It’s a holiday in the U.S., but rather that take a pass I want to say a few words about something that’s been on my mind a lot lately.

Truth be told I’m not sure if it’s a trait you just have, a skill you can learn, or some combination of the two. But the people and marketers who have it are the ones I see getting the results time and time again.

I’m reminded by it now because I just went to the bathroom at a park.

Odd as it sounds, I needed a break from the computer, needed some fresh ideas, and needed to heed nature’s call, so I walked to the park near our home, used the bathroom, and upon exiting saw this taped to the inside of the door.

It’s small. It’s simple. It’s probably inefficient. It’s not even close to cool or award-worthy.

But I love it because it exemplifies the word I’m intentionally not telling you until later in this post.

It also reminded me of something that had happened just a week earlier while grabbing a snow cone at a parking lot shack in Logan, UT. As we waited for our cones, a woman from the store behind the shack came up with a flyer and said:

It’s really, really slow today. Would you mind posting this flyer in your window?

Her request was granted and she hurried off to find homes for the rest of her flyers.

I loved this too. Not for the tactic itself, but the mindset it represented.

This woman, like many marketers, was in her customerless store looking out the window at people going by. Instead of bemoaning her lack of traffic she did one very simple thing. She went to where the people were and did something.

Like the person who taped that event calendar in the park bathroom, she looked out, saw people, and acted.

The word that comes to mind is hustle.

When I took this picture at Destination Summit two years ago, I didn’t see someone just around the corner who was up early to crank out some work on a conference trip while 250 other attendees were still in bed.

The 3rd and final day of #DSummit kicks off in one hour. Be there. pic.twitter.com/0BY2nlkj4j

— Ryan Solutions (@RyanSolutions) May 15, 2014

That person had hustle.

We talk about creativity and technical skills, but sometimes the thing we could all use an extra dose of is hustle.

That mindset where we aren’t just cranking through a to-do list but endlessly looking for opportunities, looking for doors to open, looking for where the people are so they can go there and spread the good word.

About Gregg & SlopeFillers
I've had more first-time visitors lately, so adding a quick "about" section. I started SlopeFillers in 2010 with the simple goal of sharing great resort marketing strategies. Today I run marketing for resort ecommerce and CRM provider Inntopia, my home mountain is the lovely Nordic Valley, and my favorite marketing campaign remains the Ski Utah TV show that sold me on skiing as a kid in the 90s.