Billionaire gestures typically make sensational headlines. But, they rarely change the daily reality of a Main Street customer or a local family. However, small business owners operate at a scale where a well-chosen gift can deliver faster, more visible returns than a distant stock certificate. The principle is the same. Give people a stake that grows. The difference is that your stake lives next door.

Sometimes, things go bad. More than a few problems can be virtually paralyzing, causing entrepreneurs to focus on what went wrong. But that puts their attention in one direction. And since you can’t be in two places at once, you end up ignoring or giving very little attention to almost everything else. As a result, even more problems crop up and pile up.

It’s counterintuitive to think closing stores could increase profits, especially when you’re demolishing entire buildings and rebuilding those storefronts instead of renovating them. But that’s precisely what the Southeast’s largest grocer is doing. After all, common sense suggests renovating is much cheaper than tearing down buildings wholesale and rebuilding them from the ground up. Yet, it’s happening in real time, and this unconventional strategy is producing confounding results. Here’s why.

Entrepreneurs inevitably deal with vendors who promise extras with their product sales, ship those products, then conveniently forget their promises. It could be a slightly deeper discount, free add-ons, or other perks. Regardless of the enticement, the extra never arrives, and sooner or later the customer catches on to the sleight-of-hand sales tactic. The problem is the freebies are never that valuable but still desirable. What’s more, the products are perfect and priced right. However, over time, those empty promises become too much to ignore.

Entrepreneurs inevitably deal with vendors who promise extras with their product sales, ship those products, then conveniently forget their promises. It could be a slightly deeper discount, free add-ons, or other perks. Regardless of the enticement, the extra never arrives, and sooner or later the customer catches on to the sleight-of-hand sales tactic. The problem is the freebies are never that valuable but still desirable. What’s more, the products are perfect and priced right. However, over time, those empty promises become too much to ignore.

Sometimes, the “solution” can easily be far worse than the problem. We’ve all heard this sentiment in different forms. It’s a crazy but very real phenomenon, and it goes against intuition. After all, what could possibly go wrong? Well, a lot could and probably will go wrong. That’s because there’s just no way to plan for every plausible (and implausible) contingency. Still, a circumstance we know we should handle a certain way deep in our gut is too unbearable to let play out. So, we go against our instinct, fearing it will backfire, and then watch in horror as it blows right up in our face.

Every small business owner dreams of success. Smart entrepreneurs know the best way to achieve their goal is through excellent customer service, delivering the best products and services with a positive attitude. But somewhere along the way, the hustle and bustle become a daily reality, and suddenly the personal touch and familiar feeling that comes with it are gone. And when customers don’t feel the same connection, they begin to feel like just another number, which spells nothing but T-R-O-U-B-L-E with a capital “T.”