The Detail No One Asked For, But Everyone Can Feel.

I woke up this morning feeling more ‘Monday morning’ than I have for a long time. This is the annoying flip side of a brilliant weekend in which I drunk too much, talked too much, stuffed my face, got on a bike for the first time in years, cycled nearly 35 miles, fell off that bike while racing down a road in Herefordshire (my fault/total idiot) and then, first thing this morning, read the Guardian’s summary of the news. Cue, the blues. I was drinking my coffee at the Sad Café. (What a brilliantly ridiculous -only the 1970s could produce it- name that was for a band).

But here I am, bounce-back in progress by 10:30, fairly beaten up but extremely happy and enjoying the work.

Here are a few related thoughts which I hope you might enjoy.

First, working from home is fine but working with people is better. I love my work.

Second the greatest privilege of life, beyond good health and relationships, is to do work that one finds worthwhile. And it’s possible to argue, of course, that if you enjoy your work everything else falls into place.

All of my friends seem to love their work, all of my children do, and I think that my team do, too.

I never want to stop working. Indeed, this business is something that I hope to continue as I hand over the reins of everything else to someone. We shall see how it goes.

The last few months have definitely been the most enjoyable of the G / H process so far, by miles, as I feel we are making real progress.

Third, on the whole, and despite manifold challenges, all of our businesses are in a good place. This is down to many things, but here are two that have been concerning me particularly.

Good people. It took me ages to understand that I have to surround myself with great people. Everything I do has essentially been created by me and initially I had no manual and no mentor and I was massively naïve. I thought that my hard work and determination were enough, but they weren’t. Now I have great people in nearly every role, and it is making a real difference. I wish I had gone to business school after university, but hey ho.

Details. I think that being detail-driven is probably my strength. I am rigorous on standards and what has been driving me recently is the desire to work on the things that no one asked for, but that everyone can feel. What do I mean? Well, here are two examples.

From our business at Glen Dye.

You may have seen this. We commissioned a craftsman called Rob Walker to make the now well-loved mural on a wall. Rob does everything by hand, the old-fashioned way. The first iteration said KEEP GLEN DYE A SECRET and when that became weather-beaten, I decided to change it to GLEN DYE MAKES ME HAPPY.

Superficially these have worked well; they look good, they make people happy, they are fun to have around, and they are good for Instagram. But there is something deeper at play and that is craft. We could easily have done this digitally; it could have been printed or whatever. But we chose a master craftsman who made the work entirely by hand.

The difference here is critical. People can feel that Rob’s ancient skill is real, that there’s truth and personality in his work.

This is the detail that no one asked for, but everyone feels.

Second, from G / H, the packaging. Sarah developed this and it is really strong. I think that the key thing is to bring humanness to the process and here it echoes that mural. It is real. It is considered and it is special. I am amazed by how rare this is in internet shopping, where packaging is seen as an incidental afterthought.

Anyway, enough from me for today. I might explore this theme in more depth next week but for now I am off to look at second-hand bikes online.