People love heroes, but they rarely imagine themselves as heroic. And modern American life doesn’t give most of us many opportunities.
Why is that?
We have first responders on call 24/7. Our soldiers fight in conflicts that are far away. And we can’t see all the people that we could possibly help because we can’t stop thinking about our own problems.
And we bring our worries to work where we sit at a computer, pushing digital papers around to get a paycheck.
There was a time when people looked up to the American spirit of business. People didn’t bring their idiosyncrasies into their work because they took pride in service. They put their self-expression and personal judgements on the shelf to be professional. They could have problems and still dress up for work.
Service is not where you sit inside your comfort zone, slapping a price tag on the things you do naturally. Heroic service in business is where you mentally labor over your business processes for the sake of perfection. So that other people can have a truly unique experience. So that they can say with genuine self-satisfaction, “People like me use [your product or service].”
It is heroic to serve people by pushing and straining and beating and shaping your business into something that is undeniably top-notch. It’s heroic to put on a uniform and step into the trenches so that someone can experience an amazing meal, or a computer application that never breaks, or a book that makes people transcend the mundane.
A man who shines shoes bends and bows and works with his tools so that another man can sit on a throne for a few minutes and read the news. The shoe-shine man could be a king himself at home, but he will only have the best shoe-shine business on the block if he offers unparalleled service.
How do you ensure that your services are unparalleled? Let us know in the comments!
