Next Time Your Restaurant Service Sucks, Try This

Where does word of mouth come from?

Where does word of mouth come from?

A good experience, says Forrester.

A trustworthy relationship with peers, says Big Research.

A purple cow, says Seth Godin.

They're all right, but the bigger question is: What binds all of those source elements together?

The answer is almost always hidden within a company's culture.

Companies with great word of mouth tend to operate by a simple, consistent, yet inspiring purpose and well-defined values. Companies like Apple, for instance, has created a cultural constitution, and every employee is sworn to abide by it. They understand that a purpose-driven company helps clarify decision-making while inspiring longer-term unity. They know that abiding by community-driven values compels employees to think of customers first, company second. They see the benefits of inspired, evangelistic customers and how company culture is the feeder river for streams of word of mouth. I love Google's 20% time policy. Google requiring engineers to devote 20% of their resources on side projects. Gmail Labs, though, is a sign of how 20 percent time as early Googlers knew it is vanishing from the Googleplex.

When companies shun purpose and adherence to values, that's usually the source of trouble. Just look at credit card providers, health insurance plans, Internet service providers and TV service providers, whose four industries recently appeared in a Forrester report as generating more bad word of mouth than good. The primary interests of companies in those industries often are, in order of importance: company executives, institutional shareholders, Wall Street bankers and analysts, then customers. They stealthily raise fees, add hidden clauses to purposefully complex operating agreements and cut customer service before rolling back excessive executive compensation. It's not surprising then, that the government is now proposing standards to rein in excessive executive pay at publicly held companies.

Indeed, building word of mouth is bigger than the marketing or engineering departments. For creating good customer experiences, a company hires smart and empathetic people. It does not hire talented jerks, regardless of education or work history. It expunges those who acted their way through the hiring process.

For building trustworthy customer relationships, a company makes decisions according to its core values. They expunge and avoid bad profits, the kind which trick customers. They are consistent. They are friendly. They do the right thing, something companies in the four above industries consider difficult, given their preponderance of bad buzz.

For creating purple cows, a company fosters creative thinking within tightly defined sandboxes to maintain elegant simplicity, a process that can be difficult but is ultimately rewarding to customers, who crave simplicity in an age where complexity is daunting, worrisome and exhausting.

Another Reason Recessions are a Good Time to Start a Business

Throughout the 2008-2009 recession we have seen a rash of articles about why it’s a good time to start a business. Sometimes I feel those articles are more a matter of the writer trying to convince himself or herself that it’s a good time to start a business, than convince anyone else! After all, some people lose their jobs and then become unwilling entrepreneurs.

Still, it’s true that a recession can be a rare opportunity to start a business. One reason: competitors (especially large corporations) are distracted by their own market challenges.

That can be good for you if you are thinking of starting — or expanding — your business. It means others in the marketplace are not minding the store. It could provide just enough of an opening in the market to get a toehold to scale new heights.

Over at BigThink I have read a post about why a recession is a good time to start a business.

BigThink is a pretty interesting thought-leader blog. There are videos from people such as Thomas Cooley, the dean of New York University’s Stern School of Business, discussing opportunities during recessions.

Another highlight I’ll point you to is a video of Dan Doctoroff, President of Bloomberg financial news. He discusses how businesses, including small and midsize businesses, are capitalizing on the dynamic landscape of the current economy. He sees it as more of a cyclical economy with creative rebirth happening even in the midst of negative news — it’s pretty confidence inspiring.

Accidental Entrepreneurs Share Their Stories

The Wall Street Journal offers five inspiring stories about accidental entrepreneurs:

With the economy tanking, lots of people are striking out on their own. Some never thought of starting a business until they got laid off. Others kicked around the idea but never found the time or the passion to pursue it. Now, launching a start-up seems like a better bet than taking on an endless job hunt.

Call them entrepreneurs by necessity. And while some of them have waited years preparing for just this moment, others may not be quite so ready or eager to make the move.

Read their profiles here.

Learn to say NO!

Sure it's easier to say yes, but at what price to your peace of mind? Here's why saying no may be a healthier option for stress relief.

If you've got talent, people want more of you. They ask you for this or that or the other thing. They ask nicely. They will benefit from the insight you can give them.

The choice: You can dissipate your gift by making the people with the loudest requests temporarily happy, or you can change the world by saying 'no' often.

You can say no with respect, you can say no promptly and you can say no with a lead to someone who might say yes. But just saying yes because you can't bear the short-term pain of saying no is not going to help you do the work.

Saying no to loud people gives you the resources to say yes to important opportunities.

Can't access gmail?

Here's an unrelated tech tip:

If you access Gmail using a program on your computer (like MS Outlook or mail.app on a Mac) sometimes you'll get an alert telling you that Gmail has rejected your password. Strange? Yeah, I thought so too. 

It turns out that there's a hidden link Google provides that lets you do a Captcha test to prove that you're a human. It doesn't change your password, it just resets the flag that Google was using to block remote access.

Anyway, it works for me, every time, all the time, and I figured you'd want to know about it.

How customer service is managed by some companies

Sounds familar? Telcos? Banks? Gov org? Consumer product? You name it. 

Failure: The Secret to Success

Failure Is the New Success

Thomas Edison is a great motivator and the light bulb is the end result that we use to light our world today and every day.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work - Thomas Edison, inventor and scientist

Failure is what has driven all of the greatest innovations. We all must have courage to fail as without that courage everything remains the same. 

I once heard this at a seminar, “Vision, without action, is nothing more than a hallucination!” So I my take is on this “Failure is the New Success” is this: “Innovation without failure is not innovation at all, it is only simple evolution.”

This is one of the most inspiring videos I have ever seen. The culture in the Malaysia teaches people that if they are not number one then they are losers. 

A perfect example of that is the past badminton match - Wilson Badminton Swiss Open. Datuk Lee lost again. One team will hold their head high in victory and the other team will feel like the world has come to an end because they lost (yes, Malaysian Team lost again). It doesn’t seem to matter how many teams they beat. How they improved their game performance. Or how much the fans enjoyed watching the game. In sports and in many other endeavors, if you are not number one then you are nobody. 

Throughout the years, with the many hundreds of CEOs, company presidents and business owners I have had read about, the most successful of them had disastrous failures. They got knocked down. They may have been stone cold broke. But they looked at their failure, got up, did it again and didn’t make the same mistakes. The most successful and wealthiest people have failed along the way many times. Their determination and their ability to understand the failure and turn it into success made them very successful people. 

If things are not going well for you in your business or in your life. If the future seems bleak. Don’t let anyone tell you that you are a failure and you can’t do it. Like the old song goes: pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again. 

I will try again, harder this time. I will never give up. I will succeed. I will...

When Cats Turn Into Stock Analysts

Video: The credit crisis

While most people realize that the credit crisis has been the key factor in our country’s economic disaster, and we’re all familiar with some of the keywords like “sub-prime”, a lot of people out there probably don’t have a real understanding of what exactly it all means and how it came about. What is "Credit Crisis" and how did it happen? Why did big banks like Lehman Brothers have to go bankrupt? 

Those people should watch the following video made by Jonathan Jarvis, a student at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, for his thesis project.

Dubbed “The Short & Simply Story of the Credit Crisis,” it’s exactly that. For those with a firm grasp of the problem, it might not add much, but for many people this will serve as a great overview on what happened and a good illustration of why there’s no easy solution.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Well first I am going to try and explain in simply English what are sub-prime mortgage loans and how these pools of loans were structured for max profit with the end result being what we presently are dealing with, bail outs and financial ruin for the American people.

OK, first we’ll look at the borrower’s side of this equation. A sub-prime loan is a loan for anyone for a FICO score of less then 600. In other words, your credit rating is not that good, so the bank created these sub-prime loans to offer people that otherwise would not be able to qualify for a regular fixed mortgage loan. The banks discovered that there was a whole lot of people out there that for one reason or another could not get a mortgage loan. The banks said, wait a minute, we can make some serious money here if we can create a loan catered specifically for these type of borrowers.

So in 2000, Alan Greenspan, the Fed chief at the time started to lower interest rates to avoid the country from going into a recession. This happened right after the tech bubble burst in 2000. The lowering of interest rates did accomplished two things. One, it caused the economy to expand and it caused housing prices to go up. The lowering of interest rates hit 1%. The banks now armed with these new sub-prime loans needed home buyers and lots of them. The banks and mortgage lenders started issuing sub-prime loans to everyone and many requirements to obtain these loans were no longer need to qualify i e…. income statements, tax returns (that’s another story for another day). Remember that before 2000 and before interest rates went down to 1% it was very difficult for anyone with a low FICO score to get a mortgage loan. You had to have good credit and your FICO score was required to be high enough for you to obtain a loan.

Well, now the banks were armed with these sub-prime loans and by lowering interest rate, the Federal Reserve made sure there was plenty of houses for sale. By lowering interest rates, the supply of money increased dramatically, giving the banks plenty of money. The banks knew that they could and did charge higher interest rate to these sub-prime borrowers knowing that eventually the defaults would follow. So, the banks made money from the high interest rates and waited for the predicted defaults to bring in additional revenue. Well the defaults didn’t come as housing prices kept going up and people were making their payments with no problem. At this point the banks decided to get more aggressive and creative with their lending practices, offering home equity loans, interest only loans and variable mortgage loans with rates as low as 1% for the first year. Any way to get the borrower deeper in debt and that much closer to default.

The borrower knew that since the value of his house had gone up, he had plenty of equity to cover the increased mortgage payment if and when his adjustable loan was due to increase his monthly payment. As house price went up, more and more of these borrowers started taking out seconds and thirds on their homes which was the beginning of the end. The banks knowing full well that it would only be a matter of time before the Federal Reserve would increase interest rates and these monthly home mortgage payments would increase dramatically causing borrowers to default on their loans. A nasty cycle which has put this country in a financial crisis and now the one who will paid is the tax payer through you guessed it income taxes. The banks get bailed out, write off losses from their books and walk away to lend our money out another day. We can only blame our congress and president for these sad state of events. In 1913 they allowed the Federal Reserve to be created and placed the American people in financial slavery.

Explain in PLAIN ENGLISH, please

I often find it hard to explain in plain english (if you know what I mean, don make me explain this). 

This guy from CommonCraft has created the best explanation I’ve seen. Don’t even try, just tell people to watch it. 

I got a lot to learn from these two guys. I have got to learn how to explain better in PLAIN ENGLISH to my bosses from these guys. 

Business innovators: Steve Jobs

Co-founder of Apple and chairman of Pixar, Steve Jobs towers over Silicon Valley as a renegade and artist as much as a business manager. Fortune magazine calls him a “global cultural guru,” responsible for changing the way the world works and plays. Yet, he has been criticized for his superior attitude, taking credit away from his subordinates, micro-managing his business, firing employees in fits of anger, and any number of minor infractions, such as parking his Mercedes in handicapped spaces. His net worth is estimated to be over $20 billion $5.4billion (Forbes).

“It’s better to be a pirate than to join the Navy.”

What I've learnt from Steve Jobs:

• Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower
• Be a yardstick of quality. Some people are not used to environment where excellence is expected
• The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don settle. As with all matters to the heart, you'll know when you find it.
  
• Stay hungry. Stay foolish

Inspiring message from Steve Jobs

Business innovators: Jack Welch

He is named “Manager of the Century” by Fortune Magazine in 1999, Jack Welch is perhaps most famous for streamlining GE, reducing management from 29 levels to only six, closing businesses, and firing a significant percentage of his subordinates. Despite his strong, seemingly brash tactics (he was nicknamed “Neutron Jack” for firing so many employees), he brought the value of GE up from $12 billion to $280 billion, the largest increase for any company under any CEO. He also championed the notion of informality, which he brought to GE.

Winning is about everything.

Winning Advice Jack Welch


What many people may not know is that Jack is a great communicator. Probably the most important lesson that Jack Welch taught his speech writer was that self-confidence was the #1 attribute of a leader. With self-confidence you could go out and do nearly anything that you put your mind to. Now this was truly impressive when you realize that Welch had started out as a guy who both stuttered and was very shy. Needless to say, in the beginning Welch HATED to speak in public.

Jack Welch insisted that he and everyone else who spoke as a representative of GE would tell the audience something new and forward looking. That would replace the boring status reports that are the default corporate speech these days.

GE grew and the confidence and reputation of all GE speakers grew. Imagine that--when people were given permission to be creative and passionate and interesting--they responded and so did their audiences.

These tips will get you started:

1. Talk about topics that interest the audience
2. Craft stories and deliver them with dramatic effects
3. Speak about what you know--you will automatically gain confidence and polish and overcome your fears

Take the ball and go home

Bullies can't be bullies when they are alone.

If you work with a bully, this is all you need to know. They need you.

A bully is someone who uses physical or psychological force to demean and demoralize someone else. A bully isn't challenging your ideas, or working with you to find a better outcome. A bully is playing a game, one that he or she enjoys and needs. You're welcome to play this game if it makes you happy, but for most people, it will make you miserable. So don't.

The way to work with a bully is not to try to please her or to question the quality of your work or to appease her or to hide from her.

The way to work with a bully is to take the ball and go home. First time, every time.

When there's no ball, there's no game. Bullies hate that. So they'll either behave so they can play with you or they'll go bully someone else.

Call her on her behavior (not who she is, but what she does). "I'm sorry, but when you talk to me like that, I'm unable to do good work. I'll be in my office if you need me." Then walk out, not in a huff, but with a measure of respect for the person (not the behavior).

This is a shocking piece of advice. It might even get you fired. But it will probably save your job and your sanity. Most bullies are deeply unhappy and you might just save their skin. If you're good at what you do, you deserve better than a bully.

"All Marketers are Liars" - Seth Godin speaks at Google

The Bootstraper's Bible by Seth Godin

The Bootstrapper's Bible by Seth Godin

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: godin bootstrapp)

I suggest that you read in full screen mode.

How you define your business DOES matter

I read a blog of my pal last night and I got inspired; Starbucks business model revisited. It is indeed a brilliant business idea, isn't it? I would invest in his business (if I ever have the money ). 

Most people define their business venture very narrowly and that limits the growth options or strategic partnerships in the future. Realvibez is usually seen as just a website, an Internet venture, so we take pleasure in explaining the whole plan to people and seeing the change in how they think of our venture.

The New York Times recently carried an article article about CNN's move into wire service and the plan to compete with the Associated Press (A.P.) that so many newspapers and even CNN itself has been using. The wire service will also compete with Bloomberg News and Thomson Reuters.

The President of CNN Worldwide, Jim Walton, does not define his business narrowly:

Look at the history of CNN,” Mr. Walton said. “We launched as one network in 1980. Today CNN is more than just one network. We have a huge radio business. A huge online business. We’re about content.

Notice that he did not define his business as just a 24 hour cable news channel, even though that is what it started out as. CNN has expanded into many areas because they see themselves as a "content company" and content can be used on multiple platforms.

Defining your venture solely by what it does could be narrowing your opportunities and blinding you to new revenue streams. Define your venture based on what it creates or does for people that is of value and you unlock new opportunities.

The next time you go for job interview (ever), do not tell your interviewer that you are a coder (programmer, if you are in the same industry as I'm) and you only code. Tell them that you can help her to solve her IT-related problems. 

Elements Of Sustainable Companies (Sequoia Capital)

Sequoia Capital, the famous venture capital firm that has funded companies like Cisco, Electronic Arts, Google, PayPal has this list as required reading before submitting a business plan to them (found here).

I believe that their track record proves that every entrepreneur should take this list seriously and build a business with the following in mind. VCs tend to look for specific types of companies and not everyone tries to build those specific types but the basic principles hold true for any venture that you are launching or already have.

"Start-ups with these characteristics often foretells the success of a business and the likelihood of it becoming an enduring company with a sustainable business plan."

CLARITY OF PURPOSE
Summarize the company's business on the back of a business card.

LARGE MARKETS
Address existing markets poised for rapid growth or change. A market on the path to a $1B potential allows for error and time for real margins to develop.

RICH CUSTOMERS
Target customers who will move fast and pay a premium for a unique offering.

FOCUS
Customers will only buy a simple product with a singular value proposition.

PAIN KILLERS
Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to the customer then delight them with a compelling solution.

THINK DIFFERENTLY
Constantly challenge conventional wisdom. Take the contrarian route. Create novel solutions. Outwit the competition.

TEAM DNA
A company’s DNA is set in the first 90 days. All team members are the smartest or most clever in their domain. "A" level founders attract an "A" level team.

AGILITY
Stealth and speed will usually help beat-out large companies.

FRUGALITY
Focus spending on what's critical. Spend only on the priorities and maximize profitability.

INFERNO
Start with only a little money. It forces discipline and focus. A huge market with customers yearning for a product developed by great engineers requires very little firepower.

What's in your nest?

I’ve noticed people typically fall into five groups when it comes to nurturing their nest eggs. A lot of us are looking at the way we have feathered our nests in the past and wondering if a correction is in order. Can you relate to any of these types?

Spenders - These people live for today and nothing beyond. A lot of them cannot conceive of the future, so they don’t prepare for it.

Savers - I have a friend who said to me several years ago: “I work too hard for my money to risk it in the stock market.” She keeps all her money in the bank, or a nearby mattress.

Passive Investors - These folks like to believe they are investing in the stock market, but they do so in such a passive way (ie. depositing money into a 401k - for US or KWSP - for Malaysia, and then forgetting about it) that they may as well keep their money in certificates of deposit.

Active Investors - Here are the people who analyze fundamentals of the companies they invest in. They understand that they are loaning money to these businesses and they actively monitor the results of their investments.

Entrepreneurs and Capitalists - These are your risk takers. They will put everything they have into a venture they believe in. The amount of money is irrelevant. Whether it’s one rent house or that investment bank at the bargain basement price, if it’s promising these people go for it.

How do you describe yourself, and has your philosophy changed over the past two weeks?

Mind Power: Attract and Manifest with the Law of Attraction

From the Law of Leverage I wrote a few months ago, I again read a book last week about the Law of Attraction.

If you want to be successful in life, it is important to be self aware, optimistic and to think positively. You can unleash the power of your subconscious mind to increase money, success and friends by learning how to like and accept yourself first.

This does not mean you will necessarily like everything about yourself. But anything you do not like can be changed by putting forth a bit of effort. By learning positive thinking skills and how to use your subconscious mind, you can become the person you want to be.

Self awareness is the starting point from which you can set new goals and learn new skills. Take the time to evaluate how you are traveling in life and decide what you want to change. Be honest with yourself. What would you change to become the person you want to be?

Do not be afraid to make a list of things you do not
like about yourself or about the life you are living. Once you have a written list, you can begin to set new goals to transform your life. Be positive about what you can change and achieve in order to be successful.

You have to focus your thoughts on getting that new BMW, mentally picture yourself in it, holding the steering wheel and driving around. You have to truly believe you deserve it and allowing it to come to you is the way to get it.

Asking is the first step to activating the Law of Attraction.

Next, you have to feel and act as if you’ve received it. Knowing and believing that you deserve it is the last step to have the Law of Attraction manifest your desires.

Having doubts about your worthiness produces negative energy. Negative energy produces negative results.

Having doubts on your self worth, won’t set the Law of Attraction to align with you and your desires.

If you doubt the Law of Attraction works, it won’t work for you.

Positive results happen because of positive energy. And it begins with planting positive thoughts in your mind.

In order to achieve some of our goals, we may have to make some personal changes. Personal transformation is rarely easy when you begin your journey, but if you persist you will be rewarded at the end.

Your subconscious mind influences your life more powerfully than you probably realize. Since we tend to get what we focus on in life, if we think negative thoughts we are likely to experience negative things. By deliberately replacing negative thoughts with positive affirmations we can begin to change our lives.

Now that you have your goals on paper, they have become more real. They are not just wishes, they are now decisions about what you intend to achieve. For every goal you need to decide what you are prepared to do to manifest them.

This can be a challenge for many people. You first need to identify your current position before you can work out how to get from where you are to where you want to be. For example, if your goal is to enjoy your job, you need to first recognize why you do not enjoy it at present. Once you do this, you will be able to design action steps to move you from where you are to where you want to be.

Many people are simply square pegs in round holes and need to totally change careers in order to be happy. If you fit into this category, one of your goals could be to discover what you would be best suited for and then do the training it requires.

Perhaps one of your goals is to make new friends but you do not know how to do it. What do you like doing? Join a group of like minded people.

One way to make friends and alleviate stress at the same time is to join a yoga class. You can learn meditations techniques while becoming more flexible. At the same time, you will also meet others and possibly make new friends. As you improve your fitness and your social life you will probably find your self esteem improving also. As you learn to relax, you will probably find that life gets easier.

Stress affects areas of our lives we are often not even aware of. It can interfere with our ability to communicate with others and make sound decisions. Severe stress can stop us living a happy and productive life.

Self awareness is the first step towards transforming your life. It is the foundation upon which you can build goals and move toward success by using the power of your subconscious mind. Once you have achieved your goals, you will realize you have everything you need to succeed already within you.

What's next? Go on and sign up a Yoga class. Psst... I am not affiliated to any yoga training center.