The coronation of King Charles III takes places on Saturday kicking off a weekend of events and celebrations in the UK. So before you enjoy another long weekend let me examine this historic event for a few success principles you can digest at your leisure…
1. Putting On A Show! Lessons will abound about how to put on a show that wows people. They wont just ‘do a coronation’, they will put on a show, and deliver wow! There will be fanfare. Same goes for your practice. Create fanfare and bring showmanship to everything you do from presenting eyewear, to serving drinks, to putting on a customer event.
2. Ceremony and Celebration! The coronation is an ancient ceremony. It is full of ritual, purpose, celebration and meaning. You could say it is a Critical Non-Essential. It’s most definitely not essential. Especially in this day and age. Surely Charles could have had his lawyers take care of the paperwork. Maybe he could even do it himself online and save some legal fees.
But that would be no fun. It certainly wouldn’t move anyone or make people FEEL different. Think about this for a moment. How much ceremony and meaning and celebration do you bring to your practice on a daily basis?
Do you have tea ceremony or do you just serve drinks? Do you celebrate you clients by the way you welcome them and treat them, and the experience you create for them? Do you celebrate eyewear by the way you present it and talk about it and the meaning you create around it? Or do you just sell glasses?
When you create ceremony and celebration in your practice everything changes. You will transform the experience for your clients and your results will also transform.
As an added bonus…
Let me share this little snippet from a Jones And Co. Styling Opticians newsletter from 2018 when I was invited to meet the Queen at Buckingham Place. I can only assume that my Coronation invitation from King Charles got lost in the post or eaten by the Queen’s Corgis.
Have You Met The Queen, Conor?
At first glance you wouldn’t think it, but it’s a dazzlingly exciting life being an optometrist. You never know what kind of interesting surprises are in store when you take a client through for an eye exam. Recently, somewhere in between checking a client’s field of vision and taking a photograph of his retina, I was invited to meet the Queen.
He just sprung it on me. “Have you met the Queen, Conor?” The reason was just a thank you for us showing our support for Henshaws, a Manchester-based charity for blind people. Our client works for Henshaws and he can also pull some strings at the Palace it appears.
A few weeks later a very official looking envelope with the Queen’s insignia arrived at home with an invitation to a Garden Party at Buckingham Palace at the end of May.
Within minutes of the invitation arriving my wife Catherine was hat shopping, shoe shopping, and dress shopping. After all these years, being married to an optometrist suddenly started to show some perks.
We went down to London and deposited the kids with my sister for an overnight stay and off to the palace we went. It was like stepping into another world for just a few hours. It was a fantastic experience. You walk through the front gates of Buckingham Palace, across the forecourt, and are welcomed into the palace by beaming, enthusiastic, smiling staff. (The Queen has got her front of house staff trained extremely well J). Then you’re led through several rooms of the palace before emerging in the Queen’s back garden. As back gardens go, it was very nice. We’d seen David Attenborough’s program about it recently so we were up to speed.
The Queen was there, as was Prince William. The Queen had actually just undergone a cataract procedure a few days before and was wearing sunglasses for the occasion. Apparently she had no complications and didn’t cancel any engagements. At 92 there is nothing wrong with her work ethic it seems. So we enjoyed the band music, tea and cake and cucumber sandwiches with no crusts and some ice cream. All in all, a very civilised way to spend an afternoon and a lovely invitation to get.
To Your Success!