Experience: the biggest lever you don’t know you have

Springwise has a post about a concept called Charlie’s Burger’s. It’s an anti-restaurant of sorts that does dinners by private, sporadic invites. One thing that caught my eye was that people weren’t emailed directions when the event was happening, they were directed to a satellite location to pick up the actual dinner location and directions. In the rave days, that sort of maneuver was called a “map point”. Some guy hanging out in car or a record shop with the actual directions to an underground party. You didn’t get directions to the party, you got directions to the map point and you would go from there. (There’s other variations, sometime it was a phone number with a voice recording.)

Can you imagine how much this dials up the experience for the diner? Instead of wading through a crowded restaurant to speak with a stressed out greeter, you’re going on an adventure. Even better, once you arrive at the venue, you have a shared experience to share with 20-30 other people.

I think a lot about how to flip business models on their head to build something different. I’m beginning to think I’ve been going about things all wrong. I’m beginning to believe business models happen only when you create a compelling offering or experience. (I’ll blog more about that next.) I’m starting to think you that you have to start by to flipping the experience around, then figuring out what kind of business model could deliver that experience. I think building models for the sake of building models doesn’t get you to the right place.