I was scrolling the other day and landed on two talks: Brian Tracy, the classic sales coach, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon. Different styles. Same message.

Both men, in very different ways, spoke about how focusing on the customer is the key to success.

Tracy puts it bluntly: people don’t buy your product; they buy the improvement – the result, the benefit, the transformation. He even shares a surprising idea about how we decide: roughly 85% of buying behavior, he says, is about the anticipated future. Buyers are quietly asking, “Who will I become after I buy this?” or “How will this improve my life?”

Then Tracy drops an interesting metaphor. If you were selling a vacation to a tropical island, you’d talk mostly about the island: the view, the rest, the feeling of life getting lighter. You’d barely mention the plane. Yet many of us do the opposite. We talk about the “plane”: features, specs and credentials. Meanwhile, the customer is thinking, “Are there palm trees or not?”

I’ve been around sales long enough to know I used to do this all the time. I’d pile on product details and miss the real question the customer was asking: “What changes for me?”

When you start from there, the customer leans forward, the conversation shifts, and they become interested in the offer.

Bezos also told a story from Amazon’s early days. When Barnes & Noble went online, he heard predictions that Amazon would be “toast.” Later, a magazine cover suggested Amazon would “bomb.” He reminded his team: headlines can’t give you money. Customers do.

He told his team something I’ve been thinking about ever since: don’t be afraid of competitors; be focused on customers. Competitors can’t pay you. Customers can. That’s the whole game. Competitors will do what they do, but you cannot let them take your focus off the customer.

Put Tracy and Bezos together, and you get a simple, cutting-edge recipe for business success in 2026: talk about the island, and keep your eyes on the traveler – not the other planes in the sky.

Here’s a real-world example. Imagine you run a local gym. You can sell “a 12-week strength program with workouts and nutrition coaching.” That’s airplane talk. Island talk sounds like: “Feel steady on stairs again. Pick up your grandkid without wincing. Walk into summer feeling strong and ready.” Same service. Totally different meaning.

Or you’re a plumber. Nobody wakes up excited to buy a water heater. They want hot showers, peace of mind, and a basement that doesn’t smell like panic. Marketing professor Theodore Levitt captured this well: “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole.”

Now add Bezos’s lesson: ignore the noise. Your competitor’s discount is loud. A bad review can feel like a fire alarm. But if you let every siren redirect you, you’ll spend your life taxiing on the runway, never taking off.

And it’s not only customers. Spouses, kids, friends – everyone asks a quiet question: “Does this bring me closer to what matters, or farther away?”

One quick exercise helps: take your next marketing line and delete every word that describes you – awards, years, process, features. Then write one sentence that starts with, “After this, you will …” If you can’t finish it clearly, you may still be talking about the plane.

So here’s what I’m trying to practice (and I’m saying this as a fellow learner, not a business genius). Before I write a post, build an offer, or tweak a website, I ask two questions: What is the island – what future does my customer actually want? And what noise am I about to let hijack my focus away from the customer?

At the end of the day, success in business isn’t about being louder, smarter or faster than everyone else. It’s about staying clear on who you’re serving, what future they want, and refusing to let noise pull your attention elsewhere.

Try this mental shift today: for the next decision you’re facing – pricing, marketing, hiring, your next product – Ask yourself: “Am I describing the plane, or painting the island?” And: “Am I paying attention to my customers, or my competitors?”

• Toby Moore is a Shaw Local News Network columnist, star of the Emmy-nominated film “A Separate Peace” and CEO of CubeStream Inc. He can be reached at feedback@shawmedia.com.