Part 1 in a series on improving your Personal Brand.
My father once told me about a curious habit of one of his school science teachers:
This particular teacher was fond of including riddles in his test papers.
Despite having nothing to do with science per se, they were intended as a test of logic and lateral thinking.
This is one of those riddles.
The Barbershop Riddle.
A man moves to a small town.
One day he decides that it’s time to get his hair cut, so he goes looking for a barber.
He discovers that there are only 2 barbershops in the entire town and that they are both to be found on the same street.
The first barbershop he encounters fills him with a sense of unease: The outside of the shop is dirty. The windows haven’t been washed in ages. The pavement is littered with refuse. The signwriting has glaring spelling errors and the paint on the front door is peeling and faded.
Upon entering the shop he is disappointed to note that things are not much better; The floor is dirty and covered in hair. The chairs are old and their upholstery is cracked and missing in places. The magazines are tattered and a few years old. The mirrors are dirty and there is a faintly unpleasant smell coming from the rear of the shop. The barber looks gruff and unpleasant. His hair is uneven and his fringe is crooked. His clothes are dirty and creased. He barely mutters a greeting as the man walks in before going back to picking at his nails.
The man decides not to stay a moment longer, quickly exits the premises, and makes his way to barbershop number 2.
Fortunately, this establishment looks immaculate. The facade of the shop is beautiful, the windows are clean and it looks as if it’s recently been painted.
The inside of the barbershop looks just as impressive. It’s bright and welcoming, the floor is clean and swept, the mirrors are polished, the chairs look comfortable, there is a pleasant scent perfuming the air and the ambient music fits the atmosphere perfectly.
The barber greets him with a friendly smile. He is immaculately dressed and well-groomed: clean, tidy hair, a meticulously trimmed beard, his clothes are clean and well-fitting, he has a genuine smile on his face and he carries himself with confidence.
The question is: Which barbershop should he go to, and why?
I will admit that my child-mind could not figure it out when I was first asked.
However, I was smart enough to guess that, as with nearly all riddles, the obvious answer is not the correct one.
This particular riddle is an exercise in lateral thinking.
Your gut would tell you that he’d stick with shop number 2. But that would be the wrong answer.
There is a seemingly logical question that the teacher who posed this riddle wanted his students to ponder: Where did each of these barbers get their own hair cut?
If there were only 2 barbers in the town it follows that the barbers cut each other’s hair. Barber number 2 had great hair because barber number 1 was good at cutting hair (and vice-versa).
The correct answer for this riddle is to head back to the grimy and unpleasant barbershop because that barber knows how to cut hair well, whereas the pleasant barber does not.
In the riddle, if you’d gone with the grimy barber you would have achieved the best outcome (a good haircut), but your experience would have been far from enjoyable, which for this riddle was not a factor to consider.
This may be a very interesting logic-puzzle, but it certainly isn’t the way the real world works.
However, it does highlight what I believe is a very real trap that many small business owners, service providers and other professionals fall into; the mistaken belief that what they do is more important than how they do it.
As business owners, we’d love to believe that it is purely our skill or the product we deliver that our clients and customers base their judgement of us on. The truth is a different matter.
How we interact with our clients and the entire experience of working with us, from the first contact to last, matters a great deal.
Everything about us and what we do (or more importantly, how we do it) is fair game and affects how we are perceived by the people we meet and the clients we work with (or hope to work with).
We all judge. We’d openly deny that fact, but we’d be lying.
First impressions do matter, and they’re increasingly being made online or in other places where we aren’t physically present. (Or in ways that we aren’t even considering.)
The downside to this is that you could be losing business because of a weak or unfavourable first impression without your even knowing about it.
I have a belief that we all start with a neutral impression and every little thing that we could be judged on will move that dial in either a positive or negative direction.
How far that dial moves depends on who’s doing the judging - some people are just more critical (And I’d argue that this has gotten worse in the internet age). And individually, we all have our particular pet-peeves.
(Tardiness, poor spelling/grammar and not keeping your word are mine.)
As a professional headshot photographer I have spent years obsessing over the importance of a good profile image. I also happen to be a practicing medical doctor, and it’s fair to say that both of these professions have made me more aware (and more critical) of how I conduct myself with my clients and patients.
The lessons I have learnt (some of them quite profound), and the ideas they have spawned are worth sharing.
And while my ultimate goal is to turn these ideas and concepts into a book, my aim right now is to share these insights as an ongoing, regular series of articles and social posts.
I want to help you to make a better impression on your clients in an honest and genuine way. From how you look online (your imagery/profile, website, biography, reviews, etc...) to your conversation skills, telephone etiquette, personal habits and appearance (to name just a few things). This series of posts will help you identify your blind spots and give you a good deal of food for thought. More importantly, these posts will offer practical, implementable ideas and suggestions to effect improvement in your service delivery.
This is not about learning slick tricks or gimmicks - the advice I’ll share is aimed at those who already put integrity at the heart of their business and want to do it better.
I hope that’s you.
Humans sharpen each other like steel sharpens steel, and it is my sincere hope that, in the process of interacting with each other, we can create a body of ideas and reflections that will ultimately improve our clients’ experiences and lead to a far stronger, more memorable personal brand.
Your personal brand is like the good silverware - it needs to be protected, respected and regularly polished if it is not to appear tarnished and dull when it’s placed in front of your guests.
I look forward to sharing these ideas and interacting with you over the coming weeks.
COMING NEXT WEEK: VALUE, SERVICE AND BUILDING CATHEDRALS.
