What great taste!

A few years ago my wife and myself were at a dance recital (as we so regularly find ourselves). My wife had put her purse down and walked away and it was stolen. It had just the usual items in it, my two cellphones (of course at that time I was rocking two cell phones), her phone, wallet, etc. We were obviously upset and went back to my wife's parents to commiserate and figure out what to do. Her younger sisters (whose recital it was) started calling around and found a few shady characters that seemed suspicious. We jumped online and found out that they had already dropped a couple hundred dollars at a music store. Jumping in the car we found ourselves at the store as they were locking up. We produced two pages from a year book and asked the clerk if he recognized anybody. He immediately picked out the two shadesters earlier mentioned. The clerk then went back inside and printed out a receipt of what they had bought. They were only fourteen and had bought some candy and about ten CD's. As the clerk looked over the receipt he handed it across the counter and said "Wow, those are all some seriously great bands and over a bunch of different genres, those kids have really great taste!"

The end of the night we will save for another post, we found the kids, pulled their parents out of bed, had exhausting dialog about the degradation of the American youth etc. The point today is that these kids had amazing taste in music, after my wife looked over the receipt she replied "This sucks! I've been wanting a couple of these CD's for years!"

The question I would pose to you and myself is what type of people are we, what type of people do we surround ourselves with, what type of people are we raising. Do your kids have a great taste in music but will steal a purse if the opportunity arises? Do you have great selling techniques but will bend the rules to get the sale to go through? Are your friends wonderful conversationalists about politics, religion and philosophy but every now and again they use drugs? I hope that in the age of information we do not invest so much time and energy into getting great taste but totally disregard our moral standard.

To get a little off the preachy side and bring this around to business, do you own a business that has immaculate taste but no substance? Do people visit your website and say wonderful things, walk through your front door and incessantly remark on how well put together the space is, but then when they experience what it is that you actually do the comments cease to flow? Lastly, I know I spend hours per day on getting new tastes and refining the existing ones, but how much time do we spend personally and in our business on the tasteless issues, the things that make for a great foundation of a house but that that no one will ever comment on when they walk in the front door.