According to Whose Rules?

When each customer buys four and a half times the average amount of stuff per visit and you attract four times the average number of visitors, you make eighteen times as much profit. (4 x 4.5 = 18)If you run your convenience store according to the rules and conventions of convenience stores, you’re going to have yourself a conventional convenience store.(1.) But if you run your convenience store according to the rules and conventions of a successful nightclub, four times as many people will stop to buy gas from you and you’ll sell four and a half times as much coffee, candy, cookies and snacks to each visitor…You’re going to make a glowing pile of money. People will think you’re radioactive because you’ll glitter when you walk. Complete strangers will ask you for your autograph. Pretty women will throw their room keys onto the stage.Just ask my partner, Scott Fraser. He created that convenience store 12 years ago and it’s been pumping out profits like a Texas oil well ever since.His competitors tell him he’s doing it wrong.(2.) If you run a gym according to the rules and conventions of gyms, you’re going to have yourself a conventional gym. But run that gym according to the rules of an exclusive country club and… BOOM, you glitter when you walk.(3.) If you run a lawn fertilizer company as though it were(A.) a public utility, and(B.) a one-price, all-you-can-eat gourmet buffet…BOOM, room keys on the stage.Don’t conform to the rules of your business category. Reconform your business to the rules of a time-tested, proven business model that behaves completely differently than your own. A standard practice in one business category is often revolutionary in another.This isn’t “thinking outside the box.”This isn’t “a paradigm shift.”You and I aren’t going to use those worn-out phrases because you and I aren’t posers in empty suits.You and I glitter when we walk.Have you noticed how the best TV shows always cut to commercial during a climax in the action? I’m going to do that today. I hope you don’t mind.Next week I’ll tell you where you can find a video of me explaining all the real-world details of exactly what we did for that convenience store, that gym and that fertilizer company.In the meantime…Keep glitterin’, kid.It looks good on you.Roy H. Williams