There is a hanky in my back pocket and it has exactly one job.
Every twenty minutes or so, I peel off a fake mustache, dab the sweat beading on my upper lip, and stick the mustache back on. My hair is tucked under a wig with flips and twists that I can only describe as aggressive. Every time I catch myself in a mirror, I giggle.
I look, and I say this with love, exactly like a NASCAR driver who lost a bet (scroll to the bottom for photo proof).
This is my annual scavenger hunt. It is ridiculous. It does not make me any money. And it has taught me more about running and loving a business than a lot of webinars I’ve paid for.
How a Small Town Scavenger Hunt Works
A couple of years ago we had nothing planned for the Fourth of July, and I was craving a gathering. I’ve been known to throw an elaborate scavenger hunt from time to time, so I thought…you know what? We’re doing this.
Here’s the shape of it: Everyone meets in our shop across the driveway. They form teams of their own choosing and get a manila envelope full of smaller numbered envelopes. We go over the rules (don’t mess anything up, be safe on the roads, follow the rules), and then it’s a shotgun start, so every team heads somewhere different and nobody ends up in a traffic jam at the same stop.
Each envelope holds a riddle that points to a location around Cascade. At every stop there’s an activity. Sometimes it fits the place, like the year teams had a Nerf gun war at the sportsmen’s club. Sometimes it fits the theme, like this year’s NASCAR trivia. Everyone dresses up. At the end of the night we all land back at the shop, eat, hand out awards, and throw every team’s photos and videos up on the TV.
Clues, chaos, and then a room full of people laughing at each other’s pictures. That’s the whole thing.
Your Mind, Right Where Your Feet Are
This year I noticed something. There were moments when I was simply…there. Fully in it.
As a business owner (and as a parent, frankly), you’re so often in one place physically while your mind is somewhere else. The next place you have to show up. The email sitting in your inbox. The pressure of payroll. You know the feeling.
On scavenger hunt night, my mind was right where my feet were. I was so caught up in the silliness that I forgot about everything else. There is so much joy in that, and I didn’t realize how much I’d missed it until I had it back.
Writing Without the Training Wheels
I use AI for a lot of things in my business. I’ve said it on the show, and I’ll say it again. But the scavenger hunt could not be one of them.
The riddles are too specific. There’s a clue about our town’s unofficial emcee, the guy who hosts every community event, who let us set up an activity in his backyard. Read that riddle and you know immediately: we’re going to Dagwood’s house. There are inside jokes only a handful of people will get, and you hope one of them is on your team. You can’t program that into a chat window.
So I sat down with a legal pad like it was 2015. And it was clunky. I stared at a blank page. I wrote a couple of bad first attempts. I realized I’d leaned on AI harder over the past year than I wanted to admit.
Then, somewhere around the final clue, the creative juices started flowing again. Was it perfect? No. Teams interpreted a few of my instructions in ways I never intended. But I made the whole thing with my own brain, and that wasn’t a small thing to get back. Writing without AI isn’t a limitation. It’s a muscle, and muscles need reps.
Looking Absurd on Purpose
Here’s the part that’s hard to admit: I spend a lot of time thinking about how I’m perceived. Am I wearing the right thing? Saying the right thing? How am I coming across?
Earlier Molly would have gone for a cute, photogenic interpretation of NASCAR. Present-day Molly walked into bars around town in a wig and a sweaty mustache, dabbing her face with a hanky in front of strangers. I looked so dumb. I did not care. It was so much fun.
I still catch myself skipping a video for social media because my hair isn’t curled or my makeup isn’t done. But I keep thinking about that alter ego and how freeing it felt to shed all that care for one night. When your identity gets wrapped up in how a business owner (or a mom) should appear, sometimes you need a night where you say forget it, here we go, we’re just going to have fun.
The Kit I Will Never Sell
Every year, at least one person asks if I’ll turn the hunt into a kit they can buy and run in their own town.
My answer is no.
I see the contradiction. I literally help people add revenue streams and market their stories for a living. It’s probably a great idea, and someone else should absolutely run with it. But this thing exists because I don’t have to perform, and I don’t have to hit a number. The second it becomes a product, it becomes a deliverable, and I’ll be planning next year with the business lens already on. My brain has a hard enough time shutting off as it is.
Every business owner needs at least one thing that’s allowed to lose money and be delightful. In a world that keeps telling us everything in our lives can be content, I want a few things that are just mine. I’ll share the pictures. I won’t sell it. At least, that’s what I’m telling myself.
Buttoned Up Is Overrated
For a long stretch of my career I thought being a “professional business owner” meant being controlled, on brand, and buttoned up at all times.
Turns out sometimes what you need is to bounce around on a hippity-hop ball.
That looks like the opposite of professional, but I’m not so sure it is. Play is what makes the heaviness of work and life sustainable. You can’t pour from a cup that’s been sealed shut for eleven months and then have fun for one night. Silliness fills you back up, and that’s what gives you the motivation to keep going.
The Branding Lesson I Didn’t Go Looking For
Okay, I know. I turn everything into work. But this ridiculous night taught me a couple of marketing lessons whether I wanted them or not.
Every theme gets its own brand identity. This year it was slanted racing fonts and the kind of colors you’d see on a pit crew T-shirt, totally different from the America theme or the 90s country theme we’ve had in years past. I made big printed numbers for the windows and posts at every stop so teams knew they were in the right spot.
By the second stop, people were trained to look for that design. If they spotted a little Jeff Gordon on a popsicle stick in a flower planter downtown, they knew it wasn’t random. It was for them.
That’s the whole lesson. Your brand isn’t just your logo or your color palette. It’s the thing that tells people, without you saying a word, that they’re in the right place. Use it consistently and it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
Stories Outlive the Riddles
We don’t end the night with “thanks for coming.” We regroup at the shop and the room gets loud. We replay the videos. We point out what’s happening in the background. We retell the stupid things that happened two hours ago like they’re already history.
The hunt was at the end of August. By now, nobody remembers the exact wording of the riddles. Everybody remembers the stories. Stories turn into memories, and if you keep showing up year after year, memories turn into legend. That’s what makes people ask about next year before there even is a next year.
Your business works the same way. The stories are what stick, especially when you tell them long enough, consistently enough, and in a way people can feel.
Bonus: Word of Mouth Still Wins
I’ve never run an ad for this thing. It’s for family and friends. And still, every year it gets bigger, because people talk about it, show their pictures, and ask if they can bring so-and-so. (Yes. Always yes.)
Word of mouth is still the most powerful marketing channel there is, and in a small town it’s practically the whole ballgame. Instagram, Facebook, your website… those tools exist to get people talking. So give them something worth talking about. Go over the top. Do it bigger than it needs to be. Be unapologetic about how much you care.
So… What’s Your Scavenger Hunt?
Somewhere between the hanky in my pocket, a popsicle stick with a little Dale Earnhardt on it, and a room full of people laughing at cell phone videos that are somehow still pixelated in 2026, I remembered something I didn’t know I’d forgotten.
The parts of my business with no ROI, no funnel, and no deliverable are sometimes the parts doing the most work. Not on the spreadsheet. On me, as the owner and the leader.
You are allowed to build something that doesn’t make sense on paper. You are allowed to keep the thing that doesn’t make you money if it’s the thing that fills you back up. That’s not a business flaw. That might be the whole point.
If you’re building a business that fits the life you want to keep living, start with the free Small Town Founders Workbook: https://mollyknuth.myflodesk.com/smalltownfoundersworkbook.
Now I want to hear from you. This one lives in the How do I do this? question, and part of the answer is protecting the things that keep you going. So what’s your scavenger hunt? Tag me @mollyknuth or send me a message. Let’s get found.
RESOURCES AND LINKS
- Back catalog episode: Just Have F*cking Fun
- Recent episode: Using AI Without Losing Your Voice
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