When’s the last time you experienced or witnessed excellence?

I’m talking excellence in so many ways that you can’t help but NOT notice it.

Two of our most recent vacations have been to Bentonville, Arkansas and Ridgedale, Missouri. Bentonville, the home and HQ of Wal-Mart, is probably the last place you would expect to see excellence at if you associate it with Wal-Mart like I used to. But, if you visit everything that the Walton family has built at this small town gem, you’ll see excellence in just about every turn you visit off of Walton Blvd. The second location, Ridgedale, MO, is home to Big Cedar Lodge, which is the resort, golf, museum, and outdoor vision of Johnny Morris from Bass Pro Shops.

How did both of these places achieve excellence in my eyes?

They dreamed BIG, yes money did help but you can tell there was BIG vision behind every building that has been constructed for the Walton’s foundations or a Johnny Morris property. One of my favorite stories about Johnny Morris is an employee told me they saw someone sitting out at a field at the new Shooting Academy they had built. They went up to tell this person to leave, and low and behold it was Johnny Morris sitting out there dreaming what the next phase of the Academy would be… a giant Ozark Nature Amphitheater. If you visit ANY property built by Johnny Morris, you’ll see exactly what I mean by not cutting any corners with anything that has his name on it (like the aquarium that took nine years, nine years to build!!!).

Take one day and drive through the city of Bentonville and you’ll see a level of excellence put into anything that a Walton foundations have done, and you’ll see the excellence badge is all over each property. From the Cyrstal Bridges architecture, to even the campground or Coffee shop in the middle of the park at Coler Mountain Bike Preserve, or even the archery range at Osage Park, excellence is everywhere (see pic below of Crystal Bridges).

So how can you, or I put a stamp on excellence on things that we do?

Honestly I believe it’s a mindset to not settle for average work, but there’s several things to think through to strive for excellence:

• When someone receives your product, is the product done in excellence?
• Is the product they received packaged in excellence
• Can your customers count on you or your team to deliver excellent customer service that follows through? That can mean expecting to hear back from an email within X amount of hours.
• When they see an email or a post from your company, do they expect to see quality photos?
• When someone enters your business, what’s their first impression?
• When someone sees your brand on a piece of swag, do they want it?

The bottom line is, what is out there for your brand or that represents your brand that could be improved upon?

P.S. My daughter Rosie and I got to put an IMC sticker at Coler park right outside their Airship coffee shop!