Make it ExtraOrdinaire

"The man who does more than he is paid for will soon be paid for more than he does". ~ Napoleon Hill, (1883-1970, American speaker, author, Think And Grow Rich)

Hello everybody, I have been on and off from the city recently. To be honest, there are a few things that I get to miss whenever I check out of Nairobi City. One of them is a coffee bar that I’m irrationally loyal to (in fact I’m there even as I write this). It’s not as though the coffee or the service or the surroundings are so drastically different to other suppliers of the bean. No, it’s in the little things that they’ve wooed me into this vortex. They’ve got the basics mastered but then they dazzle me with a little bit extra. As the saying goes, the difference between ordinary and extraordinary is just a little bit “extra”.


"Here is the simple but powerful rule... always give people more than they expect to get".~ Nelson Boswell  

Epic example: Not long ago, I walked in and the barista proudly held up an extension cord. Strange greeting, but it turns out they’d noticed that my favorite spot by the power-port was getting popular, so they bought an extension cord so I could work at my laptop from another table. That’s the difference between ordinary and extraordinary. And what did it cost them? What are the economics of extra? It was probably Kes.700.00 only at the supermarket, but the real point is the value that it communicated to me. I matter. Somebody noticed. Some team member cared enough to remember it next time they were picking up supplies.

"Give the world the best that you have, and the best will come back to you". ~ Madeline Bridges (American professor)

That’s value. It’s often like that with being extraordinary… the real cost tends to be less about money, and more about the effort and energy it takes to “make it extraordinaire”. Yet the rewards are enormous. I’ll drive past five other cafes on the way to this place because they won my loyalty with tokens of effort and energy.

I heard a speaker recently who said, “The gap between where you are and where you want to be is largely determined by the price you’re willing to pay”. It’s a bitter pill to swallow because we’d rather blame something external. But what price am I willing to pay to bridge the gap between where I am and where I want to be? When it comes to relationships it’s more convenient to blame being busy than to accept that in reality I’m not as relational as I want to be simply because I don’t do those little extra things that great networkers do to connect with the people they love and matter most to them.

So what about you and your team? Imagine you were to take an inventory of all the things you do – every product, service, contact point, and piece of value you add. How many of those would be left if you were to take out everything that could be classified as “ordinary” or standard? If “ordinary” was defined as “doing what’s expected”, “what others do too”, “what you’ve always done”, or “the basics”… what would be left on your list? What is it that you offer that is “extraordinaire”

It’s time to define extraordinary-

1. Ask your loyal fans and passionate advocates what they believe your “extra” is. 
2. Ask your team to automate the ordinary so they can give their personal attention to the extraordinary. 
3. Ask yourself what you could do today to invest your best effort and energy into multiplying your extraordinary points of difference.

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