I know exactly where a businesses owners mindset is at when they receive unsolicited business advice.
A couple weekends ago a friend and I went to an art festival and I’m pretty sure that next to none of the booths we went into knew that we were business consultants of some caliber. But the one thing that got my attention was how most of them had out a notebook to join their email list. But only one person asked us to sign up for their email list.
So in my truest fashion I asked them what they send emails out about and they were very receptive and honest to the question that they didn’t know what exactly to send out in emails.
Also in my truest form I offered a suggestion.
They were plein air painting the park the festival was being held in but they were leaving out the human aspects of the festival- you know traffic cones, tents all the human things that interrupt nature. So I suggested why not put this in an email as I pointed at their easel. Talk about plein air and about how you choose not to include everything that is actually happening, how a painting is different than photography and then add in where the next art show you are going to be is and the schedule. And when we left their booth the genuinely seemed excited to try that out and thanked us.
We kept walking and then a few rows down another artist grabbed out attention and we walked in, their branding was on point but I noticed something that looked like it was marketing a subscription of sorts and when I asked about it. They seemed to get defensive that it was not a subscription just a way of announcing some themes that they have. Then curiosity got them and asked well what a subscription would look like and I said I had no idea but just the way it was laid out was what a bunch of other subscriptions looked like. Then all of the reasons why they couldn’t do a subscription started coming out.
Two artists, two completely different reactions to the same kind of unsolicited attention. One took a stranger's observation and ran with it before we'd even left their booth. The other took the same kind of observation and built a case against it in real time.
And I see this all the time in consulting sessions but I keep coming back that neither reaction was really about email marketing or subscriptions. And that's exactly how I know where a business owner's mindset is at the moment they receive unsolicited advice — not by what they say, but by whether curiosity or defense shows up first. The first artist had already made peace with not having the answer, so a suggestion just felt like help. The second artist had already made a decision, put it on display, and branded it, so a question about it felt like a challenge to defend. Neither one told me where their head was. Their first reaction did.
That first reaction is also the tell for who's actually ready to grow. The open, curious mind hears a stranger's question as a door. The guarded mind hears it as a threat and locks up before it even sees what was on the other side. Same festival, same two strangers walking up, same kind of comment. The only real variable was which one of them was still curious enough to let it in — and that's the mindset I can spot every time.
Opportunity doesn't knock loudly — it usually shows up disguised as a stranger's offhand question at your own booth.
Stay curious my friend.