Flouting Conventional Wisdom & Loving It

September 9, 2009

I imagine most readers of yesterday’s article in the Toronto Globe and Mail newspaper, featuring Toronto restaurateur-turned-grocer Mark McEwan, came away thinking the somewhat brash businessman is headed for failure.  Let’s face it, these are tough times to hawk $8 stuffed baked potatoes and $14 single-serving mac and cheese to grocery shoppers, regardless of quality and taste.  What intrigued me, however, was not so much that this historically successful businessman was branching out into new frontiers at the heart of a recession, but the justification McEwan offered to his critics and compatriots in the industry:

“I’ve had many supposed retail experts – food retail experts who live and work in Ontario – give me all sorts of advice,” McEwan says. “I’m like, ‘Okay, where do you work, and what have you put together that’s really interesting?’  Everybody thinks alike in this business. It’s a herd mentality,” he scoffs. “And so I’ve gone against the grain.”

It’s so easy when times get tough to fall into a kind of paralysis, huddling together in the business equivalent of a bomb shelter until the worst of it is over.  It takes a lot of courage to use as a litmus test for success “what have you put together that’s really interesting?” and actually mean it.

I feel a kinship of sorts with McEwan, and it’s not because I, too, can charge $14 per serving for my mac and cheese. Earlier this year, against all conventional wisdom and during the country’s worst recession of my lifetime, Matt and I left our management-level jobs at an established firm to create TwoTables Internet Marketing for Restaurants.  We have had many supporters in charting our path this year, and for each of them we are extremely grateful, but for every positive voice it seems that there has been a detractor, waiting to present us with all the tired reasons why starting a business in 2009 is a pathway to doom.

And so, to the nay-sayers, I offer a variation of Mark McEwan’s philosophy.  What we are doing at TwoTables may be unconventional, it may be going against the herd and our timing may suck.  Fine.  Like McEwan, I’m confident that if we continue to keep things really interesting, follow our instincts and remain true to the principles that drove us to create TwoTables in the first place, success is inevitable.

I’m also convinced that there’s more than a few of us quietly swimming against the tide of conventional wisdom.  Leave a comment or send us an email detailing what you or your clients are doing that’s really interesting, unconventional or against the grain.

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