What if your customers don’t care as much as you do?

In this third episode of No Plan Survives, Mike Carpenter and Benjie Hughes discuss how mission impacts messaging – and ask what happens when customer behavior doesn’t line up with the things we want it to.

➡️ Mike recounts how his company shifted from relying on resellers in the B2C space to managing its own B2C sales – and unpacks the messaging challenges that came along with that. If your B2B audience is quality-obsessed and your B2C buyers are price-sensitive, how do you message for them both without damaging trust?

➡️ Benjie remembers a client whose dream was to “operationalize love” – and unpacks the ways that mission did or didn’t translate to marketing, sales and operations. He argues messaging can’t be fixed at the copy level if it isn’t grounded first in strategy, in the value you deliver and in what your customers think they need.

No Plan Survives is about what happens when our business vision crashes into our business reality – and the new things we create as a result.

This is a limited series: Two entrepreneurs, five days, five topics. Each day we each bring one story from our business journeys, told in three acts:

• What was your plan?
• How did reality wreck it?
• What new thing was born as a result?

Then we interrogate those stories – and each other.

Visit Mike's business here, get Benjie's weekly emails here, or learn more at noplan.show.

No Plan Survives is edited by Kyle Schmidt. Visual design by Bryon Elliot. Music by Benjie Hughes.

00:00 Performance First Adhesives

00:35 B2C Price Reality Check

01:32 Two Product Positioning

02:52 No Plan Survives Intro - Message vs Market

03:53 Testing Prices on Amazon

06:57 Compliance and Certification

08:20 B2B vs B2C Buyer Journey

09:50 Made in USA Trust Signals

12:53 Operationalizing Love Story

17:04 Strategy Before Messaging

20:49 Hopeless Marketing Positioning

25:07 Elevator Pitch and Networking

28:24 Episode Wrap Up and Reflections