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A recent study by Intuit, the software giant behind QuickBooks, Quicken, and TurboTax, found that three-fourths of small business owners expect to grow this year, in spite of all the talk about a recession, corporate layoffs, and consumers cutting back. Now, it s probably safe to say that small business owners are a relatively optimistic group. Part of their optimism, though, comes from that fact that two-thirds of the people surveyed said they had survived a recession before. They ve done it by putting their customers first and focusing on their finances. . When I first started studying entrepreneurship, my perception was that large companies created the jobs. Our colleges train us to work in bigg business. It s true that large companies tend to hire a lot of people during boom times, as do small companies. But during tough economic times, large companies cut back. Interestingly, small companies tend to pretty much hold their own. . If you re keeping an eye on the news, you see that a lot of large companies are cutting marketing and even customer service. They re cutting jobs and even entire departments. They re streamlining. . As numerous studies have shown, the net effect of this is that, over the course of the business cycle, almost all new jobs come from small businesses. Opportunities created by large businesses for small businesses in bad times As large companies make cuts, astute small businesses can gain an advantage by using any or all of the following three strategies: #1 Turn bigg companies into your customers. They re reviewing their operations. If what they cut is what you do it s your service market to them! They may still need that service in some capacity take advantage of it! #2 Recruit their talent A lot of the people they re laying off are very talented. These are people that you may have never been able to get before. Recruit that talent. Provide them with a nice place to fall. They may look for something more stable or some place where they feel more of a sense of ownership. Your business could be the answer they re looking for! #3 Go after the large company s small customers. With the cuts they re making, they have few resources to take care of their customers. It s the old 80/20 rule they re likely to super-serve the 20% of their customers that constitute 80% of their sales. Then they may cut back on service for all the rest. Go after these customers that are facing reduced service. They may be a small account to a large company, but they may be one of your biggest customers! Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Related posts How Opportunity Often Presents Itself Increase Your Sales by Knowing the Answer to this Question (Image by jpsdq) ShareThis

We saw a great post by John Grohol at PsychCentral called Distracted While Driving. He really caught our attention with one thought. We allow ourselves to be distracted while we drive because we think we re playing a race against time. In reality, we re playing against the odds. A study by Virginia Tech Transportation Institute and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that about 80 percent of all crashes and 65 percent of all near-crashes involved someone who was distracted within three seconds of the event. . . I plead guilty as charged. I have to admit to using my car as a roaming second office. I store up phone messages and return calls while I m on the road. . . . I m in the car on a busy, busy day with all these things rolling through my mind. That s one of the distractions that we often don t take into account. I zone out I don t really pay attention like I should. I m in my own world. . . Psychologists have identified four types of distractions, according to Grohol s article. Visual checking out an accident or looking at a billboard Audible cell phone calls, the radio, or another person talking Physical eating, flipping the dial, shuffling your iPod, or putting on make-up Cognitive daydreaming, thinking about other things in your life Of course, a lot of distractions are multi-faceted. For example, talking on your cell phone includes three of these audible, physical, and cognitive. . I really do think it saves time. We have a friend who consults with us. He talks to us when he s on his hour-and-a-half commute home. I can understand why you would use your phone when you have that long drive. . I won t dispute that at all, but I now realize more than ever that I have to recognize the odds of something happening and take measures to try to minimize the distractions. . . Changes we plan to make Leave earlier. When we have a lengthy trip, we usually don t give ourselves the time to stop and eat. We gas, grab, and go eating on the road. Leaving earlier will allow us time to stop and eat. We ll probably eat healthier, too! Ignore the phone. Granted, that s a hard thing to do. So we re going to turn our ringers off when we re only going to be in the car for a short time. Change our greetings. If we re expecting an important call, we ll change the greeting to let them know when we will be checking our messages. Pull over (if we can). For those rare situations where we have to take the call, we ll stop driving momentarily. What s your biggest distraction while driving? Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. (Image by krilm) ShareThis

The financial news seems to be all gloom and doom these days. The reports are that we re not in a recession, but times are tough for a lot of people. No matter how tight things get, we still have bills to pay. People are responding to this very intelligently. They re turning to public transportation, eating out less, seeking cheaper forms of entertainment, and cutting back on unneeded items. But what do you do if that isn t enough? . . Tapping your retirement plan It s tempting to pull money out of your retirement plan, like a 401(k), especially if you change jobs. In fact, about 40 percent of job changers in their twenties and thirties have done just that, according to a recent report by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). could cost you $130,000 If you re under 59 , it s usually not a good idea to cash out your retirement plan. Let s look at the example that FINRA used: You re 30-years old with $20,000 in your 401(k). If you earn just 6% on that money until you retire at 62, you ll have nearly $130,000 in your account, without making any additional contributions. and then some! Of course, you can start over. But you lose the power of money compounding on top of money on top of more money, all accumulating tax free until you take it out. So it s like taking at least two steps backward. But that s not all. Here are 4 other steps back: You ll have to pay income taxes out of this money, since it was invested pre-tax. There s also a 10 percent penalty for early withdrawal (unless you re over 59 ) Your employer is required to withhold 20 percent toward income taxes. If you owe money, your creditors can t touch your 401(k) unless you cash it out. By the time you get a check, that $20,000 will probably be more like $14,000 net of everything. So cashing out of your retirement plan is a short-term solution with long-term consequences. Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Related posts 63 Moves to Stop Living from Paycheck to Paycheck Don't Make This Costly Mistake (Image by nighthawk7) ShareThis

There’s a rising call for developed countries to track happiness, rather than just income and wealth. Economists say that the goal of a “rational actor” is to maximize his or her “utility” – their fancy term for happiness – over the course of his or her life. Perhaps governments are trying to catch up with the economists! . . Leicester University in England has tracked happiness for the past 30 years. Consistently, Denmark – not Disneyland – has topped their list as the happiest place on earth. We wondered why why are the people in Denmark so darn happy? Is it the weather? Average temperatures in Copenhagen are about 68 degrees in the summer and around zero in the winter. We don’t know about you, but that’s not our idea of great weather! Is it the taxes? Like her sister Scandinavian countries, Denmark has some of the highest taxes in the world. Now, granted those taxes are matched with some of the highest benefits for any citizenry. Is it their lifestyle or their habits? Danes are some the heaviest drinkers and smokers in the world? Is it their diet? One of the staples of the Danish diet is herring – this is a country that eats a lot of herring! . So it can’t be the diet, because maybe it’s just my personal taste, but ick! . . . Now there a lot of theories about what makes the Danes so happy. One of my theories is that they drink so much, they don’t remember whether they’re happy or not! . . Seriously, theories are fine, but we thought we should look at what the research shows is driving this happiness. Professor Kaare Christensen at the University of Southern Denmark found that Danes have low expectations. Because of this culture of expecting less, the people are happy when good things happen. This made us think of something Tony Robbins said – if you’re not happy, you have a choice. You can either change your conditions or your expectations. But what if you don’t want to change your expectations? Tal Ben-Shahar, who teaches the most popular class at Harvard University, found that the single most significant predictor of happiness is close relationships with friends and family. We found it interesting that 92 percent of Danes belong to some sort of social club. Maybe that’s why social media has become so bigg! What do you think? Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Sources University of Leicester Produces the first ever World Map of Happiness Why Danes are smug: comparative study of life satisfaction in the European Union Denmark: The Happiest Place on Earth Denmark happiest place on earth The REAL Happiest Place on Earth And The Happiest Place On Earth Is (Image by nookiez) ShareThis

The Council on Contemporary Families published a summary of previous studies, looking at data over 30 to 40 years. Here are some highlights: . . 1. Men’s share of household duties doubled as a percent of the total over last 40 years, from 15 percent to 30 percent of the total. The number of hours women spend on these same duties has declined over that period. 2. The younger the couple, the higher the share of household duties performed by the man. 3. Time spent caring for children tripled for men and doubled for women over the same period. Couples are placing much more emphasis on spending time with their kids than they did 30 years ago. 4. The longer a woman works outside the home, the greater the percentage of household responsibilities assumed by the man of the house. 5. Men are working less and spending more time on family duties. Women are trending in the opposite direction. 6. When the woman of the house works more hours, earns more money, or has more education than the man, the man’s share of family duties increases. 7. About one of out three couples now has a woman who earns more than the man. They pointed out that there had been an expectation of immediate change when women started working. That didn’t happen to the disappointment of many! However, over the span of a few decades, things have changed quite a bit and they predict this trend is here to stay! The bigg payoff Couples are redefining what it means to be the man or the woman, the father or the mother, in a relationship. This summary shows that the divorce rate is lower when couples divide up the duties more equally. In fact, it’s even lower than with the traditional relationship where one person is the breadwinner and the other person runs the house. . Mary-Lynn and I both grew up in a traditional family that stayed together. But we’re pretty non-traditional. . . Yeah, I remember that my mom was always in the kitchen. I determined long ago that wasn t for me! She kept telling me you re going to have to learn how to cook, what are you going to do when you are out on your own? I told her I would just meet a guy who knew how to cook and marry him. And that guy is George! And let me just add he s an AWESOME cook!!! . Roles are getting redefined so don’t listen to what other people say. If it works for you, your spouse, and your family it works! . This week, our newsletter subscribers received a great article about how to get more flexibility at work so you can have more time at home. You can get it, too, click this link to subscribe to the Bigg Success Weekly. Until next time, here’s to your bigg success! Related posts Success is Teamwork! How to Reach an Agreement with Your Spouse on the Family Finances 5 Questions to Ask Before You Work with Your Spouse (Image by clix) ShareThis

Geoffrey Moore, in his book Living on the Fault Line, discussed the “Core versus Context Model” for businesses. Core activities are things which set you apart from your competition and context is everything else. For many businesses, this may include administrative activities, marketing activities, and the like. As we discussed his model, we realized that this works in our personal lives as well. You want to do more of the things you’re really good at and less of everything else. Usually, we really like to do what we’re good at so by focusing on just those tasks, we can advance in our careers. Like for us, our strength is working on content for Bigg Success. At least we’d like to think so or more importantly, we hope you think so! For us, the contextual activities would be everything else. So for a couple of examples, we outsource our house cleaning and the yard work. Instead of spending time on these things, we can work on our business. You’re getting a glimpse into how integrated our personal and professional lives are. Since we often work from home, all of these decisions are floating around together. We don’t think we’re alone on this – a lot of people are finding it pays to integrate their work life and their professional life. By outsourcing your contextual activities, you save time and you open up the opportunity to make more money. It comes back to the time vs. money conundrum If you don’t have money, you have to invest more time. . For example, if you start a business that is well-capitalized, you will be able to spend your time differently than if you start on a shoestring. With limited capital, you may have to take care of the janitorial work – a lot of business owners have done that. I’ve done that! . At first, you may have to do it yourself because there’s no money. But you want to contract it out as soon as you can because it’s definitely a contextual activity, unless you happen to be the owner of a janitorial service. Thinking about core vs. context helps you focus on where you want to spend your time and where you want to spend your money. You think twice about spending money because there’s something else that will let you spend more time on your core. You may find that you spend your money on things that save you time, rather than cost you time. . I want a bigg screen TV, but we would rather spend that money on a web person. Right now, I handle our web site. So when there are changes that need to be made, I get to work. But there are better uses of my time. . Because we know that’s not in our core. Bigg Success is still in its early stages, so as soon as we can we’ll outsource this activity. Another example is publicity – right now, we do it ourselves. We want to contract with someone who is better at it than we are and can accomplish more than we can on our own. So although we don’t have HDTV, we do have goals for that money! It boils down to thinking about how much your time is worth. You may find that by contracting out certain activities, it costs you less than what you can make by spending your time working in your core. Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Related posts Your Personal SWOT Analysis (Part I) Your Personal SWOT Analysis (Part II) (Image by penywise) ShareThis

Today we welcomed Bill Clennan, the Memory Man. Bill is a professional speaker who has given presentations at over 10,000 events and been inducted into the Speakers’ Hall of Fame. In his career, he has helped over one million people improve their memory. One of my weaknesses is remembering names. How can I get better at it? . People don’t remember names because they don’t think they can. It’s almost impossible to do something if you don’t think you can. . So we have to spin it around and start thinking that we can remember names. . Exactly. In fact, what I tell people is decide that you’ll remember 100 percent of the people 100 percent of the time. . How do you suggest we do that is repeating it back the best way? . . I never suggest to people to repeat it back. If we meet someone who uses our name over and over, we start wishing they would back off. But here’s the good news – just by thinking of the sound of somebody’s name, that part of your brain shows increased activity. To your brain, thinking about that sound is the same as saying it. I’m emphasizing the sound because when we meet people, we hear their name we don’t see it. That’s one of the things that makes remembering names rather difficult. . The fusion technique – fuse the face with the name . At the moment I hear a person’s name, I look at their face. So I take that information along with the sound of their name and, just for a moment, I bring them together. I connect the two things. So when I see their face again, there’s a place in the brain where those two things originally came together. The next easiest thing I might say to myself, “Tryin’ Brian”, “Shirley Girly”, “Silly Billy”, “Fancy Nancy”, “Slim Jim”, or “Georgie Porgie”. . There you go – except I’ve figured it out. Mary-Lynn’s been using this fusion technique for years because she always calls me “Georgeous”! I think I like that better than “Georgie Porgie”! . For a huge portion of the history of our species, we did not have the written word. Information was passed along in rhythm, rhyming, chant, and dance. So why not use that technique? . “Syllable-ize” – break the name into sounds . When you meet someone who has a multi-syllabic name, break it into sounds. I met someone named “Ken Oracheski”. So I just pictured him with an oar stuck through his chest and he was on skis. . The rhythm method . I met a guy in Honolulu whose name is “Takabayashi”. The very moment I heard his name, I went “talk-a-bye ashi in the tree top, when the wind blows ” When you tie things together in sound, get the first part the rest of it comes along for free. So listen for the rhythm. This is one of the clues if you have to meet four or five people in a hurry. Tie them together in sound and you’ll remember the whole string of names. I call it the rhythm method. It’s especially for Catholic folks! . I was going to say that I’d heard of the rhythm method, but it didn’t have anything to do with remembering names? . Yeah, but this one works better! . . Bill’s links Get more tips on remembering names and faces Get a FREE memory evaluation Related posts Like, If You Want to be Liked, You, Like, Have to Read These 5 Traits! 3 Keys to Effective Networking ShareThis

Guy rule: best friend's genies are off limits. So when Jeannie accepts a dinner invitation from the clueless Roger, Tony is rightfully upset. Now he's chasing her all over town. This is why it's best to always uncork an unattractive genie. Shared by : The Minisode Network On: Friday, July 11, 2008 Views: 11Tags: Astronaut MASTER dream magic Nelson major meg bigg Jeannie minisode bigg ftp upload File television wish genii sitcom all geni Roger unattractive chasing Clueless NASA accepts upset rightfully Invitation Date classic always rule why Genie Tony limits friend dinner Best guy town genies uncork

After Jeannie helps Tony smack the living daylights out of a golf ball, General Peterson chooses Tony to be his partner in a match against some Navy brass. Without magic, however, Tony actually sucks at golf, as the General is about to find out. Shared by : The Minisode Network On: Friday, July 11, 2008 Views: 9Tags: Astronaut magic Nelson MASTER dream major meg bigg minisode bigg Jeannie ftp upload File living network NASA match smack However general NAVY actually BRASS chooses find partner ball sucks Without against Tony helps Golf Watch birdie out daylights Peterson

Roger and Tony take a trip to Reno for some gambling and Roger brings Jeannie?s bottle along against Tony?s wishes. His thinking is that a woman who can stop time and alter events may be of some value at the slot machines. Sounds reasonable. Shared by : The Minisode Network On: Friday, July 11, 2008 Views: 5Tags: Astronaut MASTER magic Nelson dream major meg bigg Jeannie minisode bigg ftp upload File along machines network Roger gambling reasonable ALTER NASA events slot Stop woman lucky bottle against wishes value Tony thinking May trip Sounds time brings reno

Oh, boy. Jeannie's jealous again. Tony lands the job of technical director on a big Hollywood astronaut film and Jeannie finds herself at odds with the sexy female lead. Jeannie's solution is to become a star,but her acting is so transparent. Shared by : The Minisode Network On: Friday, July 11, 2008 Views: 18Tags: dream Astronaut MASTER magic Nelson Jeannie minisode bigg major meg bigg ftp sexy upload File acting Hollywood network NASA director female odds finds jealous lead become moving Tony job film herself finger star boy again Big transparent Technical solution Lands

Houston, we have a pink, frilly problem. When Tony is slotted for a historic space walk, Jeannie goes ballistic and insists that she tag along to keep her master safe. From an astronaut's perspective, it doesn't get any more embarrassing than that. Shared by : The Minisode Network On: Friday, July 11, 2008 Views: 24Tags: Astronaut magic major meg bigg MASTER dream Nelson minisode bigg Jeannie ftp upload File she television along genii sitcom geni wish seen classic goes embarrassing NASA anybody safe perspective historic walk space Moon doesn keep Houston Tony tag pink Problem Depressent Ballistic Frilly insists Depressent More

Morningstar, one of the most respected names in financial information, recently held their annual investment conference. There was a great deal of discussion about the volatility of the market and how jittery it s making many investors. Jittery investors like to do something, but the problem is they don t make the best decisions in troubling times. We have met the enemy! One of the speakers was Jason Zweig, who is also the author of Your Money and Your Brain. Our brains can be our own worst enemies when it comes to investing. He said there are two parts of our brain the reflexive (emotional) part and the reflective (logical) part. The emotional side is ever-present; we have to consciously call upon the logical part. Obviously, we want to buy low and sell high. The problem is, with the emotional part of our brains running rampant, we may tend to buy high and sell low! So don t get in a hurry to sell in times like these. Stay the course if your investment horizon is five or more years, because research shows that a broad portfolio of stocks tends to go up as long as you hold them for five years or more. If you need the money (e.g. you plan to retire or send a kid to college) within the next few years, talk to your investment advisor to determine your best move. You can make money with a stock that goes nowhere! Let s say that you have $100 to invest each month. You decide to invest it in a broad index fund (e.g. the S ve invested $200 total and your 15 shares are worth $150. You re in the red. But you don t care you re in it for the long-term! Month 2: Assume shares of this fund are now selling for $20 again. With your $100 monthly investment, you buy 5 more shares bringing your total to 20 shares, worth $400. But you ve only invested $300. You re $100 ahead, even though the share price is the same as it was when you started! Reacting logically may mean not reacting at all! It s very difficult (if not impossible) to predict what the stock market will do. However, research has shown time and again that staying the course is usually the most profitable path for most people. It s understandable that you might be worried right now with the market being so turbulent. But don t panic react logically which may mean not reacting at all! Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Related posts Getting Aggressively Passive: Creating A Passive Income That Sets You Free How To Get Rich 6 Easy Steps To Financial Freedom (Image by woodsy) ShareThis

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You may especially enjoy listening to today s show. We had some fun with sound effects throughout, most which can t be translated to print! We recently saw a study that showed that nature-based recreation in the US has declined about 25% in the last 20 years, after increasing in the 50 years before that. So we did our show today in the middle of nature we camped out! We recorded the show in front of a nice fire while we roasted marshmallows. Nature comes with benefits Studies have shown that being outdoors has some incredible health benefits. In fact, even just SEEING the outdoors is beneficial. A little while ago, we saw a study that showed that hospital patients with a window recover much faster from surgery than those without. Isn t that amazing? This same study cited numerous sources that showed that spending time outdoors can lower stress and decrease mental fatigue. Born to be wild We ve been talking about the benefits of being outdoors. Now let s look at what the outdoors can do for one specific group of people kids. This same study we mentioned earlier showed that kids who spend more time outside pay attention better and are less demanding. It s even been shown to reduce symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). But going back to where we started, Americans are spending less time outdoors. Miracle-Gro, the garden fertilizer company, just conducted a survey. Nearly 70 percent of the parents who responded said their kids spend less time outdoors than they did when they were kids. My parents wouldn t let my sister and me inside until it was dark. They wanted us to run off all that energy! Now I know why Mary-Lynn brought me out here! Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Related posts 4 Fun Things You Can Do This Weekend for Free (or Nearly Free) without Fueling Up How to Reclaim Your Weekend (Image by mummau55) ShareThis

One thing people often don t think about when going into business with a friend is the relationship itself. You re going into business as friends. You want to remain friends. Business is full of surprises. Discuss the possible surprises upfront, before you mix friendship and business, so you can keep your relationship strong while you re in business. You may think your friendship is really strong and you re probably right. But when you go into business together, your friendship will be tested more than it ever has been before. It s wise to prepare for it beforehand, so you already have a lot of the answers when you re in the middle of a tough situation. Look at it this way a business partnership is like a marriage. You need a pre-nuptial agreement! So find a good attorney to draw up an agreement for you. 8 What if scenarios to discuss with your attorney #1 What if the business fails? According to statistics, if the business fails, it s most likely that no one will be owed any money. But what if that s not the case what if the business does owe money? How will you resolve that? #2 What if it succeeds wildly? That may not sound like a problem, but you d be surprised. Sometimes when a business succeeds at this level, greed enters in. Then comes the power struggles. Discuss the dream scenario upfront to avoid a nightmare. #3 What if one of you is incapacitated? What if one partner is no longer able to do his or her part? How will the others handle this? Will this person get bought out? Is there formula for the price? There s a lot to think about if this unfortunate situation happens. #4 What if one of you dies? Obviously this is even more extreme than the last scenario. There s the human side your friend has passed and you re grieving. But you also have business to attend to; work still needs to get done. Many of the same questions from Scenario #3 apply here. But there s more. For example, does the deceased partner s family now have an ownership stake? Or do you buy them out? #5 What happens when one of you gets married? Or you may already be married. What say does the spouse have in the business? Can the partner s interest be jointly owned with a spouse or do you want to restrict ownership to your original group? #6 What if one of you gets divorced? The business interest may be a significant asset. You probably don t want a former spouse having a say in your business even as a minority stakeholder. It can really muddy the waters, as the saying goes. What restrictions will you place on ownership? #7 What if one of you wants out? How will you determine a price? What kind of notice will you require? What is the process? #8 What if one of isn t pulling his or her weight? How will you determine that this is case? What can, and will, you do about it? These aren t pleasant things to think about, let alone talk about. However, you re more likely to find good solutions now when you re thinking logically than to try to work them out in the heat of the moment. We can t stress this enough get a good business attorney. Then sit down with your partners and your attorney and work through these issues. Your attorney will probably have even more situations to discuss. Work through these issues before you start for the sake of your friendship and your business. Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success Related posts 5 Questions to Ask Before You Work with Your Spouse Success is Teamwork! (Image by ushakov) ShareThis

We ve been thinking about customer service lately, inspired by a trip and a book. I was in Chicago recently and I had to use the restroom. I saw this little hot dog place. I thought that I could grab a dog for lunch and use their bathroom. As I approached the door, I saw a sign. The sign said, No Public Restrooms. So I stopped, looked around, and noticed a McDonald s down the street. So I went to McDonald s. I could see a business to limiting the use of their facilities to patrons, because some people will just use the bathroom and leave. But to not even let your customers use it that seems a little extreme to me. I learned this lesson the hard way. One of my earliest businesses was a Ben Franklin store the old five and dime. We didn t let the public use our bathrooms. There was one particular day every year when the town held a huge community sale. We got tons of traffic on that day, many needing to use the bathroom. People would come in and walk out because we said, No . Why wouldn t they? We hadn t served their immediate need. So we changed our policy and most people who used the restroom did buy something. This makes me think of the book, Our Toilets are Not for Customers by Floyd Coates. He tells the story about shopping for light fixtures. His house had been severely damaged by a tornado. He had to buy lights for his new house, so he went to a lighting store. He was about half done with his list having already selected about $2,000 worth of merchandise when he got the call of nature. He asked a clerk where their bathroom was. She said, Our toilets are not for customers. She went on, There s a place a couple of blocks down the street. So he left and he didn t return they didn t get a dime out of him. One of my professors, who became one of my mentors, said that most policies are created for 3% of the people the exceptions rather than the 97% who are responsible for the success of the business. The #1 and #2 ways businesses flush money down the toilet #1 Create policies for 3% of their customers The hot dog place in Chicago is the perfect example of this. Would more than 3% of the people who walk through the restaurant s doors do their business without doing business with the restaurant? Yet all of their customers are affected by this policy. #2 Create policies for 3% of their employees The renegades, you might call this 3% of employees. But the other 97% suffer for it. This results in lower morale among all the employees especially the ones who did nothing wrong. Lower morale leads to lower productivity. What s that sound? Oh, that s the sound of money getting flushed down the toilet! This 3% rule is a good thing to think about before making any policy decision that affects customers or employees. We ve given one example, but there are so many more. What have you seen as a customer or an employee? How do businesses flush money down the toilet? Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. Related posts How Opportunity Often Presents Itself If You Want to Increase Your Profit, Don’t Put Your Customers First (Image by Leo Reynolds, CC 2.0) ShareThis

A bigg salute to Josh Whitford, who writes the Unconventional Marketing blog, for inspiring today s post. Josh read the The 4-Hour Workweek, written by Tim Ferriss, and decided to accept the challenge to contact a famous person. Josh chose Warren Buffett. He wrote a letter to Buffett asking him for his single piece of wisdom and sent it along with a self-addressed, stamped postcard. To Josh s surprise, the Oracle of Omaha responded a couple of weeks later. Buffett simply said, Read, read, read. A typical Buffett answer short and to the point! It s interesting advice because a poll by the Associated Press Ipsos showed that one in four Americans hasn t read a single book in the last year. At least, that s how the news reported it we look at that and see that three out of four Americans did read a book last year! In fact, the last Gallup poll that we saw on this subject showed that over half of all Americans have read more than 5 books in the last year! Read, read, read for the sake of your career (and finances) We hear about the haves and the have nots . A study by the National Endowment for the Arts [pdf] showed the impact of reading on a person s well-being reading less leads to lower reading proficiency which leads to fewer (and lower quality) career opportunities. For example, according to the study, Proficient Readers are 2.5 times more likely than Basic Readers to earn at least $850 each week. This study also showed that 44% of Basic Readers lack a full- or part-time job, two times the percentage of Proficient Readers. So, Warren Buffett said it well read, read, read. Read, read, read to expand your imagination When I was young okay I d like to think I m still young so when I was younger, I used to just read non-fiction, and specifically books on business and investing. Then I took a literature class with a phenomenal professor a short-story class. It made me use my imagination in a way I didn t do when I just read books that I thought were more practical. And as Albert Einstein said, Imagination is more important than intelligence. What s nice about reading, rather than watching, is that you are the director. You create a vision of the story the characters, the setting. Just think about how many times you ve read a book that gets turned into a movie. So you get all excited and go see the movie and it s not as good as the book! For me, a great example is Stephen King s book, It. I scared myself more reading that book than watching the movie! It s much more interactive mentally and the skills carry over to your professional life. A simple commitment to reading that s worked better than a college degree We have a friend who worked his way up in a small business. In fact, he ended up buying the business from the owner. After he bought it, he wished he would have gotten a college degree. But he didn t have the time he had a business to run! So he made a commitment to himself to read one business book every week. He reads the best sellers and he talks to friends for recommendations. He has that done for years now. He knows more about business than just about anybody we know. Do-it-yourself knowledge that s what Warren Buffett is talking about. What are you reading? Related posts The Fastest Way to Learn (Re-learn) Read a Business Book Every Week (Image by lusi) ShareThis

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Today on The Bigg Success Show, we welcomed Phil Rosenberg. Phil is the founder of reCareered, a career coaching service that helps job searchers get past the biggest challenge in today s competitive jobs market to get noticed. Phil, what does reCareered mean? It means someone who is seeking a job change, or trying to revitalize their career, or someone who is between jobs and wants help with how the job markets have changed in the last eight years or so. How has the job market changed? Eight years ago, the majority of resumes were delivered on paper. Around 2000, it changed to where most resumes were delivered digitally. And how does that change the resume itself? It changes it completely. The paper-based resume had to be static. The only way to customize it was by a cover letter. A digital resume can be searched. It also increased the number of resumes that went into most companies, by as many as ten-fold. We always hear about search engine optimization and how you want to rank at the tops of the pages for Google. But apparently you can do the same for your resume it can be optimized? You bet, and it s especially critical in today s world. Most major employers get thousands of resumes for each job, but they only staff to look at twenty to thirty. That s two to three percent. So your goal, in submitting your resume today, is getting to the top two or three percent. Through resume search optimization, you can manage that process rather than have it be random. My strategy with my clients is to make a resume a single-use document to have it infinitely customizable so that you re gaming the search engine and forcing it higher up the search page. How do we make a good impression right upfront? There s been research from the University of Toledo and Stanford University that states that interview decisions are made within the first two to thirty seconds. That blew me away. The rest of the interview is just somebody justifying their initial decision. So it s a gut feel decision that may occur even before you shake hands. It s all about preparation. Learn about your client how they communicate (verbally and non-verbally), how they dress, how they look. If you want a job, go to a place that s close to their office and sit there during lunch. Talk to people from that company who are getting lunch there. On a Friday night, go to Happy Hour at a bar close to their office and talk to people from that company. When you talk to them, watch their body movements. What s the tone they use? What s the speed they use to talk? You can also do that with their written communication their web site, annual reports, press releases. The key to all this is communicating to your audience that it seems like you already work there. It reminds me of the book, Guerilla Selling. It s all about learning about your customer, in that case, but in the case the employer you re going after getting as much information as you can, wherever you can. It s amazing how much information you can gather. Sure. That s also an effective way to use LinkedIn, Facebook or your own personal network. Chances are you have contacts within that company. A lot of people only use those contacts to see what jobs are available and to ask them to pass their resume along. They leave out some of the greatest uses of a network talking to people within an organization to find out what an organization is like and what the communication style is like. Listening for how they re answering questions rather than just what they re saying. This is fantastic advice because you do want to fit in. It s all about mimicking. When you re at an interview, should you sit up straight and lean forward or should you try to have your body language be similar to the body language of the interviewer? From what I ve read, you should try to mimic that person. That s exactly what you re doing it s called mirroring. You re trying to show that you fit in. You speak the same language. You re really trying to act like you already work at the company. It takes a ton of preparation. A lot of people aren t willing to put that preparation in, but the people who do get a huge, almost an unfair, advantage. Phil s links You can get free daily job tips from Phil at his blog or visit his main site, reCareered, the place for resume search optimization and job search 2.0. Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed. ShareThis