There is a wooden recipe box behind the paint counter of a family-owned hardware store, and it holds the most valuable thing in the building.
It isn't the cash drawer or the key machine. It's a set of index cards, one for every customer who has ever had paint
Read More
A woman brings her car into a family-owned repair shop in a small Wisconsin town on a Tuesday morning in October. The brakes have been making a sound for two weeks. She has already decided this will be expensive, and she has already decided she will be talked
Read More
On a Saturday morning in May, a woman is weeding along her front walk when a neighbor from two streets over stops on the sidewalk. "Your yard looks completely different," he says. "Who did it?"
She thinks for a moment. She cannot remember the company's name.
Read More
A board member is at a dinner, seated beside someone she has just met. Between courses, the stranger asks the polite question: "So what does your organization do?" She has heard the mission statement read aloud at every board meeting for three years. She begin
Read More
