Confusing Guitars With Guitarists.

I was relaxing one evening and watching a Bon Jovi concert on TV. The guitar solo Richie Sambora suddenly unleashed had the audience mesmerized. He is a master guitarist. He has mastered his trade through countless hours of practice, exploration and most of all, passion.

There are a lot of people who admire how Richie Sambora plays. He played a Fender guitar which many would buy at the nearest Guitar World. Or you could get his original guitar at Rock Star Guitar, a website of original artists’ guitars. People buy the guitar to identify with the great guitarist they uphold.

It even bleeds over into an illusion – “If I buy this guitar, it makes me a great guitarist.” Now that may be more subconscious than apparent for the average person. My question is why spend hundreds of dollars on a Richie Sambora guitar? Why not take the money and invest it into expert guitar lessons? Read more

999 Ways to Success

I have spent the last week working with my team on various systems we are implementing for our clients. The process is rigorous yet fulfilling. I enjoy it greatly because it embodies what our culture and message is about – passion.

We always believe there is an answer to problems. When we try daring things, we inherently will face a proportional amount of problems. We say, bring it on. Each solved problem separates us from our competition. It is what the same mentality Thomas Edison had when answering a person who wondered if he was frustrated about a thousand failed light bulb experiments. Read more

When Preparation Meets Opportunity

In our last ezine article we wrote about how to outlast your competition. Some of our readers found a discretionary point in the content. The idea of luck may or may not resound with you. Let me take this opportunity to talk about the idea of luck.

I share the same definition as Oprah on this one: “Luck is when preparation meets opportunity.” Some people believe it is all preparation; others believe it is all about opportunity. I think it is the convergence of both.

It is likely that you missed a lot of opportunities in the last 30 days because you were not prepared to take advantage of them. It is also likely that you have prepared and may have had a “build it and they will come” mentality. The problem is, you may have built it for the wrong opportunity. Read more

Outlast Your Adversity

I recently reconnected with an old college teammate to recall a running route which punished us each Sunday morning during cross-country season. I ran throughout college as a distance runner in an intensive program in upstate New York. I can remember running over 45 miles in three days and wondering if I was going to simply break like a toothpick.

On Sunday mornings after grueling races the day before, we would faithfully head out at 7 AM on our 17 mile Ellison Park runs. We sounded like a graceful stampede in rhythm running along waterways and into small towns. Some mornings, I relied heavily on my teammates just to pull me through the workouts. Showers and brunch at 9:30 AM started our days. The majority of the campus was still in bed. We were just trying to recover enough to do our 4:40 mile repeats the next day. Read more

Test the Welcome Mat

One of the best ways to know for sure if customers really count is to evaluate how an organization deals with complaints. At one of our Dream Retreats, we learned from a participant whose daughter manages a Limited, Inc. store location in Arizona that the company will dismiss a store manager who receives three unresolved customer complaints.

At first, we were somewhat taken aback by the severity of this practice, but after a little research into the effects of customer complaints on the bottom line, we realized that the policy makes very good sense. The Technical Assistance Research Programs Corporation of Washington, D.C., which publishes statistics on customer complaints, has found that for every customer complaint that an organization receives, there are 26 other dissatisfied customers who will remain silent. Each of the 27 dissatisfied customers will tell 8 to 16 others about the experience, and 10 percent will tell more than 20 other potential customers. If you do the arithmetic, you will find that three complaints translate into more than 1,000 potential customers hearing about poor service a company provided. No company can afford to drag its feet when handling customer complaints.

We have been wowed many times by Disney’s exceptional attention to guest problems and complaints. One example occurred when we were visiting Disney World with a group of clients.

After we had all checked into the hotel, we quickly departed for dinner. As we were riding along in one of the in-park buses that shuttle visitors around Disney World, the driver asked us how our rooms were. One of our clients mentioned that the faucet in his bar sink had an annoying drip, and he added taht he hadn’t had time yet to report it to maintenance.

“Sir, I’ll take care of it for you,” the driver assured him.

We didn’t give it another thought, but when we got back from dinner about 10 o’clock, the faucet was fixed. And then, more impressive yet, shortly thereafter the driver showed up on his own time to make sure that the problem had been taken care of. This is the level of service you should aim for when you ask your employees to treat every customer like a guest in their own homes. The bus driver was truly committed to making the guest experience the best it could possibly be. That is service with a capital “S.”

— Obtained from the book, The Disney Way by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson

Winning: Prove You Care

The pursuit of excellent service as an owner of a business or a consumer seems to be an elusive goal. In my time with business people, this topic is difficult work. It requires thinking in the place of the customer. What do your customers want in the area of service? First and foremost, your customer is thinking about themselves, not you. As a consumer, you think the same way with the vendors who service you. What is it we all want when we give our cash to a business? We want to know they care. Their service is one means they show this. How they position and create an experience is another way they can show they care. Have you ever walked into a business and felt the owners were seeking how little they could give for your business? They are thinking about themselves also, to their own detriment. They lose.

Here is what the business person who shows care looks like: Read more

Does Perfect Planning Make Life Perfect?