One of the things I absolutely love is when you hear a perspective on something that you never thought about.
Something that makes you stop and reconsider what you thought you know.
Not that it means your original perspective was wrong – as I’ve said before, there’s rarely a really wrong answer, just lots of degrees of right – but you just feel your eyes have been opened to something that you thought had no way of surprising you.
It’s like a revelation to me.
The reason I say this is because it happened when I read this interview with a bouncer …
Now maybe you’re thinking his statement was massively obvious, but I never looked at bouncers that way.
To me, they were there to stop trouble and maintain order.
Oh … and to look menacing.
[Except my best friend Paul is sometimes one and he is the opposite of menacing]
However, after reading “If you’re too drunk you’re not going to buy any drink”, I now realise their actions are as much about securing the profitability of the business as it is securing the reputation and environment of the premises.
In essence, they’re more than bouncers, they’re business managers.
Now of course, you could say this is a classic case of ‘reframing’, and maybe it is … but in my experience, it only works when it is born from a truth that people can immediately relate too, so even if that is the case, it’s still better than 95% of the stuff our industry has done.