The Business of Ice Management
Last night I spent $30 on a beef wagyu shawarma sandwich. On the way home I realized I could stop at the new convenience store for some soda to go with it.
The owner is excited about his new store, but he has insecurity because the previous owners walked out on their lease. He wants everyone to know that he is not the previous, deadbeat owner.
I have tried to assure him that people know that the previous owner would not come back to their store after leaving it vacant for half a year.
Time to Checkout
Last night when I walked in to get my soda I found a 1L bottle of Perrier. I took it to the cash and he apologized that he was restocking the fridge when I went to the cash register, thereby beating him to it.
I told him he didn’t have to apologize, I understood he was in the middle of a task and that he had to finish it before coming to the cash register.
Then I realized I might as well get some more drinks while I am here. He has a healthy pop section which is what I’m all about.
Creative Brain Turns On
I started taking a look at the entire fridge section and came up with some suggestions about what we could move into the healthy pop section to attract more buyers like my customer persona.
Yet apparently Bubbly can not be integrated with the healthy pop because it belongs in the Pepsi owned fridge which was the first thing that broke down my idea a bit.
Next, I noticed there is a dedicated Yerba Mate fridge at the end of the store, and I suggested he move a row of Mate in there. He said he already did, and after that I didn’t have many more suggestions.
Basically everything was perfect in there as it was and I spent ten minutes getting involved in merchandising for no reason.
When you are single you can do these sorts of things and not feel guilty that someone is waiting for you. I recommend you try it if you haven’t considered it yet, even though single people tend to be overlooked and thought of as freeloaders who don’t contribute anything.
Time to Add Some Ice
When I got home I looked in my freezer for some ice cubes and I noticed the tray was just about empty. Two half-filled cubes left. I had been procrastinating refilling the cubes for a while now.
And then it dawned on me: A store is not in the business of selling you pop once, they are in the business of selling you pop repeatedly.
And by the same logic, you are not in the business of making one tray of ice cubes. You are in the business of having a never ending supply of ice, whenever you need it.
You need to think way beyond having one tray of ice cubes. You need 2 or 3. When one is getting low, you better make sure the next ones are ready to go.
Add Some Variation
In some of those trays you can mix in some lemon with the water so that you have lemon water on demand as the cube dissolves in your drink.
Or you can put drip coffee in them so that when you make ice coffee the cube will keep replenishing the flavour with more coffee.
You are not in the business of making a never ending supply of ice cubes. You are in the business of having an array of options for cooling down drinks for whatever situation arises.
Think beyond the current tray at hand.
Three Ideas from My Notebooks
Good ideas have legs. Bad ideas sink down and get forgotten. Always keep a log of your ideas in various notebooks and when you look back on your notes you will see that your best ideas keep getting energy thrown into them.
If you want to write a newsletter, you must be able to be vulnerable like a hot virgin going off to college. If you want to write an email to colleagues, you will need to tap into the same raw intensity that I pull from when I do this work. Don’t overlook the power of being exactly who you are. And don’t be insecure like the store owner who is apologizing for everything. You can’t help people who can’t be helped. Have low expectations for 80% of the people you know and focus on the last 20% who are aligned with you.
Think big in all areas of your life and work. There is no point in always dialling back your ambitions to fit in with the average way of thinking that you might be surrounded by. Think beyond the current tray of ice cubes. How can it expand to become a never ending supply of frozen water? Where some people saw Las Vegas as a desert that had little access to fresh water, other people saw the perfect place to open up hotels and casinos.
All of the ideas going back to May 2023 are located in The Ideas Index:
Elliott’s Homepage Playlist
Last year I ran my website on Squarespace which ensured that I looked like every health and wellness influencer from California1.
When it came up for renewal I couldn’t justify the price so I went back to working the land and set up my own Wordpress for the price of a coffee every month as opposed to the price of a beef wagyu shawarma.
So now I can do things like upload my music to my site properly and put the songs in playlists.
You can check out my new, stripped down site here.
I went back and listened to this song Just Drive and it was a monster, so I’m reposting it in this message now:
Thanks for reading today, and have a great week ahead 🧡🥯🧡
Elliott
This is an old, repeated joke about Squarespace. Overall it is the best option for running a website that will look clean no matter what you do, but I still had many issues with how their system works now, specifically Fluid Engine.