In Frankfurt, there is a specific coffee you drink.

Wackers Kaffee.

It’s just what you do.

Frankfurt is a finance town. So, if you go around lunch time on a weekday, all the financiers form a line out the door to get their after-lunch coffee.

On Saturday, if you head down to Wackers Kaffee, there is a line out the door of weekend shoppers.

And, any day you head down there around 2 pm, there are people having afternoon cake and coffee. Every table is taken.

Needless to say, it’s always full. It is the coffee you drink in Frankfurt.

And, it’s delicious. The best coffee I’ve ever had. I’m partial to their Cubano roast. It’s smooth and a little nutty. And as an American, it feels a little like you’re drinking contraband.

They’ve been around since 1914.

They’ve survived two world wars and they consistently produce great coffee.

Obviously, to make it that long, you don’t rely on being trendy.

You build relationships with your customers. One at a time. You establish yourself as a valued member of the community. Showing up day after day for decades building your brand.

When successful, that brand leads itself to the holy grail of word of mouth.

That is what great marketing does.

If you’re ever in Frankfurt, I highly recommend stopping by Wackers Kaffee.

He proceeded to drink copious amounts of wine on French national T.V.

It turned into a scene.

Charles Bukowski was in France on a book tour and was being interviewed on French T.V.

His friends and family were embarrassed.

He didn’t apologize.

He wrote about it.

Authentic, raw, and in detail. That’s what Bukowski does. There is no sugar coating in the stories he tells.

Some enjoy Bukowski. Some think he’s a drunk hack.

Regardless, he’s authentic.

At a time in post war industrialized America, where we idolized wholesome Leave it to Beaver life, he brought the raw emotions people actually felt every day.

It’s the everyday life of working-class America that he represents.

Bukowski had no polished, rehearsed highlight reel.

What Bukowski illustrates, is we have a desire for things that feel human. Things that are a little imperfect.

It’s probably why emails that have a typo in the subject line have better open rates. Our instinct tells us a human wrote this.

Sprinkling a little Bukowski style authenticity in our marketing can make us seem human. We become more accessible to our audience.

Like Bukowski, be authentic.

In the early days, Amazon was unprofitable.

They went public with meager profits.

Then, they were publicly ridiculed for not pushing more for profitability.

But, they ignored their critics and continued to play their own game.

The long game.

It wasn’t that Amazon couldn’t be profitable. They were willing to have profitable quarters when they needed to.

They chose to be unprofitable.

For long periods of time.

The biggest reason is their perspective was different.

Most companies will invest for a year and consider that long term.

Amazon invests in 10 years and considers that long term.

Which is why they seemingly had profitability issues on a quarterly basis.

But, as history would have it, when a company invests in 10 years while everyone else is investing in a quarter or 1 year, you win.

Amazon clearly has.

Time is a competitive advantage. Amazon knew this and their long-term investment horizon was strategic.

They beat out competitors.

They did it with free shipping. Hugely unprofitable in the short term.

Then, they did it with two-day shipping. Unprofitable in the short term.

Again, they did it with Prime. Profitability not a concern.

Years later, free, two-day shipping is a consumer expectation. They figured out how to win with it.

Now, all their competitors struggle with this expectation.

If Amazon had only looked at a 1-year return on any of these investments, they probably never would have continued. But, a 10-year investment makes them all work.

The only way you benefit from compound interest, is allowing time to do its thing.

Compound.