How many times have you heard that?   I remember hearing this many times growing up and have really never, until now, contemplated the meaning.  In Gary Vaynerchuk’s book, The Thank You Economy, Gary shares story after story of all the ways people in business are going out of their way to create a customer for life and, if they are not, they will not be in business very much longer.   He starts by telling his own story of working for his father in their liquor store stocking shelves when a customer walked in with an expired coupon.   When he asked the store manager if he would still honor the coupon the manager said no.   Gary recognized that he didn’t feel right about this.   He intuitively knew that the customer didn’t feel good about this either and would most likely never return.   He makes the point that losing one customer is a far greater loss than the one sale that would have happened that day.   It is a loss of years of sales to that customer.  On the flip side, in another story he tells a story of an owner of a burrito restaurant.  One day a woman was sitting out front on the sidewalk and sent out a tweet, I must admit I am saying this with a certain sense of delight that I know what that means, where she said that she was annoyed by how loud the music was blaring from the restaurant.   The owner, another amazing thing to think about, was notified immediately of the tweet and had the music turned down then walked out front to inquire if it was now more pleasant for her.  She was indeed pleased and then tweeted again that this had just happened and this must be the greatest restaurant in the world.  (Maybe a slight exaggeration)   Now, instantly, this little tweet is heard round the world and that restaurant is in the hearts and minds of hundreds.  This now happens instantly with social media.

When we bought The Abominable Snowmansion, a lodge/youth hostel in Taos, New Mexico we had this vision of creating a waypoint, a place where travelers from around the world would stop for a night and share stories of their travels.  This was before we had, or were aware of, the internet, websites, email and twitter was not even in the embryonic stage!   What we did have was this amazing word of mouth story telling among ardent world travelers.   We had visitors from all corners of the globe during our tenure at the hostel and heard many amazing tales but it wasn’t until a Masai from Kenya walked into the kitchen that we knew we had achieved our goal.   When he came through the kitchen door, I was at the stove cooking the standard 5 pounds of spaghetti for the riders coming back down from the Friday night bicycle race up Taos Canyon.   As I looked up and saw this extremely tall man standing by the counter, I smiled and exclaimed, “Where are you from?”   He proceeded to tell me that he was a Masai from Kenya, educated in London at Oxford and the reason he was here at the Snowmansion was that he was told by an Australian in Stockholm, Sweden that he should definitely go to Taos, New Mexico and stay at the Abominable Snowmansion!   Wow!   I loved hearing that.  It was a complete validation that what we wanted to achieve had indeed happened.   That took several years, hundreds of people coming through, thousands of words spoken and a lot of sweat and toil maintaining the lodge in order for that to happen.   Today, someone can walk through the door, look around, say hello and do you have a bed for the night, then tweet that they just arrived at the Snowmansion.   In an instant hundreds know the name.   The next instant can be the most impactful of any business owner’s life.   Did the tweet say they liked the place or did it say the front desk people were rude?  Now what once was relegated to one unhappy customer is broadcast like the Shot Heard Round The World.

Here is what I love most about this; it keeps us alert.  It gives us endless opportunities to be genuine, caring and really interested in what those around us have to say.   This is not going away, it will only become more so.   Gravity is becoming less, time is speeding up and technology today won’t be the same tomorrow but what will endure forever is being kind.   So Kill ‘Em With Kindness is even more important and more powerful today than it was when it was first coined.   We kill the anger, the hurt, the disappointment, the loneliness and the fear of loss when we make it our first priority to be kind.