If you are reading this you are probably familiar with Seth Godin and his unbelievable abilities to communicate and verbalize things that we think about every day related to marketing but, for one reason or another, we fail transform into any sort of action. Yesterday I had an “aha moment” (Jeffrey Gitomer) that made me think of Seth’s book “The Purple Cow” immediately. I went to my local, Carlsbad, CA, Baskin Robbins. I had been there at least 100 times before. Every time I had been there prior to today I felt like I was paying too much for a scoop of ice cream but I enjoyed it so I treated myself maybe once a month. So I happened to walk in and I got my favorite, a scoop of “Rocky Road”. After handing over the $2.97 I picked up my cone that was sitting in the tray with the holes in it thinking my gosh $2.97. As I was walking out of the store the scoop of ice cream felt out of the cone and my biggest concern was OMG I am such an uncoordinated human being. My biggest concern was about the mess I made. The owner, who I had never interacted with before, asked to please stop cleaning and as I was about to tell him how sorry I was he had already placed a new scoop on a new cone and it was sitting on the tray and the owner was there with a mop. When I offered to pay he refused and instead thanked me for my loyal business. I thanked him profusely but the $2.97 did not feel that bad anymore. That was truly remarkable.
What makes this experience even more remarkable is that I emailed Seth my experience as soon as I had access to email. Much to my surprise he replied, “great story, Michael! enjoy the ice cream.”
