About fifteen years ago, I interviewed Brian Smith, the founder of UGG. His rise from surf-dude newcomer to global brand goes like this: Brian, an Aussie, moves to California in the late 1970s, planning to bring California surf fashion back home. Instead, he noticed something California is missing that Australia already has. California surfers have freezing, wet feet after a set in the Pacific, and Australia has the fix: sheepskin boots. He ships some pairs over, and a global brand is born.
It’s a great (and true) story, but it’s incomplete. There’s a missing part I discovered during my time interviewing him. Brian didn’t only see a need (a way to warm cold, wet feet); he spotted a market ripple and planted his business squarely in front of it.
Ripples from a bigger wave
By the 1950s, synthetic materials had gone mainstream. Plastics and polymers were reshaping manufacturing, consumer goods, and daily life. It was a massive market shift. A tsunami.
Tsunamis are big, but a savvy business owner (just like a surfer) knows that’s too dangerous to ride. Instead, you look for the refracted waves: the ones created by the tsunami’s momentum, sloshing, and crashing around. Those ripples are big mamas themselves, with one critical addition: they’re rideable. That’s what Brian rode, all the way to the beach (cough… bank… cough).
So what was the ripple wave for surfers? Better neoprene wetsuits. In the early 1950s, suits were thick and stiff, and not ideal for surfing. Then, through the 1970s, the material improved. Neoprene became thinner, more flexible, and far more comfortable to paddle in. Suddenly surfers could stay in the water through the cold season.
That’s a ripple: a market trend set off by a much bigger wave of change. And as nature has it, as soon as one problem was solved, the next one showed up. Surfers could now handle the cold ocean, but they still went barefoot to grip their boards. Warm bodies, but freezing feet.
Brian showed up at exactly the right moment with exactly the right answer. Not because he was predicting the future. But because he was wave spotting.
AI. Our tsunami. Your ripple.
Obviously, today’s tsunami is AI. We’re all staring at it, talking about it, and either panicking or pretending to have it figured out. But none of us can ride “AI.” It’s just too massive.
What we can ride are the countless ripples it creates: new customer expectations, services people suddenly stop paying for (or new ones they will pay for), problems that didn’t exist six months ago, and the gaps that open when something old gets disrupted. That’s where the opportunity is. Do you see your industry’s ripples?
So, are you watching?
The market is constantly sending signals. And you can only spot them if you poke your head up from your business for a moment. Here are the questions you should be asking right now:
- What are customers suddenly asking for? New requests are often the first sign of a ripple.
- What are they no longer willing to pay for? Quiet resistance is a huge signal.
- How has their behavior changed? Look at what they do, not what they say.
- What are your competitors doing differently? Especially the small ones. They move first.
- What new problem did a recent solution create? Surfers’ cold feet only existed because the wetsuit solved a bigger problem.
That last question is the most powerful one. Every solution creates a new problem. Every shift leaves a gap in its wake. Your job isn’t to predict the next change. It’s to notice the ripples already happening and the reactions they’re forcing.
Your assignment this week
Block thirty minutes. Not to work in your business, but to look around it. Review your last ten customer conversations, support requests, or lost deals. Look for the pattern you’ve been too busy to see.
Then ask yourself: what ripple is showing up in my business that I’ve been treating as a one-off?
Brian Smith didn’t invent a wave, and he surely didn’t try to ride a tsunami. He spotted the ripple already moving through his market and rode its momentum all the way to the bank.
Do the same. Are you watching?
-Mike
