Accessing the "True Needs" of a Business and Individual: The Practice of Empathetic Business Listening

Have you ever meditated on you and your business’ true needs?

I guess before we discuss true needs, the question that must be asked is what are true needs? To get that answer, we must first discuss two key practices that my blockchain-integrated agency, Amasia Creative Consulting Group, specializes in. The first is the active practice of Empathetic Business Listening (hereafter referred to as EBL), and the second is empowering a business to realize its full Material, Emotional, and Spiritual Potential (hereafter referred to as EMESP). The second, unlike the first, is a passive practice that happens automatically as a result of the active practice of EBL.

In Amasia Creative Consulting Group, the practice of EBL is what separates us from a horde of competitors to the benefit of the business and individuals we work with.

What most people don’t realize, and a value that is enshrined in Amasia Creative Consulting Group both ideologically and practically speaking, is that money is simply a pathway to satisfy a client’s true needs. The obvious goals when one of our Creative Consultants sits down with one of our clients is to work out a strategy utilizing one (or all) of our three arms (PR and Media Management, Creative Content, and Full-suite Technology Development) to generate revenue. But, at the end of the day, revenue generation is a matter of developing and perfecting a process that works for the client.

Every business and every individual is different. Why are they different? If their surface needs are the same (revenue generation and sustainability) why do each of these businesses and individuals take time (sometimes decades) to develop a customized process that works for them?

It comes down to true needs. When developing anything from something as simple as a business plan to something as complex and multifaceted as a PR and media relations campaign, the true needs of the business and of the human beings operating within the business must be considered in order to develop a unique process that works. Only through the active practice of EBL, and subsequently working with a business or individual based on the data collected via EBL, can the surface needs be provided for and the passive process of EMESP occur organically.

Amasia Creative Consulting Group specializes in these processes because we are both artists and business people combining the best aspects of artistry (innovation, creativity, out of the box thinking) and business acumen. We are Creative Consultants. Reinforced by our values and our processes, we engage with our clients with respect and positivity. This environment creates a healthy, mutually beneficial relationship between Amasia Creative Consulting Group and its clients empowering both. (Amasia Creative Consulting Group through the refinement of its processes and the client through gaining a customized engagement focused on accessing its true needs.)

For the purposes of this article, I will cite a recent primary client engagement that showcases the employment of EBL to access a client’s true needs and enable the process of EMESP to begin:

A small Italian restaurant in the New York Metro Area has had a 60% drop in revenue over the last 5 years of business. They are in a heavily competitive area. Their food is Continental-Italian (popular in the 80’s and 90’s) rather than Italian-American. Their chef/owner is in his 70’s and works in the kitchen everyday doing everything.

I walked in on a cold call and caught the chef/owner at the bar eating. I introduced myself. He began talking. I began the process of EBL.

In 30 minutes, I learned all I needed to know as a Creative Consultant, and we didn’t discuss his revenue intake until the last 5 minutes of the conversation!

So, what was discussed during the first 25 minutes of the conversation?

The first 25 minutes drew on my natural inclination as a Creative to be empathic and listen to his story. He was originally from Sicily where he worked on an Artichoke farm, and since the age of 13 he worked in kitchens. 35 years ago he started this restaurant and built the business brick by brick to its heyday in the 1980’s, 90’s, and early 00’s. He knows how to do everything in the kitchen, from butchering to baking. He isn’t the “celeb-chef” of instagram fame. Shy, with heavily accented English, he confessed that he didn’t spend time with his grandkids and that the restaurant he loved and built and has given himself to was becoming a 24/7 burden.

His surface needs were simple, customers through the door and revenue in his pocket.

But why?

It took me those 25 minutes to access the true “why” through EBL. Once identifying his true needs as an individual first, and then as a business, I was able to switch on consultant/business developer mode and discuss strategies for revenue generation.

What were his true needs? He confessed to me, in that initial conversation, that his true needs were to spend more time with his grandkids and to pass down his knowledge of cooking. For that, he needed to attract customers, because more customers through the door leads to revenue generation, revenue generation leads to the ability to hire more people, and hiring more people allows the chef/owner to take a day off and spend time with his grand kids.

25 minutes of EBL and 5 minutes of strategy development allowed me to land a client and immediately begin to tailor a unique strategy based on his wants, needs, fears, and hopes for the future.

It would take more time, and more EBL, to develop a comprehensive media relations strategy based on his and his business’ true needs. But, after that initial conversation, even though it was a small step, EMESP had organically begun. After all, hope is the first step to realizing one’s full Material, Emotional, and Spiritual Potential.

So, back to the question posed at the beginning of this article. Have you ever meditated on you and your business’ true needs? If not, I encourage you to do so. If, after you meditate, you need some help or clarity to develop strategies to help attain your true needs as an individual and as a business I encourage you to consider coming to Amasia Creative Consulting Group :)

To learn more about Amasia Creative Consulting Group look for my articles on LinkedIn and feel free to contact me at [email protected].