By Douglas Kruger
IF you ever get the chance, plonk your derrière on a chair and have a cup of coffee with Antony Gibb. He’s a leading historic buildings consultant. That means he’s spent decades clambering around castles and fiddling with façades. And he’s fascinating. Who else gets to study beauty, at a level where he can explain why it works?
He taught me a fascinating principle. And it applies to your business, whether you sell hotdogs at St Ouen, or financial services in St Helier.
You need a hand-crafted door.
I’ll explain.
I mentioned to Antony that I have a habit of staring at beautiful doors. I love the darn things. Elegant, London-style entrances, painted in a gleaming black or a hobbit red, with handles of gold, letterboxes outlined in filigree, perhaps a Narnia-style lamp contributing a warm glow from above. There’s something wonderful about them, and it draws me in. We have some great ones in Jersey. I think of Bath Street, Green Street, Roseville.
Antony nodded knowingly. He explained that there’s a reason for this, that most people aren’t aware of. Houses tend to be functionally designed, increasingly on software. But doors of this kind tend to be hand-crafted, even in new builds, and there’s something in our souls that yearns for such customisation.
I’ve been thinking about it ever since… which is to say, trying to figure out how to steal the principle and use it in a speech. It wasn’t hard. Once you’ve had an expert like Antony draw your notice to the Beautiful Door Theory, you’ll start to see its application everywhere.
Take Mercedes. Arguably the inventor of the automobile, they nevertheless excel at remaining relentlessly relevant. The S-Class is often cited as the benchmark for new tech, with everyone else following in its wake. Sit in one these days, and it’s like finding yourself swimming inside your eight-year-old’s favourite video game. Or Eurovision. It’s a laser-show. Nobody can accuse Mercedes of being behind on innovation.
Nevertheless, you will still find their version of a hand-crafted door. In the cabin, it’s that old analogue clock, dating back to the Norman invasion. Under the hood, it’s the handwritten signature of the engineer on their AMG engines. These touches are designed to delight. They hint at luxury, heritage, and above all, personalisation. They are in no way necessary. No beautiful door really is. They are created to appeal to the soul.
And that visceral touch is easy to overlook. Especially on an island like ours, where most business is abstract, as in the case of our financial services sector.
Yet it matters that you add one. Your very own unique signature. A special, emotive something that sets you apart…even if your business model is a deal on a piece of paper. Especially if your business model is a deal on a piece of paper.
I have a sneaking suspicion that this principle runs deeper than we think. I watched a brilliant TEDx talk the other day, in which the speaker went into depth about what he called “incomplete slides”. The principle, he explained, was that slides these days have become “too perfect”. Therefore, they all look the same.
It’s often more compelling to draw a squiggle on a slide, or even on a whiteboard, because that strikes the mind as having greater authenticity. We watch it play out before us, rough, ready and real.
I liked it so much, I’ll be trying it out at BDO. I have a business networking presentation coming up in early July, and I’m going with visuals that use a sort of composite: beautiful photography, overlaid with my own chalk stick-men drawings. There’s nothing else like it, because I drew them myself. They represent my own experimentation with the Beautiful Door concept. I’ve prepared most of the slides already, and my gut-feel is that the principle works like a bomb.
Makes me wonder how else it might be applied.
I suspect it all begins with the desire to be playful. No one actually requires a Beautiful Door. Think of it as a non-compulsory thoughtful touch, intended purely to delight.
In the ever-evolving landscape of commerce, it’s tempting to think exclusively in terms of AI, which is the current hot topic. But not all innovation happens on a screen. Use it, by all means. But if it’s the only thing you’re focusing on, just remember that you might be congregating on the most contested field.
What if you tried thinking outside the chatbot? In the rush, are there entire battlegrounds that have been inadvertently left open? What if sheer human connection is one of them? If so, you need a Beautiful Door. Something unnecessary, hand-crafted, charming.
What might that look like in your business?
Best-case scenario, could it reflect something about the core DNA of your business? Lego, for example, make their pop-up stands and conference displays out of blocks. Is there a creative way of highlighting the idea at the heart of your business? I invite you to dream out loud. How might you delight Jersey, and make yourself distinct, via your own Beautiful Door?
Douglas Kruger is a bestselling business author, and a Hall of Fame speaker. He lives in St Helier, and speaks all over the world. Meet him at douglaskruger.com.
