I’ve been going to the Internet Summit in Raleigh every year since it began. It’s a chance to not only hear from thought leaders and rock stars in the digital world, but to network with peers who are interested in learning more about the technologies that have infiltrated and changed our lives forever.

Anna’s Gourmet Goodies has been on the web since 2002. We’ve evolved over the years, allowing me to combine my technology skills and background with a passion for creating products that feed people’s soul. I love meeting people who know something I don’t and are willing to share that knowledge. One of the people I met this year is Melanie from Sisarina.

Melanie has a gift for engaging the audience with her authenticity and passion. Her company, Sisarina, is named after her imaginary childhood friend. I was drawn to her topic, which was different than some of the heavy technology being shared that day, “Rock Your Business – Stop Selling. Build a Club.”

She used the example of Mini Cooper cars and how their marketing is focused not so much on the cars themselves, but the people who drive them. Apparently driving a Mini means you’re in the club. You wave at other drivers. You go on adventures instead of drives. It’s not about steel, rubber and petroleum products, it’s about the soul of the people behind the wheel.

Technology folks are famous for acronyms. I can’t tell you how many surveys I’ve taken where they ask what kind of business we are at Anna’s Gourmet Goodies. Are we a B2C (business to consumer) or B2B (business to business)? Melanie challenged all of us that we are neither. “You see”, she said, “we are all in the H2H business. Human to Human”.

What a simple and profound concept. I immediately thought about a recent experience I had meeting a new friend from the Ukraine. I was at Crossroads Infiniti and Yuri (the sales manager) was speaking with a client in Russian. My Russian has faded to a few words, but Yuri introduced me to the customer, whose name was Yuriy. He had recently moved to the United States and was there with his wife and his infant son, also named Yuriy.

I was in no position to try and speak Russian, but Yuriy was kind enough to practice his English. We talked about his coming to the US and their experience starting a new life here. The conversation moved to Anna’s Gourmet Goodies and our chocolate chip cookies. As an Infiniti customer, he absolutely loved them.

He described some of the cookies from the Ukraine and said that oatmeal raisin was very popular there and one of his favorites. He shared other treats and things about his culture. He was incredibly kind, respectful and I thoroughly enjoyed meeting him and his family.

Afterwards, I asked Yuri (the sales manager) to send me his address. I baked up a couple of packages of our oatmeal raisin cookies and sent them to Yuriy and his wife along with a brief note. I welcomed him to the US and confirmed what he already knew, that Yuri and the other people at Crossroads Infiniti were not just professionals, but really good human beings.

About a week later, I was in the dealership and Yuriy (from the Ukraine) was there with his wife and infant. He had brought in a bag of candies from Russia for me. He walked up and with a huge grin on his face, hugged me and thanked me profusely for my kindness. All I did was send him a few cookies, but it was clear that the impact and connection went way beyond that. I was overwhelmed and even got a little misty.

We send out cookie and brownie gifts to people every day. We hope the connections we make generates this type of reaction from the people who receive them. But we rarely get a chance to experience this side of the human connection. It had an impact on how I view our business.

Sadly, not everyone has heard Melanie’s message and understands they are in the H2H business. We lost an order this week to a technology company who is stuck in the B2B business. The admin who prepared the gift list, sent us the order without a person’s name for the packages, only a company. These were going to large companies and I asked if they were sure they wanted to do this. She said yes.

From our experience, we knew the packages would be delivered, but we would likely get a phone call from the recipients asking who the packages were for. The opportunity for the technology company sending the gifts, to make a human connection to their customer, would be lost. When I asked a second time, just to be sure, they went with another large cookie company who will simply take their money and ship the order.

I can’t think of a time when it is more important to be reminded that we are in the human to human business. Things get busy this time of year. We’ll be working hard to hand craft our cookie and brownie gifts, and make sure they get to the right destination.

But thanks to Melanie and Yuriy, no matter how busy we get, we’ll remember that we are not sending cookie and brownie gifts to an address or a business. We’re sending them to a human being. And if we create even a small measure of happiness and gratitude that I saw in Yuriy’s face and felt in his hug, then I’ll sleep well knowing we’ve hit our goal by creating something that lasts long after the package is empty – a human connection.

We’re entering the season of traditions. In a few weeks, people across America will gather with friends and family to give thanks and share a meal centered around turkey, dressing, cranberries, pumpkin pie and a host of other comfort foods that are part of their Thanksgiving tradition.

Following that, we’ll celebrate traditions again in December. In my house it’s Christmas, maybe it’s Hanukkah in yours, or another tradition. These are big traditions, but sometimes the smaller ones in our families are just as important. We recently went to the NC State Fair as part of a tradition in our family that includes roots to the beginning of our business.

Growing up, my parents took me to the Kentucky State Fair. We didn’t have phones with cameras to capture the images, but I have vivid memories of talking to Freddy Farm Bureau and the time I ate a corn dog and lost a tooth (no, we did not go on a mission to find it later). Memories from traditions are more permanent than anything digital.

Debbie and I started taking Anna to the NC State Fair from the time she was an infant. I’d take off an afternoon and we’d wander around the grounds looking at the booths, the animals, the vegetables and all the other stuff that comes with the State Fair. We’d park the stroller on a grassy hill (yes – it is still there) spread out a blanket and have a picnic with Anna.

When Anna was three, we stopped by the Village of Yesteryear where artisans and crafts people demonstrate skills from days gone by. We met Karl Johnson a scissor artist and decided to have him create a silhouette of Anna. Watching a skilled scissor artist work is truly an experience. His brother Erik now carries on the tradition of scissor art at the State Fair.

We framed the image and hung it on the wall in our office. When we started our company and named it Anna’s Gourmet Goodies, I scanned the image and 15 years later we’re still reminded that our brand was born out of a tradition.

This year, Anna found time to get away from college and come back home to go to the fair as a family. And, just as we have in years past, we followed our NC State Fair tradition. We stroll through the buildings, looking at the exhibits, stopping at least once at the House Autry booth for a fresh hushpuppy. We stopped for a quick photo in front of The Big Cart, a V8 powered shopping cart from the NC Department of Agriculture (I’m still negotiating for a chance to take it for a spin around the parking lot).

Then, we’re off to my favorite corn dog vendor where they’re hand-dipped and fried up fresh and hot. We explore the flower gardens, stop at the Village of Yesteryear and say hello to Erik and Dan Dye (a silversmith).  We take a ride on the ferris wheel, and finish off the night with some fresh made ice cream churned by John Deer tractor engines, while watching the fireworks. We’ve followed pretty much the same ritual every year.

Not everyone connects with a State Fair as an annual tradition. But for me, it is an experience that, despite whatever noise might be going on in the world at the time, reminds me that we live in a great country.

Do you have traditions in your family and/or your business? Looking back, it’s clear to me that traditions are threads that bind us together. The cord we hang on to that gets us thru the ups and downs, the ebbs and flows of the year. A reminder that it is okay to pause, to celebrate and to remember.

At Anna’s Gourmet Goodies, we have customers who order gifts from us once or twice, and we love that. We also have customers who’ve made sending our gifts a tradition. We’re grateful to have the opportunity to provide not only our cookies and brownies, but in some small way, be part of a tradition that binds together our customers with the people they choose to share our gifts.

I hope you’ll make some time to reflect on traditions, even small ones, in your family and your business. And if Anna’s Gourmet Goodies happens to be a part of that tradition, know that we take that responsibility seriously and always strive to deliver more than simply great cookies and brownies, but an experience that has a lasting impact on every person who opens one of our packages. That’s a tradition we’re proud to be a part of.

One of the best compliments you can receive from a customer is when they ask you for a referral. It is a signal that you have become, as my friend Chris Brogan calls it, an ally as opposed to simply a vendor looking to sell something. We had an opportunity to create something special for a customer recently and it was a true gift for us to be able to design an experience for their clients.

Our customer contacted us to provide a referral to another company for client gifts this holiday season. Not that they were unhappy with our products – it was just that they wanted something a little different. I took it as a supreme compliment they would ask my opinion on alternatives.

I looked around at some companies and sites to see what might fit. We know a few others out there who do some great work (like Berta Scott down at Southern Supreme in Bear Creek). After giving it some thought, knowing what we’ve learned about their company and how they treat their clients, we thought it might be interesting to see if we could create something beyond a gift and deliver an experience their clients would always remember.

We are fortunate to have some very talented food professionals in our area. Years ago I connected with Missy at LaFarm bakery in Cary. Her husband Lionel is a true rock star in the world of baking. In addition to running a thriving bakery, he lectures at conferences and his book, A Passion for Bread: Lessons from a Master Baker, says it all. His work flows from his passion.

I stopped in one day to discuss my idea of including some of his sweet breads in our gift and it was done. We’ll be adding Lionel’s coffee breads to our ‘gift experience’.

Next, I wanted something to go with that and naturally, I looked for coffee. Coffee roasting has exploded right up there with craft beer and once again, I found a shop, Back Alley Coffee Roasters.

Beth and her husband Tracy started this business after an experience learning to roast coffee ‘in a back alley’ of sorts at the college where Tracy was a professor. They started, much in the same way as Lionel, out of a passion to create something wonderful. When you stand in their shop and watch the baristas create a custom pour over for customers, it’s clear they understand the difference between producing a product and crafting an experience. We checked off another item with coffee from Back Alley.

Finally, we needed something to put the bread and the coffee in. A box or a tin just did not seem right. A wood crate would be a nice touch. I started looking for solutions out there, but couldn’t find anything to fit our size and budget requirements. I did find one company that could have made the product, but after some thought, I decided to reach out to Richard.

Richard is retired and lives in Louisville. He began his career serving in the military and later went on to work at Fall City Brewery where he did a variety of jobs, including a tour guide. Richard loved to help people by building things and eventually ventured out on his own providing building and repair services.

Working on your own is never easy, especially when you have (5) children and a wife at home. But they worked together as a team, always doing the right thing for his customers, providing for the needs of his family, living responsibly and being faithful in charity to his church and community. His passion shows in his integrity and always wanting to do things right. He seemed like the perfect fit to craft the wooden crate to finish off our gift experience.

He agreed to let us use his workshop, so Debbie and I traveled to Kentucky to make some sawdust and craft some crates. The size of the order came in nearly triple what we initially expected, so we had a bit of work to do.

One of my favorite quotes is from Science Guy Bill Nye – “Everyone knows something you don’t”. It drives one of my passions, learning. Spending a weekend in the woodshop with a master craftsman like Richard was certainly an experience for me. We crafted the parts that would bring this project together.

The coffee breads, freshly roasted coffee and hand crafted crate came together nicely. To top it off and create the final piece of the experience, I put together cards with pictures of the craftspeople and their stories. In the end, we believe that creating an experience is more than just the taste of a product or the colors in the packaging, it is the story behind it and the feeling it evokes that make the difference. The recipients who get this package are in for an experience they’ll not soon forget.

This project was a chance for us to learn things that we’ll apply to gifts from Anna’s Gourmet Goodies. While it is dangerous for a business to stray too far from their core mission, we felt this project fit nicely with our core mission I discussed some time ago in this post titled ‘Real magic happens when you understand the why’.

We won’t be shipping these out until the first of December as a part of our Holiday gift rush, but having the opportunity to work on a project like this has been like an early gift for us. Telling someone else’s story is extremely gratifying.

By the way, in addition to being a generous craftsman, Richard is also my father in law. Not only did I get to spend time in the workshop and learn from a master, we were there to help him celebrate is 85th birthday. For me, that is a sweeter gift than anything coming out of our oven.