Through the great weblog of my brother Joachim, I found this inspiring TED talk from Simon Sinek. He explains why it makes more sense to think WHY -HOW- WHAT when you are selling products than the other way around, while in daily life people tend to do exactly the opposite. So did I.
My “elevator speech” was; I publish a culinary travel guide because there are many culinary tourists who have to spend too much time on creating a satisfying itinary. So I made a clever and inspiring online travel guide. I thought. Still, something was nagging me, keeping me from shouting this proudly from the highest roofs.
Cause when I looked at what I made, I saw that I did way more than required for a practical travel guide and that I had spend lots of money and time on including more or less non-functional items. I mean, what’s the use of surprise stamps, pictures and facts in the larger context of a travel guide. Nothing? Why did I blog about pillows with macaron print or tiny wine & bread tableaus? Useless, you’d think, waste of time.
Still, this content HAD to be there, I felt. So today I took the time to sit down and try to put my sub-conscious thoughts about the “why” of CFL on paper. I found that I had conciously fully been focussing on the “CURIOUS food lover” part, ignoring my personal “curious FOOD LOVER” desires. As a food lover, I like be involved with food, using all my senses – looking at great pictures, tasting pleasant food, enjoying comforable textures and smells, listining to the sound of spatters when roasting meat, what not. Yet pleasing these senses had not much to do with satisfying curiousity, so on the surface they did not meet the websites purpose of collecting activities based upon interestingness, satisfying for the mind.
And when I look back at the results so far, I have not been making a travel guide for the curious food liker, I have made a travel guide for the curious food lover, where browsing through the content should be a pleasure both for your senses as for your mind, as well as the activities included should offer be able to satisfy both. An important addition to the existing supply of culinary guides, is the broadness of the activities included, obvious activities like restaurants being “just one of the many” possibilities to satisfy versatile culinary curiousity.
Enough thinking for now, just have a look at the Simon Sinek’s TED talk yourself!
