I do some work in the home school market writing DVD courses for home school math. This week we’ve really been swamped with calls and emails about parents getting ready for the Fall and needing answers to some key questions.

In getting all of this done, we missed one phone call. The lady had called us and left a message but during the recording her phone clicked out just as she was saying the last digits of her phone number. So we couldn’t tell what her number was to call her back. It was right on the day that we were updating our phones, too, so we didn’t have a record of the missed call and had no way to call her back. It wasn’t really anything we could have avoided, and she took the time to email us later so we talked eventually, but it was an enlightening moment.

Even things we can’t avoid or change will impact our customer service, which impacts how our companies are reflected to the world.  I think too many companies let customer service fall second on their priority list. Returning the phone calls or getting back on that email are not put up there as being important. But they really are just as important–if not more important.

As you are looking at your business, whether you have your own company, or you are in a contract with another company that you serve, you have a customer. And as you are serving this company or your company’s customers, remember that how you treat people matters a whole lot more than whether or not all your i’s are dotted and your t’s are crossed. How people feel they were treated by your company is what they will remember when deciding to do business with you. Keeping up good relations is always better than trying to mend broken ones. Make your service a priority.

Last night I was in a ministry team where the leaders and the pastor were
struggling to find out why they could not get people to show up for their
“ministry”

It came down to this. They needed to define who they wanted to serve, and
then what do those people value. Marketing! Same problem we have on our job,
getting a job, or running a company.

Anything meaningful we do in life involves serving others! Sometimes money
changes hands – other times it does not- But – we are always serving. And -
to serve effectively we have to know:

WHO are we serving? and What do they value?

I got this email the other day:

“Something small on reverse interview:  I talked to my boss and asked him how he got to where he is today.  I used the reverse interview technique.  This worked well, he opened up and this has helped improve our relationship.  I now find him making more eye contact with me during meetings and I feel more comfortable in speaking up.”

This is one of the powerful things you get from this reverse interview – you get to know people on a more personal level. You open up the doors of communication and find common ground by getting past the corporate sterile conversations.

When you have just graduated high school, the world is before you. You have all of your dreams and aspirations ready to go. You look at your parents and say things like “I want to major in acting. I want to be an actress” or “I want to go into photography” or maybe “I want to major in a foreign language”.More than likely your parents stare blankly back at you with doubtful looks.

But you didn’t care back then. You had no fear about stating these things then, because they were purely, simply, exactly, what you wanted to do with your life.

Then you graduate with those degrees and feel dismayed because all of the “now hiring” signs are not looking for a photographer, an actress, or a specialist in foreign language. So what happens?

These same people go on to get jobs waiting tables, being a sales clerk, or punching cards behind the desk of some government job, because those places were “hiring”. The job made money, the money paid the rent, and that was the main priority.

Thus, we have an entire society of people who “have to have a degree” but they almost never work in their degree field.

What’s wrong with this picture? Well aside from the discussions we could have about businesses who require you to have a degree, then don’t care what your degree is in, mainly we need to talk about why people don’t choose the things they want AFTER college the way they did before.

Ignorance? Fear? Practicality? Responsibility?

There is nothing irresponsible about pursuing the career you want instead of just pursuing anything that pays money. In fact, pursuing money above all else, is the exact kind of mentality that leads to criminals. Set your priorities towards what really matters. You may need a job to pay the rent, but you aren’t doing your family any favors if you come home every day miserable because you just spent 10-12 hours doing something you hate.

If you got that degree in acting, see if you can’t make a career of that. You don’t have to be a starving artists. Keep the day job, but be looking for ways to create yourself a career that is fun for you AND makes the money you need for your family.

Looking to be a photographer? Who says you can’t open up a website where you sell your photographs? That doesn’t take anything away from what you’re doing now, but it allows you to be doing something you love. and who knows? As that website grows, maybe you can reach a point where that is your main career. Really, it is possible. IF you work at it.

The point is, as you look at your career, stay in what you’re doing if it is what you WANT to be doing. Otherwise, don’t be afraid to pursue change (responsibly)

A friend of mine and I were talking the other day and they were telling me about how their brother had recently lost a job. Not only that, but the job he had just applied for that he thought was a shoe-in, had fallen through. So now this guy was telling me about the hard-luck story that his brother was having trying to pay bills.

Now, obviously, the story is tough. But honestly, my reaction was “How free he is now!” This guy just lost his job, he doesn’t have income. That’s the bottom. It can only go up–he can finally CHOOSE what he wants to do.

But what was he doing? He was putting in applications at every local shop in town and sitting back, waiting on a job to waltz across his threshold.

I was shocked.

“Doesn’t this guy have a degree in mass communications?”, I asked.

“Yeh” my friend replied.

“Then why isn’t he contacting some people in mass communications or searching out internships in that field, or even starting his own business doing something he likes? He doesn’t have anyone to answer to anymore. He’s free. He can go for his dreams now. Why isn’t he?”

My friend was at a loss for words.

When you are out of a job, you have two choices: you can find a job, or you can make a job. Odds are that if you make for yourself a career that you WANT, you’ll be much happier, much more fulfilled, and most likely, you’ll make more money.

So if you’re in this boat, where you need a job, then MAKE ONE. Go out today, right now, and MAKE YOUR DREAM JOB HAPPEN.  The alternative is to to be sitting at home waiting to hear back from applications. So why not give it a try? there’s no better time than now.

According to Nick Swinmurn, a 30 year old billionaire  the key to success is to “be scrappy”. In an interview for the BBC news blog, he talks about how it is the guys who don’t give up that succeed the most. It doesn’t matter, he says, if you don’t know how you’re going to do it. It only matters that you DO something. Fight against the odds, go against the grain and “try everything and just fight and claw and keep adapting, keep trying things.”

Don’t let yourself get distracted with side-ideas. While you’re working if you come up with something else that might be awesome–great. But make a list. Finish one thing well, then move on to the next. Don’t chase 4 million rabbit trails. If you spent only one dollar on each of those rabbit trails, you’ll be broke instead of 4 million dollars richer. Or $800 million dollars richer in the case of Nick. He just sold his latest company, Zappos, (a shoe selling company) to amazon.

Watch his video here. And while you do, ask yourself: Why aren’t you making shoes again? (or whatever it is that you haven’t tried because it is “too simple” or “wouldn’t work”) Yeh, maybe you should take a second look at that “crazy idea”.

Recently Gerard Butler (Famous actor) did an interview on The Bonnie Hunt Show.

I don’t always put much stock in the musing of actors, but I happened to hear this interview and I felt what he was talking about is really relevant to entrepreneurs. Originally, Gerard has actually studied at law school and started a career in law. After he was established in his law career he realized that it was not his passion, not his “purpose” (his exact words in the interview). He said that growing up being an actor was something seemed rather unattainable because when he was young if he said he wanted to be an actor, people would scoff and suggest: “hey what about medical school or being a lawyer instead?” So he followed their advice and became a lawyer because he thought it was the path he was “supposed” to take, but once he got there he just felt unfulfilled. He admitted in the interview that while he knows that there are people for whom being a lawyer is great, it was not what he was meant to be. So one day he packed his bags and moved from Scotland to London and said “I’m going to be an actor”. When he did it, his family was not happy–they thought he was ruining his life, and he himself thought as he did it, “This is a disaster”. He said, “I knew this is what I wanted to do, [what I was passionate about and what I needed to be doing], but it didn’t feel like that at the time.” He talked about how even though he was pursuing his dream, it was hard at the beginning. And now, he has starred in several blockbuster films and is enjoying a career he always dreamed of doing.

I think a lot of people who are in corporate America hesitate to pursue their dreams because they are afraid of that initial hard time to reach their goals. But if Gerard Butler had never took those first steps, he would still be working miserably as a lawyer in Scotland instead of enjoying a hugely popular, and lucrative career doing what he loves to do everyday. So sometimes, taking those first hard steps are the crucial ones to living the life you dreamed of.

Watch the complete interview here.

I don’t think you’ll argue when I assign the word “crazy” to Tom Cruise, but did you ever stop to think that if all of us had some of that same kind of “crazy”, we might be successful at our own risky business?

Of course, I’m talking about *legal* risks in business. You know–the ones we all face when we look at a new endeavor. The finances, the time, the location, the people, the software, any number of things come up on the list of “if”s “and”s “but”s and “maybe”s. Funny isn’t it, that when you start your own business–or make major changes at your current one—one of the first and foremost concerns on your mind is the amount of risk you’re taking. Rarely does the fact that we are stepping out there into  new realm that could make-or-break us escape our thinking. Somewhere in the back of our minds as we shake hands with our reverse interview-ee we are confident that we have no idea what we’re doing.

But as anyone who has started a business knows, sometimes perseverance brings freedom. And as the movie line goes, “Freedom brings opportunity. Opportunity makes your future.”

So as you look at making new decisions for your business, approach risks as obstacles, not road blocks. Don’t be afraid to ask people already where you want to be about how they got there and what they did to get there. Learn from their mistakes and listen to their advice on steps to take. Not everything about their journey will makes sense for your business, but some of their thoughts could help you turn those mountains back into molehills that are easily avoided or eliminated all together.

As Andre Malraux put it,

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not [that] one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one’s ideas, to take a calculated risk – and to act.”

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. This friend is a social media specialist, but she’s trying to get better at her work. So she called up a few connections on LinkedIn (thinking that a business social networking site would be the place to drum up some help), and asked them for advice on how to better advertise her blog clients and build a more solid following on the blogs she was managing.

What she got in return for her request was several sales pitches. Not people trying to help her, but people wanting to sell her their services. She was baffled. Why in the world would companies not want to help her get better? Because she was competition? She was confused. “Aren’t these companies aware of how many companies are out there?”, she thought.  If we don’t help each other get better, then no one gets better and we all stay the same. It didn’t make sense. She had sent out an honest plea for professional assistance and instead she had been sent to the bottom rung and approached like a raw piece of meat for dogs to fight over. She was completely frustrated and turned totally off to every single one of the companies that tried to woo her business.

This happens all too often. In business, when people come to you seeking help and advice, the best way to get their business for your company is to give them exactly what they are looking for and nothing else. I’ve sold more products simply by not advertising my products. If a customer calls me up and says “hey, I just wondered about this one thing” and I listen, reply, give them solid advice (sometimes even sending them over to companies that compete with me), 95% of the time, I get their business because they appreciate the honest, truly helpful, approach.

Too many times marketing schemes center around trying to fool the customer into buying your product. They create a fake need and then try to step in and fill it. But the consumer is wise to this approach. They know what their needs are–and they have plenty of real ones. They don’t need marketing departments to create new ones. So, to me, the best marketing strategy is to return to that old addage of putting the customer first.

When you honestly invest yourself in your customers, caring for what they need, and doing your best to provide answers and assistance without expectations of reimbursement, customers will thank you with their business.

Sounds like a criminal title, doesn’t it?

Serial Entrepreneurs are a special breed of human. Instead of starting a company just once–they love the thrill of starting a business, selling it off, and moving on to the next big thing. They take raw materials and build teams, business models, financial plans, and entire corporations completely from scratch. Then, they do it again.

With each new venture, they build experience. As they gain this experience, they gain insights and wisdom about the formation of businesses that allows them to take greater risks than what might be afforded to someone else. The opportunity to take greater risks makes for the opportunity to have greater success.

But not all of the ventures of serial entrepreneurs are successful, and according to K Ganesh, that’s not the point. K Ganesh is one of India’s leading serial entrepreneurs, and he claims that “The previous experience, irrespective of whether it was a success or failure, becomes vital. ‘After going through the entire process of creating a new company, a new team, and new business models and processes from scratch, you are now ready to do something bolder and bigger,’” (Read full article here)

I know a guy who does this for a living and he does quite well. Although, his motives are not purely thrill seeking. He likes helping people fulfill their dreams, so he helps them do it mostly as a financier. He puts up the money to start a company and he gets bought out once the company is on it’s feet. Sometimes the businesses work, other times they don’t, but if you ask him, the experience was worth it every time.