Is Your Business A Hole In The Wall?
There’s a little saying that my wife and I use (and our friends, too) when we’re out of town and looking for a restaurant. We’ll often say, “Let’s find a hole in the wall place”.
You know what I mean by a “hole in the wall” restaurant, right? There’s no flashiness. It’s not about prime real estate and major brand awareness. It’s sometimes even a little dirty. Yet the stereotypical “hole in the wall” provides two things: great tasting food and a superior atmosphere.
For an example, let’s enter into a coney war in downtown Detroit. Sitting in the prime real estate location is American Coney Island sitting on the forefront of the triangular corner formed by West Lafayette Boulevard and Michigan Avenue. Tucked a few feet down the street but right next door is a much smaller Lafayette Coney Island.
American has the prime position, the big lights and even bigger seating area. Lafayette is the consummate “hole in the wall”. American is good. Lafayette is better. American is busy. Lafayette is busier. Why? It’s the “hole in the wall” effect.
Having a strong brand, great exposure, and large availability (seating in this case) is always a plus. You can even provide an excellent product with tremendous value as American Coney Island does. However, why is it that people walk right by the prime corner spot and enter into another doorway just ten paces further?
It’s the “hole in the wall” effect.
Your business may be doing all the right things in advertising, product development, innovation, and selling and fulfilling your products and services. You can build a solid business by focusing on these business systems.
Yet you always have the opportunity in your business to create that “hole in the wall” kind of feeling. You do so by developing an atmosphere and relationships with your customers or clients that is unmatched by your competitors.
Great business systems produce results. Great business systems coupled with the “hole in the wall” effect will produce exponential results.
So I again ask you this interesting question…is your business a hole in the wall?
One comment
Dr. Bradley W. Semp
Dr. Brad helps businesses to Design for Action! Click here to learn more.
Gawd, I do love a double entendre!
My business is a hole in the wall for two reasons. I try daily to foster the environment of which you speak – peer-to-peer mentoring – electronic tribal marketing – joint venture marketing facilitation – collaborative listbuilding – RVBT (reciprocal virtual brand transference)- state-of-the-art online tool development – dream publishing engine – an idea foundry…
AND
My very business model is THE HOLE ITSELF. In my view, there is a massive, high, thick concrete wall that separates the Internet Marketing world from the Network Marketing world. A miniscule few players have seen fit (largely thanks to video marketing, blogging, and social media communities) to drive a MACK TRUCK through that wall…creating a hole in it from which an OBSCENE amount of money flows. So great and so quick is the wealth, I often wonder if they’ll figure out a way to make it illegal. It is certainly a disruptive technology in the truest sense of that phrase.
Call it alignment of the stars. Call it what you wish, but few points in human history have seen the entrepreneurial equivalent of a perfect storm of opportunity such as exists today.
So, for two reasons, just call my team the hole-in-the-wall gang