The truth is that business is simple: create great products, merchandise them at the point of sale, continuously innovate and surprise, reward and achieve a position of loyalty with your front line, and seek new truth from the market. Deliver the goods at a competitive cost. Price to earn a decent but not competitively inviting return. Not much else matters.

Epidemics of "bad" voice can kill your reputation overnight.

A curious mind does not say to consumers "What do you want?" A curious mind understands context, understands behavior, understands spending and spending patterns - the accumulation of a day's purchases, or spending over a week or a year. A curious mind asks the questions that open up the consumer to talk about her latent dissatisfactions, hopes, wishes, and dreams.

Better ramp up your virtual relationships. Companies think omni channel is the correct answer. This is not enough. The information explosion for consumers makes 24/7 and full and complete engagement possible.

I like to take CEOs into consumers' homes to see the "real world." CEOs have privileged lives with big incomes, lots of help, access to just about anything they wish. The average consumer lives on $53,000 a year and has daily tradeoffs and compromises that must be made. I took a CEO into a trailer park so he could observe first-hand - and understand - how consumers use his product.

Truth is so difficult to hear about. It must be experienced.

A lot of people believe you only need a vision. This is simply not correct. You need brilliant execution every day. It's about attention to all the details of go to market.