I was reminded of a very important lesson this past weekend. Through an outreach mission with our church, my wife, Stephanie, and I hosted two women from China. Young and Wendy (their easy-to-spell American names) have been attending Penn State University since last fall. While they were with us for only a short time, it was an incredibly eye-opening experience. I commented to Stephanie that with our busy lives, it often feels like we live in a bubble, unaware of the vast differences in culture and other lifestyles in the world.  

A couple of observations as I write this, still sleepy from the time change. The Chinese highly value and respect education and hard work. Both of these women have a master’s degree, and one of them is a PhD studying molecular something or other! When we sat down to breakfast on Saturday, after we explained what a pancake was, they each had one and then announced that they were full and satisfied. When I looked down at my plate of four pancakes, fruit, and a muffin, I knew why many Americans have a weight problem! 

My daughters were home for spring break, and on Saturday night we spent time getting to learn more about our different cultures and ways of life. When we said goodbye to Young and Wendy after church on Sunday, we exchanged phone numbers and e-mail addresses and said that we would stay in touch. I hope we do.  

Driving home from church (my mind already engaged in what I needed to do on Monday!), I thought about how there are so many different people, customs, ways of doing things, outlooks on life, etc., that one size just doesn’t fit all. This is such a great lesson for business owners. You cannot simply come up with option A and option B and hope to please everyone. The businesses that do really well are those that are able to effectively cater to the individual needs of their customers. Figure that out, and no matter what you do you will do well.  

In the world of newsletters, this point was also driven home for me with one of my new joint venture partners, Eric Paul. Eric and I are combining forces to offer a done-for-you newsletter program for magicians, and I learned from him that magicians have essentially three different customer bases – schools, corporations, and families. So rather than try to create a newsletter that loosely fits all, we have created three monthly newsletters, one for each segment. I know that this extra effort will pay dividends. So remember, one size does not fit all.