GarthBox

Most business owners aren’t trying to purposefully neglect their product or service. They didn’t get into business just to screw people over (aside from maybe the pyramid model, but that’s another blog post).

They also can’t be everywhere all the time. So they train their staff to listen (if they are smart). They read the POS system reports to look for anomalies. They survey customers every now and then to see how the business can improve.

Alas, nothing is more important than the customer who speaks up.

The one that asks to talk to the manager to say “This person and experience was wonderful, I really loved X and wanted you to know” or the person who reports “There has to be something wrong with Y. I’ve had it here before and it tastes nothing like it did.”

The responsibility is as much yours and mine as it is the business owner’s.

Most of the time, the best way to make something better is to suggest a way how or point out that something’s wrong in the first place.

 

Stay Positive & It’s On All Of Us

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As you’re listing your business values, the list can get quite long. To help narrow down your list to 3-5 values, consider the following:

Distinguish between your core values and things you value. You may value confidence, but it might not be what you want your business to stand for.

Consider how the values you’ve chosen will help direct your business decisions. How do the values influence the way you work with stakeholders or whether you try to upsell or who you decide to buy product from?

When you’re tight on money or when staff leaves unexpectedly or when you’re getting pressure from stakeholders, how steadfast will you be with your selected values? If you can be convinced to leave your value behind (even if it’s only once), then you might want to consider a different value.

Do you wear the values like badges of honor? Do you mention them right when you start talking to people about your business? Are the values an integral part of your brand story?

 

Stay Positive & What Are Your Core Values

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You can hire a hypnotist to trick you into thinking all your deadlines are sooner than they are.

Alternatively, you can set your own deadlines, incentives for completion and penalties for not.

You don’t need school to have homework assigned. Nor do you need hypnosis to get it done.

It’s all on you.

 

Stay Positive & Own The Privilege

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Tomorrow might not arrive. Your idea may face an environmental force that shuts it down. Your tribe could move on. You may keep procrastinating that task that’s been on your plate for weeks.

There’s a lot of uncertainty around tomorrow, which tends to make one anxious and fearful and all the sudden paralyzed.

You can also view tomorrow as one mile of a longer marathon. That you’ve shaped it to be better than today, but not as good as the day after tomorrow.

You could make your connection to others stronger than ever by caring more. You can do what you need to do today to have more time to do what you love tomorrow.

Perspective on tomorrow has as much impact on tomorrow (it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy) as it does today.

 

Stay Positive & <—

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There’s a highly successful beer bar in Kansas City that refuses to pause operations to accommodate any sort of private event. “I’ve made a promise to my customers when I’d be open. I don’t care if the bar is empty, I will not close,” the owner told me.

To put things in perspective, by hosting a private event, he could make out with more than a daily average profit from remaining open to the public. Alas, he made a promise.

He understands that the promises we break, add up.

A party is for a day, but that one customer he would have neglected could have been a customer for a lifetime.

The same goes for closing early. Opening late. Not answering the phone. Not responding to an inquiry on social media right away. Choosing to staff poor talent. Selling terrible product because you don’t want to bite the bullet of throwing it away. The list goes on; there are hundreds of ways you can break the promise you make to your customers and it adds up.

What’s your promise?

 

Stay Positive & Stick To It

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It makes sense to stay in your same lane while driving, there’s less of a chance of you making a mistake by switching.

Same goes for the work that you do, the exercise you perform, the type of books you read.

Transitions bring only aches and pains… at first.

Then you begin to adapt, get better, and all the sudden you’re rocking and rolling again.

It ought to go without saying that the best way to shorten the aches of transition is to go all in, to welcome transition with resilience and determination to be better at this than you were at that.

And it all starts with understanding that 1. You’re going to be forced to transition, anyway. Such is life. And 2. Aches are often your muscles growing faster than normal.

 

Stay Positive & Worth It?

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Quadrant analysis is a method to classify tasks and whether they are low effort/high effort and low importance/high importance.

The method is often used to prioritize addressing the low effort high importance tasks, but too often one gets curtailed into addressing the low effort and low importance because they are easier; because all those things add up don’t they?

Pro tip: Easy to do? Let someone else do it. Pay a friend,  intern or personal assistant to do it.

Then you can put your attention to where it matters most, where it’s exhausting work but ultimately worth it.

Don’t make the same mistake with your work projects as you do with your personal to-do lists.

We’re all attracted to what’s easy, but it’s not where the real value is.

 

Stay Positive & It Won’t Get Easier, But It’ll Always Be Worth It

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