This morning I walked into one of my local coffee shop for a morning caffeine hit. It’s not a cafe I frequent regularly, probably once a month, but they make good coffee and they use good quality soy (yes, I’m one of those).
Waiting for my latte, instead of flicking through the daily newspaper flopped on the table, I had good look around… at the walls, the benches, what was behind the counter. And I noticed something.
There were some interesting historic photos of the local area hanging on the walls, but they were all crooked. There’s a heshen bag in the corner, for some kind of kitch effect, but it had a pile of junk mail perched on top. The counter top was dusty, there were chips in the paint on the walls and plastic picture hooks without pictures hanging from them.
As business owners and marketers we often get so used to these minor imperfections, we start not to see them. We get complacent, we notice them in the beginning, promise to fix them, then never do… then we just forget about them and accept them.
Try to take a look at your business with fresh eyes. Put some time aside once a month to look at your business objectively  and ask yourself, “what would Starbucks do?”. Or even better, open yourself up to critique – ask a family, friend or pier what they think (we offer this as a service on our Marketing Spotlights) .
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