Recently, my friend and informal mentor, Larry Winget, posted a fairly controversial blog post entitled, “Passion Has No Value.” When I saw that post, I knew that once again, Larry was going to light some fires. And indeed, after a week and a lively debate on Larry’s site, it seems I was right.
I might have opted into the dialogue on Larry’s site, but I wanted to spend some time with this one, rolling it around in my brain.
My initial gut reaction to Larry’s post was that indeed, passion itself isn’t enough for success. As Larry and I have always agreed, it takes expertise (and other things) to be successful. Ultimately, you’ve got to have the goods to back up whatever you promise, there’s no way around that. If you’ve got passion but no expertise, you can look forward to a short business life, leaving a lot of unhappy clients and customers in your wake.
But…the whole “passion has no value” thing…that’s got me feeling like a doorknob snagged my sweater: I can’t shake it loose.
I admit, I’ve evolved over the last year. I don’t really talk much about “passion” these days. I admit, I have talked about passion’s role in the micro-entrepreneurial business, but I never really felt quite settled about it. Passion is a word that has been overused and misunderstood.
These days, instead of “passion,” I talk about “fervor,” which the dictionary defines as “great intensity of feeling or belief.” Why fervor? Because just about every mega-successful person I know is intense in his or her own way, including (and perhaps especially) Larry. Passion, though, as Larry suggests, is a word that refers to an “uncontrollable” emotion, that frankly, doesn’t have a place in business.
Emotion in general certainly has a role- it’s how we connect with people. After all, people do business with people and emotion plays a role in relationship-building. But uncontrolled emotion (passion) often gets in the way of an open, evolving, questioning mind, a necessary ingredient for success.
I do love working with entrepreneurs and I love helping small businesses grow. But I love the results I get more…and so do my clients.
And even if fervor and intensity are different from passion, they still aren’t enough for success. You can never exclude expertise from the equation. Without the “chops” to back up your fervor, you’ll never be successful (or at least, not for long). Successful business lies in the “sweet spot” that’s found in the cross-section of what you’re fervent about, what you’re really good at, and what sets you apart (the “power triad”).
I assume that Larry would agree with me that even if you’re great at what you do, you still have to find something that sets you apart, something that distinguishes you from the rest of the world (whether you’re an employee or an entrepreneur). Why do I assume Larry would agree with me? I mean…have you seen his boot collection alone? Larry himself has build a successful brand that fuses his unique personality (and fashion sense) with what he’s fervent about (cutting through the nonsense) and what he’s really good at (communicating that “straight shooter” vibe through multiple mediums).
I’ve worked with micro-entreprenuers who set up shop solely under the premise of turning their “passion into profits” and failed before looking for help. I’ve worked with small business owners who focused only on what they were good at, but didn’t enjoyed it and didn’t find much success before deciding to make a change. And I’ve worked with folks in both of those categories who never packaged their business in a way that set them apart from everyone else in their industry, couldn’t reach their audience, and didn’t understand why.
Fervor, expertise, and packaging (or branding) are the first keys in success. They’re not the only keys, but they’re a good place to start.
And as for passion…as Larry suggests, perhaps that uncontrolled emotion is perhaps best left to the personal realm. Passion is what you feel about the things you want to create in your life- the ultimate outcomes like more time with family or creating a feeling of stability, safety, and security. Passion about what you’re working towards is what keeps you motivated…and that does have value.
If you’ve read my “The 7 Lessons of Mega-Successful Entrepreneurs” or if you’ve been reading my weekly e-mail newsletter, then you know that there was a time that my business had plateaued and no matter what I threw at it, money, marketing strategies, time, effort…I just couldn’t get the darned thing to budge over the bump to the next level. My business was doing fine, but I wasn’t satisfied and I certainly wasn’t fulfilled.
I started thinking that maybe it was time to walk away. In fact, I actually did walk away. I took a three-month hiatus away from my business and started to look at other opportunities. My husband and I looked at all kinds of businesses.
But try as I might, I couldn’t escape the nagging feeling in my heart that I still had more to do in my own business.
So, a month into my little sabbatical (about the time when I got really bored), I started working with a coach to get through the burnout and frustration to the heart of what was holding me back in my business. Because the one thing I did know for sure was that when you’re too close to something, it’s usually too hard to see the answers. Having the outside perspective of a coach or consultant can give you insight and a big picture viewpoint that you’d never have on your own. And if I was going to figure out what had kept me in that plateau, I knew I needed someone who could be for me what I am to my own clients.
For two months my coach guided me as I dug deep and searched my soul. When I finally came up for air, my mind was clear. And that’s when I discovered precisely what I’d been missing all along that had held my business firmly at that plateau.
It wasn’t just one answer. In fact, the answer to what was holding me back came in the form of seven simple lessons, and I’d been hearing them from my mentors for awhile. But sometimes you hear the right answers at the wrong time, you know? And that’s what had happened to me. I’d heard them, I just hadn’t gotten them.
As soon as I started implementing the Lessons in my own business, things started to change. Things didn’t change overnight and I did still have to work. That’s just how business operates! But the more in tune I got with the Lessons, the more things happened. Opportunities started to fall in my lap and people started to take notice. I felt an ease in my business that had never been there before, and my creativity soared.
I don’t know if now is the right time for you to hear the Lessons, but even if you’re not quite there yet, I’d like to encourage you to start learning about them. You can download my original “The 7 Lessons of Mega-Successful Entrepreneurs” using the form at the top of this page. Once you click the confirmation link in your e-mail, you’ll receive another e-mail with a link to the free download (sorry to make you jump through hoops, but it’s become necessary with bots and spammers; I promise the download is worth it).
If you’re not just ready to hear the lessons, but you want to see how dramatically your business can be changed like mine was, then join me for my free Webinar, “The 7 Lessons of Mega-Successful Entrepreneurs,” where I’ll share the Lessons in-depth and give you action steps for every lesson in a handout. You’ll walk away with a few ways to start seeing changes in your business now, even before the New Year.
If you’ve been feeling frustrated like I was and you’re ready to jump out of your plateau, this webinar is for you.
Join me November 29 for “The 7 Lessons of Mega-Successful Entrepreneurs” at 1:00 PM Eastern.
(Seriously, it’s free. And it’s not a sales pitch. That’s not how I roll. I’m just saying.)
Customer service is one of the most important things in today’s marketplace. In this article, I’ll show you how one big company got their customer service wrong, and how you can learn from their mistakes and take your small business customer service to the next level.
Last Christmas, when Leo and I took the kids to Spain for the holidays, we experienced several hours of delay in London Heathrow Airport. After our delay, our flight was boarded then de-boarded, and then we spent several more hours in the chaos of baggage claim, trying to get our suitcases back. British Airways made no public announcements, made no real effort to provide accurate information (except to first class passengers, and even that effort was minimal, at best), and no one seemed to be in charge. Not only that, but my bag was lost for an entire week, and we received Leo’s bag a week after that, the day before we left to come home, and the entire time the bags were lost, no one at British Airways seemed to have a clue what was going on.
And believe it or not, that wasn’t even the worst part of the customer service catastrophe. After the holidays, on the train back to London, I filed the claims for our canceled flights and reimbursement for what we purchased while we awaited deliver of our lost baggage. I heard back from BA by February, but in March, they stopped responding to my e-mails. It took until May to get a response, and only because I e-mailed the CEO of British Airways, and then it took another two and a half months to get them to issue a reimbursement check. The final insult? The check they sent covered less than half of the claim I submitted.
Where did British Airways go wrong here? Everywhere. So…what could they do better, and more importantly, what can you learn about about small business from my bad experience with British Airways?
The customer or client should be at the forefront of everything you do.
I’ve said it hundreds of times – your priority should be to meet the needs of your target market. You have to know who they are and what they want so you can design everything for them. When you develop your brand, ask yourself: will this appeal to my target market? When you have a web site created for you, ask yourself: will my target market be able to navigate this? When you set up customer service guideline and procedures, ask yourself: does this serve my clients and customers?
I’d wager that when BA execs sit down to plan something new, they don’t consider the customer at all. It’s evident in their hard-to-navigate web site, their lack of easily-accessible customer service phone lines, and their lack of consideration for the customer in virtually every aspect of travel. Make sure you don’t make the same mistake.
Have emergency backup plans in place. No matter what business you’re in, there will always be moments when something goes wrong. If you have a contingency plan in place before things go wrong, you won’t have to scramble to figure out what to do. Your response time will be faster and your customers will be satisfied sooner…and you won’t feel frazzled, because you’ll know exactly what’s going on and what to do about it.
If British Airways had an emergency backup plan in place for what happened when we traveled back in December, there would’ve been BA personnel telling people what was going on and what to do next, and no one would’ve spent the night sitting in baggage claim.
Keep your customers informed. The worst thing you can do when things go wrong is to cut your customers out of the loop. Maintain regular communication with your clients and customers, even if you can’t tell them what they want to hear. They want to know that you’re working on solving their problem.
A great example of this is how American Airlines handled a problem I recently had with a ticket. They’d made a mistake and ticketed something wrong and I was on the phone with their customer service agent, trying to solve the problem. The agent had to put me on hold for a very long time so his supervisor could work with another department to fix the issue. Every couple of minutes, though, he’d come back and say, “I’m sorry this is taking so long, Mrs. Baroncini-Moe, but I just wanted to check in and let you know that we’re still working on this and I just need to have you hold a bit longer. Is that okay?” And because I knew what was going on, I was fine with the lengthy hold.
British Airways could’ve gone a long way with customer service by having someone in the baggage claim area telling people they weren’t sure what was going on, but they were in the process of finding out and were going to let us know just as soon as they had answers, having someone call my hotel to let me know they were still trying to get our bags to us and updating me on their progress (even if there hadn’t been any), and, instead of going for three months without replying to my e-mails, having someone contact me to let me know they were researching my receipts and working on figuring out the reimbursement, which brings me to my next point.
Respond quickly and communicate regularly. When customers contact you and let you know there’s a problem, respond immediately. Let them know you’re willing to take action to resolve the issue, and you are on their side. Your goal is to preserve the relationship, and one of the ways to do that is to keep the lines of communication open. Make sure they know you’re continuing to work on resolving things and keep them updated on your progress.
Obviously, if British Airways had communicating effectively and regularly from the start, we wouldn’t have spent the night waiting for our suitcases, and obviously I wouldn’t have spent three months trying to get them to respond to e-mails. Beyond that, if just once, a member of the BA staff had picked up the phone and called me, instead of relying on the impersonal medium of e-mail, I think I would’ve felt like they cared a little.
Go an extra step beyond to satisfy your customers, and apologize. Be exceptional. Go overboard. Do what it takes and go beyond just what you “have” to do to resolve any problems. British Airways sent me reimbursement for half of what their mistakes cost me. I would’ve been happy if they’d sent me exactly what I spent on replacement clothes, toiletries, and, as this was our Christmas trip, replacements for the kids’ Christmas stockings and stuffers, but do you know what I never received, even to this date? An apology. If, at any point during this process, anyone from BA had called me to say, “We are so sorry for how this has been handled, and we’re going to make this right,” I wouldn’t have felt so frustrated and angry as I practically forced them to resolve the problem.
My point in this post is to show you exactly where this big company went wrong in their customer service, and how you, as a small business, can do better. Good customer service matters – people talk about that. So make your customer service about caring for your clients and customers in an unparalleled way. Go the extra mile, and dare to be exceptional. Put yourself in the shoes of your customers and clients and ask yourself, “What can I do to put this relationship first and delight this person?” Do that and you’ll find your customers becoming more and more loyal, until you have your very own volunteer marketing team.
Being authentic can be surprisingly difficult, especially in business. I often work with people who have no problem being genuine in real life, but who really struggle with authenticity in business. I hear from clients that, in business, they have to appear to be mega-successful — not just sort of successful, and not “hey, I’m growing a business here,” but really successful, in order to be taken seriously. There’s so much posturing and pretending, because people believe that you can’t become successful unless you appear to already be successful. But that’s just not true! In fact, it’s the opposite.
We’re all works in progress.
I’ve seen “behind the scenes” of a lot of the people who most of us think of as mega-successful, and things aren’t always how they seem. A well-known wealth coach I know spends most of his time talking about the power of mindset, but I know that he struggles with exactly the same issues everyone else does: doubt, uncertainty, insecurity. We’re all works in progress. Every single one of us. We all have questions and insecurities and fears. It’s how you deal with those internal struggles that matters.
The truth has a way of seeping out anyway.
We think we’re so good at hiding our secrets from the rest of the world. But whether it’s a financial crisis, marital problems, personal demons, or something else, even if you think you’re keeping your skeletons hidden, you’re probably not. Truth has a way of sneaking out there and betraying our lies. Truth may show up in an uncertain look in your eye or in the way you keep your secrets, but know this: it’s almost impossible to keep things totally hidden.
It’s not all about appearances. It’s about truth. Far too many folks out there seem to think that if you appear to be super-successful, you’ll achieve legitimacy. But it’s not about how you seem, it’s about how you are. If who you really are matches up with who you say you are, then you’ll appear credible, because you are credible. On the other hand, pretend you’re something that you’re not and you’ll come off as shady.
The real secret to gaining legitimacy is authenticity. We’re all after legitimacy, in the end. So take the time to build your expertise and knowledge, offer your services at a discounted rate while you gain experience, and build in the right systems to support your products and services so you can offer unparalleled good service. You’ll build credibility by doing things right, and with credibility and legitimacy comes real success.
(In an upcoming issue of my No Suits Allowed! e-zine, I’ll be talking about how to be authentic. It’s such an important piece that’s missing from so many businesses today, so make sure you subscribe to the e-zine so you can find out the critical steps you need to take to achieve authenticity in your business.)
