photo credit: Délirante bestiole [la poésie des goupils]

Our clients are so stupid!

Is that your company’s vibe?

If you aren’t sure, ask the people who staff your front desk, sales department and/or customer support/service positions.

At one time, the majority of my software customers were studio photographers.

Their industry was making the massive shift from film to digital. Prior to that, many (if not most) of them had a love/hate relationship with computers. Digital *forced* them to deal with computers and business growth pushed them there as well.

It wasn’t at all unusual for a photographer to apologize for being “stupid” (their words) when asking for help, because they weren’t “experts on computers”.

I reminded them that we’re all stupid about something, noting that I’d look pretty stupid if they started asking me questions about posing, lighting and other technical things about their business. Photographers back then (late 1990s – early 2000s) usually weren’t computer experts and didn’t need to be. Today, technical expertise is a necessity in their business thanks to digital photography and videography.

Unicorns and Clouds

One of my first duties in the technology business was “dealing with users”. I was trained early on that the people on the other end of the phone paid the bills.

Fast forward a few years… A small handful of people are discussing various technology topics and one says “How does one explain to a customer that there is no ‘cloud’? There is only someone else’s remote server. There are also no unicorns.”

Naturally, the wiseguys call this person out for claiming that there are no unicorns, but soon the conversation resumes in technoworld.

At first, this person was reminded that, technically at least, a remote server isn’t the same thing as a cloud.

One tried to keep the conversation civil, wondering aloud if the easiest way to explain it was to ask the customer to “define the word ‘cloud’ as if you could find it in Webster’s dictionary.” He continued noting that a cloud is a group of servers and that the number and location of those servers could vary.

The original questioner remained in “my customer is stupid” mode by commenting that the customer’s data “lives” somewhere and that it isn’t just floating in space, following that with a comment that perhaps a cloud is a “server with blue spray paint and cotton balls.”

It was noted to this person that a cloud and a server are far from the same thing, offering that “a cloud is multiple redundant servers with the ability to fail over, load balance, etc. not just one box in granny’s house out of state”.

That got nowhere and was quickly rebuked by “This customer isn’t that smart. Says he doesn’t want his data on a server, he wants it “in the cloud”. I think he’s watching too many television commercials.” followed by “As I sit here at home backing up my entire website via FTP before updating our shopping cart software, bored silly while it takes forever. Considering how long it’s taking me to back up my website, I can’t imagine why this guy wants ‘cloud’ storage”

Enough!

At this point, I’d heard enough and said this situation shows why he needed to have established a position as the “expert” in his market. His response: “That’s what I like about my other business. The customers don’t presume to know anything about it.”

It was painfully clear at that point that he wasn’t interested in hearing legitimate reasons on his customer’s behalf. He just wanted to whine about a customer others would be glad to have, but I wasn’t done. I noted that his customer’s business might require travel and thus need access from anywhere.

He didn’t care.

I then suggested (with a touch of sarcasm) that his customers might have picked up an airline magazine (which often discuss business topics, given their market) and that he could have defused the whole thing by educating his customers with a pre-emptive “This is a cloud and why you might (or might not) want to use one” blog post.

Your customers want your leadership, not your disdainful, disrespectful scorn. Be their expert, but never underestimate them.

photo credit: write_adam

As I look back over the last 12 years or so, I’m convinced that Scott Dinsmore is exactly right.

None of us have least bit of a clue what we can really do. Not the faintest idea.

On the contrary, we’re all fairly sure what we can’t do. But the whole “can’t” thing is really way too easy. It’s the can that hard.

“Can too”

Remember when you were a kid and your best friend or your brother or sister would get into a silly argument? One of you would say “Can too!”, to which the other would reply with an insightful “Can not!”?

While it sounds a lot like most modern-day political conversations, the same thing goes on inside our heads all the time.

Have you ever put any thought into which one of you wins? I mean the yous inside of you.

Rather than get you all weirded out with touchy-feely stuff, here’s an example.

Except for a couple of months when in Tennessee, I’ve been running several times a week since sometime early this year.

I’d go to the place where I run and get after it on the elliptical or the treadmill (usually both, back to back) until I’d run two or three miles. On a big day, I’d go five. As I got back in the groove from my time out of town, I managed to get 12-20 miles in every week.

Those miles were chipped away at what seemed like a decent enough pace until I was done. Despite the drenched clothes and sometimes grumpy knees, it hit me one day that I was slugging along at a rather generous pace of 11 to 14 minute miles.

Faster than your grandmother, but not what I expected after months. Something bugged me.

Kinda like Monk

It was that danged Nike+ smartphone app.

Like most running/hiking tracker applications, it has a GPS and a motion sensor so it can record your pace and distance.

The troubling part is that there’s a records display and the 10k one was empty. I’m one of those undiagnosed sometimes OCD types about some things (we all have “those things”, it seems) and that empty spot just made me nuts.

One day, I couldn’t take it any more. I decided to fill that box one Wednesday a few weeks back.

Took me 90 minutes the first time. Pathetically slow, but the box was filled with nowhere to go but down (in pace/time). In over 50 years I had run a 10k once.

Two days later, I ran another one. Then a weird thing happened.

My regular run pacing started to shrink like a fat guy locked in a sauna. Instead of 15 minutes on average to do each of slightly more than 6 miles, I started seeing my long run fastest-mile-pace dropping from 12 or 13 minutes per mile to nine and change.

Because I didn’t know I could do that, I guess I just did. The Nike slogan suddenly made more sense than ever before.

Start.

Not all that long ago, a guy told me I couldn’t do something. Said I’d be back in 6 months.

So I did it anyway…12 years ago.

The specifics don’t matter. The lesson is simple: Start. Then don’t quit.

I know…it’s a platitude you’ve heard 1000 times. Have you heeded it?

If you’re going to invest your time, energy and money in something, put it into something impossible, insane, unprecedented, life-changing. Don’t waste all that energy on something that isn’t worth darned near losing your mind over. Do something that’s so killer, so incredibly difficult, so rewarding and yes…so profitable that you don’t have any idea how you’ll make it work.

That hunger has value you can’t imagine.

Start. Now.

Maybe you’ve already started

Your business might be stuck at that 15 minute mile type of plateau. What do you do? How do you go faster, better, stronger? Every week I write about strategies to break through business plateaus.

Is your plateau breaker sitting there like that empty 10k record box?

Sometimes you just have to do something you’ve never done to learn the potential of what you really can do.

Anyone can just plod along. Why not do something impossible?

“When you’re a carpenter making a beautiful chest of drawers, you’re not going to use a piece of plywood on the back, even though it faces the wall and nobody will ever see it. You’ll know it’s there, so you’re going to use a beautiful piece of wood on the back. For you to sleep well at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried all the way through.” – Steve Jobs

What’s your plywood?

PS: Thanks for raising the bar, Steve. Be well.

photo credit: Rob Gallop

Earlier this week, I wrote about breaking down Chet Holmes’ “Dream 100″ list of prospective customers into 10 lists of 10.

What I didn’t tell you was why I break the list down.

Asking you to name 100 random prospects would like result in an impact focused on one thing – “just the sales”.

This set of lists takes you well beyond that. Instead of having to think of 100 ideal prospects, you have only 10 of a specific type to come up with and each one has a context.

More importantly, each of the 10 groups has a specific purpose.

• The 10 testimonial prospects need to be well-known in your market. Influencers. People or companies that, when mentioned, make people think your company hits home runs.
• 10 CEOs you’d learn the most from – Obvious. Good to have their business, but great to have them, effectively, as business partners.
• The 10 biggest upsides will make great turnaround / rags-to-riches stories. Powerful stuff.
• The 10 clients to test your strengths are there because your strengths needed to be pushed – they ARE your strengths, after all.
• The clients to expose your company’s weaknesses are there because you need to be reminded of them and decide whether to let them be or eliminate them.
• Clients with a demanding nature are there to make your team better. Like your strengths, they too need to be pushed.
• The transformational wave of revenue is going to be needed if you get these other things right – because a lot of change is going to come one way or another.
• The 10 clients who need what you don’t have really need YOU. The fact that you don’t yet offer what they need will force you to stretch in your market.
• The 10 clients who wouldn’t likely survive without your help are there for several reasons. They’ll remind you of the small fry you might be ignoring. Maybe they shouldn’t survive without your help. What will you learn from that process?
• The 10 clients who would make you wake up in the middle of the night and think to yourself “I can’t believe I got those guys” are there for all the above reasons. They’ll push most of the buttons the other 90 clients will push – but in different ways.

The real reason that last category is there is to push you and your business well beyond your current boundaries as you see them.

You need to be pushed. You need to realize that you have another level inside your business that you’ve yet to discover.

PS: Getting these 100 clients will establish you as the leader in your market. Other prospects will notice you success, notice who they are and notice what you did to get them. And they’ll want some of that. Which is why you needed to be pushed.

photo credit: ansik

Not often do I post two guest posts in the same day, but this one can’t wait.

The education-related portion of Steps Toward Becoming a Technology Leader: Advice to School Administrators is what originally caught my eye, but the root of the discussion has applications in every business, if not every life.

Good stuff from J. Robinson, the 21st Century Principal.

Yesterday, I happened across this video montage of Will Smith interview clips that has him discussing what motivates him.

His comments on persistence, work ethic and competition are a good listen and well worth the 9 minutes.

Do you have that kind of will power?

photo credit: the half-blood prince

Last week a Flathead Beacon reader sent me a nice note about a column that he liked, and while doing so, posed a question.

He said “One thing I am dying to read from you, is how do you get rid of a pain in the butt client — or a pathological recreational shopper — or the perfectionist from hell — without him or her poisoning your other customers?”

He’s not in for what he probably expected.

In my experience, few clients really, truly need to be fired (aka “gotten rid of”).

Why not just fire them?

Three reasons:

• If they really, truly are worth firing, it’s often easier to get them to fire themselves without any negative consequences for you. Raise the bar on what it takes to become/remain a customer. The benefits of doing this are substantial.
• If they aren’t worth firing but are simply a thorn in your side, it’s the person in the mirror (you and your business) that needs to make changes. Once the thorny customer is satisfied, they usually become one of your biggest fans. I’ve seen it time and time again.
• How hard is it to get a new customer? What does it cost in time, effort and money?

As I said, if they really need to go, I prefer to work things out so that they fire themselves. But that isn’t the question he asked, so let’s address it.

Back to the question

Let’s do the easy one first – The “pathological recreational customer”.

Some things to consider:

• Are they coming into your store just to get warm? Obvious…maybe, but be careful. More on that soon.
• Are they shopping for someone else?
• Are they a mystery shopper?
• Are they investigating but not personally planning to buy? The smart ones aren’t going to tip their hand until price comes up and the business is ready to buy.
• Did they randomly walk into your store?
• Are they doing price comparisons on your store for a competitor? Note: anyone with a smart phone can do this. Get over it. In fact, get over price as the ONLY competitive edge. Part of your edge, fine. All of your edge? Not so fine.
• Is their recreational shopping a burden to your business?

Have you talked to them? “I notice that you like to browse through our store but you haven’t become a customer. Is there something you need that we don’t offer?” and take the conversation from there. Again, be careful. You gain nothing from embarrassing a (potential) customer, but there is plenty to lose.

Keester pain

The next easiest one is the “Pain in the Butt customer”.

Let’s consider the reason they’re a pain. It could be one or more of these:

• The customer is just one of those angry-at-the-world kinds of people.
• The customer is not being treated in a manner that meets or exceeds their expectations.
• The customer is not being treated well by anyone’s definition.
• The customer bought a product or service that doesn’t meet or exceed the expectations you set, which again could mean that you didn’t set any. Sometimes called “merchantability”, we ask the question “Is the product/service reasonably able to solve the problem or fill the need it was being sold for?”
• The customer has unreasonable expectations.

Note the operative word? Expectations. Do a better job of setting them.

The pain in the butt can most often be turned into your best reference by simply becoming their advocate.

Boy, it’s hot in here

The “perfectionist from hell” is the one you’ll be most tempted to get rid of. Problem is, they often fit into the “keester pain” category.

More often than not, they’re really an indicator that your product line or services are missing one or more tiers of service at the high end. Yep. It’s probably an opportunity. Isn’t that cool?

People like this often have high personal accountability standards and (right or not) hold others to those same standards. Your regular products and services at their regular prices aren’t a good fit for them and their appearance of perfectionism is a good indicator of that.

Add another level.

A higher quality product with a greater level of service attracts a customer who might be a perfectionist and is also willing to pay more for that level of quality.

It’s also a great way of defining expectations for the customer BEFORE they make the purchase and allowing them to choose how they’re served.

It’s Chevy Suburban vs. Cadillac Escalade. Both have a market.

photo credit: Fenanov

Once again, Peter Bregman has a story about how to turn around a day, a career, or maybe even a life.

In five minutes.

Check out today’s guest post from Harvard Business Review.

photo credit: kekremsi

Recently, the New York Times published a story about changing prices for books in print and how those prices compare to prices for electronic books.

In particular, the story focused on comparison pricing occurring at Amazon.com for books published both in paperback and for the Kindle, a very popular eBook reader manufactured and sold by Amazon.

The story teaches a very valuable lesson. It starts by quoting customers who automatically assume a lower manufacturing cost for an electronic book, since the incremental cost of producing extra copies appears to be (or close to) zero.

Customers, unaccustomed to seeing a digital edition more expensive than the hardcover, howled at the price discrepancy, and promptly voiced their outrage with negative comments and one-star reviews on Amazon. “Really, James Patterson?” wrote one reader from Elgin, Ill. “Why would it possibly cost more for a digital download than printed and bound ink on paper?”

Nowhere

Nowhere does anyone say anything about the fact that the reader gets the same VALUE from both books.

Nowhere does anyone say anything about the fact that the reader can read the Kindle version on their PC, Jerry’s iPad, Dad’s Blackberry, Joe’s iPhone, Sandy’s iPod Touch or their brother’s Mac.

Nowhere does it talk about the ability to share comments/annotations, read a page on one device and find it in that same place when they start reading the next time on a totally different device.

For that matter, nowhere does anyone note that the value of the book has nothing to do with the cost of ink, paper, binding or electrons.

Neither should the author of a book, regardless of the means used to deliver it.

Oh the cost of it all

Yes, I realize that the printed book seems like it ought to cost more.

After all, someone had to put it in a box, put it on a truck and deliver it to the local bookstore. There’s the cost of the driver, the truck, the fuel, the paper, the ink, the brick and mortar that built the store and so on.

The difference to most is that people typically don’t see the costs invested to deliver the electronic form, all they see is that 1 copy costs no more than 2 copies because it’s just another download.

When people howl about the price of an electronic book, no one considers the amount (much less the cost) of research and development necessary to design the Kindle device and have it manufactured and shipped to the U.S.

They don’t marvel at the costs of the servers and software to support the book’s transport to a wide range of devices and software viewers.

They don’t consider the boardroom and engineering efforts to work out deals with cellular carriers so that the device can download newly purchased books and sync anywhere in the world without so much as a login.

But none of that matters. It’s great evidence. Great talking points.

But it doesn’t matter one bit.

What matters

The value of the content inside the book is what matters.

What if you opened that book and in two hours of reading learned something that changed your life, changed your business or cured a problem you’ve had for years?

Is the allegedly zero incremental cost of that electronic book in any way relative to the value you received from it? No way.

Are professional baseball bats priced like a 2×4? Are a PGA champion’s golf clubs priced like stainless steel and graphite you might find in an auto parts store? Of course not.

So why is it so easy to assume that a printed book is worth more than an electronic version?

Because no one put any effort into convincing you that the electrons (or the paper and ink) don’t even begin to set the value.

98 cents

Your body is worth about 98 cents in “ingredients”.

Going by that measure, Winston Churchill and Einstein are each the equivalent in value of mass murderer Charles Manson.

I don’t think so.

Never let your products/services get to the point where the value you deliver is calculated primarily by the container it’s delivered in and/or the material it’s made of.

photo credit: nukeit1

Today’s guest post from BigThink.com, which might on the surface seem to be about the military and Afghanistan but I think you can look through it with the right lens for your business and find my real message in it.

Hint: It fits nicely with my burden shift discussion earlier this week.

Second hint: Note the teddy bears in the photo.

Fifteen minutes with Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibrary.tv – which means you get some colorful language on occasion – but you also get a dumptruck load of value.

Gary has a way of cutting through the excuses and the cants that few can put into words like he does.

What are you waiting for?

photo credit: dickuhne

Yesterday’s heads up from Mashable about the Southeast Conference’s (SEC) proposed new media policy had the social media world (among others) buzzing in a hurry.

The bottom line? No social media usage will be allowed at SEC sporting events.

What exactly does this mean?

It means no Tweeting from the stadium to your buddy 1500 miles away just to annoy him (even more) about missing the game due to an out of town meeting.

It means no Posterous live blogging from your phone by email.

It means no bouncing, fuzzy YouTube video of your team’s band playing your favorite song (see below), no LSU dance team shots on Flickr ( not even to your daughter who is trying out next year) and absolutely, certainly no pics or video of the Texas Luvs on your Flickr page or photoblog when UT visits your SEC school.

We just talked about the SEC and their new network on ESPN last week, using them to illustrate a lesson for competitive strategy, so it’s interesting to compare that to this because they’re both about competition.

“Protecting the brand”

The spokesperson will talk about how they’re protecting their brand and that their TV network has exclusivity and so on.

And I can understand that. Really, I can. And I understand what happens if you don’t protect and defend your trademarks.

But it’s still a bad idea because it doesn’t build the brand. It doesn’t build fans. It doesn’t engage your fans.

Instead, it ticks them off.

Some would say that the SEC is protecting their members’ brand, but they are already well in control of that.

Don’t believe me? Just try putting a Gator, “‘Bama”, the LSU Tiger or a Razorback on anything for retail sale without an explicit license to do so.

Some would say that social media will cause TV coverage to “leak” viewers (and thus money due to ad buys, etc). While I disagree, it’s easy to see how the SEC would view that as diluting their brand if they approach this from the wrong angle.

Fact of the matter is, it *strengthens* their brand by being everywhere, increasing the ability of fans to become rabid fans by consuming even more information about their team. For rabid fans, its one more way to attempt to satisfy their need for info.

A reader over at Examiner.com hit the nail on the head, noting “This is another case of big business not “getting it”. This reminds me of when the sports venues freaked out about televising sports events because they thought no one would come to the stadiums any more.” (the rest of the comment can be found at the Examiner.com link).

529,000

If I’m SEC Commissioner Mike Slive, I don’t want to find 529 Google hits on “LSU band neck site:youtube.com“, as I found today.

I want to find 52900 or 529,000.

If I stumble across a YouTube video of rural village kids in Ghana calling the Hogs, I’m not furiously dialing the YouTube CEO to complain, instead I’m thrilled that our fans are so rabid that they are spreading the word – even in Africa. I might even have someone dig around and find similar things to show off to the press and fans.

If I’m the SEC commissioner, I want the entire South er no, I mean Nation planet to eat, drink and sleep my conference’s sports.

I want to walk into a street cafe in Paris and hear someone talking about last weekend’s Georgia-Florida game – with a French accent.

I want people clinging to SEC football and basketball long before they start clinging to guns or religion.

And as a little side benefit, I want the other conferences to go to sleep at night dreaming they could do what my conference does.

Jealousy

When we went over the story about the new SEC/ESPN network last week, it was clear that other conferences are ticked off. Even Notre Dame seems torqued, perhaps because they’ve enjoyed that level of exclusivity for years.

The rest of the gang? They wish they had the same “problem” that the SEC has.

Now imagine that you’re the Big12 or PAC-10 commissioner.

First thing you do the day that the SEC announces that wacked-out social media policy?

Fly in GaryVee, call a press conference and have Gary announce a new Big12 social media contest, website, program and what not. We’re gonna show the best ones at halftime and on tv so you can enjoy them as you munch on a big bag of Doritos. Maybe you even come up with a way to get the crowd fired up during the game with crowd-created videos – even those made earlier in the game.

Use your imagination. Remember our “go after their strength” discussion.

Think long term

Perhaps the biggest problem I have with this is the long-term damage that this could cause to SEC schools.

If I’m the guy looking for endowment money or selling season tickets, the last thing I want to hear about is a stadium cop tossing a fan out of a game because they are filming a jerky, not-exactly-1080p high-def video of the Razorback cheerleaders on their iPhone.

If you do that today, that fan will remember that for the rest of their lives.

It is entirely possible that their memory will likely be strongest when you call to ask for endowment/scholarship money, season ticket renewal or when their kid starts talking about going to your school.

A prime example: Former Arkansas athletic director Broyles made numerous and valuable contributions to the rise of Arkansas sports during his accomplished tenure.

Despite that, you don’t have to look far among Arkansas alumni to find someone who vividly remembers the student body being yanked around by Broyles during the last 30 years. Some still stew about it after 2 decades.

So when you find that SEC school’s potential booster and you ask them to help out your school, what kind of memory do you want them to have?

A Frank Broyles moment? A stadium cop moment? Probably not.

Engage and Enable

The SEC should be encouraging discussion and interaction about SEC sports.

They should be engaging new fans and enabling their fervor to grow, rather than finding a new way to tick off an entire generation of college students – the same folks that your successor will be looking at for high $ donors 20-30 years from now.

UPDATE: Seems the SEC has been a tad surprised by the substantial negative reaction to their proposed social media policy. As a result, they’ve relaxed things a bit (Twitter and the like are OK now), but video is still off the table.

photo credit: alterna2

An ideal guest post for America’s Independence Day, Tech Dirt’s coverage of Amanda Palmer’s use of Twitter for grassroots marketing of her music (and other stuff). I hadn’t heard of her until reading the article.

Note: This is not a G-rated article, but it is instructive all the same.

The point of this is to think, much less think unconventionally, consider the resources you have available and most importantly, to communicate with your fans (even plumbers have fans, so don’t think that your business doesn’t).

Regarding naysayers: There will *always* be people who tell you you can’t do it, you can’t sell for that price, you’ll never make it, etc.

They might be partly right: perhaps they couldn’t.

The question isn’t what they can or can’t do, it is…  Can you?

photo credit: jas kaur

Not long ago, I was having a conversation with a photographer friend about a photographer he knew that was in the middle of shooting a Sikh wedding.

I’ve never been to one, but it sounded like it lasts several days and ends up resulting in 6000-10000 photos. Quite a celebration.

I suggested that if one really studied their ceremony, their beliefs and learned more about these things than anyone else in their large community, this photographer would really standout and as a result, dominate that business.

The end result would be to become the #1 expert in photographing Sikh weddings in that area, perhaps nationwide.

My friend said “Standing out is the new normal.”, in effect saying that everyone stands out in that business and that standing out is no big deal these days.

Maybe he’s right, but I haven’t seen that yet.

I believe there is always room – in any market, to do what others won’t do, to learn what others won’t learn and to provide service that others can’t or won’t provide.

As I remarked to him, “even in a room full of billionaires, the 80/15/5 rule holds true.”

In other words, even in a room full of highly-successful people, 5% of them could kick the crap out of the others in business, tennis, mountain climbing or whatever they attempted.

Yet they’d all be billionaires.

To that end, Tom Peters’ site posted “Be irreplaceable” today – definitely worth a read.

photo credit: lepiaf.geo

You like to sing. In fact, you’ve been singing since you were 12.

You’re 47, but at first glance, you look a bit older.

You’ve never been kissed.

You live with your cat.

Kids on your street make fun of you.

She’s real

While it sounds like a stereotype that I made up, she’s real.

She has 4 minutes to change her life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY

Luck? Jim Rohn describes it as the intersection of preparedness and opportunity.

If you had that opportunity in your business, are you ready to hit it out of the park?

Preparation and opportunity. The latter you can’t often control. The former is a different story.

If you had her heart, where would you be?

Be prepared.

Update: A little more about Susan Boyle, the woman featured in the video. She is the youngest of nine children in a coal-mining town, who spent much of her life caring for an aging mother. She was diagnosed with a learning disability as a youngster and was bullied in school. Nobody knew of her talent…except for the patrons of a pub where she sang karaoke, and they were all watching the night she performed on the show, waiting for the world to learn what she could do.

Download audio file (CompetingWithBullwinkle.mp3)

photo credit: FlyNutAA

The other day, one of our dogs chased a huge moose out of the yard.

Who cares, right? Maybe. Read on.

If you haven’t ever seen a moose, they aren’t quite as friendly as Bullwinkle. In fact, they have a reputation for being pretty mean once provoked.

Readers of the Gary Paulsen’s Hatchet series will remember a scene where the moose attacks Brian in a high mountain lake, almost drowning him.

If you remember past posts, you might assume that Blondie, our 85lb+ Golden Retriever/Alaskan Husky mix might be the one who chased the would-be Bullwinkle out of the yard. Even though Blondie can fill the back seat of a Suburban, you’d be wrong if you assumed she was the moose chaser.

It’s an understandable assumption. After all, a full-grown moose typically weighs between 800 and 1300 pounds and stands 6-7 feet high at the shoulder. You’d assume it would take a big noisy dog to scare off something that big and that mean, right?

The trouble with that theory is that Blondie is really of the species doggus fireplacus-snoozus, meaning she’d rather lay in front of the fireplace and snooze.

The dog that chased off the moose? Our Bichon Frise, Gigi (no, I didn’t name her<g>). That isn’t her in the photo above, but the dog in that photo looks just like her.

Gigi weighs all of 8-9 lbs and stands maybe 6″ tall at the shoulder. So I’m looking out the bathroom window into the back 40 and I see this little white wanna-be tasmanian devil yapping her brains out and this moose trotting off while looking over its shoulder looking like it wishes it were in another county.

Here it comes

Yeah, there’s a lesson there. You knew it was coming.

The assumption is that the big competitor can’t be made to blink – or in the case of the moose, can’t be made to take their marbles and go somewhere else.

Many times, that assumption is made because the competitor is “too big to fail”. Bet you’ve heard that a lot lately.

In the case of the moose, that would be my assumption as well. The likely reality is that the moose realized that this little yappy white critter coming after it with fangs bared and a maniacal yap (is that even possible?<g>) not only wasn’t scared of it, but wasn’t going to back off.

Suddenly, whatever brought the moose into the yard simply wasn’t worth it anymore. Trust me, I have those days with Gigi from time to time myself:)

The dirty little secret is that if the moose got close enough to Gigi, she probably would have run for the hills, but coming to that one particular spot just wasn’t attractive enough for the moose to chance it.

The moose doesn’t know what Gigi is capable of, much less willing to do in order to win the battle. Because it really doesn’t need this little corner of Montana in order to survive, it leaves.

Like Gigi, your ability to compete against a large, entrenched competitor is largely up to what’s inside of you.

Do I mean that you can sell more insulin or diabetic socks than Wal-Mart? Probably not.

On the other hand, in your market, you might be able to create a great success selling diabetic supplies to the right market by selling better than they do – simply because of delivery, service, insurance handling, convenience and so on.

Even Wal-Mart has weaknesses – some by design

Ever seen a drive-up window at a Wal-Mart? Ever seen a Wal-Mart delivery vehicle in a neighbor’s driveway?

Even in a market with a large, entrenched competitor, you’ll find things that your competitor is unable or unwilling to do. Things that the customer would be happy to have you do for them as part and parcel of delivering your product or service. There are *some* customers that will gravitate to you because of that.

Others wont care about delivery, drive-up, or whatever you use to differentiate. Let them go. Assuming that everyone is your ideal customer is a great way to bore the market to death (the death being that of your business).

Focus on the clientele who revels in or depends on the differences you offer.

What would your competitor simply hate to find you doing in “their” market? What could they do if they wanted to that would really please their customer – but they wont because of their compliance department, laziness or their business model?

Be the Gigi of your market. Defend your corner of the yard like a maniacal, fluffy little dog that is convinced it cannot lose.

photo credit: SuperFantastic

Imagine getting laid off at 63 years of age simply because you’re old.

Now they won’t tell you that because you could sue them for that. Instead, they lay you off because another (ie: younger) employee doesn’t have to make as much.

Like a kick in the gut, you’d think.

But not for this guy. Despite health issues, a divorce, a failed consulting firm and getting fired simply because he (wink, wink) made too much, Michael Gates Gill proudly says he can make a toilet shine like a Ferrari.

He says “Starbucks saved my life“, but I think he’s wrong. 

More on that in a minute. 

More than ever, service matters

Some businesses offer great service. Some do not.

More often than not, the difference is in the attitude of the person behind the counter. They do what no one else will do (much less try) – just like the dog in the photo. 

In Mr. Gill’s case, the right attitude is really what saved his life – the attitude of both his and those of the people he works with. 

I’ll bet it comes across the counter at his shop. In fact, I’ll bet it impacts the attitude of many of his clientele and causes people to want him to wait on them rather than someone else.

Do you have anyone like that?

photo credit: s-a-m

Jeane Vogel is an artist in St. Louis, a non-profit consultant and a long-time friend. Oh and now, a guest poster here at Business is Personal. 

A few days ago, she wrote this gem entitled “George Bailey, meet Darwin“. 

If you read only one thing this weekend, make it be this.

When I was young, one of my favorite books was Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are. Can’t wait till little Arianna is big enough to deal with the monsters in the book so I can read it to her.

As I was reading Robert Kiyosaki’s finance column on Yahoo today, it hit me that the monsters in the room (in the book) are much like the financial houses and the goverment moves we’re hearing about in the news every day.

More important than my goofy way of relating that odd parallel is a rhetorical question Kiyosaki asks:

How did we become so financially weak that we surrender our economic independence to politicians?

It resonated with me because it echoes what I’ve been saying here for quite some time: Use your business to take control of your own economy.

Enjoy that cup of coffee, kick back and read what the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” guy has to say about the financial bailout and how it affects all of us. Yes, there is a business lesson for all of us there.

PS: I don’t advise reading the public comments on that page. Stay positive and focused.