Sightseeing
Bob and I took a short journey across town to visit a competitor yesterday. This is one way of measuring our performance. This particular store didn’t even exist when Bud’s started so it’s great to now have a competitor by which to compare our organization. Going in the front door, I joked with Bob about how long it would take until we saw one of our customers. We opened the door and we were greeted by one of our customers walking out. We saw another customer sitting on a couch messing with his blackberry. Bob and I sat down on opposite sides next to him. “This is a shakedown,” I said. He looked up shocked like he was a child who had just been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and then laughed. “What are you doing here?” he asked. And then he explained how he was just at our store like he needed to justify what was going on. We are going to invite him to a future focus group to learn more about our business. When this particular store opened, we worried about its impact on our sal...