How Headsets.com grew by betting on service over price

Executive overview

Mike Faith founded what became Headsets.com in the mid-90s, initially as a discount headset retailer. Three years in, he recognised discounting wasn't a defensible position and made an overnight pivot to premium customer service — inspired by Tom Peters' argument that service is a barrier to entry competitors can't replicate.

The result: a three-time Inc 500 company and twice-named best place to work. The strategy rests on three pillars: a service-obsessed culture built through rigorous hiring, a disciplined meeting cadence from the Rockefeller Habits, and relentless focus on one niche.

Competing on service beats competing on price — service compounds, discounts don't.

From discounter to service leader

• Started as "Headset Discounters" in 1995–96, reaching $2–3M revenue
• Realised discounting wasn't a viable primary proposition after three years
• Pivoted overnight to a premium service model — no incremental change, a full transformation
• Inspiration: Tom Peters on service as a competitive barrier others can't easily replicate
• Renamed and repositioned as a specialist, the only pure-play office headset retailer

The headsets.com domain acquisition

• Leased the domain in 2000 with a lease-to-own deal — couldn't afford to buy outright
• $1M total price; $2,000 down with escalating payments over 10 years; personally guaranteed
• Paid off in eight years; ranked as the eighth most expensive domain transaction at the time
• Three compounding effects: top search engine placement, customer trust, manufacturer credibility
• Manufacturers noticed and began offering better deals — the spend was self-fulfilling

Hiring for service

• Hiring process for customer service roles is so rigorous that Faith says he wouldn't pass it himself
• Screen heavily for patience — he has high impatience, which disqualifies him from the role
• Hunger is the primary trait sought across all roles: the drive to want more and get it right
• Hunger can be ego, financial, or psychological — source matters less than its presence
• Misaligned hunger: a great relationship-builder failed in new business but excelled in account management

Training and development

• Significant investment in both internal training and external courses
• Philosophy: if trained people leave and thank you, that's fine; if untrained people stay, that's a bigger problem
• Doing the right thing by people is treated as non-negotiable, regardless of whether it's reciprocated

Meeting cadence (Rockefeller Habits)

• Daily huddles, weekly team meetings, quarterly offsites — the standard Rockefeller Habits cadence
• Purpose: keep everyone aligned on mission, aware of challenges, and connected across functions
• Common failure mode: teams abandon the cadence early, citing irrelevance, before they've tuned it
• Root cause of failed meetings: poor agenda management, no preparation, rambling, wrong attendees
• Deeper failure: people want others to care about their work but haven't noticed they don't care about others'
• Meeting cards used to keep sessions productive — cards for "so what?", "bullshit", and "that was awesome"
• Annual goals printed and posted throughout the company; meetings anchored to them

Strategic focus and long-term goal

• Every deviation from the core headset focus has been a lesson to return to it
• Current goal: overtake the category's dominant manufacturer — a near-monopoly — within 20 years
• Ships US and Canada; owns international domains (UK, Spanish, German) but not yet pursuing them
• Rationale: the US and Canadian markets are large enough to focus on for now