There is a Yiddish word, 'kvel', which means to beam with pride, especially over one's children. My wife and I do this regularly for both of our children, but today bear with me as I kvel over my older daughter, Elana. This past weekend she displayed and sold her photographs in the Edina Art Fair, second largest of Minnesota's many summer Art Fairs.
Any parent would be proud, and we are especially excited because she was selected for this juried Art Fair (i.e., not everyone gets in). Further, it was her first attempt to get her work selected for any Fair and, at 14 years of age, she was the youngest artist ever at this Art Fair. The three-day event proved to be hard work and a highly developmental experience, both of which we examine more closely below.
I got to watch this sequence of events unfold both as a parent and as an organizational psychologist. As a parent I was filled with pride. With my professional eye, I could also see how each opportunity provided a development experience and the seeds of yet another opportunity.
Malcom Gladwell, author or Outliers, was right; success is not pure luck, nor is it pure talent, but rather it is a combination of the two that favors those who seize upon opportunity, develop from that experience and leverage it to be ready for the next opportunity. Notice the following flow, from opportunity to developmental experience to the next opportunity.
That is almost an entire college course on small business and customer service packed into one fast-paced weekend!
It is also a great illustration of building a small-scale customer centric business. And this brings me to a question for each of you about your own customer experience:
Where have you seized an opportunity to support your customers, only to find that became the groundwork for your next opportunity?
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