One of the most common things people say to me when we’re chatting about the business is, “You guys always seem to be trying something new. Where do you get all your ideas?”
The truth is, I’m a bit of a fraud. Nearly all of the ideas don’t come from me—they come from you!
A few years ago, a business mentor recommended a book to me: Will It Make the Boat Go Faster? by Ben Hunt-Davis and Harriet Beveridge. The book focuses on the mindset and strategies that helped the British Men’s Rowing Eight win gold at the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The team had one simple question guiding them: “Will it make the boat go faster?” Every decision, big or small, was filtered through that lens of moving closer to their goal.
That mindset stuck with me and has shaped how we handle feedback and continue to progress at Hartley Farm. There was a time when all the requests and ideas coming our way felt overwhelming. It was easy to feel stuck, like a rabbit in the headlights. In business, as they say, if you’re not moving forward, you’re likely falling behind. So our filter, or as we call it, our mission, became “to enrich the everyday lives of our customers”.
That’s why feedback is so important to us. You may have noticed that we’re always asking for reviews. It’s not just about building our reputation—it’s about ensuring we’re heading in the right direction. Whether it’s praise or constructive criticism, we want to hear it all. Every week, a few of us sit down and go through all the feedback from conversations, reviews, and suggestions that we’ve had that week and anything that keeps coming up gets added to “The Issues List.” From there, we work through each item, one by one. Some are quick fixes, and others take longer, but we chip away at them, always aiming for progress over perfection—one of our core values.
A recent example? The acoustics in the Barn. It’s been one of the most frequently mentioned issues, and I’ll admit, it took longer to tackle than I’d hoped. Creating The Barn was one of our biggest projects at Hartley, and I wanted to make sure any changes didn’t compromise the atmosphere or aesthetic we’ve worked so hard to create. But after careful planning, we’ve invested in improvements that we hope will make a noticeable difference and which I hope will help make the boat go faster, or in our case, “enrich the everyday lives of our customers”.
On that subject… please do drop us a line with any suggestions and ideas you have for us. You can just reply to this email.
Have a great day.