Kemmons Wilson’s 20 Tips for Success

• Work only a half a day; it makes no difference which half-it can be either the first 12 hours or the last 12 hours.
• Work is the master key that opens the door to all opportunities.
• Mental attitude plays a far more important role in a person’s success or failure than mental capacity.
• Remember that we all climb the ladder of success one step at a time.
• There are two ways to get to the top of the oak tree. One way is to sit on a acorn and wait; the other is to climb it.
• Do not be afraid of taking a chance. Remember that a broken watch is exactly right at least twice every 24 hours.
• The secret of happiness is not doing what one likes, but in liking what one does.
• Eliminate from your vocabulary the words, “I don’t think I can” and substitute “I know I can”.
• In evaluating a career, put opportunity ahead of security.
• Remember that success requires half luck and half brains.
• A person has to take risks to achieve.
• People who taker pains never to do more than they get paid for, never get paid for anything more than they do.
• No job is too hard as long as you are smart enough to find someone else to do it for you.
• Opportunity comes often. It knocks as often as you have an ear trained to heat it, an eye trained to see it, a hand trained to grasp it, and a head trained to use it.
• You cannot procrastinate-in two days, tomorrow will be yesterday.
• Sell your wristwatch and buy an alarm clock.
• A successful person realizes his personal responsibility for self-motivation. He starts himself because he possesses the key to his own ignition switch.
• Do not worry. You can’t change the past, but you sure can ruin the present by worrying aver the future. Remember that half the things we worry about never happen, and the other half are going to happen anyway. So, why worry?
• It is not how much you have but how much you enjoy that makes happiness.
• Believe in God and obey the Ten Commandments.

A Complaint is A Gift!

It is a Friday and the first real snowfall of the season in Upstate New York. The weather forecast of 2 inches of snow turned into 6. By one p.m. my feet are wet and I can see the reason, a crack in my boots. At the end of my sales calls, it is time to look for new boots. We have a long winter here and wet feet put a real damper on my enthusiasm. Cold and tired I entered the Army and Navy store.

In the shoe department I meet Christine and she started with a warm smile and sincere hello. She asked if she could help me. Then she started asking questions. What type of work am I in? How long am I usually on my feet during the day? What type of surfaces do I walk on? Am I indoors or outdoors and for how long? What am I looking for in a boot?  What type of problems have I encountered with boots or shoes in the past? She used empathy stating how frustrating it must have been with wet feet all day.  WOW!  Five minutes before I was tired, wet and unhappy. Now I was interested and engaged. Christine, through the use of questions helped me design the solution to my problem. Within minutes she brought me several boots that would fit my criteria and a new pair of dry socks with which to try the boots on with. She suggested I walk around the store a few times to try them out. Twenty minutes after entering the store I had dry feet, new $125 boots and a smile.

On the following Friday, walking across the street to my office I became conscious of limping on the right foot. As I thought about it, I remembered limping the day before. On entering the office, I took the boot off and saw red around my ankle bone. This should not happen with new boots. Around 5pm I entered the same Army and Navy store without a smile and a sore right foot. Christine came up, smiled, and asked how I liked the boots. I took off the right boot and showed her my red ankle bone and explained how I had been limping the last two mornings. Christine stated how uncomfortable that must have been for me. She asked me to wait so she could find the store manager. I looked down at my scuffed up boots thinking that these could not be resold and how was this situation going to turn out? The store manager came over and apologized for the inconvenience. She told Christine to make me a happy customer. Christine offered me a replacement pair of boots or a store credit. I asked for the same style and tried those on. They seemed to fit well. I walked around the store for 15 minutes. She suggested I wear them indoors for a few evenings to make sure they fit well before wearing them outside. She thanked me for making her aware of the problem. I have been very happy with this second pair of boots. I am now a loyal customer for this Army and Navy store. Christine had taken what was a lemon and made it into lemonade.

What are the two business lessons for you?

#1 Engage your customers. Ask pertinent questions. Listen to what they say. The proper questions in the correct order will lead the customer to their own solution. How can they not invest in the solution to their problem, once they have already come up with the solution themselves?

#2 In life and in business things will break. Things will go wrong. Be prepared. Be sincere, thoughtful, and caring. Have a detailed plan for taking care of complaints. Take the customer’s side and come up with a solution to their problem. Make it easy for customers to do business with you. Thank customers for giving you a complaint because studies show that only 1 in 26 will tell you when they are unhappy. Research shows that it is 4-5 times more costly to find a new customer than in keeping an existing one. Look at the dollar value of that customer over their average life cycle. When you add up 5, 10, 15 years of sales to that customer what are they worth to you? By complaining, your customer is doing you a favor. They are giving you a chance to take care of the problem before they shop elsewhere. You can eliminate the competition by being a Christine.

“Don’t give back, JUST GIVE” quote from author Nido Qubien.

Thanks Christine for the business lessons and the happy feet.

How are you planning to have your best year ever?

Ray Kroc the founder of the McDonalds franchises stated “as long as you’re green, you’re growing. As soon as you’re ripe, you start to rot. Are you green and growing or ripe and… rotting?” What are you planning so you will stay green?

Leonardo da Vinci was one of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance period. He was an inventor, an artist, a teacher and known around the world for his paintings of the Last Supper and the Mona Lisa. Would it be safe to say Leonardo da Vinci was green and growing, a real success? Do you know what Leonardo da Vinci, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Hillary Clinton and Bill Gates have in common?

In fact if you could go into each of their homes you would find a special room they use. That room would be a library. Do you think this is just a coincidence? These great minds were and are constantly learning and reading to expand their universe. Suggestion-go out this week and buy a book to improve yourself and start your own library like Leonardo da Vinci.

I get excited about self improvement, motivation, staying green and growing. I like watching positive attitude DVDs at home and listening to educational CDs while driving. One concept that is continually repeated by the successful people in these programs is to keep a journal. Articles about Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Jefferson say that they both kept journals and would ask questions about why some things happened the way they did. Leonardo da Vinci would not always answer his own questions. He wrote that sometimes just by asking the question, a few days later an answer would appear. Suggestion-go out and buy a journal, write down your thoughts, ideas and questions as they occur and don’t worry about the answers. They will appear as they did to Leonardo da Vinci.

General George Patton is a great hero to me. I remember reading an article about General Patton. He was asked during World War II if he was nervous about fighting the great desert fox, the German General Rommel, he laughed at the reporter. He stated that he knew Rommel better than Rommel knew himself, because he had studied the history and tactics of General Rommel.

The point was that he had planned to meet Rommel in battle long before they ever actually met on the battlefield. Suggestion-plan your week before it begins. I like planning my week on Sunday night when things around the house are quieting down. I can concentrate on what I would like to accomplish that week and how to make it happen.The more detailed I plan, the more success I encounter, and you can too. Plan your day, plan your week and plan your month. This will lead you to actually planning your year so you can be as successful as General George Patton. “By perseverance, study and eternal desire, any man can become great”-General Patton.

My final hero is Albert Einstein who is known for E=MC2, the theory of relativity. Very few people know that Mr. Einstein had developed a theory for success. His theory is SUCCESS = X+Y+Z. The X stands for hard work which he was well known for. The Y in the equation is for fun. He found having fun cleared his mind and helped provide answers. He enjoyed boating, playing music and going for walks with his friends and family. Finally the Z was for being a great listener, absorbing what was going on around him and sometimes just staying quiet.

In closing a quote from motivational speaker Zig Ziglar “discipline yourself to do the things you need to do when you need to do them, and the day will come when you will be able to do the things you want to do when you want to do them.!”

Now go out and have your best year ever!

Is Your Business Running Aground?

While traveling with my family on a vacation in Florida recently and staying with friends, I had the opportunity to pilot my friend’s 28” power boat. We traveled through the canal and into the river that feeds out to the Gulf of Mexico. My friend Zeke was adamant about keeping the boat between the buoys/markers while I was piloting his boat. I have been friends with Zeke for 30 years so I respect his suggestions and stayed as he requested, between the buoys in the river. It seemed like he was too cautious to me, because the water level looked fine to just cut across the river and shorten our travel distance to the gulf.
A few days later we left Zeke’s place and rented a hotel room on Fort Myers Beach.  Early the first morning, I left our 8th floor room and looked out at Estero Bay, the view stopped me in my tracks. I was shocked. Looking out at the Bay on the back side of Fort Myers Beach, there was a ½ mile of sand in a ¾ mile bay. .The tide was out, the water level was low, and the only water was between those safety buoys in the river. How correct my friend Zeke was, it is VERY DANGEROUS out side of those buoys. In fact, if a boat was outside those buoys they would run aground, be in serious trouble, and damage the boat.

I completed my walk on the beach wondering, “Would it be helpful if a small business had those safety buoys to help them stay out of trouble?” The boat captains are very confident when they follow these buoys for miles, all the way out to sea. How confident would you be, if you had buoys to follow with your business decisions? What would be the equivalent to buoys for a business person? Where would you find buoys? If you really think about it, we all have safety buoys available that we can use. Here are some safety buoys that can help you in your business.

As you travel around you see, as I do, many business’s that’s doors are no longer open. Be the business that travels between the buoys and stays successful!

The Business Lesson of The Broken Tooth

Years ago on a family vacation in Vermont while eating lunch; my front tooth broke in half. My three young daughters got a big laugh each time I smiled and they saw that broken tooth. All that kept going through my mind was a painful and expensive repair to my tooth. The owner of the motel were we stayed was very kind and gave me the name of his dentist. This is where the valuable business lesson begins for me. I called this dentist office at 7am the next morning and the receptionist surprised me, she was expecting my call. She asked if I was in pain, which I was not. She offered an appointment for 7am the next morning and apologized for this inconvenience on my vacation! The next morning at 6:45 I arrived at the dental practice. I was nervous walking in and this same receptionist welcomed me with,” Good morning Mr.McEntire, my name is Joan. Please sign in and you are welcome to Danish, coffee, tea, or juice.”  “ No Joan,” I said.  “I just brushed my teeth.” Joan held up a new toothbrush and stated I could brush again after a treat. Joan looked very busy, yet she inquired about our vacation and mentioned that Sue would be my Dental Assistant. At exactly 7am Sue came out to walk me to the dentist’s chair. She stated that Dr. Thomas would be examining me that morning. Sue commented about sights to see in the area and how she felt bad about this frustration of the broken tooth to me. She explained what would be happening with an x-ray being taken and then the dentist would be in to review my options. After the x-ray, Dr. Thomas came in, asked me if I would like to come in every day of my vacation so he could rebuild this tooth OR have a temporary repair that would last 30 days and see my regular dentist. He said he completely understood if I wanted to see my regular dentist as then it would not interfere with my vacation. He quickly started a temporary repair and within an hour and a half shook my hand, gave me an emergency number to call if I had any problems, handed me a copy of the x-rays, and wished me an uneventful rest of our vacation.

What lessons did I learn form this experience?

What do you want your customer to think and feel after doing business with you?

It was obvious to me after leaving that dentist office that this was a well planned, rehearsed

and practiced event. All of the people at this dentist office knew what they wanted me to think and feel after my visit. They blew me away with their exceptional customer service. The owner of the motel must have called the dentist office the evening we discussed my broken tooth. The receptionist checked the answering machine before I called that morning and made a note of my name, where I was staying and the concern of my problem.

This receptionist, made me feel welcome, comfortable, and relaxed. The same was true of the dental assistant and Dr. Thomas. Everybody was friendly, pleasant, personable, thoughtful, and professional. I was so impressed, the next day I dropped off some flowers to the staff.

While visiting with the receptionist I mentioned that it was like everyone was one of the owners, everybody treated me so well. She smiled and said that the whole staff goes through extensive customer service training, they plan on exceeding customer expectations, and yes, everyone shares in the profits!

What is the lesson for your business?

You and your staff decide what your customer walks away with in their mind. You and your people determine the outcome of the customer’s experience. So what is your customer’s experience?

You’re fantastic! You’re just O.K. Or you’re terrible.

Start today with your people and plan to WOW your customers.

Because if you are not WOWING THEM, somebody else will!