The room does the work, not you

Happy Sunday!

Last night I was standing in a crowd of strangers, all of us watching a giant screen set up outside, and the Knicks won the championship.

I have lived in New York for a little over a year now, and I have never seen the city like this. People were hugging people they had never met, and nobody asked where anyone was from or who they voted for or anything else.

It hit me somewhere in the middle of all that noise. Not a single person in that crowd decided to get along. The environment decided it for us.

The room decided it

That is the part I keep thinking about today. We were all pointed at the same thing, so everything that usually separates people just stopped mattering. The unity wasn't a choice anyone made, it was the room.

I do this myself. I credit my own discipline for things the room was quietly handling, and I almost never stop to look at the room I happened to be standing in.

The longer I am here, the more I feel the city pulling on me. I think we badly underestimate how much of who we become is just where we decided to stand, and you can feel a place change you if you pay attention.

The thing nobody looks at

And then, because this is what my brain does now, I started thinking about retention.

Most brands treat keeping a customer like a willpower problem. They believe the next clever campaign is what holds someone, so they keep reaching for a better subject line or a sharper offer. It is the individual-effort version of the same mistake.

The brands that actually keep people have built something different. They built an environment the customer does not want to leave, where the flows are consistent and the brand feels like a place instead of a stream of sends.

Showing up becomes the normal state for that customer, so it stops being something they have to be talked into every time. You do not retain people by trying harder on each email, you build the room, and then the room holds them.

Look at your rooms

I think this is the thing almost nobody reflects on, in any part of life. Not the city they live in, not the people they build a business around, not the customers they are trying to keep. The room is doing the work, and most of us never turn around to look at it.

So that is my Sunday thought, the morning after a championship. Look at your rooms this week, the one you live in, the one you work in, and the one you are asking your customers to stay in.

If one of those rooms is on your mind, hit reply and tell me which one. I read every response.

Anyways. Go Knicks. I love NYC.

- Raymond