“What’s our hook?” I remember the times that I was asked this question throughout my startup and technology career. I remember the times I asked my team and more importantly myself through various projects and start ups of my own. A hook is what I used to squirm away from as my boyfriend slid a sea worm onto it and brown ooze slid down his finger. A hook was a safety pin reimagined as my father curled up a small piece of bologna and jabbed it onto it, promising we would catch something in the sliver of a stream that ran next to Lily’s cottage on Granite Lake.
A hook is used to not only lure consumers closer to products and services but actually snag them and turn them into life long customers. Hooks have always bothered me. They seem insincere at best. They’ve snagged me once or twice on a small outboard languishing in the baking sun in Pepperrell Cove. I remember sitting in brainstorming sessions for hours while people threw out notions of beauty, power, convenience, connections, all things that they thought would motivate the masses and ignite action in our direction. In the early days of dot com, at best we were making up the rules as we went along. We reached for the biggest, shiniest, and sharpest hooks we could think of at that time. A certain handful of individuals had knowledge of the explosion of users that were coming down the pike, while most of us were left managing the masses and warming them up to be users and consumers in the early days of dial up and banner ads. There was a lot of education taking place both internally and externally. I remember feeling as though my eyes were glazed over when Sky held up a small cardboard box in a LA meeting. He had quickly put it together with his partner Jake as they informed us that one day everything, and they meant everything we would ever need would be accessed from a similar small box. We would even be able to make calls around the world. I exchanged glances with Matt and Rick, one subdued the other over excited. I felt a little bewildered. I suddenly realized that there was a world that existed that only a certain few had access to and somehow I had been invited to catch a glimpse.
Decades later I find myself aware of hooks again. What is the one piece of bait that we are going to use to hook people into visiting Lucy & Moosey’s Gifts. We are no longer a big fish in a small pond. We are now the little guppy swimming amongst the sharks and barracudas. That is figuratively of course. We are the new kid in town. My kids didn’t grow up in the community, we’ve only visited throughout the years. My partner isn’t from the area. We are both from the south just over the border of New Hampshire. Some would say that where we live isn’t even really Maine. While getting out of Dodge was appealing to both of us for various reasons it also has a few consequences of its own. We both blend into the wallpaper, something honestly we while we both love, offers fewer connections to get jump started in January. So with all that said, how are we going to draw people to Lucy & Moosey’s Gifts. What is going to be our “hook?”
When Michael first approached me with the idea of opening a shop together, I quickly shook my head no. Adorning an apron once again was more like wrapping an anchor around my neck than stepping into a hot air balloon. Yet, I listened. As my shoulder’s relaxed and my mind began to imagine and wander along with Michael’s, I heard his only perquisite for our partnership; it had to be fun. I smiled. Yes, fun. I could lean into a little bit of fun. We stepped into our partnership, not with uncertainty, but a shared past experience of hanging out together in A Little Something on Saturdays. As his Chains of Cranes began to spread their wings, he would drop by more often with a cup of coffee and breakfast pastry and ask if there was anything he could do to help. As the shop grew busier, he jumped in. Helping with customers, ringing up sales, and wrapping their gifts, suddenly being a shopkeeper was fun again. That’s how our business friendship came to be, I guess you could say by his willingness to show up and A Little Somethings growing busier each day.
“Fun?” you say. I asked him to elaborate on his definition of fun. And oh how he did. He had me at hook, line, and sinker. I knew how it felt to work beside him, it was fun. It never felt like work and our creative juices usually inspired us to imagine new products, events, magical ways to merchandise, and sticky fodder for social media. I nodded yes. He had me at let’s open a shop together if truth be told. I was flailing without a new course to set and the twinkle in his eyes were my North Star I couldn’t seem to find. So there you have it, Lucy & Moosey’s Gifts hook to hopefully snare all of you into stopping by to check us out, “you’ll have fun.” We have beautiful gifts you love to give and receive and the moment you enter the shop, your spirits get lifted and you forget that joy isn’t something we can expect everywhere and everyday. Fun is an action, a word used to describe, lean into, and be owned as one’s day to day mantra. Fun is an acronym for joy and abundance leaving fear and scarcity in the dust. Fun is enjoying oneself in the present and forgetting that there is much to worry about in the big dark world beyond our control.
Lucy & Moosey’s Gifts hook has been officially set: FUN!
The hours flew by yesterday as we made coffee and tea, sprinkled more grapevine and twinkle lights around the shop, delivered welcome gift bags to our new neighbors, and hung large heart peace cranes and heart chains in our diorama of a large side window bay. I told Michael that he has an extraordinary eye for creating magic. I giggled as I said he was our Chief Magic Magic and I would be our merchandising, numbers, and marketing chief. He nodded and replied, “yes, please!” Our business partnership/friendship has evolved over the past years. He referred to me as his sister from another mister, I agreed. He is my brother from another mother. We have become joined in this new venture, a little something different than my shop in South Berwick. People that have come in said it feels familiar, yet it’s different somehow. Michael likes to remind them of the original laundromat tiles and rug that anchored the shop. I take it on the chin. It was a little shop around the corner that I loved as well as others feeling the same way. Michael loved it too. Lucy & Moosey’s Gifts is a lot of the same with the elevated level of fresh new floors, walls, and a whole lot of fun. It’s a hidden gem you’ll want to discover for yourself.
That’s a shiny new hook if I’ve ever felt one!
You never know what fun you might discover when you stop by.
