I sat down with Richard at the coffee shop up the road from howies, one of the founders of innocent, and he told me his taxi story. He was taking a ride back to work I think. Anyway, as all taxi drivers do, they want to make conversation. His went along normal lines.

'What do you mate?'

Richard replied, 'I help run a smoothie company'. 'Oh yeah, which one?'' Innocent.' 'Nice company. But it’s not the same anymore.' Richard was a bit taken aback. 'How do you mean?' 'Well, you changed the label. It’s glossy now and the other one was matt. So it doesn’t feel as real anymore, you know as authentic.' Richard thanked him once he was dropped off. He went into work and the first thing he did was change the label back from glossy to matt.

The taxi driver had just taught him the importance of the bigness of small. How those little things that we don’t think are that important have a huge impact. Isn’t it funny that we are always looking for that big idea but it turns out it might be just of lots of little ideas that are magically put together to form something special? We want to know how to build a huge corporation like Starbucks in one fell swoop, when they have worked out it’s built one cup at a time.

We are all looking for the perfect relationship when there is no such thing, but you can get close by just working everyday towards keeping the other person happy, interested, feeling special. Those small gestures that add up to whole lotta love. We all want to enjoy a good reputation, but it is a lifetime of saying thank you or being polite. Of keeping calm or writing a letter to an angry customer.

If you want to build something big, do all the small things right.

David Hieatt.