I just got back home from a visit to a new and devilish coffee shop.
It opened maybe 3 weeks ago. It’s a typical “AirSpace” place, cool and yet warm, shiny in parts, subdued in others, stools for sitting, with colorful and well-designed boxes of teas, bags of coffee, and assorted overpriced cups, mugs, and water bottles for sale. (One of the water bottles sells for 50 euro. I guess you put in water and it turns into gin.)
Point being, this new coffee shop has everything to predispose me to go there on occasion.
On occasion, but not every day — there are other good options for coffee around my house as well. But this new coffee shop, devilish place that it is, has just taken care of that as well.
The story:
Two weeks ago, I went there and ordered a pastry and two coffees. I went to pay. The girl rang me up and said, “It will be 6 euro for the coffees. The pastry is free, since it’s the first day we opened the bakery.”
“Oh that’s nice,” I beamed. I thought no more of it.
Since then, I’ve ordered a pastry on a few occasions. I had to pay for it each time.
Then there was this morning. Similar story — a couple coffees, a slice of lemon cake. But it happened again.
“The coffees are 6 euro,” the girl said. “The lemon cake is free.”
My heart almost melted. And through my tears of gratitude, I saw exactly what will happen in the future. I will be going back to this place regularly — screw the other coffee shops around, even if they served me well before.
You might think I’m telling you to give stuff away for free, to build some sort of reciprocity.
That’s a part of it, but it’s not enough. On its own, it can even be dangerous. You don’t want to train people to expect stuff for free. They will get used to it quickly, and they will start to feel entitled.
But surprise people on occasion with some stuff for free — or with any other kind of reward — and their hearts will melt.
Do it rarely, sporadically, unpredictably, and you literally create irrational addiction. There have been hundreds of science papers written to prove this fact, but perceptive people have known it for ages. From Cervantes’s Don Quixote:
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… beguiled by a purse with a hundred ducats that I found one day in the heart of the Sierra Morena; and the devil is always putting a bag full of doubloons before my eyes, here, there, everywhere, until I fancy at every stop I am putting my hand on it, and hugging it, and carrying it home with me, and making investments, and getting interest, and living like a prince; and so long as I think of this I make light of all the hardships I endure.
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And on that note, I would like to remind you I am giving away a purse with a hundred ducats for free tonight. Well, it’s a purse filled with info products, which are worth a hundred ducats, or maybe more.
I’m running an ad in Daniel Throssell’s newsletter. The ad will go out in Daniel’s email in a little more than an hour.
To get the purse full of info products, for free, you will have to be on Daniel’s list when the email with the ad goes out. Here’s the link to Daniel’s website if you want to get on there in time: