Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals
January 2015
Investment marketing and business development professionals often want to know what their competitors are doing. Where are other investment firms seeing the most results for their marketing dollars — in advertising, webinars, social media, client events or some combination of these efforts? This issue of Excess Returns considers an underutilized marketing strategy that is proven, low in cost and unlikely to be implemented effectively and consistently by competitors.
With best wishes,
Liz Hecht
Founder, Principal and Director of Research
Alpha Partners is an investment marketing firm specializing in research and presentation strategy. Our goal is to create alpha (excess returns) by helping investment firms win, keep and diversify assets under management.
Once upon a time I met with a product manager for a large investment company. He had recently run a search for a marketing firm to help his company tell a stronger story about its competitive advantages. For various reasons, his firm decided not to move ahead with the project. But this gentleman was kind enough to get back to me with a detailed response to my proposal. So I invited him to a breakfast meeting to thank him again for considering Alpha Partners — and to get more feedback about how our proposal had stacked up relative to those of competitors. He told me that he had preferred the Alpha proposal over that of our closest competitor, and he explained why. He also told me, incredibly, that many of the marketing firms he had contacted never followed up with him at all, or promised to follow up with a proposal and never did!
Since this meeting, I have spent a lot of time thinking about the concept of following up: how difficult it can be to follow up well consistently and the consequences of being fitful in one’s follow-up. We live in a world where follow-up can be sporadic, delayed and in many cases nonexistent. My clients also often tell me that they wish their business lives were more clearly focused on outcomes: feeding back and following up, closing the loop and defining the next step.
Are you doomed to inhabit a land of lost opportunities and loose ends? Or does a world where follow-up is rare give you and your company a competitive advantage?
We can all agree that the business world we wish for is not the one we’ve got. Many more people can be counted on to avoid, delay, dismiss and forget than those precious few who follow up on a consistent basis. So let’s step back, take a deep breath, survey the landscape and consider how to wrest competitive advantage from a world where follow-up is increasingly rare.
Have You Got What It Takes to Follow Up Effectively?
Do you have the right people? Follow-up tends to occur one on one between individuals, which means that the quality of the follow-up depends largely on the people. Does your firm have the right people in place to follow up diligently on every new business opportunity? In the early stages of a start-up, the principals of the firm may be able to follow up effectively without a dedicated marketing or sales professional. But as your firm grows, you will need to allocate the resources required for effective follow-up, and that means people who will follow up with your same energy, discipline and care.
Do you have the right materials? People often come to my company looking for help with their new business presentations or client presentations. We rarely receive inquiries about what I think of as follow-up presentations — the meeting after the introductory meeting or the semifinals preceding a finals. There is an optimal sequencing of information that should occur depending on where one is in the follow-up process. To follow up effectively, developing the right materials is critical.
Do you have the right mindset? If you are the sort of person who follows up diligently, then you are confronted almost daily with the enervating ambiguity of an unresponsive world. Important emails go unanswered and vital communications remain unacknowledged while new business proposals languish in limbo without the courtesy of a response. (Someone once told me that she learned her firm had not been selected for an investment mandate by reading about it in a trade publication. She and her team sent in a proposal and participated in several in-person presentations and neither the consultant nor the prospective client had the courtesy to make a short phone call or send an email to thank them for their time.) In this environment, successful follow-up requires a system combined with ingenuity and a mindset that is at once humble, optimistic and resolute. To follow up effectively is at once an act of faith and empathy: I believe my efforts to reach you are important and something good will come to both of us if I persist (that’s the faith part), and I totally understand that you have been too busy to contact me (I know what that’s like!).
Have you defined the next steps? One needs to ask constantly, "What is the next step?" Every meeting, call or email should embed a next step or desired outcome. This should happen not only in a new business development context but also as part of the everyday life of a firm. I like to think that I am good at following up, but in researching this article I kept thinking of situations where my own follow-up could have been faster, more thoughtful and more diligent simply by linking a series of clearly defined next steps. Often, especially given the delays that can occur between intention and action, following up successfully is a matter of taking good notes, concluding each set of notes with a brief summary of next steps and then referring back frequently to said notes. It sounds boring and humdrum, but I am often surprised at how grateful people are when I start a call with a concise summary of the last call — and when I conclude a meeting by briefly confirming next steps. I also am amazed when seasoned investment company professionals will conclude a meeting with, "Well, that’s it for now" or "I see we are out of time. Do you have any questions?" — as opposed to confirming and summarizing a set of next steps in relation to a desired result.
When should you not follow up? In a new business development context, following up successfully does not mean dogging every opportunity — only the right opportunities. Some clients may not be a good fit for you and your organization for any number of reasons. You need to carefully weigh the nature of the opportunity against the time and cost involved in responding to an RFP, preparing for due diligence meetings and traveling with several people to a finals and a semifinals.
So whatever happened to the prospective client who was kind enough to join me for breakfast? Shamefully, I do not know because I did not follow up. I failed to define and implement a next step. But it’s a brand-new year and I have a new system that will prevent such lax behavior in the future!
A System for Following Up
Having a system takes the frustration out of following up. Here are some questions that will help you develop such a system or improve your existing approach. How many times will you follow up regarding a new business inquiry before you risk seeming like a stalker? (I say three maximum, but the number does vary with the situation.) What materials do you plan to use at each stage of the follow-up process and how will you customize these materials to different audiences? What is your process for providing a steady stream of valuable information to new business prospects such that they come to see you and your firm as a resource? How do you share information with your team, ensuring that others learn from your experiences with a given prospect or consultant? Does everyone on your new business development team regularly update your CRM database, sharing information that could be helpful in preparing for future meetings? Do you maintain a list of new business and consultant meetings with defined next steps noted after each meeting and a clear understanding of who will implement each step? As you start to act more systematically — in developing new business and in all aspects of your life — you are likely to realize the joys and benefits that come to those rare few who follow up.
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
The following passage from Greg McKeown’s great book, Essentialism, confirms my suspicion that people today are so busy tweeting and texting and blogging and posting that they sometimes fail to follow up on business opportunities right under their noses:
"I ran into a former classmate of mine years after graduating from Stanford. I was on campus doing some work on a computer in one of the offices when he came over to me to say hi. After a minute of pleasantries he told me he was between jobs. He explained a little about the job he was looking for and asked if I could help him. I started asking some questions to see how I could be helpful to him, but twenty seconds into the conversation he got a text on his phone. Without saying a word, he looked down and started responding to it. I did what I typically do when that happens. I paused and waited.
Ten seconds went by. Then twenty. I simply stood there as he continued to text away furiously. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t acknowledge me. Out of curiosity I waited to see how long it would go on. But after two full minutes, which is quite a lot of time when you are standing waiting for someone, I gave up, walked back to my desk, and went back to my work. After another five minutes, he became present again, interrupting me for the second time. Now he wanted to resume the conversation, to ask for help with his job search again. Initially I had been ready to recommend him for a job opening I knew of, but after this incident I admit to feeling hesitant to recommending him for an interview where he might suddenly not be present."
This passage comes from my favorite chapter in the book, which is entitled: "FOCUS: What’s Important Now." This book is a godsend for busy people who need to prioritize their time by focusing on what is essential. But Essentialism is less about time management tactics than about developing a mindset that makes effective time management a way of life.
Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals
January 2014
What’s in your bug-out bag? As a denizen of the 21st century, you no doubt are aware that a well-stocked bug-out bag is key to any survival plan. But what about your investment bug-out bag? This issue of Excess Returns considers the implications of survivalist culture for investment management companies. Specifically, how can investment firms do a better job of communicating about risk?
With best wishes,
Liz Hecht
Founder, Principal and Director of Research
Alpha Partners is an investment marketing firm specializing in research and presentation strategy. Our goal is to create alpha (excess returns) by helping investment firms win, keep and diversify assets under management.
The bad news is I’ve lost control of the clicker. The good news is, while being doomed (slight pun intended) to watching one of my husband’s favorite and my least favorite television shows, I have an idea for this issue of Excess Returns. National Geographic’s Doomsday Preppers profiles survivalist families getting ready for various forms of natural or man-made disasters ranging from global financial collapse to earthquakes to biological warfare (to name just a few).
Part of me gets this show. There is a certain appealing simplicity in the concept of survival: one is not overburdened with an abundance of choices; one’s focus is clear. But I prefer not to envision a future without raw food restaurants, HBO and perfectly chilled Chardonnay. I do not want to take to the hills and start over.
As I watch this week’s episode, however, it occurs to me that investment managers could learn from all these survivalist families stocking their bug-out bags and building their safe rooms. As evidenced by the number of wealthy investors with portfolios mainly in cash, bonds and gold, the investment industry can still do a much better job of communicating about the realities of risk.
Best Practices for Communicating About Risk
After 2008 many investment firms improved the way they define, monitor and manage risk, and many more companies today now emphasize their risk management systems and strategies. Where I have not seen significant improvements, however, is in the way investment firms communicate about risk. The following best practices, when applied systematically, can turn communications about risk into a competitive advantage.
Define terms first. Your Great Aunt Tabitha and the CIO of a sovereign wealth fund are likely to view risk very differently. Investment company professionals therefore should communicate about risk in the context of what risk means to a prospective client. Is it something that can be described with a Monte Carlo simulation or something that inspires visceral dread? (Describing risk in the context of client goals seems obvious, but if it’s so obvious why don’t investment firms do this more often?)
Demonstrate understanding of what could go wrong. Communicating about risk has little to do with tracking error or standard deviations or correlation coefficients. The real risk that investors understandably fear is that their investment manager’s worst-case scenario does not capture everything that might go wrong. “Understandably” because, as documented in Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst, human beings do not excel at envisioning worst-case outcomes. Investors thus are likely to gravitate toward asset managers who acknowledge a complete spectrum of risk when describing individual investments and the portfolio as a whole.
Communicate consideration of risk at every stage of the investment process. The typical investment process map ends with the portfolio and then sometimes includes a separate page about risk management. The way one contains or capitalizes on risk should animate the entire process discussion — as opposed to being treated as an add-on or an afterthought.
Give the sell discipline its due. For many traditional investment strategies, a thoughtful sell discipline executed consistently is possibly the most important form of risk control. And yet one still finds detailed investment process descriptions — page after page of information on how the manager selects investments — without one drop of ink on when and why the manager sells. Similarly, a recent white paper on risk management by a large global financial services firm details 24 discrete forms of risk without any mention of faulty sell discipline implementation.
Think big picture. Portfolio managers routinely tell investors that they cannot predict the future. I always find these protestations to be somewhat wearisome, not the least because investment managers make them so often using exactly the same language (we don’t have a crystal ball, blah blah). Of course these managers can’t predict the future. But they can develop a well-informed global macroeconomic view, seeking to understand the full range of risks confronting their investors.
Equate risk with returns. Many investors still don’t understand (or need to be reminded) that returns are derived from risk. Investment opportunities also arise based on ingenious humans finding new ways to prevent worst-case scenarios. An asteroid wiping out all or part of our planet strikes me as being the ultimate risk (sorry preppers, your gas mask or water purifier won’t help you there). And yet a recent episode of NOVA, “Asteroid: Doomsday or Payday?” dramatizes how studying the risk of asteroids is already creating investment opportunities in space.
One of the main reasons I don’t like Doomsday Preppers is that the preppers usually are blinkered in their focus on what could go wrong. Each prepper family, it seems, has zeroed in on just one disaster to prep for (this one over here is prepping for a cyber-attack while that one over there is wholly focused on the negative consequences of global warming). These preppers would have more credibility if they acknowledged the complete range of potential negative outcomes. That’s what I want my investment manager to do.
Envisioning the Worst
Never Saw It Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst explores what author Karen A. Cerulo describes as “positive asymmetry” or the human tendency to imagine positive outcomes in greater detail than negative outcomes. Positive asymmetry, argues Cerulo, a professor of sociology at Rutgers University, can at least partly explain 9/11 and the 1986 Challenger disaster, while negative asymmetry helps to explain the avoidance of catastrophe in the case of the Y2K millennium bug and the SARS outbreak of 2003. For investment professionals who want to improve the way they think about and describe risk, this book is a must-read cover to cover.
In Never Saw It Coming, Karen A. Cerulo documents “positive asymmetry,” a phenomenon that may explain why so few investment firms communicate effectively about risk.
The Big Short Revisited
Speaking of negative asymmetry, I recently had the pleasure of rereading The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine, by Michael Lewis. The Big Short tells the story of the people who understood the risks inherent in the subprime market long before those risks became front-page news. This is a classic well worth revisiting, and it may soon be a movie, too (Brad Pitt’s production company, Plan B Entertainment, has optioned the film rights).
Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals
January 2013
The two most powerful words in any presentation are “for example.” Yet investment managers use specific examples infrequently or without skill. This issue of Excess Returns considers why investment company professionals so often get this wrong and what can be done about it.
With best wishes,
Liz Hecht
Founder, Principal and Director of Research
Alpha Partners is an investment marketing firm specializing in research and presentation strategy. Our goal is to create alpha (excess returns) by helping investment firms win, keep and diversify assets under management.
When I began working on Wall Street in 1981, I spent a lot of time during interviews with portfolio managers and securities analysts thinking, “I wonder what they really mean?” The lexicon of the financial world was new to me and I thought that was the problem. Yet here it is 32 years later, after I have built a career in this business, and I still frequently wonder what investment professionals really mean.
Over the course of my career, I have listened to thousands of presentations by different investment companies and, with stellar exceptions, these presentations often are completely devoid of supporting examples and explanatory detail. During new business presentations, simulating a finals for a multimillion dollar mandate, I sometimes feel like the dog in the famous Far Side cartoon: all I hear is “Blah blah blah Liz blah blah blah Liz blah blah.”
Beyond Blah Blah Blah
The blah blah factor stems from the fact that most investment managers are selling exactly the same thing (enhanced returns with reduced risk) using exactly the same language (fundamental research blah blah secular trends blah blah tail risk blah). So they all sound alike. To cut through all this sameness, I have learned over the years to ask a simple question: Can you please give me an example?
When I ask this question, one of two things happens: (1) investment firm professionals answer the question enthusiastically and I start to understand what they mean or (2) they skirt or botch the question, and I realize that they don’t really know what they’re talking about or don’t really do what they say. Put another way, this question causes professionals in our world either to rise to the occasion or fall apart.
In the July 2011 issue of this newsletter, I wrote about what we at Alpha Partners call “elephant questions,” or questions that are so big and important that they should be answered before they are asked. In my view, requests for examples are elephant questions. Investment marketers should provide specific examples before they have to be asked. Yet there are many reasons why this still does not happen:
Living in a bubble world. Few investment professionals operate outside of their own rarefied environment. They actually think that most people understand terms such as “secular trends” and “tail risk.” Compounding the problem, those out there in the real world who do not know what these terms mean are unlikely to admit it. Like the dog in the Far Side cartoon, they listen attentively without understanding.
Portfolio manager inaccessibility. The portfolio manager or portfolio specialist does not routinely make fresh, relevant examples available to marketing and client service professionals. At many firms (still, in 2013!), much lip service is given to the importance of transparency but a true culture of transparency has yet to take hold.
Fear of being pinned down. Portfolio managers live in a changing world where what makes sense one day might very well seem foolish the next. Some managers react to the vicissitudes of the investment markets by refusing to be pinned down on the specifics regarding anything at all. They are much more comfortable being vague and so a nebulous quality begins to infect all aspects of their communications. (I find it incredible, for example, that some portfolio managers still say that they plan to meet their performance objectives over a full market cycle. Whatever, the average layperson must wonder, might that mean?)
Fear of oversimplification. Sometimes investment professionals are concerned that specific examples will oversimplify their investment process. This is true in particular of firms with quantitative investment strategies. This concern may be well-founded. An even more legitimate concern, however, is that a simplified example may be the only way to make a quantitative strategy understandable and prospective clients are unlikely to buy something that they do not understand.
A low bar for salespeople. Often, when I suggest to clients that specific examples would help build understanding of the investment strategy, they say, in effect, “Liz, we are concerned that our salespeople might give the wrong examples or might give examples that create misperceptions about our investment process.” This is a legitimate concern at some companies where the salespeople, for any number of reasons, really don’t fully understand what they are selling. Such reasons range from portfolio manager inaccessibility (noted earlier in this article), firm cultures that have not yet embraced transparency and the mistaken belief that salespeople are intellectual lightweights unable to discuss the investment strategy in any depth.
The risk of faulty execution. There are indeed many pitfalls in presenting examples effectively. The wrong examples (a holding notoriously unfriendly to unions presented to a Taft-Hartley plan) can be worse than no examples at all. An example or examples presented with excessive detail can kill a presentation. Examples that contradict the investment process also are a common problem. (Such examples may prompt the question “That’s a nice story you just told me. But what does it have to do with the investment process you described earlier?”)
When Long-Term Capital Management (LTCM) began marketing to investors, writes Roger Lowenstein in his fascinating book When Genius Failed, “Long-Term even refused to give examples of trades, so potential investors had little idea of what the partners were proposing.” By not providing effective examples, investment firms rob prospective clients of that critical moment of understanding where they can say, “Aha! I see! Now I know what you mean!” After the fall of LTCM and Bernard Madoff, investors may be more likely to demand specific examples before writing a check.
But Is It Legal?
Whenever Alpha Partners recommends the use of examples, the first objection we typically hear is, “But our compliance department has told us that using specific examples is illegal.” Compliance experts Marvin Barge of Barge Consulting and Otto Medrano of Forensico Partners explain, however, that it is legal to use specific examples in investment marketing literature as long as certain conditions are met.
According to a No-Action Letter (Franklin Management, Inc., December 10, 1998), written examples can be used in investment marketing literature only to describe how the investment process is implemented — not the results of process implementation with respect to a specific security. A more recent No-Action Letter (The TCW Group, November 7, 2008), Mr. Barge explains, specifies that investment managers can present examples showing results, “but only if they show an equal number of holdings that contributed most positively and most negatively to the performance of a representative account.” Based on recent No-Action Letters, says Mr. Medrano, “compliance professionals have better guidance and thus can probably find a way to include examples in their presentations that are consistent with the law.”
At Alpha Partners, we recommend that our clients use examples in written marketing materials only to show how the investment process works; we believe that portfolio performance over time — as opposed to any one example or even a balanced suite of examples — is the best indicator of results. When presenting specific examples, however, investment management professionals should be aware of the results so as to be able to answer any questions that arise.
It is important to note, too, that the No-Action Letters referenced above pertain to Rule 206(4)-1(a)(2) of the Investment Advisers Act of 1940. These No-Action Letters apply within the United States and to companies outside of the US seeking to attract US investors. Firms not domiciled in the US, not registered under the Advisers Act of 1940 and not seeking US investors should follow the rules of their governing body.
The Missing Component
An important assignment recently sent me to the private equity section at Amazon where I found The New Tycoons: Inside the Trillion Dollar Private Equity Industry That Owns Everything. As I write this I am halfway through the book and enjoying it immensely. As the infographic on Amazon points out, this book dramatizes how pervasive private equity has become, playing an investment role in many of the products that populate our daily lives. It is this precise component that I find to be missing from many investment marketing efforts: an understanding of the underlying investments in the form of real companies, products and personalities. Investors, it seems to me, want to know that they are investing in something more tangible than a list of top 10 holdings or a pie chart showing sector allocations. They want to know what the companies in the portfolio make or do and how they fill a void or realize a dream.
Jason Kelly’s 2012 book dramatizes the role of private equity in the products that populate our daily lives.
Monthly insights for investment marketing and sales professionals
January 2012
According to the dictates of their nature — not to mention commonly accepted best practices and, in some cases, the law — investment companies are compelled to audit everything. There are third-party compliance reviews and on-site due diligence visits and the annual GIPS verification, to name just a few of many required processes and procedures. Our first 2012 newsletter puts forward a different kind of due diligence not often formally practiced yet vital in running a successful investment business.
With best wishes,
Liz Hecht
Founder, Principal and Director of Research
Alpha Partners is an investment marketing firm specializing in research and presentation strategy. Our goal is to create alpha (excess returns) by helping investment firms win, keep and diversify assets under management.
It is more than a decade ago and I am in a meeting with the CEO of Company X, an investment firm that wants to hire Alpha Partners for a sizable custom research project. His team’s numbers, he tells me, are "literally off the charts" and yet the consultant community "does not understand our investment process."
The proposal we later submit is accepted and off we go, keen on developing research insights that will help this company turn performance into asset growth. We schedule interviews with clients, consultants and former new business prospects and start reading everything we can about the firm, its asset class and its competitors. There is just one rather significant problem, I realize a week or two after we get started: we are working on the wrong project. Market research is not required to understand why this firm’s lead product has no traction. The source of the problem is all too apparent without the benefit of in-depth interviews: the company’s marketing literature is, well … no wonder consultants do not understand the investment process.
Things to Consider in Conducting a Marketing Audit
Let’s assume then that your investment company is being considered by a consultant, manager of managers or fund of funds with a well-defined marketing due diligence process. (In my perfect world, all consultants and multi-manager funds would have such a process. But even if they don’t, you will benefit by acting as if they do.) You want to pass the audit with flying colors so you conduct your own internal audit and/or ask a knowledgeable outsider to help. After all, it’s a new year, so what better time for a fresh, comprehensive look at your marketing literature? Here are some of the things you need to consider:
Reality. Does the marketing communicate what your firm really does and your true competitive advantages? Sometimes, we have found, a firm’s marketing documents and website do not tell a consistent story because there is no consistent story. There may be internal conflict. There may be disagreement regarding the best way to tell the story. Or certain aspects of the story may have become stale with the passage of time. In any case, you should fix the underlying problem — i.e., decide what story you want to tell — before you even consider changes to your marketing literature.
Quality. Do all of your materials exude quality in even the smallest details? This is important whether you are a start-up or first-time fund or a mainstream global firm with hundreds of billions in assets under management. Your marketing should convey respect for every little nuance that defines how an outsider experiences your firm — the hundred little things that add up to a client or consultant wanting to come back again and again.
Consistent Content. Is the story the same within and across all media — the website, RFP response or PPM and presentation book? Is content aligned across other documents such as client reports, quarterly commentary, press releases, newsletters and white papers? If you are a multiproduct firm that operates globally, are there perhaps inconsistencies that should be resolved across borders and product lines? And are there perhaps even inconsistencies within the same document — a Portfolio Overview on Page 22, for example, that conflicts with the Portfolio Construction Guidelines on Page 12?
Consistent Design. Consistent content counts for little if the overall look is inconsistent. I frequently conduct reviews where a firm looks inconsistent not only from one document to the next but also from one page to the next within the same document.
Personality. The highest-quality documents sometimes lack this vital ingredient. In looking at the website for a start-up firm the other day, I was struck by the clarity and vitality of the language and imagery. I know the portfolio manager for this company’s lead product from another life; he is a star, and I can sense his personality in the distinctive look and feel of the site. The site opens with one arresting message that immediately makes me want to learn more.
Proof. Are claims made in the marketing materials largely unsubstantiated? Or are the materials rich with proof in the form of examples, research validation, performance attribution and performance history?
Integrity. Finally, does the integrated sum of the parts translate into one greater whole? Do the quality, consistency, personality and proof provided by your marketing materials make people want to get to know you better and ultimately work with you?
When completed, our research for Company X did indeed point to a critical need for improved marketing materials. One consultant in particular commented heatedly and at length on the shortcomings of the presentation book. And while it was beyond the scope of our assignment, I personally issued a plea to the CEO for improved materials. "Your RFP responses are curt to the point of rudeness and certain key information in the presentation book not only is confusing but also flat-out inconsistent," I told him. After the meeting, he thanked me, in a decidedly lukewarm fashion, for my time. That’s the last I ever saw this gentleman and the firm no longer exists. His company may not have learned anything from this experience, but we did. We never accept assignments now without at least a preliminary review of a company’s marketing literature. By conducting our own marketing due diligence up front, we are in a better position to define what is truly required.
While working on this article, I ran some ideas by one of our fund-of-funds clients. "Does your team formally evaluate a fund’s marketing literature as part of due diligence?" I asked him. "Not formally," he said, "but of course it is considered. We view good materials as a prerequisite. Will bad materials disqualify a fund? No, but bad materials are definitely a red flag. We had a meeting with a fund last week, for example, and our researcher said his impression was that the firm was ‘not pulled together.’ This fund’s team had a difficult time communicating the highlights. We probably will schedule another meeting with them, but we feel a bit frustrated that we couldn’t accomplish what we needed during the first meeting. If their presentation had been better, we might already be considering the next level of due diligence."
Marketing expert Seth Godin shares our love of a Park City restaurant, El Chubasco. His blogpost about one of our favorite local eateries dramatizes why all the small details matter when running a business. When I stay up late editing a document for the third time to be sure that it is free of typos and wholly consistent with a related document, I sometimes now think of Mr. Godin’s comments about El Chubasco and feel less like a nerd and more like a successful businessperson serving other successful businesspeople.
