During the six years we lived in Toronto, one of our favourite rituals was exploring coffee shops. We tried dozens across the city, almost always ordering the same drink: a latte. In our experience, the coffee itself was equally good everywhere we went — what changed was everything around it.
No two stops ever felt the same. Each café carried its own personality, like people you come to know:
The Reliable Regular was quick and consistent, just two blocks from the subway.
The Polished Performer impressed with marble counters, perfect pours, and playlists curated for Instagram.
The Cozy Friend felt warm and familiar, with baristas who remembered names and lamps that made you want to stay all morning.
The latte didn’t change. But the experience, the nuance, the personality — that’s what drew us back, or nudged us elsewhere.
It made me realize something: what keeps us returning isn’t novelty. It’s resonance.
Resonance outlasts novelty.
We’re told again and again that to stand out, you have to be different. Radically different. Reinvent the wheel. Break the mold.
Entrepreneurs absorb this belief until it feels like law. If you aren’t offering something brand-new, the thinking goes, you’ll disappear into the noise. That pressure to reinvent can be exhausting — and misleading.
Because sameness isn’t failure if it resonates. People don’t walk into a café expecting it to reinvent coffee. They want a good latte, a space that fits their mood, and an experience that feels right.
And novelty can even backfire. We’ve visited cafés that leaned so hard into gimmicks — strange flavors, flashy décor, over-the-top ideas — that the coffee itself got lost.
Novelty may grab attention, but it doesn’t build a connection. What keeps us coming back is when something familiar feels meaningful, human, and alive.
The latte stayed the same, but the personalities around it gave us reasons to return.
It’s the same reason Cinderella has endured for centuries. The story is simple: an overlooked girl, a moment of magic, a transformation. But its resonance isn’t in novelty. It’s in the retelling. Folklore passed it one way. Disney animated it with song and colour. Modern writers reimagine it in darker or more contemporary tones. The story is the same. What changes is the voice, the medium, the expression. And each version finds its own audience.
We don’t actually crave endless novelty. We return to familiar stories told in new voices.
That’s how customers decide, too — not on novelty, but on resonance.
Explorers enjoy variety, drifting between cafés depending on mood or circumstance. But it isn’t novelty they’re chasing — it’s a change of feel.
Loyalists find one place that feels right and never leave it. Not because it’s radically different, but because it’s reliably aligned.
Occasionals drop in wherever is convenient, when the need arises. They aren’t seeking reinvention — just what fits in the moment.
Different places, the same latte. The coffee was always good. What made the difference was how each place expressed itself, and which cafés felt like us.
In the end, it isn’t reinvention that earns loyalty. It’s recognition.
I believe the same principle applies to our work. Most of us don’t need to reinvent what we offer. What matters is how we give it voice, how we shape the signals people connect with.
Which leaves me wondering: how many of us are already carrying something solid — something that works, something people value — but are still searching for the personality or the voice that makes it feel alive?
You don’t need to reinvent to resonate.
Lead with purpose,
Rachelle
As a devotional coffee lover, this resonates!