychics (my deepest apologies to the Long Island Medium), I’ve decided to gaze into my own crystal ball to see if I can glimpse anything coming our way next year. And after employing all of my divinatory prowess, I’ve got three predictions for 2024 that you’ll want to hear.

I think that, on the whole, we won’t see huge changes in 2024. But when I say that, I don’t at all mean to imply that next year is going to be stagnant. Rather, I think that there are going to be a lot of small changes that don’t lead to huge, obvious changes immediately. Think of a duck constantly kicking underwater without disturbing the surface.

After a year of digesting what expensive money looks like after 20 years of cheap money is certainly going to impact how many huge risks people take, which is why I think we’ll see more small, subtle tweaks than total game changers. 

Similarly, most people are content where they are, so we’ll probably see less job hopping in 2024. Most departments probably won’t get huge additions, but it seems like few will be totally cut in 2024, either. As I said, small, gradual changes are what I see coming in 2024.

That means that you can probably keep any pricing gains you took, but you are not getting more. Most consumer-facing businesses aren’t going to see growth as people adjust to the new normal of pricing, but inflation is also slowing down, so I’d expect people to find a new way to make ends meet without massive disruptions.

That covers macro trend prediction, but there’s one thing that I want to talk about in particular, partially because everybody wants to talk about it: AI.

I think that AI will do in 2024 exactly what it did in 2023. But if you think that AI suddenly exploded in terms of development this year, then you and I are seeing different things.

While AI got a lot of hype this year, the truth is that many of us have been using chatbots and servicebots for years. So while the conversation has centered around these hot new developments, the truth is that it has mostly been slow progression over the course of years.

And I think that will keep happening in 2024. Yes, AI will continue to develop, but it’s not going to be ubiquitous for daily operations in the next 12 months. I’d liken it more to a Blackberry in 2002: Yes, it was better than a fax machine and could give you an edge, but it wasn’t going essential for everyday operations.it takes time for tech to become evenly distributed. 

In that same way, AI is going to keep getting better and becoming a presence in 2024, but I think we’re years away from AI advancing enough to become a must-have.

My final prediction is about the job market in 2024. After a lot of relocation and moving up in the past year, a lot of people have found themselves in much better positions than they started with in 2023. People are making more than they did at the start of the year, so I’d expect to see less mobility in 2024’s job market.

This goes both ways, though. Employees won’t want to move from their new positions, and employers probably won’t want huge staffing changes in a period when the consumer is figuring out how to afford their regular products and services. 

I’d also expect to see more people in the office in 2024. Work-from-home levels are undoubtedly higher than they were pre-pandemic, and I don’t see that changing, but a lot of employers that swore they’d stay remote have started ordering people back into the office. 

Overall, I think that in a year where there are a lot of small, not-immediately-noticeable changes, the best thing you can do is keep yourself informed. Try to look for diverse perspectives so you can get an idea of the whole picture in the moment instead of waiting until the event is in the rearview to uncover some clarity.

For me, I’m a mainstream guy so that means subscriptions to the WSJ and the NYT. That roughly balances out to a moderate view, which I supplement with a variety of digital-only sources. Regulars include Quartz and Medium. 

However you do it, getting credible, balanced information is the best thing you could do to make it through 2024 in a good position. Because while there likely won’t be sweeping changes, staying on top of what’s happening can help you see the small changes that will end up making a big difference further down the line.