Brill posed as a wealthy foreigner in New York City, and got into several dozen taxis to see how many drivers would cheat him.

Only one out of thirty-seven cheated him.

The rest took him directly to his destination and charged him correctly.

Several refused to take him when his destination was only a block or two away, even getting out of their cabs to show him how close he already was.

Recognize scarcity, but only with the intent of increasing your ability to choose abundance. Despite the problems, our world is full of light and joy, if that’s what we choose to see.

Recommended Reading: All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten by Robert Fulghum

“There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations – these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat.

But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit–immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play.

But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously–no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner – no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.

Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses.” -C.S. Lewis

What do you think? Share your thoughts by commenting below.

Bill Gates, arguably one of the greatest successes in the modern business world, said this:

“Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning.”

It’s usually easier to find unhappy customers willing to speak up about their experiences than happy ones.

Why? Because vocalizing dissatisfaction – and pointing a finger at the perceived source – seems to come more naturally to many of us. Negative emotions are often experienced more strongly than positive ones.

Still, while the negativity can be hard to swallow when you’re working as hard as you think you can to provide outstanding service, there’s also something to take away from the complaints.

Instead of seeing unhappy customers as a reflection of personal failure, reframe their comments as an opportunity for improvement.

It takes practice to look past the harsh words sometimes offered up by unhappy or even angry customers, but underneath is something valuable: a specific place for improvement.

Also, there is something to be said for someone taking the time to express dissatisfaction. If the experience didn’t matter at all, they wouldn’t have bothered. So your product/service matters enough to take the time to comment.

If the feedback you’re getting from an unhappy customer is in written form, take the opportunity to read their comments more than once.

The first time you read what they have to say, you might feel uncomfortable, frustrated, and defensive. That’s okay. Feel it and let it pass.

The next time you read the criticism – perhaps after a period of time since the first reading – look for a specific complaint. While not everyone will be specific in expressing their dissatisfaction, many people will be.

If you can pinpoint exactly what caused the dissatisfaction, that’s the first step towards resolving it and improving your service/product.

While criticism can help keep you humble, learn to look past any harsh words. In short, stop looking at the problem and look for a solution.

Ask yourself: What could have been differently to avoid this customer’s reaction? Can I improve upon that in some way? Do I need to do more research into how other customers are experiencing this aspect of my business? If it needs to be this way, is there a way to explain that more clearly to customers?

Unhappy customers provide a learning opportunity. They force us to look for progress. They make us question every aspect of our service/product. They remind us that there is always room for improvement.

While we may always strive for perfection in our field, isn’t nice to know that the best is yet to come?

Ultimately you must be able to look at whatever you sell from the perspective of the person you’re selling to. In the end, that’s the perspective that matters if you want to improve the customer experience.

You have no idea how much your words will mean to someone else. Everyone could use some validation.

*If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or e-mail, you may need to click on the title of the post to view the video on our blog.*

“Being human always points, and is directed, to something, or someone, other than oneself — be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself — by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love — the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself…self-actualization is only possible as a side-effect of self-transcendence.”
-Viktor Frankl

What are you doing to live this quote? Share your thoughts below.

At the time of the plane crash, Todd and Lisa had two children, with one on the way.

Todd was one of the leaders who, realizing that the terrorists were on a suicide mission, organized a counterattack to subdue them.

Although they were not successful in bringing the plane down safely, their heroic actions undoubtedly saved many other lives by averting the plane from hitting its unknown target.

The customary reaction would have been for Lisa to be angry, bitter, and full of hatred for what the terrorists had done to her husband and her life. Instead, she chose love over hate, and faith over bitterness.

In her autobiographical account she quotes from a speech she gave where she said,

“…September 11 was just another date on the calendar for all of us. Now, when we hear that date, it brings to mind all sorts of things, from fear to anger to sadness to thoughts of all the loss that we have experienced personally.

“We’re left with choices about what we will do with those feelings. The choices for people like me…are to look at all the things we’ve lost or to look at all the things we have; to become bitter or to become better; to live in fear or to live in hope. I’ve chosen to live in hope…”

She is quick to point out that the source of her strength is God and having an eternal perspective. She writes,

“Lately I’ve been trying to look at the bigger picture, to discover what I’m supposed to learn from all this. I’m sure I have much growth yet to experience, but I’ve gleaned a few insights.

“Probably the most important truth is that my security must be in God rather than in anything or anyone in this world…I have found safety and security in a loving heavenly Father, who cannot be shaken, who will never leave me or forsake me, and in whom I can trust completely.

“For those looking for hope, I recommend grabbing the hand of your heavenly Father as tightly as possible, like a little child does with his parent. God is a hero who will always be there when you need him.”

Let us follow Lisa’s example and find the hero in us by choosing faith over fear and love over bitterness.

Marketing tools are things like websites, social media, brochures, flyers, blogs, etc.

Tools are necessary to marketing, but just because you have them does not mean you are marketing.

To build a house you need an architect, builders, tools, and materials. If you only have the tools, you only have one part of a complex equation. Just because you have all the latest and greatest tools, doesn’t mean the house will get built.

Independently, websites, blogs, and social media will not change the landscape of your lead generation alone. I’ve met scores of companies that think a Facebook page with throw them over the edge or once a better website is built that will be the ticket.

These tools will only be effective when they combine with the three other components of marketing.

To continue with the example above, the architect is your strategy, which is determined by asking questions such as, “What are our goals? What is our timeline? What is our why? What is our marketing budget? What have we learned from our previous marketing attempts and how do we apply those lessons?”

As the marketing department and management dialogue and get to the right solutions it can propel companies to new heights.

I’ve seen companies so eager to market that they never stop to coordinate all their efforts and end up making costly mistakes and could have been prevented. I’ve seen other companies who are so busy working in the business they never take time to work on the business.

The builder is your company messaging.

What is your story? What makes you unique? Why should your potential customers care about you? How do you differentiate yourself from the marketplace?

When proper messaging, strategy, and tools come together blogs, social media, emails, websites all tell the same compelling story, in a way that is intriguing and compelling.

Stories need to be simple, not complex. If you can’t summarize what you do in a sentence or two and better yet, your customer after meeting with you can’t tell the story, it’s too difficult.

Word-of-mouth referrals, the cream of marketing, will never take place if they can’t share their excitement.

The final piece of the analogy is the materials.

Without materials, there is no house. It doesn’t matter if you have the most expensive tools (website, blogs, etc), the best marketing plan (architect), or the best builders (messaging and story-telling), you won’t succeed without the best materials.

Materials are the conversations you have with your prospects and customers. Without them your business is nothing.

Conversations are two-way. Have you been talked to in a so called “conversation” and never got a word in edge-wise?

Marketing isn’t a one-way voice blast. Your website needs to talk to your customer in a way they want to be talked to. Blogs are for transparency and opening, a chance to share the real you.

Even radio ads, for example, need to start a conversation and invite your prospect to want more.
Your front-stage marketing needs to match your customers’ back-stage experience. If these two are at odds with each other, good luck!

Don’t fall into one of the biggest marketing traps that exist with small or medium businesses. Just because you have marketing tools, doesn’t mean you’re building a business.

When I was 12, my mother took me to Germany to visit relatives.

While we were there, we took a boat trip down the Rhine River and saw castles tower over endless mountainside vineyards.

We visited one of the castles. I must have played and explored for hours. Before we left, my mother bought me a souvenir: a 3-inch statue of a knight in shining armor.

I still have that little knight. If you saw it, you might ask, “What’s the value in that?” I see it and it brings back a flood of memories.

Value is always in the eye of the beholder.

A diamond is only valuable because we all agree it’s valuable. Not everything is that straightforward. Maybe a book is valuable to you. Maybe it helped you grow, heal or connect to God.

To really become a builder – to be able to see opportunities and improve the world around you – you must understand that value isn’t monetary. It’s a part of ourselves.

It can be what we believe and experience. Maybe it’s the lessons we learn. Maybe it is our time.

Maybe it’s not what we think is valuable, but what the person we’re trading with thinks is valuable.

When we share something of value, it goes a long way.

What do you value? What can you give?

“Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.” – Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2, 3.1.62

In this scene, a powerful king fights to fall asleep while his poor subjects sleep soundly.

He cannot grasp why a poor, disheveled shipmate can find rest in a literal storm, but the king cannot quiet a stormy mind. Sleep refuses to “steep [his] senses in forgetfulness.”

King Henry was by no means a perfect king – he quietly coaxed the murder of his predecessor, King Richard, in order to take power. Still, since then he served honorably, but struggled to sleep at night.

Besides the obvious lesson of reaping the sour consequences of actions without integrity, King Henry offers a picture of struggling in a position of power.

While most of us are not king of a country, we have some form of a crown. Perhaps we’re the leader of a network marketing team or the mother of three young kids or a high school classroom teacher.

Whatever that role is, the point is that there is heaviness that very often accompanies positions of leadership. With power comes responsibility; this is not a new concept.

Still, as leaders, how do we manage the weight of that power?

Instead of starting with the problem, we ought to start with the solution. In other words, we should answer the question: why can King Henry’s subjects sleep while he cannot?

With Any Power Comes Great Responsibility

The immediate answer to this question is that his subjects don’t have the same level of responsibility that he does. But scale does not necessarily lessen a leader’s sense of responsibility.

For example, a manager with three employees does not care less about those people simply because there are other companies with more workers. To him, those three people are his number one personnel priority, period.

And therein lies the rub – it’s not the scope that matters so much as the level of impact. In positions of responsibility, ethical leaders concern themselves with how they will affect the lives of others with the decisions they make every day.

Losing sight of that ultimate end is what leaves leaders making self-serving, shortsighted decisions. Most of the battle of managing the weight of leadership is recognizing the real bottom line: impact.

King Henry assented to the murder of King Richard because he saw only the immediate reward to himself – the power of a king – without regard for the long-term implications both to his subjects and to his own conscience.

Maybe at the end of the day, losing a little sleep is a reminder, albeit inconvenient, of where a leader’s focus should be. Silencing that nagging voice entirely could leave us less aware of how our power as leaders matters in the larger picture.

Still, accepting that burden as an element of solid leadership should be coupled with accepting our own limitations as human beings. Ideally, leaders would make the right and best choice all the time. This does not happen.

Closure for the poor leadership decisions we inevitably make comes in the form of recognition and application. Just as the impact of power must be recognized, the application of a lesson learned is the only way to move forward as a stronger, improved leader.

Handling Responsibility

So how do you manage the weight of leadership? Simple: recognize and respond.

Recognize the scope of your impact as a leader. Recognize that sometimes sleep does not come because you must be aware of your impact. Recognize that selfish decisions for immediate gain will have long-term effects.

Respond to that responsibility not by allowing worry to fester and frustrate your future, but by using your experiences – both positive and negative – to work towards a model of leadership that exudes integrity and success.

Practice these two elements of leadership, and the crown will get a little lighter.

I once went hiking with a group of guys on a trail that led to a great waterfall.

We’d heard that as you got to the waterfall, in order to see it up close, you had to do a steep climb down to the river in the canyon. We were planning for that and we were ready.

When we got there, to our surprise, the last group had left a rope. They’d tied a good mountain-climbing rope to a tree at the top. We simply used that to lower ourselves down.

We took a good look at the waterfall. We left the rope when we were ready to leave.

Who knows how many people had used that rope since its owner left it behind? How many people have used it after us?

Also, how many people took that trail and didn’t leave a rope for others?

That rope was left behind by someone with a builder mentality.

A builder asks “What will others need? What can I build? How can I achieve something that gives back? How do I contribute and influence? What is needed and how do I fill it?”

Whoever left that rope made that day much easier for us.

We all enjoy the fruits of builders: the homes we live in, the freeways we drive on, the bridges we cross, the freedoms and luxuries we enjoy.

We can all be builders, and that mentality starts with our families and other close relationships. We can also build businesses and other projects that serve the needs of others. How about the community in which we live?

Are we leaving a trail that others would want to follow? Are we leaving a legacy worth pursuing or something that contributes to society?

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to post a number of blog articles that talk about three key principles that every person needs in their life if they want to be a productive human being — either in their relationships, families, business or society.

To the extent that these principles are followed, you will recognize builders and become one yourself.