Awesome Stories From Ambiguous Sources – The Cab Driver Story

There was a cab driver in NYC who was tired of the grind. Same shit, different day – every day. One day, he put a cooler in his car and offered his passengers that day a drink. The response was overwhelmingly positive. That was the spark that lit the fire. From then on the cab driver kept making small, meaningful improvements to the ride experience until…people started taking his phone number to request not a cab, but himself. He had work lined up before the day began.

I never knew the ultimate end state of the cab driver, but I always loved that story. The idea that a small change can really lead to a monumental outcome. Can even, dare we say it, turn your life around.

I view that story as the keystone for marketing. What service are you providing? How can you improve that? What have you slacked off on doing? How can you show appreciation and hope to develop a relationship with new clients? How might that small change seriously affect the outcome? What opportunities are there?

Furthermore, when you shake up an established system you can more easily suss out problems, cracks, and the things that have been running on autopilot. Admittedly, a shakeup is a costly and emotionally-taxing way of discovering whether or not things are running as smoothly as you imagine. But, a ship never made it to shore without a little course correction.

I find that often, as a freelancer, I receive the work that has been on the back-backburner. And I enjoy sifting through their spreadsheets and processes and finding newer, fresher, more effective ways of cleaning up the mess and establishing a new process. It’s a great day when you finally get that spreadsheet just the way you want!

So find something to change. Find something to do better. Find whatever new information comes through that channel. Get more information. Learn more. It only empowers you in the end.

(I could dig up the stories I’d heard. I could try and source them. But I just don’t want to. I think it’s like that joke in “Good Will Hunting” it’s better in the first person. So, this is what I will say: I genuinely remember each of these stories.)