Success Quote by Jim Barksdale

Barksdale’s line has the blunt, boardroom elegance of someone who’s watched too many PowerPoint decks confuse activity for achievement. He doesn’t romanticize “vision” or “brand purpose”; he drills down to the only scoreboard that can’t be massaged for long: behavior. Buy it. Use it. Return. The rhythm matters. Each clause is a gate, and most products die at one of them.

The specific intent is managerial discipline. In “any business situation,” he’s carving out a portable test that travels across industries and hype cycles. It’s also a quiet rebuke to vanity metrics: awareness, clicks, press, conference applause. Those can be rented. Repeat usage has to be earned.

Subtext: customers are the real investors, and their capital is attention, time, and habit. A first purchase can be bribed with discounts or novelty. “Do they use it” is where reality bites; it’s the moment the product meets friction, expectations, and alternatives. “Do they come back” is the hardest question because it exposes whether value is durable or just well-marketed.

Contextually, Barksdale comes out of the era when tech businesses learned that scale without retention is just a faster way to lose money. His phrasing anticipates today’s product-led orthodoxy: retention cohorts, churn, LTV. Yet it’s not analytical posturing; it’s a moral stance about accountability. If the customer’s life doesn’t measurably improve, the market eventually stops the story.