Sometimes you just have to follow your instincts

In 1998, Alvin and Pam Ross bought the town of Tortilla Flat, Arizona.  They bought it from Jerry and MaryJo Bryant. It's been a 'Ma and Pa owned' town for decades.

It wasn't a big town but it had a big history as a former stop on a Stage Coach route on The Apache Trail, America's oldest roadway. The town, consisting of a restaurant, museum and gift shop has a voting population of 6 and could easily have disappeared into history... but the couples who have owned the town shared a vision. They believed a character restaurant serving hearty portions of memorable food could grab people's attention, and they were right. Somewhere along the line, they stumbled upon another idea to get customers 'involved': they invited people to write their name on a dollar bill (or currency from their home country) and they began to wallpaper the place 10 square inches at a time.

When they began to fill the walls with money, the owners guaranteed they would fill their cash register with money, too. I'm guessing the owners would not have articulated it this way, but they stumbled upon two key ingredients that marketers take for granted now. First, people want to be heard; they want to have their moment in the spot-light. Having their name stapled on a wall for hundreds of thousands of visitors to see is a kind of immortality. Plus, they had formed their own virtual community. People love to belong to exclusive clubs and the proprietors of the town of Tortilla Flat provided that.

They aren't the only people in the world to come upon this idea, and they probably weren't the first, but they instinctively knew it would generate a buy-in from their patrons and today they are legendary for it.

Not every instinct should be followed, but they shouldn't be disregarded either. Some of the best ideas sound crazy when they're first spoken out loud. I'll bet when that restaurant in Tortilla Flat had five bills on the wall, no one believed they'd eventually cover every square inch of wall. If the idea had never been voiced, the thriving metropolis of Tortilla Flat (population 6) might just be a dusty photograph in an Old West Museum.