There comes a point in the career of the modern entrepreneur when you’re likely to hear him asking, “Do you want fries with that?” In my case, it goes, “Do you want fries, a hash brown, gravy, or grits?”

Last week, I took a job at the local Biscuitville, a breakfast-only fast food restaurant serving North Carolina and Virginia. I’m enjoying the heck out of this. I used to work at Wendy’s, about 10 years ago. I remember long days at the drive through window. Coming back to that environment has shown me that running a drive-through is like riding a bike; once you learn it, you never forget. I’m also really impressed with the speed and accuracy of the ordering at Biscuitville. Working there has been somewhat Zen-like for me over the past few days. I had forgotten the degree of presence and concentration it takes to process orders quickly, one after another after another.

I’m not 100% sold on this company or opportunity, mainly because of the logistics of the scheduling and the fact that they’re limited to this local region, but if I do decide to stick with them, my mind is already racing with ideas. For example, I’ve noticed that service times are heavily impacted by customers taking a long time to put their money away and drive up to the second window. There may be a way to implement a payment and order taking system that removes this bottleneck. Also, what if I made an effort to tell all my friends where I was working, and a lot of them became regular customers? What if a group of 4-5 people had a daily or weekly breakfast meeting there? Unfortunately, a fast food place doesn’t work well for that, but that’s just an example.

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I just identified, over the past few weeks, a fatal flaw with my marketing plan.  I haven’t been living my story as The Introverted Entrepreneur.  Ever since I started creating this brand name, I’ve been keeping myself busy going to lots of networking meetings, introducing myself cold to strangers, calling people on the telephone, and even leading new groups.  All the things that, in other words, introverts hate doing.

This is a serious mistake because I’ve run the risk of intimidating people to my approach.  It is imperative that I be successful in a way that any introvert can duplicate.  Success by itself, in other words, isn’t enough.

But it finally dawned on me after about the 20th person made the same comment, that my approach just wasn’t working.  The comment was – “But Dave, you’re not an introvert.”  In other words, I had alienated my audience by creating the impression that I couldn’t relate to them or understand them – because I wasn’t one of them!

But, there’s still time to correct the mistake.  From now on, when I walk into rooms filled with strangers, I will attract them to come talk to me.  If it’s awkward and uncomfortable, I’ll stand in the corner and talk to no one.  After all, I won’t be any worse off than if I just hadn’t gone!

How consistently do you stick to your story?  What do you tell the world that you stand for?  Do your day-to-day actions reflect this?