Thank you Apple, for maintaining your stellar reputation in customer service. I knew you could do it! A couple of weeks ago I shared a rambling tale about how my local laundromat had taken Apple to the cleaners in the customer service department. While my laundromat’s sterling reputation remains intact, I’m happy to say that Apple has reversed their temporary shortfall, at least in my world. And in the process done something I’m always talking about regarding service.

I’ve always argued that simply “doing it right” is not actually the way to build the strongest customer engagement. Most of us EXPECT it to be done right; after all, if someone goes into business to do something, why would they do anything else? I learned this while in restaurant management years ago. Most happy customers say little more than hello and goodbye, and even when you leave comment cards on the table, the most detailed feedback comes from those who had a PROBLEM, not those who had a reliable and positive experience.

The pro-active and positive strategy obviously then is to try to make things EXCEPTIONAL for the customer. Kind of a no-brainer, but also a real challenge to maintain on a day-to-day basis. But if you’ve been in business awhile, you know that the most devoted customers you have are those who actually had a BAD experience, but then had it resolved. It’s a huge trust-builder, and the customer really develops emotional anchors around the experience that make them more like an ally than a customer. This isn’t mere speculation; the idea is backed up by research.

Apple seems to focus very well on that “exceptional” notion from the get-go, by creating remarkable, must-have products that people didn’t even know they needed. And their products are so darn reliable that you really don’t hear much about how they handle problem resolution, you just assume that the one-to-one “genius to customer” ratio you see at any random Apple Store just means it’s all being taken care of. Which is why my little problem was such a shocker, and why – after our little bump – Apple has a new long-term convert.

The short version of the story is that I was slowly becoming an Apple convert thanks to my beloved black MacBook, and just as I was preparing to make some major hardware purchases – which probably all would have been Apple products – I had a major snag with the most basic level of customer service surrounding a known issue with the battery in my MacBook. The service failure was simple in one way, but frankly epic in another. I already outlined it in the previous piece.

But Apple fixed it. How? Well, first I emailed the Apple Store team, Cc-ing Tim Cook, the CEO. I didn’t get a heartfelt response from Mr. Cook or anything, in fact I didn’t get ANYTHING for nearly a week. But then I got an email from the store’s team leader, asking for my phone number so he could call to address the problem. And then we spoke the next day. I joked about not hearing back from the CEO, but he quipped “well I sure did”, and from there he did a fantastic job of addressing my concerns in a genuine, non-patronizing fashion. Which happened to involve replacing the problem battery, and offering to do some quick diagnostics to make sure it hadn’t caused any damage.

Suddenly, this cold and cocky corporation that I loathed was HUMAN again, and I was happy as a clam. How hard was that? Not very, and Apple did it just right. So right that I’m preparing to make nearly ten grand in hardware purchases with them, purchases which could just as easily have gone to the less-expensive, and less prestigious competitor. And almost did. What do I mean by “doing it right”? They addressed the problem thoroughly and directly, with people-driven earnestness, and without making the frustrated customer jump through hoops.

How many times have you had the experience of a waitperson or clerk feeling compelled to make excuses, elaborate explanations, or perhaps even questioning your honesty when you have a simple, legitimate gripe? Probably a lot. What a lot of business owners overlook is the short term cost of making one customer happy vs making that customer unhappy. Maybe you’ve heard of Pete Blackshaw’s book Satisfied Customers Tell Three Friends, Angry Customers Tell 3,000. Or maybe not, but those in the know realize that the one giveaway that seems like a losing move is actually the WINNINGEST move you can make. The damage that can be done by that one negative voice has a much more tremendous ripple effect than any positive voice, mostly because that angry person screams and rants, and often STAYS angry,

That’s where Apple came through; they acknowledged the problem, and FIXED it, with no fuss, and no platitudes. In this case giving me a free replacement battery for a device that was well out of warranty. A very generous gesture on one hand, but at the probable cost of about 60 bucks versus the outcome of losing thousands in revenue later, a sensible “investment”.

Apple gets the added benefit that I’m not the kind of person who only rants about negative stuff, I rant even MORE about positive stuff.

Thank you Apple, you rock.

Recently I had to face some uncomfortable facts. As someone who is working hard on creating a Personal Transformation System with my pal Nick, part of my goal is to help others be organized, focused, happy, successful, and motivated. But ironically, I suddenly found myself disorganized, unfocused, unhappy, and not feeling especially successful. At least I was still motivated! But what had happened?

Being Organized – The Map is not the Road

One of the little dangers of having a lot of organizational tools is that if you’re not careful, you spend more time working on planning than actually DOING things. I’ve always been alert to this; I’ve seen people spend weeks setting up software like ACT! and then using it for nothing more than storing contacts. Or setting up QuickBooks, and using it primarily as an invoice generator. Or loading up their smartphone with email functionality, and then never being able to find a message or attachment on their phone OR their computer.

Another thing you may run into once you do a lot of elaborate planning is that you probably have lots of deadlines – some of which affect each other, some of which don’t relate to others at all! Your head can quickly become a spaghetti bowl of overlapping timelines and goals, and leave you feeling more disorganized and plan-less than if you had never organized a plan! It’s like driving down the freeway with a bunch of maps on your lap, but not knowing what town you’re in.

Scope Creep and Product vs. Process – The Destination is not the Road Either!

If you have a “one widget business”, I envy you. Sometimes I’m tempted to chuck all my activities, and open a chocolate chip cookie shop. I know there’s a demand, I make a pretty mean chocolate chip cookie, and what could be more fun than baking cookies all day! Plus, you could make employee performance jokes with your staff constantly, like “whaddya want, a COOKIE?” But alas, I am gifted/cursed with a brain that explodes with pretty decent ideas on a regular basis, and my real challenge is filtering things down to the achievable ones and focusing on them.

Most of what I’m about to say would be different if my ventures were well-capitalized, but like many of us, my business is about 80% sweat equity at the moment. So the problem arises when I take one of my product ideas and walk it through the logical steps. I’m going to reference some basic items here that you may have to work through to roll out a product. They may overlap, they may not ALL be necessary as discrete steps, but they all are necessary in ONE way or another. And the list is by no means all-inclusive:

Creating the Product:

Ideation & Conceptualization
Prototyping/Designing/Outlining
Sourcing Services/Materials
Package Design
Setting up production

Taking it to Market:

Identifying place in market
Marketing
Sales
Advertising

Okay, that’s already a lot of stuff. I’m lucky in a way, in that I have the skills and knowledge to execute almost all of those tasks. But that can also quickly devour me. Walking a single product or service through this is not rocket science, it’s just work and persistence. But what if it’s necessary to create two or three products at the same time? Or if – as is often the case these days – the product is sort of a marketing piece in itself, and is interdependent with other products, services, or marketing strategies that have to be rolled out at the same time? Like social media, websites, seminars, and an actual retail product? Where do the product and business end, and the marketing and sales begin?

This is where I personally got derailed recently; as well as trying to wrap up some other projects, I was creating a book with Nick. After completing the writing and distribution arrangements for the book, we got so focused on marketing the thing that we kind of forgot that it wasn’t our magnum opus, or even a “core product”. It was originally meant to be a vehicle for building out our production and sales channels, and creating a standard product development process. In this case for a book. It should be simple – write the book, find a way to publish and distribute it (we did, it’s on Amazon now), and then do some promotion. But several things then came into play. They can be summarized with a just a few concepts:

Robot-Brained Marketing Strategies

Be thorough, but use some common sense or simple analysis before you roll out that multi-platform marketing campaign! Just because we have hundreds of marketing channels at our disposal doesn’t mean we have to utilize them ALL. There’s a strong tendency at present to put a lot of effort into “social”, i.e. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, etc. Facebook in particular is a possible paper tiger and time-sink rolled into one. Yes, there are a HALF BILLION USERS. But how can you really connect? Sharing in your own network? Maybe, but that’s likely to come across as spam. Advertising? Sure. So you place an ad. It better have lots of cha though, or you’re wasting your time. And assuming you DO get users to click, where do you take them? To a page to buy a product? Why would they do THAT? Is it remarkably unique? Is it REALLY CHEAP? Is there some other reward? I’m focusing on Facebook here, because it’s still so popular right now, but I could do the same with any channel that one might think is of value as a marketing tool. CHOOSE YOUR CHANNELS INTELLIGENTLY.

There are 168 Hours in a Week

I learned that with my very first business, a small 24/7 telecom company. Most people sleep at least 56 of those hours. That leaves 116. Subtract about 21 hours for eating-related activities, and you have 91 left. If all you want to do with your life is eat, sleep, and work (like me, apparently) then you’re all set. But seriously. When do you plan to execute all these crazy marketing ideas? Assuming you already have a product, how long does it take to create a good campaign, with decent images and copy? How long does it take to actually place the ads? If the marketing ideas are meant to generate user-engagement, how much of that can be fully automated? Do you have time for the parts that can’t if you get a good conversion rate? Have you scripted all the nice responses for your registration thank you emails? After you’ve laid out all these plans and executed them, ask yourself – could you have sold more copies of your book by standing on a street corner for the same amount of time? BE REAL ABOUT TIME AND USE IT WELL.

Are You Happy?

Oh yeah. Isn’t that why we started a business in the first place? Of course, there’s that whole “making money” thing, but let’s face it. Unless you’re fueling a business with outside capital (an entirely different game) you’d probably make a lot more money with a high-paying job than by starting your own business. So you might as well be ENJOYING things, right? And that, to me, is the number one priority. It’s just that my passion for keeping things moving, doing things in the smartest way possible, and being as thorough as possible can all work at cross purposes. If you ever find yourself in the same boat, step back and ask yourself some reasonable questions:

Am I doing too many things at once?
If so, thin things out, and extend deadlines if necessary. Give things the attention they deserve.

Who made these deadlines, anyway?
Oh yeah. That was me. And I’m a FREAK. Let’s just revise those a bit when needed!

Is this task even in the right bucket?
Don’t confuse advertising with marketing, or marketing with sales, even though they overlap.
Don’t confuse website development with product development. Unless of course the website IS the product.

Am I thinking like a businessperson?
This gets me a LOT. I love some of the creative work I do so much that I often forget that time equals money.

Can I outsource this?
Just because you have the skills to do something doesn’t mean you’re the best person to do it.
Could someone do it just as well, and a lot faster?
Can you AFFORD to outsource it? If you’re not prepared to pay to have it done, ponder its value in the first place.

Are you enjoying your work?
Because no-one is MAKING you do it.
Take a break and hit a lot of reset buttons if you need to.
Get back to the things that launched you on the journey in the first place.

When you find the right path, you’ll know it, because success, happiness, and wealth will simply be happening.

Visit KickYourAss101.com to learn more, or pick it up on Amazon.

What’s stopping you from doing it? Is it money? Time? Is there some class you need to take first, or some kind of equipment you need? It seems like everyone we know has a dream or a business idea, but precious few seem to execute the ideas and make the millions they think that idea is worth. I’ve been as guilty of this as anyone at points in my life; but what is it that stops us from pursuing the grand visions in our hearts and heads?

It’s Not A Lack Of Tools

I regularly marvel at the fact that we actually accomplish so little given what is available right at our fingertips. I sometimes think that maybe it’s the VERY AVAILABILITY of these tools that prevents us from doing things. I’m going to use a few examples, ranging from the small and personal to the grand and history-making.

The Small & Personal: My Magazine

Ever since I was a teen (before personal computers even existed) I’ve had a sort of fantasy about publishing a magazine. I mean a real, turn-the-pages, high quality magazine. I’ve realized a less-tangible version of that dream in creating sites like the one you’re on right now, or my pop culture site Dissociated Press. But the funny thing is that the only time I created a real, physical publication was way before I had all the amazingly powerful tools that are right inside the average personal computer these days. In the 80′s, I did a short run of a self-published magazine with a few friends. We used dry transfer letters, cut-and-paste, and TYPEWRITERS! It actually didn’t look too shabby. We would print it at the local copy shop and hand-assemble it. And I would argue that the challenge of thinking it wasn’t possible is what drove us to actually do it! Meeting and arguing about layout and content, having to actually MAKE SOMETHING WITH OUR HANDS really put a special spin on it. I could open Creative Suite 5 right now and get to work on a new magazine, and in spite of the fact that I could actually create a print-ready publication, the process would feel empty, and distant, and theoretical. And I’m probably not going to do it any time soon.

The Grand & History Making

Two amazing things happened back in the sixties. One was that a lot of people suddenly sensed that something was wrong in our culture. That people should be treated more equally, and that maybe we needed to be a little more responsible to the world around us, and our fellow humans. The other was that someone pointed at the moon, and said “let’s go there!”, and for some crazy reason a bunch of other people agreed. So a civil rights movement was born, with no Internet, no cell phones – hell, no PHONES in many cases, and around the same time, a bunch of people got together and built a bunch of 300 foot tall rockets to send men to the moon, three at a time. Can you imagine either of those things happening today?

Source

As the humorous internet meme featured above points out, available technology seems to have little impact one’s actual desire to DO something. I would argue the same about other momentous and brave acts through history. GPS is available all over the world. The “G” is for “global”, in case you forgot. Can you imagine what Magellan’s journey was actually like? No electronic navigation, no idea what weather lay ahead, no ENGINE for cryin’ out loud! Heck, before Magellan, that whole “globe” issue was still a hotly debated topic itself. Or the Declaration of Independence? Setting pen to paper – when a “pen” was a fancy stick that you dipped in ink and used to scratch words onto animal skin – was a far different process in those days. It’s pretty likely that you had put some thought into things before you bothered creating an actual document. Can you imagine the founding fathers hunched over Microsoft Word 76, typing, deleting, trying to get the typeface right, with Clippy popping up saying “You appear to be trying to write a declaration of independence, would you like help with that?”

So What Is It That Really Makes Things Happen?

I’m going to take a stab at this, and then turn around and see if anything I’m pursuing passes muster. Feel free to chime in with your own thoughts; when I’m done with THAT assessment I might have lots of time on my hands to post and review your ideas.

Vision vs Seeing

If you just look at the moon, and say “wow, that is really beautiful”, that’s kind of a nice thing. But there’s no vision in just seeing. Vision would be “That is really beautiful! I must paint a tribute to it!” or “That is an amazing recurring sight in the sky! I must erect Stonehenge!” or “Wow, that looks amazing! I think I will go there!” Seeing a problem or a possibility is hardly the same as DOING something about it, and the impetus to act usually comes from a vision. A dream. A hoped for outcome that is larger than simply accomplishing the original task. As in the case of a civil rights movement, where the real dream was a better world MADE POSSIBLE by equality, not simply creating equality for its own sake.

Insurmountable Challenge

I would argue that intrinsic to many truly worthwhile ventures is a significant – if not insurmountable – challenge. Sure, you know that if you REALLY WANTED to, you could use email, Twitter, Facebook, and direct mail to launch a product or promote an idea. But will you? Even a lot of people who really aggressively put these ideas to work fail. But what if you found out your child or other loved one was going to die within 30 days, and the only way they could be saved is if you raised enough money for a special procedure. I bet you’d take all this knowledge and MAKE IT WORK. Or figure out an even more clever way to achieve your goal. Illumination without fire? IMPOSSIBLE! Human flight? IMPOSSIBLE! Cure Polio? IMPOSSIBLE! The list of things that were achieved exactly because they were impossible is quite lengthy. What’s the challenge in your dream? Is there one? If there isn’t, what will drive you to realize such a dream?

Planning, Passion, Purpose & Persistence

Planning things can be critical to making things happen, but plans are useless without the other three “P” words above. The “purpose” of going to the moon was probably not just to study the place, grab a few rocks and come back with them. Arguably the greater “purpose” was a massive proof of concept of two globally competing ideologies, i.e., capitalism and communism. The fact that human values seemed to be at stake imbued the venture with a sense of purpose, and gave participants the passion and persistence necessary to achieve the goal. Do you know the root of the word “passion”? It’s from the Late Latin word “passio”, which means “suffering” and “submission”. If you’ve ever passionately pursued something, you know that being passionate doesn’t mean you’re just intensely drawn to something, it means you’re willing to suffer for it. There are reasons that people have an almost religious relationship with the products of companies like Apple. Sure, the company is fundamentally driven by the same motives as other tech companies, but the reason the iPad is the iPad and other tablets are still just tablets is largely because of the passion and sense of purpose the creators embodied. Aside from the intense commitment to excellence that Steve Jobs imbued in his underlings, the iPod, iPhone, and iPad weren’t just refined versions of existing devices or concepts, they had visions of a greater purpose that drove them far beyond the hardware. They were all tools for massively distributing content and applications that people were hungry for, something other tablet makers still don’t seem to have grasped, except perhaps in the case of the Kindle.

So as I said above, feel free to chime in. Unless I can actually apply all these ideas to my OWN ventures and not scrub them the same day, I’m going to have a lot of leisure time soon.

In the end though, all this talk of eastern belief probably muddles a really great practical tool for better living, which is to stop looking outside so much for someone or something that is going to give you some tidy answer. You don’t need to go to business school to start a business, you don’t need to go to church or temple to believe in God, and often, the solution to a problem is either staring you in the face or lingering nearby. You just have to develop the openness and awareness to recognize and accept it.

As a kid, did you ever see the “Goofy Gophers” cartoon, in which the two characters Mac and Tosh were so incredibly considerate that it seemed they would never accomplish anything, always saying things like “You first, my dear,” and “But, no, no, no. It must be you who goes first!”, or agreeing with each others’ unnecessarily complex phrases with a hearty “Indubitably”? I was recently reminded of these two rascally but respectful rodents as I sat in on a meeting of a group of political activists. I use the term “activist” loosely; in spite of the fact that I vigorously support the aims of this particular group, I doubt they’ll ever accomplish anything, and I find sitting in on meetings with them almost excruciating. Why? Because of a phenomena we’re all at least a little familiar with, i.e., the dreaded groupthink.

Collectivity & Cooperation vs Procedural Paralysis

I’ve always been a team player myself. In fact, one of the cornerstones of the method I bring to any work I do is the demand that all involved parties are committed to the good of the task at hand, and not bound by their ego-driven attachment to the ideas they have about it. I believe in that mysterious “It Factor”, the idea that for virtually everything around us, there’s a best natural manifestation of the “soul” of the thing, whether it’s the sculpture that a certain piece of marble should be, or the way a song should be played by a particular group at a certain moment, or the way a room should be arranged. Or the results of a group of people’s collective action. But this is a fine balance. Being respectful of everyone involved in something does not, in my opinion, mean that everyone deserves a 100% equal voice. I’ve always known this theoretically, but had never seen it in action until recently. The main problem with attempting absolute consensus is two-fold, and will manifest in the worst way when 1.) A really bad idea is the first one agreed upon for consideration, and 2.) the group maintains 100% commitment to respecting the possible validity of the idea and the input of everyone involved, no matter how inane their perspective is. In the case of the group I was working with recently, matters were made worse by the fact that even the basic procedures of the meeting were open to discussion, so before even discussing any action, literally an hour was spent on discussing discussion procedure.

Benevolent Dictators & Ego Collisions

Although I’m a big fan of the “benevolent dictator” in many situations – a great film director or stage manager are great examples – if a group is committed to 100% consensual processes, there are probably only two solutions – which I’ll get to in a moment – and which won’t allow for well-intentioned assertiveness. The common response of someone who sees this paralysis occurring and actively tries to fix it is usually implosively catastrophic. The person will usually preface what they say with “I have over X number of years experience with” and then explain why the thing they’re saying is so valuable to the group. Even if it IS valuable to the group, the only word the group hears is the “I”, and even if the person only uses the word twice at the beginning to say “when I did this I”, the group only hears the word echoing cavernously throughout the room as they imagine the person’s head swelling like a cartoon as they self-aggrandize, wondering when they’ll ever shut up so the group can get back to groupthinking.

Assertions As Questions

This is the oldest managerial trick in the book; everyone knows that the best way to get someone to do something is to ask them, and that people will be most on board with something when they feel like it was their idea. If a group has actually CHOSEN groupthink as their preferred method though, the only hope of re-directing the train of thought is to find some incredibly passive way of injecting a new idea. And this is dangerous ground. The problem is that the flawed thinking of the group is usually so painfully obvious that it almost enrages the parties who see the problem, so it’s almost impossible to actually assert an idea, even if it is completely based on verifiable facts. The idea has to be posed as a question about a possibility, and one has to tread lightly to avoid being bluntly critical of the existing trainwreck that is already in motion, or risk being permanently and subtly ostracized or marginalized by the group.

Or You Can Take Your Marbles And Go Home

Depending on what’s at stake, and how bad the groupthink is, it may be worth sticking around and being patient. And patient you will have to be, because the kind of material that’s often referenced for consensus decision making is material like this Seeds for Change Guide for Consensus Decision Making. The methods themselves will be alien to many, and the procedures are elaborate, so you can easily spend hours just outlining procedures and training the facilitators to implement them. And who will still be around at that point to listen? Well, probably not me. As a person with a strong team spirit, I like actually playing the game, and maybe WINNING, and have no desire to disrupt the fun of others. I’m probably more apt to take my marbles and go play elsewhere. And I think it’s important to realize that this can be as productive and cooperative as staying and acquiescing to the group. Chances are that unless you’re literally maladjusted in some way, there are probably other people in the group who feel the same way, and you can start a new game with them!