Creating the Hero Experience

While coaching Little League baseball during May of 2006, a nine year old boy taught me a very memorable lesson about the power of creating a hero experience. On our first day of practice, I asked each player to write down what they wanted to accomplish by the end of season. Most answers were fairly predictable; i.e. they wanted to pitch in a game, learn how to hit a baseball, etc…. but one boy wrote down; “I want to be a hero!”

Now that was interesting… I asked this boy what being a hero meant and he replied… “To get a game winning hit and have everyone cheering for me!” That’s simple, right?

Well, nearly three months later, this young boy hadn’t gotten a single hit in game. Most ball players would have been discouraged and want to quit. Instead, this young boy showed up each day with a smile on his face, simply glad to be playing ball with his friends and I really enjoyed having him on the team. Fast forward to the first game of the post-season playoffs and during the top half of the last inning, our team was down by one run but had runners on 1st, 2nd and 3rd base with two out. Guess who comes up to bat? Yep, you couldn’t have written a better script.

I called a time-out and walked over to home plate to ask this boy if he knew what time it was? With a slight smirk he replied, “7:15 pm and time for a pinch-hitter?” I said, “Nope – it’s time for you to be a hero – and it is totally going to happen, because I believe in you…“ With a whisper, I reminded him of his pre-season goal and then said, “This is your time!” With a look of determination and an impish smile, an amazing thing happened when our little hero cranked the ball, and I mean hard, deep into left field. When the dust settled, our hero was on 3rd base, having driven in three runs. Everyone was going crazy (even the other team) and the smile on this young boy’s face (and his parent’s faces too) could have lit up the sky at that very moment… Well, guess who signed up to play baseball next year with a couple of friends? Yep, you’re right! So what does this have to do with business? In a word, “EVERYTHING!”

Imagine building a business where a key business strategy was to create heroes. Customers become repeat buyers and your advocates when they realize their hero experience (whatever that might be in delivering your product or service.) If you aren’t creating hero experiences for customers, is this acceptable to you or instead a big business problem?

Last Friday, at the Winning in Business Master Academy, a highly engaged and diverse cohort of small business owners commenced their six-week program, by employing Dr. Steven Covey’s 2nd habit of highly effective individuals and defining success for their future. This Friday, the journey continues when I will begin teaching them how to market, sell and deliver hero experiences to others. Being a hero to others; now that’s a fun way to win in the game of business!

By the way, photo above is of my son Carl at the age of nine. He isn’t the young boy I wrote about today, but isn’t this photo a perfect attachment to a great story?