by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Collaboration, Creativity, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Planning, Resources, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 50 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Write a great last chapter-Part 2
— From Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer
Yesterday we learned Danny Meyer’s approach to mistakes: writing a great last chapter. “The worst mistake,” he says, “is not to figure out some way to end up in a better place after having made a mistake.”
Today, Meyer expands on his philosophy for handling/addressing mistakes and why it’s important to learn from them.
In his restaurant business, “when something goes wrong, it is essential for the manager on whose watch the mistake occurred to make every effort to connect with the guest within 24 hours.” Depending on your business, the time frame for connecting may be different, but it is indeed essential to connect with the affected party.
The author says, “No matter how much you try to erase what has happened, you cannot.” And he adds, “Why wait for a second or third letter from somebody who has now cc’d his report of your fallibility and culpability to the Chamber of Commerce, the restaurant critic of The New York Times, and the Zagat Survey? Instead, take initiative.”
The initiative that Meyer suggests—and takes—is as follows:
1. Respond graciously, and do so at once. “You know you’re going to resolve the mistake eventually. It’s always a lot less costly to resolve the matter at the outset.”
2. Err on the side of generosity. “Apologize and make sure the value of the redemption is worth more than the cost of the initial mistake.”
3. Always write a great last chapter. “People love to share stories of adversity. Use this powerful force to your advantage by writing the closing statement the way you want it told. Use all your imagination and creativity in thinking about your response.”
4. Learn from the mistake. “Use every new mistake as a teaching tool with your employees [or colleagues]. Unless the mistake involved a lack of integrity, the person who made it has actually helped your team by providing you with new opportunities to improve.”
5. Make new mistakes every day. “Don’t waste time repeating the old ones.”
These last two points showcase one of the reasons why Meyer has been so successful. He is not afraid of him or his staff making mistakes, he knows it’s a natural part of life and business, and he welcomes the lessons and improvements that each mistake brings.
If you want to learn more about Meyer’s story and his philosophy about hospitality, my friend Don Crawford kindly pointed me to this recent podcast. Thanks, Don, it’s awesome! If you have a resource that goes well with a particular post and you’d like me to share it, please let me know, I’ll be happy to do so. 🙂
ACTION
TODAY: Hindsight is always 20/20, but in this case it can definitely help: think of a mistake you’ve done in the past. How could you have solved it in a more timely way and written a great last chapter? Do this exercise a few times, focusing on a different mistake each time. By imagining how the process and the ending could be different, you’ll be getting ideas as to how to handle future mistakes applying Meyer’s philosophy.
FUTURE: Make it a habit of incorporating Meyer’s five initiative points above to your life and business. You and your team will be able to handle and learn from mistakes in a much better way!
Know someone who would like this approach to mistakes? Please share this post: Email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Collaboration, Creativity, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Miniseries, Opportunity, Resources, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 12 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Write a great last chapter-Part 1
— From Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer
Danny Meyer, restaurateur and hospitality guru says, “The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.”
I love his take on this!
He and his team refer to their strategy for handling mistakes as “writing a great last chapter.” While Meyer’s examples come from the restaurant world, the approach can be adapted to any business. The author explains:
Whatever mistake happened, happened. And the person on the receiving end will naturally want to tell anyone who’s interested at all about it. That’s to be expected. While we can’t erase what happened, we do have the power to write one last episode so that at least the story ends the way we want. If we write a great one, we will earn a comeback victory with the guest. Also, the guest will have no choice but to focus on how well we responded to the mistake when telling anyone we made it. We can, then, turn a mistake into something positive. To be effective, the last chapter must be written imaginatively, graciously, generously, and sincerely. And sometimes we even write a great last chapter when it was the guest, not us, who made the mistake.
Meyer recalls an occasion when Senator Bob Kerrey—whom he knew well—was having a dinner party at one of his restaurants. One of Kerrey’s guests found a beetle in his salad. Kerrey ran into Meyer the next day and told him. Meyer, rightly so, apologized and asked if his staff had handled it well, to which the Senator replied that, indeed, the staff had handled it incredibly well.
After the conversation with Senator Kerrey, who was then having lunch at another of Meyer’s restaurants, Meyer spoke to the General Manager and told him:
“There was a mistake last night at Gramercy Tavern. We’ve got to figure out how to write a great last chapter here,” and explained what had happened. Further, Meyer added, “Whether or not Senator Kerrey or his guest orders a salad during his lunch, I want you to deliver a beautiful salad and garnish it with a small piece of paper. On that piece of paper, I want to you write the word RINGO, and when you deliver it, you can tell them ‘Danny wanted to make sure you knew that Gramercy Tavern wasn’t the only one of his restaurants that’s willing to garnish your salad with a beatle.”
Meyer points out: “It was now impossible for Senator Kerrey to tell anyone the story about the beetle in the salad without also mentioning the ‘last chapter’ we wrote the following day.”
Most mistakes in Meyer’s business, according to him, are like this one and small enough to fix. But whether it’s something like this or a complaint of any other kind, the author focuses on a twofold mission. “First, to learn from the mistake and to profit from what we’ve learned; and second, to write a great last chapter that allows us to end up in a better place with the guest than if we had never made the mistake in the first place.”
I think Meyer’s approach to mistakes and hospitality is fantastic. Please come back tomorrow to continue learning from him on how to handle mistakes.
Do you have any stories of mistakes well handled? I’d love to hear them! Please let me know in the comments here.
ACTION
TODAY: Whether you make a mistake or someone else does, big or small, you can write a great last chapter. What will you write?
FUTURE: Make it a habit of incorporating the mindset of writing a great last chapter in your life and business. You and your team will be able to handle and learn from mistakes in a much better way!
Know someone who would like this approach to mistakes? Please share this post! Email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Goals, Growth, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity, Planning, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 43 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: The New Niche
— From LINGO: Discover Your Ideal Customer’s Secret Language and Make Your Business Irresistible by Jeffrey Shaw
In today’s world, where we often hear that we must “niche down,” because “the riches are in the niches,” Jeffrey Shaw, entrepreneur, coach, podcaster, and author of Lingo, says, “Ditch the niche and diversify!”
Whaaaaaat??!
He explains: “It’s not that niche marketing is inherently bad; it just needs to be redefined.”
He goes on to say that most of us, as the creative thinkers that we are (creative here defined very broadly), “need freedom from the shackles of a tightly narrowed offering and market. We’re multipassionate warriors and we don’t want to be stuck doing one thing.”
So, what should we do about this?
In Jeff’s podcast and community of Creative Warriors, he refers to following all our passions as chasing squirrels. I own a dog who has tried to climb trees to chase squirrels (!) so I know how crazy this can get… Further, as an entrepreneur myself and a mentor for startups and small businesses, I know that our business minds tend to chase many squirrels too: the (in)famous shiny-object syndrome or SOS that tends to distract and derail us if kept unchecked.
Shaw says, “I’m not saying chasing squirrels is productive. But I am saying the creative thinker is going to do it anyway. Rather than make them feel ‘sinful’ for something inherent in being creative, why not figure out how it can be productive? We can make it productive by using the connections between them to unite the squirrels into a herd and then setting that herd off in a productive direction. We can cultivate a new niche.”
And here’s the key to the New Niche: “The New Niche is not the one thing you do or the one segment of a market you serve. The New Niche is the space you own, or, you could say, the area of expertise for which you are known.”
Note here that Shaw said “area,” because your expertise includes many things, so it’s not just constrained to the one thing you do.
“Space is expansive, even limitless as far as we know and so are the possibilities and creative freedom you have when you become known for the space you own. When you or your business are recognized for the space you own, you gain creative freedom. With clarity about the space you own, you can diversify your business and create multiple streams of income.”
Shaw goes on to explain the idea of the New Niche and the meaning of owning a space: “The space you own—as a solo creative entrepreneur or as a company—is what you are known for. It answers this all-important, fundamental question: Of what will your ideal customers say you are the expert?”
Further, Shaw urges us to imagine overhearing the tail end of a conversation on the street in which a person asks another one for a referral, “Oh, [your name or name of business] is the go-to expert for ___________.”
Fill in that blank. “If you don’t know almost immediately how to fill in that blank, then you don’t own a space yet.”
In his podcast, Creative Warriors, Shaw interviewed Christopher Lochhead, co-author of the book Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets. Lochhead refers to owning your space as being a Category King and emphasizes “the importance of not only being the ‘king’ of a category but also being the first in that category.”
To this, Shaw says, “Being the Category King can certainly give you an advantage. However, for many entrepreneurs, it’s less important to be first. It’s more important to create a unique category for which you can be recognized and stand out.”
So, what is your New Niche? Let me know in the comments here.
ACTION
TODAY: Answer this question about yourself or your business: “Oh, [your name or name of business] is the go-to expert for ___________.” What is the space you own? What is that New Niche of yours? If the answer comes easily, congrats! If not, no worries, give yourself time to think and to come up with the best answer for you.
FUTURE: Claim that space as yours… it is indeed! Make sure you are passionate about it, and that it is marketable, and you’ll be golden. Here are some additional posts on this subject: How to apply the Law of the Category to your benefit and Own a word in the prospect’s mind.
Know someone who chases squirrels? Please share this post with them! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Marketing, Mindset, Miniseries, Planning, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 37 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Little things make all the difference-Part 2
— From Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur, by Derek Sivers.
Yesterday we learned from Derek Sivers some of the things he implemented to make his customers smile during his days as CEO and Founder of CD Baby, an online store for indie musicians.
The key is to be thoughtful—it’s the little things that make all the difference—and provide the best service you can in a consistent way.
Let’s continue to learn directly (verbatim) from Sivers the stories of some of the awesome things that he did to turn his customers into raving fans:
Sometimes, after we had done the forty-five minutes of work to add a new album to the store, the musician would change his mind and ask us to do it over again with a different album cover or different audio clips. I wanted to say yes but let him know that this was really hard to do, so I made a policy that made us both smile: “We’ll do anything for a pizza.” If you needed a big, special favor, we’d give you the number of our local pizza delivery place. If you bought us a pizza, we’d do any favor you wanted. When we’d tell people about this on the phone, they’d often laugh, not believing that we were serious. But we’d get a pizza every few weeks. I’d often hear from musicians later that this was the moment they fell in love with us.
At the end of each order, the last page of the website would ask, “Where did you hear of this artist? We’ll pass them any message you write here.” Customers would often take the time to write things like, “Heard your song on WBEZ radio last night.” “Searched Yahoo!” “Found it here.” “I’d love to have you play at our school!” The musicians absolutely loved getting this information, and it always led to the customer and musician getting in touch directly. This is something that big stores like Amazon would never do.
Also, at the end of each order, there was a box that would ask, “Any special requests?” One time, someone said, “I’d love some cinnamon gum.” Since one of the guys in the warehouse was going to the store anyway, he picked up some cinnamon gum and included it in the package. One time someone said, “If you could include a small, rubber squid, I would appreciate it. If this is unobtainable, a real squid would do.” Just by chance, a customer from Korea had sent us a packaged filet of squid. So the shipping guys included it in the box with the other customer’s CDs. See the customer tell this story himself in this great video.
It’s no wonder that CD Baby created a legion of fans around them. Sivers and his team were thoughtful, creative, imaginative and always focused on the customer, to the point of going the extra mile to send cinnamon gum and even squid! And “the whole party marched down the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!” to [the] package, on its way to [the customer]…” ←This is another post about Sivers you don’t want to miss. He’s all about making the customers happy.
As you can see, it doesn’t take too much money or too much time, and a little playfulness and creativity will take you a long way. Sivers says, “Even if you want to be big someday, remember that you don’t need to act like a big boring company. Over ten years, it seemed like every time someone raved about how much he loved CD Baby, it was because of one of these little fun human touches.”
What little things can you do to make your customers happy? Who has made you happy and how? Let me know in the comments here.
ACTION
TODAY: Review your customer’s journey and focus on the many touch points that exist. How can you improve upon those points to make your customer happy[ier]?
FUTURE: As your customers become happier and happier, capture those moments as testimonials in writing or video. This will help prospects make a decision to go with you/your company for its outstanding service, and that way you can perpetuate a virtuous cycle.
Know someone who is always making the customers smile? Please share this post with them! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Marketing, Mindset, Miniseries, Planning, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 42 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Little things make all the difference-Part 1
— From Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur, by Derek Sivers.
“If you find even the smallest way to make people smile, they’ll remember you more for that smile than for all your other fancy business-model stuff,” says Derek Sivers, entrepreneur and author of Anything You Want.
Sivers was the founder of CD Baby, a very successful online website for indie musicians to sell their music (he sold it later for millions). As a pioneer in this field, he learned many lessons, and one of them was the importance of little details to make people smile.
He shares some of the things that made a huge difference on the CD Baby website. I’m adding them verbatim below, since I think Sivers writing conveys the stories very well. Enjoy!
Because we shipped FedEx at 5 p.m. each day, customers would often call and ask, “What time is it there? Do I still have time to get it sent today?” So I added two little lines of programming code that counted how many hours and minutes remained until 5 p.m. and then showed the result by the shipping options. “You have 5 hours, 18 minutes until our next FedEx shipment.” Customers loved this!
We answered our phone within two rings, always—7 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week. Phones were everywhere, so even if the customer service rep was busy, someone in the warehouse could pick up. All anyone had to do was say, “CD Baby!” Customers loved this! Someone actually picking up the phone at a company is so rare that musicians would often tell me later at conferences that it was the main reason they decided to go with CD Baby—they could always talk to a real person immediately. All employees knew that as long as we weren’t completely swamped, they should take a minute and get to know the caller a bit. Ask about her music. Ask how it’s going. Yes, it would lead to twenty-minute conversations sometimes, but those people became lifelong fans.
Every outgoing email has a “From:” name, right? Why not use that to make people smile, too? With one line of code, I made it so that every outgoing email customized the “From:” field to be “CD Baby loves [first name].” So if the customer’s name was Susan, every e-mail she got from us would say it was from “CD Baby loves Susan.” Customers loved this!
Please come back tomorrow for Part 2 because the things that CD Baby did to make people smile get even better! As you can see, thoughtful details can turn clients into raving fans. What details can you modify or implement to make your customers smile?
😀
ACTION
TODAY: Think about the positive feedback you get from your customers (customer is broadly defined here). Can you replicate that to make everyone smile? What can you do to always implement those thoughtful details that made the customer smile in the first place?
FUTURE: Make a habit of examining the feedback you get to always be improving your attention to detail. Having customers turn into lifelong, raving fans is a wonderful achievement.
Know someone who is always making the customers smile? Please share this post with them! Email, Facebook or Twitter.
by Helena Escalante | Accountability, Collaboration, Creativity, Growth, Habits, Leadership, Mindset, Resources, Wellbeing
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 15 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: No Skunking
— From Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer
Danny Meyer’s wonderful book Setting the Table is all about hospitality in the restaurant industry. However, the leadership style and the lessons that this great restaurateur shares can be applied to any kind of business, not just restaurants.
I was particularly struck about a passage in the book where he talks about the qualities of self-awareness and integrity going hand in hand: “It takes integrity to be self-aware and to hold one’s self accountable for doing the right thing.”
Specifically, he says, “self-awareness is understanding your moods and how they affect you and others. In a sense, it’s a personal weather report…” But no matter whether the personal mood is sunny or rainy, it’s crucial for people in business “to be aware of and accountable for their own personal weather reports.”
He goes on to say that “no one can possibly be upbeat and happy all the time, but personal mastery depends on team members being aware of their moods and keep[ing] them in check. If a staff member is having personal trouble and wakes up feeling angry, nervous, depressed, or anxious, he or she needs to recognize and deal with the mood. It does not serve anyone’s purposes to project that mindset into the work environment or on to one’s colleagues.”
Meyer’s term for that is skunking: “A skunk may spray a predator when it feels threatened, but everyone else within two miles has to smell the spray, and these others may assume that the skunk actually had it in for them. It’s not productive to work with a skunk, and it’s not enjoyable to be served by one either. In a business that depends on the harmony of an ensemble, a skunk’s scent is toxic.”
I think this analogy is perfect. My dog has been sprayed by a skunk twice (!), and it’s one of the most repulsive and disgusting experiences we’ve had. We’ve taken—and will continue to take—every precaution to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Skunking in the workplace should be avoided too, as it can spread widely if left unchecked, hurting the organization inside and outside as well.
And this is where we come full circle: it takes integrity to check with ourselves and determine what mood we’re in. If it’s a great one, fantastic, let’s spread the joy. If not, the first step is to acknowledge it and keep it in check, so that we can resolve it (or put it on hold temporarily) and change it for the mood that best suits our business endeavors. And remember: absolutely no skunking!
If this is of any help, I’ve found something that works for me: when I’m not in a good mood and I need to work, I give myself permission to change my mood temporarily. For instance, I tell myself that I will temporarily become happy and postpone my being upset or worried about whatever is making me unhappy when I get back from the office, because I need to be at my best during work and with clients. This usually helps, and by the time I’m back I don’t want to go back to being upset any longer, so I can see what was bugging me in a different light and focus on solving it favorably.
ACTION
TODAY: Take some time to do a personal weather report. Is your mood sunny and beautiful? Partially cloudy? Rainy? Cold and nasty? Be honest with yourself if you’re not in a good mood so that you don’t skunk others (not even inadvertently). How could your self-awareness and integrity help you in this instance? We’re all different: think of something that will work for you and the dynamics of your team.
FUTURE: Adopt the no skunking rule into your life and that of your teammates and business.
Know someone who has been skunked? Help them out by sharing this post! Email, Facebook or Twitter, thanks!
