Sometimes We Change
And we must follow the urge to make it painless
Yes, sometimes we change. A word during a Zoom call, an idea while seeing a video, or a casual conversation with your trusted barista can send your world in a tailspin that we can only hope ends well.
Most of the time, it does. We’re cats, you see. We tend to fall on our feet and casually keep going, despite everyone looking. This is why we switch jobs, industries, cities, and even countries.
When you’ve started from scratch in a new country, without any certainties besides a limited cash amount that you have to grow before it runs out, you pretty much know you can do anything.
Shifting the direction of your marketing efforts to focus on a very different audience is one of those things. In case you are inexplicably fond of me and my work at Storefront Mastery, worry not, we’re not going anywhere. We have taken some very interesting steps forward, and found new places to partner with, where our impact is actually much greater. We are happy and grateful.
This is both exciting and terrifying. So I’ll start with the big realization: of all the audiences and types of downtowns that we serve, the best fit for Storefront Mastery’s main proposition is a place with a few prerequisites: districts that are dynamic, business owners who are committed, and visitors who are discerning. In other words: places that do well, managers who see local businesses as partners that contribute to the local experience, and visitors who are aware that paying for experiences may be more expensive but it is exponentially more rewarding.
The proposition, as you can read in my previous Substack posts, is that every downtown business is a hospitality business (Link). The sooner we understand that, and begin incorporating principles from the hospitality industry into the downtown management style, and into each growth-minded business in the district, our district’s development trajectory changes, every chart’s curve slants dramatically up and to the right, and the foot traffic and sales conversions follow.
Any place management organization can become a hospitality-minded one, and transform its district into a place with many reasons for people to visit, and many unique businesses that become household names. The shift is in the mindset.
We can help them, and we love to do it, but the commitment required must come from within. Most of the challenges we’ve had through the years rest on the fact that after we create strategies and recommend easy implementation process, the local culture resists changes, even those that would directly improve their business and their quality of life.
The low hanging fruit for us, as ironic as it may be, is moving on to the next harder level: districts that want to grow, with feral place managers who defy the conventional ways, and exceptional local businesses who see downtown as a lifestyle, but are also mindful of growth. But most importantly, who know that, as my friend Jeff of Revitalize, or Die, says: growth alone isn’t an improvement strategy.
Our best experiences through the years have been serving them. We are very happy to take them as clients, and we do, more and more, since figuring they are our best fit. Hit us up to see if we’re a good fit.
Onwards.