Author: Keith Lee

A note from Keith:  Dan Kennedy is not only the leading expert in Marketing; he is the highest paid Copywriter in the world and is my personal mentor.  Everything Dan says to do, I do because I know what an impact it has had and will continue to have on my businesses.  If you are a small business owner looking to grow your business you’d be wrong to NOT listen to Dan.

How to Get Rich in Un-Rich Times
by Dan Kennedy

In the Renegade Millionaire System, I dispense this advice: #1: BE the Wizard, #2: BEWARE the Wizard. Wizards are very powerful, so it is better to be one than to be influenced by one.

Everybody welcomes the convincing Mystic. People so desperately wish to Believe. That there is a long lost, ancient or a revolutionary new Something: cure, elixir, formula for easy riches or happy relationships or better sex or children that mind or growing 12 foot high tomato plants; a gizmo that turns corn into fuel or tree bark into gold doubloons; an Answer Man, Seer, Keeper of Secrets. And in dark times, this desire intensifies. In dark times even kings subjugate themselves to the Mystics – which you know if you’ve studied history. People really don’t want rational explanations for how you do what you do, they prefer Believing that you possess Mystical Powers and Magical Secrets that you will use for their benefit. To underestimate the power of secrets and secret powers is to ignore how humanity has been manipulated, controlled and ruled since its beginnings.

 In these times, you can rise to greater heights of influence and power than at any other time, by turning up the wattage on your mysticism. In the dark, you glow. Doesn’t matter if you dispense investment advice or lawn care advice, are a dog whisperer or a presidential candidate, or a tax attorney or a mattress manufacturer – now, more than ever, is the time to speak of secret techniques and magic ingredients and unique abilities.

To offer absolute certainty in an uncertain world. To declare unique and profound importance.

I’m speaking now about how you present yourself to the world.

If you sell a particular kind of mattress, you must present it as THE – emphasis on key word: THE – first, best, only “magic,” based on top secret technology invented for NASA and Olympic athletes – that relieves all back pain, delivers 10,000 more REMs per night, lets cellular structure rejuvenate thus slowing aging, helps you lose weight while you sleep; is THE secret to eternal youth and vitality. It must be THE GREATEST discovery in medical science of this century. And you, as its spokesperson, must be the Grand Mystic of Sleep Science. You need an arsenal of Amazing Facts at your disposal. You need practiced language and Profound Statements. You must convincingly promise THE Cure. For whatever ails them, economically, emotionally, physically. To advance your education, I strongly suggest getting and reading the book CHARLATAN. It reads like a novel but is non-fiction. Not that you should be a charlatan; I presume you deliver legitimate value in whatever you sell or do. But that you should use the techniques of the master-charlatans of the ages. Nothing less will do.

When a group becomes lost and frightened in a dark cave, the man with the only flashlight automatically becomes their leader. Key word: only. It’s time to present yourself as the person with THE ONLY flashlight.

Learn more about Dan Kennedy and GKIC

We are delighted here at Keith Lee Business Systems to work with Lee Milteer, a productivity and human potential expert with whom I’ve had the privilege of knowing for many, many years. Members of my Live Your Bucket List NOW Insider Circle receive reports from Lee and her faculty, as well as a Celebrity Guest interview audio every month as part of their membership.

Lee has been a huge inspiration for me as well as thousands of other business professionals and entrepreneurs.

You can find out more about her at www.Milteer.com

Remember when you were a kid and you used to dream about a time that you would be in charge of your destiny and nothing could stop you from being exactly what you wanted to be?

Now as an adult, you have the authority you wished for as a child, but things aren’t going the way you had planned.  Does your life seem to be all work and no play? Do you feel uneasy about your future? Do you ever start to doubt yourself? Do you get stuck wanting to move ahead in life but aren’t sure if now is the right time, or you aren’t exactly sure how to proceed? Have you been waiting for the right time to do something and are now realizing there is never a perfect time?

Childhood Woes

From childhood, we’ve been taught to do what authority figures told us to do. We have been programmed that other people are smarter, wiser, and have more experience. We’ve been warned about the disastrous results that might happen if the rules aren’t followed. The bottom line is that we’ve been taught to give our power away and not trust our own judgment or truly believe in ourselves.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten your power to listen to the deepest part of yourself – your real needs, your desires, your gut instincts – and you’ve begun to make choices that are no longer satisfying. The good news is that your point of power is this minute in time. It’s the decisions you will make and act on from this day forward that will determine your destiny.

This month I am going to give you some new perspectives, motivation, and strategies for taking action so you can take back your true power and start Believing in Yourself and abilities again.

You Program YOUR Future

One of the first things you must do is start to be aware of how YOU are programming your future. How are you labeling yourself? Are you programming yourself to fail and allowing past habits and events rule your future?

The way you label yourself and think about yourself with yourself talk will determine how you make good decisions about critical issues in business.

We all have unproductive behaviors or habits that keep us from using our potential effectively. If your self-talk reinforces those unproductive behaviors or habits you are actually programming those unproductive behaviors to be more powerful and harder to get rid of in your life and self-image.

By Lee Milteer, Author, Speaker, Coach, Publisher, TV Personality
Milteer.com 

One time, a few years ago, I called one of our very good clients who has a brick and mortar store, excellent mail order business, superb telemarketing organization, and a top notch website.  They don’t have a retail store in my area, so I usually order online or call them.

I order from them for a number of different reasons:

1. They area a very good client of ours.
2. Their products are superb.
3. Their service is almost always at the Make-You-Happy level.
4. But even the best service businesses fall short and that’s why we need to be consistent and persistent in reinforcing Out-Nordstrom Nordstrom Customer Service in our business.

One of the areas that continually amazes me is how often people assume they know what you are going to ask and therefore don’t really listen to what you’re saying.  I had ordered top quality expensive wading boots for fly fishing in rivers.  When I got them they were too narrow.  I looked through their catalog and saw that the only boot they had in the catalog was available in wide widths was a lower price model.  Now, I’m not snobby, but my feet are old enough that I need the support and extra sole thickness.

I called the 800 number to ask if they had any higher quality boots in wide widths.  A very nice good customer service person told me that was the only boot that actually came in a wide width, but suggested that I call back in the morning and ask for a “boot product specialist” and see if one of the boots “ran” wider than the model I ordered.

I thought that was a great idea!  I buy New Balance tennis shoes for that reason.  I don’t need to get a “wide,” their shoes just run “wider.”

So I called back the next day and asked for a product specialist.  I told him that I had already found out that the only boot they carry in a wide was their inexpensive model and that the customer service person suggested I call back to see if any of the more expensive models “ran” wide and might work for me.

He said, “Let me check.”  It was quite a long while so I thought he was “checking” with someone else to see if any of their boots “ran” wider.  But then I heard him mumbling on the phone.  I found out that he was just reading from the catalog.

I told him I had already read the catalog and that I knew none of the other boots came in wide widths and ask again if he or anyone there knew of any brands “ran” wider.  He just went back to reading the catalog.  Finally, I just said, “Never mind,” and hung up.

I went to the local fly shop that is not very convenient for me to get to and found that they didn’t have any boots that came in wide widths either.  But they did have a great boot that ran wide.  I bought a $139.00 pair of boots.

And yes, you guessed it.  The company I called in the first place has the same boot.

The “product specialist” was very nice and polite and I’m sure he had customer service training.  The company’s customer service is consistently too good to think it just comes about without training.  There are at least 11 lessons to learn from this one call.

1. Train your team to truly listen.  Pay particular attention to people in your organization who tend to answer questions from you and others before they listen to the entire question.  Pay particular attention to those who like to finish questions for others.  Truly listen, don’t assume that you know what someone is going to say.  You know what happens when you assume.  You make an ass out of u and me:

   ass-u-me.

2. Monitor your customer service.  This seems almost obvious, but while it’s obvious, almost no one does it.  Whether you use secret shoppers, your own people secret shopping, or recordings, don’t ass-u-me that your people are doing what they’ve been trained to do.  And don’t ass-u-me that they do the same things when you or a manager are around to witness it firsthand.You surely can’t monitor every customer service interaction, but in this case, over time the business I called would certainly hear a similar customer service interaction and be able to address it in their training.
3. Make sure your customers know what to do when they are not being served properly.  Be sure your customers know your exceptional customer service expectations.  They need to not only know your exceptional customer service expectations, they need to know what to do when they don’t get Out-Nordstrom Nordstrom Customer Service.In as many ways as you can tell your customers what to do when they don’t get Out-Nordstrom Nordstrom, Make-You-Happy Customer Service.  Tell them when they are on hold on the phone.  Tell them in any communication that you send to them.  Tell them with signage.At American Retail Supply we tell customers to please let us know if we even let you down and if you’re still not happy call me, Keith Lee the owner of the company at 253-859-7310.If I have been told, “If we ever let you down, please call Bill at xxx-xxx-xxxx” I would have likely called Bill who would have found out that they do have a great brand that runs wider.  They would not have only thrilled me, they would have me writing an entirely different story about their Out-Nordstrom Nordstrom Customer Service and I would have told you their name and I would have spread a huge amount of positive word-of-mouth advertising.
4. Know your product.  I’m not going to harp on this too much because we are human and we can’t know everything.  But I do think that a “boot specialist” certainly should have known if any of hte brands “run” wide.  And if not he should have been trained to do #6 below.
5. Know your Customers.  I am a very good customer for the company I called.  Good enough that they send me a hardback version of their master catalog that is about an inch-and-a-half thick.I certainly believe in giving every customer World Class, Exceptional Customer Service.  With that said, your best customers should be taken care of even to a higher degree.  Yes, the customer that buys a $200,000 a year from us does get super-duper Out-Nordstrom Nordstrom Customer Service.  But you say, “How can they know that you’re a great customer?”  Have a great data base!  I’m going to be blunt here.  With the price of computers and software today, there is simply no excuse for not knowing who your great customers are and you are throwing money away by not marketing to and treating them differently and that certainly should not affect giving your other customers Out-Nordstrom Nordstrom Customer Service.In this instance, the product specialist should have pulled up my account, saw that I was one of their best customers and done something special to take care of me.  What could he have done?  He could have called someone in the company that knew my answer and called me back.  He could have called his manufacturers and called me back.  He could have gone to the warehouse and tried on some boots to see if any “ran” wide.  He could have done something.Should he have done those things for someone who buys $3.95 a year?  Maybe, maybe not.  But for one of his best, absolutely!
6. Train people to know where to go to get answers.  I covered this a bit in #5.  There are a lot of things he could have done to answer my question, but the biggest frustration was that he never seemed to listen well enough to hear the question properly.  We have a lot of product at American Retail Supply.  Regardless of how much training we give our team there is absolutely no way our reps can know everything when we put them on the phones.  So we spend a lot of time in our training teaching them where they need to go to get the answers.  When they start we constantly remind our reps of the most important sentence to learn:  “I’m sorry, I don’t know, but I’ll find out and get back to you by…” and then get back to them when you told them you would.
7. Create loyal customers.  In this instance, one of my favorite places to shop let me down.  But that’s unusual.  Their service, products and delivery are usually superb and because they are, I’m loyal and I’ll continue to shop with them.
8. You can learn multiple lessons from poor customer service in your business.  The normal response to bad customer service is to simply blame the person who delivered the poor service.  As you can see by the ten things we learned from this one phone call, you can learn a great deal from one instance in poor service and there are lots of things that could have been done so that this didn’t happen.  It’s not just the reps fault.
9. If you truly believe in and practice Out-Nordstrom Nordstrom Customer Service you will have multiple ways to catch and fix poor customer service.  When you implement Out-Nordstrom Nordstrom Customer Service you have many ways to identify, catch, and fix service that is less than exceptional.  With Out-Nordstrom Nordstrom Customer Service you will have opportunities to recognize problems, fix them, or maybe not even have issues come up because of
   • Training
   • Monitoring
   • The customer contacting someone else
   • Product knowledge
   • Customer knowledge
   • Training your Team to know where to get answers.
10. Three fingers pointing back at you.  I learned a lot of wonderful lessons from my mentor, Dick Thompson.  One of them is, “Remember, when you point your finger at someone else, three fingers are pointing back at you.”  If customer service in your business is anything less than great you have one person to blame… yourself!  There are only a few reasons for poor, or great customer service and you are responsible for all of them.

Be sure to have your eyes and ears open for your own customer service stories and them lessons you can learn from such experiences!

-Keith Lee

In May of 2013, I was fortunate enough to listen to Barbara Corcoran’s keynote address at the GKIC SuperConference in Orlando.  Her story is absolutely fascinating and what she shared with us attendees really resonated with me.  She was a fabulous speaker, was truly authentic, and it was evident that when it came to business, she wrote her own rules.  A true Maverick, which I really appreciate!

During her keynote address she shared with us her Seven Lessons of Success, as told through her experience as an Entrepreneur.  These may be things we have all heard before, but it doesn’t hurt to be continuously reminded of them to help us as business owners and Entrepreneurs stay on our A-game!

Lesson 1: Enjoy the Getting There

Barbara talked about the day she would sell her business for a lot of money.  Like most business owners – certainly me, probably you – she dreamed of selling her business one day for a lot of money… and then she said, “To anyone in the audience dreaming about selling your business, let me just give you a word of caution, enjoy the getting there.  I thought the day I could go to the City Bank machine and see that I had $44,000,000 in my checking account after I sold my business would be the most amazing change in my life.  Well, let me tell you something, it’s so much more fun getting there than having it.  The best days of your life are in the action.  Nothing is ever as exciting as building your business”

WOW – That was powerful.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said it also, “Life is a journey, not a destination.”

Lesson 2: All Great Entrepreneurs are Great at Failing

Over the years, in her real estate business Barbara had about 7,000 real estate agents who worked for her.  She had agents earning $11,000,000 a year, while the average agent earned $43,000.  She asked herself, “What’s the difference?”

At first she thought it was connections – that wasn’t it.

She thought it was how hard they worked – Nope.

What she found out was that her great sales people were great at failing.  When they get hit they have the inability to feel sorry for themselves.

They were down for a short amount of time and then back at it.

Lesson 3: Perception Creates Reality

Long before Barbara was a Celebrity Real Estate Broker in New York City, in fact, before she could afford to advertise, she started sending out press releases about the New York real estate market.  She began to be quoted in the New York Times as real estate expert, Barbara Corcoran.

When Barbara heard that Madonna was pregnant, she wrote the Madonna Report about what
Madonna would be looking for now that she was pregnant.  She didn’t represent Madonna, but she was now referred to as, Celebrity Real Estate Broker, Barbara Corcoran.  When Richard Gere was looking to buy in New York, his people called Barbara.  Perception Had Created Reality.

Lesson 4: There are Only Two Types of People Who Work for You – Containers or Expanders, and You Need Both of Them

Containers are the organizers, the filer, the office manager, the operations manager, etc.  You need
Containers in your business, and you need them in the correct positions.

Expanders are those good at sales, creative and marketing.  You need Expanders, and you need them into the correct positions.

Put people in positions where they can creatively use their strengths.  Let them reach their personal and professional goals as well as the goals you’ve set for them as their employer in the best way they know how.

Lesson 5: Promote GOOD People

I’ll say it the way Barbara did.  Forget about ‘ass kissers.’  You don’t need ass kissers.  To find GOOD people ask co-workers in the company, “Who helps you?”

Now, I agree with Barbara’s first 5 lessons, but I have a real problem with her 6th lesson…

Lesson 6: There is No Such Thing as a Balanced Life for the Successful Business Owner

OK, I haven’t sold a business for $66,000,000.00 like Barbara so I can certainly accept that if you define success as selling your business for 66 million dollars there may be no such thing as balance.

Barbara didn’t start her family until she was 47 years old because she couldn’t imagine running a business and having a family.

YIKES!!!!!!!!

OK, again, maybe that’s true if you build a business worth 66 million dollars, but that doesn’t work so well for most business owners.  We’re not willing to put our life totally “on hold” to build our business.

I love what I do.  I love owning my business, but I also have a family life, and my outside of work life.  But… if you had asked me in 1992 if you could be a balanced business owner I would have agreed with Barbara because I was burnt out, and just flat tired from building my business and being the best father and husband I could.  I was running at 100 miles per hour and I had no time for my own physical, mental or spiritual life.

When I started developing my Make-You-Happy Management System in 1993, everything changed.  I had found a way to create that work-life balance that we all strive for but find so elusive when we become Entrepreneurs and business owners.  This literally changed my life, and I become a better husband, father, and business owner because of it (I’ll spare you the details here but you can learn more about this system at www.KeithLee.com).

Lesson 7: You Have the Right to be There

When Barbara became a “success” in New York she started attending industry events and to her surprise everyone at each event was a man.  They treated her like second class and she felt second class.

After accepting this for a while, she decided that she wasn’t going to accept it anymore and decided for herself that:

You Have The Right To Be There

So she decided she was going to change her thought process and start acting like she had the right to be there and before long it wasn’t an act anymore.

Always remember, you have the right to be a successful entrepreneur!  No apologies.  No regrets.