I was going over marketing ideas with my daughter (Becky), thinking about ways to bring people in for bikes. It’s tough competing with all the clutter out there, and it’s equally tough getting someone’s attention, sometimes even when they’re in the store, because they’re so concerned about knowing everything they overlook the obvious.

We’re told we have to master Google AdWords, we have to send out bi-weekly emails and figure out new services to offer all the time. And sure, you need to do all that (never mind that many really good customers either intentionally or accidentally remove themselves from our e-list because they get too many emails and an email from a local brick & mortar business is somehow more intrusive than the 5-10 emails they might get each week from Amazon and yes in fact that does hurt my feelings a bit).

But what about the idea that, you come into our shop, and you’re not going to get fed a bunch of techno-nonsense, you’re not going to get some young guy trying to mold you into some unattainable yoga shape on a bike because that’s how he rides, and you’re not going to be talked into a 16 pound $4000 carbon road bike if what’s appropriate for how you’re going to ride is a $1000 hybrid or maybe a $2500 e-bike?

Most importantly, you come into our shop and we’re going to try and addict you to what we believe is the fundamental truth. That thing that attracts people thousands of miles so they can be ushered into the Dalai Lama’s presence.

Life goes by at exactly the right speed on a bike.

How do you say that? OK, I just did, but what if you had to shorten this to just two paragraphs?  –MikeJ