Demons or Angels?

This evening I spoke with a friend and colleague who is struggling with an up and down, feast and famine cycle of selling behavior. Without getting into any confidential details I can reveal that there were times in this person's past when he was very motivated and performed well but the source of the motivation seemed to come from fear. There were situations in his life that were so awful that he was always on the edge with heightened awareness, always watchful and always proactive to keep things in control.

Those awful situations have been mostly removed but now it seems that whenever he starts to exhibit the champion behavior that he had before there ensues a self-sabotaging pattern. There seems to be a mental association with the past; when he has that same clarity of perception, that winning behavior, the specter of that horrifying past comes rushing back.

This isn't necessary. All we have to do is to replace old pattern with new ones. An excellent strategy for doing this is the Swish Pattern, something I learned in NLP classes. You'll find a good description of the system in Tony Robbins' book Unlimited Power (see the bookstore). I believe it's on page 113.

The important point is that we can be motivated by fear or love. Both will get us into action. But love will grow us and we can move toward it. Fear only diminishes us and we tend to move away from it - it rules us.

Can I Breathe Now?

We use a lot of long distance around here so when I got an offer from Skype for their unlimited US/Canada Internet phone service for $29.95 a year we decided to give it a try. We really like Skype's IM function: V and I, though our desks are just a few steps from each other, still often prefer to use IM to avoid inappropriate interruptions in each other's work.

That was two days ago. Although my charge was processed moments after clicking submit I am still Skype-phone-free.

V pointed out "The Skype logo on their homepage says 'take a deep breath.' How long am I supposed to hold this?"

I wandered into the Skype forum and found an insurrection in process. The closest thing I found to a calming voice was a post with a link to the following email:

"We have been experiencing longer than usual delays with payments made by credit cards. These payments stay listed as Pending in our system as we are processing them. Normally, credit card payments should be processed within 15 minutes but in some cases it has taken a lot longer.

You can view the status of your orders here:
https://secure.skype.com/store/myaccount/orders.html

We are working hard to process all the orders quickly and apologise for the inconvenience that this has caused

Kind regards,

Skype Customer Support"

Can't you just smell the condescension?

I have no idea where the person got this email, though she seems to keep reposting it time after time. (She apparently runs a "Skype Based Business" and calls herself a "skype hugger".) All I have received is an autoresponse saying, in effect, got your money, sit on your hands which is supposed to make it OK that the word "pending" on my account status page is starting take on a decidedly stale and moldy appearance.

Here was my response to the above post:

I signed up for Skype a couple of days ago and after experiencing the same mixture of aggravation, confusion, and finally anger people have been venting on this forum I started poking around in here.

Ma'am, I know you are a Skype based business. I am certain you have had wonderful experiences with them or you wouldn't be betting the farm on them. But what is going on here reminds me of the recent debacle with Jet Blue. You have terminals full of tired and hungry travelers and no one is really in control enough to manage the apparent melt-down Skype seems to be going through. But there is one BIG difference. Jet Blue's CEO Tom Neeleman had the backbone to go on the record in public that they had screwed up and he fell on his sword over the debacle.

The people behind Skype are conveniently hiding behind autoresponders. Seems pretty spineless to me. At the very least, stupid.

Wherever you are, stop cowering and show some cajones. Tell people straight up what is going on, what you are doing to fix it or offer immediate and unconditional refunds. You have screwed up so step up and take your medicine.

For me, I expect to treat the $29.95 as if I lost it on a ball game. I will also sniff around forums like this a bit in the future before I get involved.

OTOH, I've got some GREAT material for my blog - this has the potential of turning into one of the big customer service SNAFUs of 2007.

Now, I really do like Skype, But REALLY!

(Vicki, you can breathe now.)

Some People Are Perfect for the Job

A recent post in Marketing Profs asks:

"Does your front-line staff embody the image that you want to project to the world?"

I think we could all look in the mirror and ask that question on a daily basis. But let's ask another question first, i.e., "What is the image we want to project to the world?"

I've worked with companies that want to hire to fill a position and, typically after they have suffered through some disastrous decisions, finally agree to let me help them profile the JOB first. I am not surprised when I get the feedback from various people within the company to find marked differences among the perceptions of a job's requirements. The ensuing frank conversation typically leads us to a clearer and more honest description of what the job requires, and then they are more likely to fit the candidate to the position.

But back to the mirror. What are we really telling the world about us on our front line? And are we consistent with it?

There is a brew-pub in my area that I used to patronize on a regular basis. I loved their beer. It was always fresh, and they have some great variety. But they had two major weaknesses in their operation that eventually drove me away.

First was the wait staff. You never knew what you were going to get, and it would just drive you crazy anticipating (sometimes dreading) what you might have to endure to get your order. I learned who the pro's were and always asked to be seated in their section. But even that didn't work because they might not be on the shift or they had just moved on to another job. The inconsistency was unsettling.

The second problem was the inconsistent menu. You might order the same menu item, say a cheeseburger, and one time you would get curly fries, another regular fries, and maybe another time fries more like chips. One time when I was there for Sunday brunch they informed me the cook didn't know how to poach an egg (they had to find a manager to tell him what it was), the English Muffin was replaced with a white cupcake with colored sprinkles, and to make up for the fact that the order took a VERY LONG TIME to fill they piled my plate with four times the normal portions of home-fry potatoes. I have not been back there for several years. It just got too bizarre.

There is another restaurant in the neighborhood (OK, it's a bar) called J. Gilligan's that does not brew but has a good selection and where you always know what you are going to get. Even when there is staff turnover there is still consistency to the way they handle your order. And you know what you are gong to get when you order your "regular."

Likewise with my local coffee house, The Coffee Haus in Arlington. I once patronized a local competitor who followed a similar path as the pub described above. I finally threw up my hands and found this great place right around the corner with great staff, reliable ambiance and free WiFi. I always know what I am going to get. See that smiling face up above? That's the way it always feels.

Thus, I keep coming back.

These people know who they are, get the right people to represent that, and do it consistently.

What Entrepreneurs Do on a Snow Day

I never had the privilege of participating in the undergrad high jinx of my alma mater’s annual Groundhog Day celebration. (Being a commuter student on a live-in campus is serious non-fun.) I’m told the festivities consisted largely of drinking beer on a wooded lot near the campus, but these days it seems to have turned into a full-fledged, capital ‘e’ Event. I remember with fondness and a little jealousy the enjoyment I saw my academic colleagues having every year on this date as they stumbled into class wearing watch caps and muddy shoes. There was little or no discussion of Punxsutawney Phil, but something unusual had definitely happened in that ever-so-serious environment.

Even then, though, holidays were something I tended to overlook in the task list. Holiday? Snow day? Time to catch up on the pre-reading and maybe log some overtime on the night job. Heck, there was never so much snow in Texas that you couldn’t work someway if you were committed to it.

The Groundhog Holiday (or “Observance,” if you prefer) also makes me think of the wonderful movie, “Groundhog Day” with Bill Murray. Now, this one is never going onto the classics lists with “Citizen Kane” or “Gone with the Wind,” but it does convey a message of doing and redoing what matters until you get it right to which a lot of us – especially the entrepreneurs – relate.

So, what do entrepreneurs do on a snowy Groundhog Day? We re-do things!

During the last few weeks of inclement weather, the Coach and I have been making hay while the sun fails to shine.When you work for yourself, you may run short on time but you never run short on potential improvements. Providing a better and better place for accomplishments to happen is key to the environment we want for our clients as well as for ourselves. It’s this relentless, fanatical commitment to and fascination with what you do that makes the risks of owning your own business plausible and, in the end, supremely rewarding. So, rain or shine, we do and re-do what we do, always striving to produce a place for excellence to happen.

Over the last several weeks, we have been busily at work revamping the JUMProductions website. Clients have always known there was good stuff there, but if you go there, you’ll see that the look has changed a lot. More visual thanks again to our contributors and a little better layout. We’d been told we weren’t making what we actually do for people obvious enough, so we’ve re-worked it. We hope this is better.

So what about the Groundhog?

The bigger Groundhog message, for me, is that if you find yourself reworking and revising and tweaking stuff, if people who aren't of the same mindset as you wonder why you don’t just “give it a rest,” don’t argue with them, but don’t give yourself any grief over your personal desire to produce something astonishing either. You’re not alone. That burning desire for the best from ourselves can make the work a reward in itself and our achievements confirmations of time well spent. We know many people like that, and we like them a lot.

As to the site, if it’s not just right, we’ll just do it again!

(By the way, in case you missed it, this was the soft rollout of the new site.)

When the World is Not Flat: Attitude vs. Altitude

I just got a well-thought out and insightful email from my good friend, Richard at the Minker Company Richard D. Minker Company. It referenced The World is Flat by Tom Friedman and the story therein of Jet Blue Airlines. Here's a snip from his note to me:

Anyway it spoke to the fact that all airlines pretty much fly at the same altitude. Jet Blue's philosophy is that it is "Not the Altitude, but the Attitude" that is the reason for their success.

This is the kind of Top Down thinking I believe is the tipping point in becoming a great company.

It begins with who you are, what you stand for (i.e., your values) and the vision you have for the world and your place in it. My recent reading and thinking has lead me to the conclusion that the idea of "brand" is passe, maybe even irrelevant. Why? Because it speaks to a superficial rendering of the core of a company; the mere manifestation if you will - the perception. What really matters is the Vision/Mission/Values.

When I think of the great business leaders I always have an experience of someone defining how things are or should be, i.e., A Vision. It is usually huge, outrageous, and amazingly appealing and attractive. It pulls you into it. And it also has a special magical effect - it compels action. Because of the energy that it provides (to those who are drawn to it anyway) putting legs on the mission (the how, the action plan) becomes compelling, even an obsession.

You get the right people on that bus (sharing the values and drawn to the vision) and they will do anything humanly possible to get it to its destination. And along they way they may just redefine what "humanly possible" means.