“Don’s Business Model Is Himself”

Kelly Stout profiles Don Ward, who “runs a successful business shining shoes at the corner of Sixth Avenue and Forty-seventh Street in Manhattan”:

Don uses various tools of benign manipulation to attract customers. Flattery (“Nice boots! And your hair looks nice. Can I love your boots?”). Shame (“Look at your boots!”). And appeals to reason (“How do you not clean your dirty shoes, sir? Sir! It’s 2013; we have the technology.”). Don estimates that only one quarter of his customers are women—this is up from when he started shining shoes in the nineties, when a mere one in nine was female—but his tenderhearted heckling is equal-opportunity, and he does a lot of it.