When I first picked up a guitar and tried learning some riffs, I thought I just needed to learn to play the notes.

Hold down the strings in the right spots, strum at the right times, and music comes out. It seemed simple enough.

Only it’s not.

Playing the correct notes is the easy part. But the notes themselves only make up a minor portion of the music.

Everything else – from timing to dynamics, and even the way in which the string is strummed – has a huge impact on the end result. Listen to a little kid play a scale and then listen to a trained musician play the same scale and you’ll know what I’m talking about. The difference is night and day.

Yet when we learn a new skill, we tend to get stuck at the surface.

We stress about playing the right notes rather than producing beautiful sounds.

We obsess about the words in our presentation rather than connecting with the audience and giving an engaging presentation.

We settle for merely showing up at work rather than focusing on what we actually do while we’re there.

The key is in realizing that the “minor” details are often what make the difference.

I go to my corner hardware store rather than the big box stores, not because my local store has more products or better prices (it’s the opposite) but because of the little things – the family atmosphere, familiar faces, quality products, and the feeling that I’m a valued customer.

They know that selling hardware and lumber is about more than simply selling hardware and lumber.

It’s the difference between listening to a well-produced song and listening to a string of notes. When done correctly, the pieces come together to make the whole much greater than the sum of the parts.

-Brandon