“That’s a palace?” my daughters exclaimed.
Their eyes were declaring what their mouths were too polite to say.
That’s complete ***t.
So they weren’t impressed with the palace where the oldest deciphered language tablets in Europe, Linear B, were discovered. And in all honesty they were looking at foundation stones with the highest being about a meter tall.
It wasn’t Buckingham Palace.
But we had the place to ourselves. Except for the lonely figure my daughters thought was a princess but who in reality worked at the museum and stood by in case we had any questions.
Greetings from Greece.
As you may have noticed I have not posted as often these last 3 weeks or so.
I consciously decided to practice what I preach and enjoy the independence of owning a business where I control how and when I work.
I have taken this time to spend with my daughters going up and down the beaches here in Messenia and introducing them to thousands of years of history.
And observing lessons that apply to any business owner.
For example, the epidemic of tavernas here abandoning fresh olive oil for mass processed sunflower oil in their cooking.
Why?
Because of the fallacy that efficiency trumps quality.
Sunflower oil can be reused over and over compared to olive oil.
But olive oil is tastier, healthier, and makes you feel far better than sunflower oil ever could.
And olive oil in this part of Greece flows freely.
These owners have a unique advantage of making meals with the best and most affordable ingredients that restaurant owners in other countries could only dream of having.
Imagine cooking everything in olive oil in Dubai.
But these owners read somewhere that reusing cheap oil 30 times beats a higher quality oil you can use far less.
So they save pennies and destroy the very thing that made them unique in the first place.
They run away from authenticity at the exact moment a market that’s getting fed up with artificial AI driven everything is desperate for it.
Why commoditise yourself for pennies while throwing away the real gold?
What do you think?
Cheers,
George
George Sotiropoulos writes from Greece about observing local tavernas replacing quality olive oil with cheaper reusable sunflower oil, using it as a metaphor for how businesses commoditise themselves by prioritising efficiency over the authentic quality that made them unique. He argues this is especially misguided when the market is increasingly hungry for authenticity in an age of AI-driven sameness.