“There has been a constant war, a war with fear. Those who have the courage to conquer it are made free and those who are conquered by it are made to suffer until they have the courage to defeat it.”
If there's a problem, we at Wine Library never tell ourselves that once we handle this issue, we'll never have to deal with the person again. We talk to every single person as though we're going to wind up sitting next to that person at his or her mother's house that night for dinner.
Remember the guy in the 80s walking around with a boombox on his shoulder? Why'd he do that? Because it told a story about who he was. Expressing yourself is big business.
You cannot underestimate people's ability to spot a soulless, bureaucratic tactic a million miles away. It's a big reason why so many companies that have dipped a toe in social media waters have failed miserably.
I've done really well on one core principle which is, I think I have an intuitive ability to understand consumer behavior more than the average bear, and I'm not scared to bet the farm on that gut feeling.