Boot Maker's Untold Story

The Tortilla Principle: How businesses often fail to market their most compelling stories.

Shaan shares a story about a boot maker named Will Roman who founded Chisos boots:

"This guy worked in tech, had an everyday job, quit his job, moved to Mexico for three years to learn the art of boot making. But guess what? Not on his website. That's years of life, three years of marketing collateral that he's not using. That's a thousand days of his life that he's not putting on the website.

Even if you click down the 'More' tab, it's like 'More Our Story,' you go to it, it's like 'True small business. Hi, I'm Will, I'm a hardworking guy passionate about craftsmanship.' Guess what? Everybody says that. Guess what everybody hasn't done? Moved to Mexico for three years and apprenticed in this boot factory."

Shaan connects this to what he calls "the tortilla principle" from another experience:

"I was talking to a restaurant owner who was complaining about costs. He holds up these tortillas and says, 'These tortillas cost $2 each. Most people get their tortillas for like 20¢.' I asked why, and he said, 'Because the chef demands that every morning we get fresh tortillas that are trucked in from Mexico.'

I was like, 'Why don't you tell anybody that?' He said, 'What?' I said, 'You should tell people we truck our tortillas in fresh from Mexico every morning. I'd gladly pay $2 if I knew that.'

Your problem isn't that the chef is not willing to compromise and cut costs. Your problem is that you're not marketing this in a way that actually tells the story of why this food tastes better than anyone else's.

That became one of our core things. We call it the tortilla principle. When we look at businesses, we ask: Where are we trucking in tortillas fresh from Mexico, and are we doing a good job of telling that story? Almost always the answer is no. The things you do in your business that are the blood, sweat, and tears to do something great, you take for granted because they just seem like table stakes for you, and you're not even telling the world about why you do that or what you do there."