I wasn’t planning to blog today, but I had such a profoundly interesting small business related morning that I felt compelled to share some of it. I normally run in the evenings, but lately I’ve been getting up early when it’s cooler to run the trail. Today I decided to start at the opposite end of the trail from the one near my house, because I wanted to see how the routes connected up. My start point today began in the middle of town, and was surprisingly quite gorgeous. Now, my normal routine is to run and then head straight back home. In fact, because of my job, the only place I really frequent in town other than the running trail is the grocery store. Today, however, by the time I was done running I was starving, so I decided to head to a cafe that my friend Meghan had recommended the other day that was close by. It’s one of those little local places that I had always passed by for a couple reasons. It has a horrible location; it’s stuck in a weirdly shaped corner of the messiest intersection in that section of town, and there’s pretty much zero parking. It also had a lot of that Americana kitsch out front that as a an east coast native makes me feel a little uncomfortable. We all have politics where I grew up; you just don’t put them in your windows. But I went anyway, because it was close and I figured it would have coffee and a place to sit down.
The place is called Pete’s Corner Cafe, and it gets fabulous reviews on Yelp. The inside was beautifully decorated with cute tables and real dishes with palm trees on them. They brought me my coffee in a matching cup. They had real butter for the pancakes. All of these things made me think I might have found the perfect cafe. I ordered pretty conservatively because I didn’t know how good it would be, but I’m now determined to go back and try something more interesting. Their pancakes were the best I’ve had in years; almost like my grandmother’s recipe.
As I was finishing up, the chef/owner came out to ask how my food was. We ended up sitting and talking for ages, since I mentioned that I ran a small business too. He said that he’d been there a year and three months, and was proud of that, but that money was tight for him. He needs to make $500 a day to make the diner run smoothly, and he normally made half of that. He didn’t say it to get sympathy; he was clearly proud of making ends meet and dealing with things like they were. He also fed meals to two homeless people who he spotted out on the street as we talked. I asked him why he did it, and he said that he believed that if you did good things you got good things back. I asked him if he had a website, and he looked confused and told me that he might have a Myspace page for the business. On the way out, he shook my hand and handed me a small package of homemade buckeye candy from his fridge. I told him that I did advertising, and that if his wife (who handled that side of it) could come meet me tomorrow around ten am I’d come back down for breakfast and try and give them some ideas for free things they could do.
I then wandered over to a dog grooming place that I had driven by previously. Didy currently gets groomed at a place with at least ten other dogs, and it freaks him out. I came in and asked about grooming services, and the woman who did the grooming came out. Her name was Judy, and she was holding her granddaughter. She not only gave me a quote, but took me through all the grooming facilities and asked about Didy’s background and temperament and took notes. She only grooms one dog at a time, and she says that she frequently grooms dogs that other grooming places won’t take, and that they’re wonderful for her. I told her that I would bring him in tomorrow except for the fact that they didn’t open until noon, and she told me that she’d happily show up at ten so I could drop him off after my run.
There was a homemade dog treat display there full of treats that she baked herself, and I looked at them and hesitated. I told her that Didy probably wouldn’t eat wheat germ treats, but that I thought they looked great. She handed me two small packs of them and told me to take them for free and try them, and if I liked them I could buy him some when I brought him back for grooming. When I got them back home, Didy amazingly wolfed them right down. Maybe it was the carob coating or the sprinkles, but something about them worked for him.
We internet based entrepreneurs (myself included) spend hours each week arguing about social media strategies, styles of advertising, and stressing over all the ways that the internet allows us to use it to make money. What amazed me the most about these places was not just the owners or their generosity, but the fact that these people have no web presence, and probably have no idea that social media marketing exists. They’re brick and mortar businesses, they’re struggling, they’re dealing with it gracefully, and the idea that you can go out and do all this scary advertising stuff on the internet is a totally alien idea to them. They’re sticking to the basics: quality products, amazing customer service, and a passion for what they do.
As I got home, I wondered how much better our businesses could be if we took a little bit of time off from the internet and put it into the things that Pete and Judy value. In a vast and impersonal network, how can we make our businesses as wonderful and personal as possible?
P. S. Speaking of dog things, Didy’s birthday sale is going on through the end of the week, so get in on it if you can!
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