GarthBox

I got a Goonies playcard in my first order of a Johnny Cupcakes t-shirt.

This one hotel was fairly mediocre, except for one nuance: they included a bottle of bubbles so you could take a bubble bath.

A brewery in northwest Wisconsin looks like a lot of other breweries, except they have a remarkable Theodore Roosevelt quote painted on a wall.

When you’ve been nose to the grind, focusing on big picture, building a brand, doing what your customers or clients expect, we can often lose sight of doing the cool things.

The things that can be a difference between 4 stars and 5. The difference between being talked about and not. The difference between disliking your job and loving it.

Stay Positive & More Cool Things, Please

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It pays, literally, to create efficiencies in a process.

There should be a line that is drawn on when to stop tweaking for effiiency, however.

And that line is right before the end. Right before the face to face interaction. Right before the connection with another human. Right after something meets spec, but before it’s sent out – wherein you have a minute to figure out how to make it more special, more valuable, more meaningful than what the conveyor belt brought you.

The best way to optimize humanity is to not.

Stay Positive & Pause At The End Of The Process To Make It Better

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It might come naturally now, but it didn’t before.

The only way it came to be that it comes naturally is that it became familiar.

The more familiar it is, the more naturally it happens.

Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s still not work and certainly there are new innovations you can try with it, but foundationally it does get easier the more familiar you are.

It’s why writers need to do the reading as well as the daily writing. Make the thing you want to excel at feel more familiar every day.

Only then will it come naturally.

Stay Positive & Show Up Every Day To Make It More Familiar

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When you’ve surrounded yourself with geeks, you know you’ve hit your passion, found the edge and dove deep into the hobby or work.

But, of course, it’s a small group and too many entrepreneurs get stuck thinking they are their smallest viable group to do business with.

They might make great friends, great resources, great givers of feedback, but geeks’ responsibility is to keep geeks geeking with them.

It’s not that their resistant to expansion, quite the opposite; they’re completely content with the size of tribe they are – they’re just happy to have other geeks with them regardless if it’s two or twenty.

By all means, fall into love with something to the point you become a geek, but if you’re seeking business growth, you’ll have to harness the power of the geeks to attract more.

Your smallest viable audience is bigger than you might think it is – and that’s a good thing.

Stay Positive & Geek It Up And Beyond

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Is it the way you would want to be interacted with?

If so, you might be onto something, at least from a foundational standpoint.

It’s universal that we appreciate being treated with honesty and compassion.

Far less universal is innate empathy. Often that is something we need to work toward.

The way we like to be talked to might not be how a guest likes being talked to.

The stories we want shared with us might not be the stories guests want to be shared with them.

The reason a guest entered your establishment might not be the same reason you think they did.

By all means, treat people just and with care, but also treat different people differently.

Stay Positive & No One Is You

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There aren’t too many outliers that are going to stroll through as a potential customer of yours. After all, you’ve narrowed your audience, focused your brand, zeroed in on your tribe to serve.

BUT, outliers will arrive.

And such, it’s worth remembering that it’s a competitive advantage to accommodate them, and it doesn’t cost much.

Have something on hand for the person who brings their dog everywhere, the vegetarian, the person who needs their phone charged, the one that needs a container for to-go.

And each time someone asks for a special accommodation, make it easier for yourself to accomplish it in the future.

I recall the first time someone brought a growler to fill up at the bar, except they didn’t bring the cap to it and we didn’t have caps. I asked if they had five minutes and I literally ran up the street to a homebrew shop, purchased an entire bag of caps (around $11) and wa-lah. A happy outlier of a guest in that moment as well as the few that have since come with their growlers without caps.

Stay Positive & Be Prepared

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There’s no question of whether or not you will fail. No point in investing hours, days, weeks into trying to prevent it.

For more productive is to consider what you’ll do and where you’ll be after you fail.

You’ll be closer (how much closer is based on how big of a fail [the bigger, the closer]) and smarter (how much smarter is based on how much you learn from the failure [the bigger the failure, the more to learn]).

Almost makes sense to leap further and more often, doesn’t it?

Stay Positive & Take The Leaps

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