Who doesn’t love the Golden Rule? It’s a biblical classic, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Sounds lovely, but it’s missing something essential: empathy.
Empathy is exactly what I needed in my first job waiting tables at Schwambach’s Diner in Temple, PA. Day one on the job I encountered their house specialty, scrapple. What is scrapple? It’s pretty much exactly what it sounds like, boiled pork scraps mixed with cornmeal that are formed into a dense grey loaf and sold to restaurants by the tub. Yum?
We served it pan-fried for breakfast, usually next to two eggs over medium and hash browns. The diner patrons loved it. Me? Nope, hard pass, every time. Yet, I served it with a smile when my regulars ordered it. I appreciated that it brought them joy.
The Golden Rule would have had me switch out their order for pancakes, bacon, sausage, oatmeal, grapefruit, you know, pretty much anything other than scrapple to go with their eggs and hash browns. Something I’d eat, rather than what they craved for breakfast. Yep, empathy is why I served scrapple with zero guilt or hesitation.
Empathy is also why the old advice that business owners need to "eat your own dogfood" doesn't ring true to me. If that were true how could I possibly market products I wouldn't purchase myself? I once interviewed for a marketing role at a company that only sells menstrual cups. I was sad not to get the job and market to those women.
In that role and in selling fancy soap I recognize that I am not my customer. I just need to have an appreciation and understanding of my customer's situation and how the product I offer solves their specific problem.
In a prior post I wrote about the $21 bar of soap I’m about to make, market and sell. I would not buy a bar like that. I buy my soap at Costco on sale for a tenth that price. By the transitive property of the dog food rule (yeah, I made that up), I should only sell bulk soap at a discount. That’s nonsense.
I’m making and selling a bar of soap I’ve designed to help customers who struggle to separate their chaotic work day from the peaceful part of the day. I’m using premium ingredients and an artisanal process, so these will be high-quality bars. However, quality is not what justifies the price. The justification is what the bar does for people. I’m not doing magic, I’m solving for a specific stressful moment in many people’s daily lives. My job is to find those people and get my soap to their showers.
That’s why I’m the person to do this. I understand who I’m making this for. It’s not for me. It’s for that person who's been staring at a laptop since 6 AM and needs one deliberate, unhurried thing that tells their body the grind part of the day is over. For some of those people it’ll be a ritual that culminates with a $21 bar of soap, a bar they buy from me.
Unlike the transitive property, this isn’t just something I made up. In 1979 sociologist Milton Bennett recognized the inherent limitations of the Golden Rule. He noticed that the Golden Rule relies on sympathy. It asks you to recognize the challenges in someone else’s life and encourages you to find your solutions to their problems. That doesn’t work. His brilliance was realizing that empathy works better. He devised the Platinum Rule, “Do unto others as they themselves would have done unto them.”
For a marketer, that’s the whole job, know your customers and apply not the Golden Rule, but rather, the Platinum Rule to find success. So, no, I’m not eating my own dog food, soap, or scrapple. I’m using empathy to guide me to make and sell the products my future customers are going to love, because those products solve their problems, not mine.
Whose problem are your products solving?
Disclosure: I write these posts. AI helps me edit them.