Gary Meighen
2.4K posts


@grizzledcheese Reminds me of walking through Watkins Glen when I was five 🤣
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The greatest marketing trick of the last 50 years was convincing the world that Starbucks sells coffee.
They do not sell coffee.
If they sold coffee, they would have gone out of business decades ago.
Their product is consistently mediocre, often burnt, and overpriced by 400%.
Yet they are an empire.
Why?
Because Howard Schultz understood something that every business school on Earth gets wrong:
Humans do not buy products.
Humans buy better versions of themselves.
When Schultz visited Italy in the 80s, he didn’t just see people drinking espresso.
He saw theater.
He saw a barista who knew every name.
He heard the hiss of the machine before he opened the door.
He watched an old man read a newspaper for three hours on a single espresso and nobody rushed him out.
He realized people weren’t paying for the caffeine.
They were paying for 15 minutes of feeling European, sophisticated, and unhurried.
He didn’t bring back the beans.
He brought back the stage.
He invented the “Third Place.”
Not home, not work, but an escape where you rent a feeling of status for $7.
If you are selling a commodity, you are in a race to the bottom.
If you are selling an identity, there is no price ceiling.
Stop obsessing over making your product 10% better.
Start obsessing over who your customer becomes when they use it.
People don’t want what you make.
They want how it makes them feel about themselves.
~ Andre Gonsalves
✨🙌🏾💫

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šikaakwa—> Chilaga—> Chicago 😳
Wild onion/garlic/skunk place? The Miami-Illinois word "šikaakwa" (stinky plants along the river) got French-fried into "Checagou" —> Chicago. 🧅🧄
But early European maps (1500s–1600s) had already marked the exact spot as "Chilaga" (or variants like Shilaga/Checagou), sometimes with castles or symbols, 200+ years BEFORE the city was "founded" in the 1700s/1800s. 🗺️
A 1987 Chicago Tribune article straight-up asked, "Is long-lost Chilaga the Camelot of Checagou?" Calling it a mythical/legendary place that kept appearing on maps. 🤔
Then boom—the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition drops one of the most insane "temporary" cities ever built in that same location. Coincidence? Or covering something ancient? 🏛️
What do YOU think happened in Chilaga/Chicago?
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Look at the size of that mug?
These things are brutal.
She is holding a 12-pound invasive Green Iguana that froze and fell out of a tree in Miami.
If he was awake, that tail and those teeth would send you to the hospital for stitches.
Desiree@DesireeAmerica4
South Florida is freezing… and the reptiles are locking up. They are literally dropping out of trees alive but paralyzed. One local scooped up 125 in a single day. The 40-degree weather is doing it for free. FWC says they will be humanely killed or shipped out.
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