Making Sure Your Business Will Never Be Irrelevant

My wife and I have been watching episodes of an old TV show from the 90s. One of the main characters has a catch phrase that has started me thinking. At least once in every episode she says to another character, “That is irrelevant.”

It’s funny in the show, but in real life irrelevancy can be disastrous. An irrelevant business is a broke business. And if your business is broke, you’ve lost your vehicle for achieving your purpose. Despite that, products, services, and even entire businesses become irrelevant all the time.

For more than 100 years, the telephone booth provided a way to communicate when away from your home or office. Every gas station and most street corners had one. But with the popularization of the cell phone in the late 1990s, they quickly became superfluous.

I remember the time when it was normal to ask for a “wake up call” when staying at a hotel. At the appointed time someone from the front desk would dial your room and let you know that it was time to get out of bed and ready for your day. While you can still request wake up calls, the service has become fairly uncommon since setting the alarm on the clock in your room, your cell phone, or your wristwatch is just as easy and avoids the need to talk with another person while suffering from “morning voice.”

Sears was a retail giant for nearly a century. Unfortunately, starting in the 1980s the business lost touch with the desires of its customers. Declining product quality, questionable (and even illegal) business practices, and simple mismanagement resulted in the once-proud company shriveling to only eight stores.

There is one way to guarantee you will never become irrelevant: ensure that you make people’s lives better.

When your primary focus is money, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of ways to become irrelevant.

It took less than 10 years for Blockbuster Video to grow from just one retail outlet to a multi-billion-dollar company. But then cable TV channels began offering on-demand streaming. This technological advance allowed cable TV channels to compete directly with video stores.

A short time later Netflix began mailing DVDs to its customers. Redbox installed self-service video kiosks in easily accessible locations. These new service models provided convenient alternatives to traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Meanwhile Blockbuster doubled down on retail locations and made the decision to move away from DVDs and focus on Blu-ray products.

At the beginning of 2010, Blockbuster had 6,500 stores. By September of that year they filed for bankruptcy. And by August 2018 only one store remained open. In 2019, it was the only Blockbuster still operating anywhere in the world.

In retrospect, Blockbuster’s demise can be traced back to one fatal flaw: they stopped listening to their customers. Because making people’s lives better wasn’t a priority for them, they were blind to the fact that the primary business challenges they faced from competitors centered on customer convenience.

Why was on-demand streaming successful for cable channels? It made customers’ lives easier. How did Netflix grow so fast? Receiving DVDs in the mail was extremely convenient. Why didn’t the move to Blu-ray help Blockbuster? It didn’t make anyone’s life better. Instead it gambled on a new technology that hadn’t been adopted by the majority of its customers yet.

Contrast that with the last Blockbuster store. It’s still around today in 2025. These days, it’s almost a museum and most of its money is made through merchandise sales. It survives because it was able to pivot when times changed.

When you’re in business to help people live better lives, you naturally listen carefully to your customers so you can respond to their needs. As a result, you make decisions that provide customer value, engender loyalty, and turn consumers into brand evangelists.

As long as that’s true, you’ll never be irrelevant. And, it turns out, that’s really good for business.