When customers aren’t beating down your door, you have a couple of options.  You can chase them down, re-invent your company, change prices, change services or just quit.  I see people trying out all of those solutions. In fact, I’ve watched some seminar promoter types jump from one area of “expertise” to another, trying to find that one thing that people are going to buy.  And as they jump from frying pan to frying pan, they get a little more scorched every time as they trade in what expertise they do have for more and more hype.

And I see others just waiting.  They cut their businesses and lifestyle back to a sustainable level and with minimum work, they can maintain.  Meanwhile, they are taking advantage of The Chance of a Downtime.

It’s not often that you get that breather in our modern world.  I remember my grandmother (raised on a South Dakota farm) telling me how winter was when the family rested.  There weren’t field to plant, cultivate or harvest.  It was a time to just stay indoors, hang out with the family and stay warm.  It was a time to get ready for the next season.  It was the Chance of a Downtime.

In this economic breather, there are opportunities to learn new markets, meet new people, increase our personal capabilities, learn, meet, expand, grow and plan.

One friend just shut down his business a few weeks ago.  He and his wife are now going full board into a network marketing company with an internet marketing twist.  He is improving his capabilities at SEO (search engine optimization) and considering a new business to be an SEO resource.  I don’t know for sure what he’ll end up with, but rather than try to keep a flailing business alive, they took advantage of the Chance of a Downtime.

If your business or investments have slowed down, what can you do with your own Chance of a Downtime?

It’s also an opportunity for you to create positive change in the world.  Here are three quick strategies for doing that:

(1)  Set up your business so that you leave people better than you found them.  Your business itself is a force for good in other people’s lives.

(2) Earmark a portion of your profit to support causes that speak to your heart.

(3) Rally your clients, vendors, employees, ICs, anyone associated with your business around your causes to give part of their time and most importantly, their talents, to causes you support.

When times are hard, it’s tougher to find the time, money and heart space to do anything other than take care of yourself and your family.  And it’s never been more important.  When you pledge money, and honor that pledge, you are making a promise to the future.  It’s demonstrating a belief in yourself and your business beyond today.  It’s truly a wealth belief that transcends time.  You will be empowered when you do!

Here’s what we are doing:  My businesses have always been about empowering others to take control of their own wealth, to keep more of what they earn.  That means creating and implementing powerful tax strategies that control when and how much you pay in taxes.

On a personal note, we’re emotionally connected to charities related to children in Mexico.  We adopted our son David from a Mexican orphanage and ever since that time, we’ve seen each child as just like the son we love so dearly.  

We’re now living on the coast in Baja California.  We’re trying it out for a year and we’ll see what happens after that.  We’re in a more affluent part of Mexico, so there isn’t the crushing poverty and hopelessness you see in cities like Juarez where David came from.  But still, there isn’t a great support system.  School is free, but very expensive uniforms are mandatory and the children have to pay for standardized tests.  Plus, the kids have to be immunized and have birth certificates.  Those requirements keep hundreds, perhaps thousands, of kids out of school each year in this area.  

Our family toured schools in our area this past year.  We saw the free public (class sizes of 30-50 kids), the lower cost private (class sizes of 20-30) and the exclusive private.  The exclusive private are phenomenal, by the way.  Best I’ve seen anywhere.  

Kids aren’t starving in the orphanages here and they have clothes, but not all get to go to school.  So, that’s how we’re helping.  We toured a school along with two girls.  One was going to start this year if she could get the money for uniforms, books and get her immunizations caught up.  The other should have started last year, but didn’t have the money.  They were evaluated, met the teachers, got a tour and got to play on the playground.  When it was time to go, the youngest started silently crying.  She didn’t want to leave.  I think the monkey bars might have been more of a draw than the library, but I was still touched by how much she wanted something a lot of us take for granted.

The two girls start school, for the first time for both of them, on 8/25. 

What moves you?  What difference do you want to create?

I think the secret is adding value.  If you can add value to relationships, then the relationships will flourish.  If you can add value to your clients, (and it’s something they perceive value in) then they will stick around and refer other people.  If you can take an idea and add value to it, you have created an innovation that can create a business.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve talked to a lot of people about Twitter.  There seem to be three schools of thought:  (1) Never heard of it (2) Love it  (3) Hate it.

Never heard of it.  Okay, Twitter is for early adapters at this point, moving more into mainstream. It makes sense that there are people who never heard of it, or actually have heard of it but have no idea what it is.

I’ll skip to #3.  Hate it.  Here are the things I hear that are wrong with Twitter:

-  Tweets are just self-absorbed comments about what the person is doing.  (no connection made)

-  Well-known people hire others to tweet for them. (not real)

-  Spam.  (agreed - I hate spam)

-Waste of time.  (not seeing any purpose in Twitter)

And then there is the other group:  People who love it.  I’m one of them.  Here’s what I’ve been able to do:

-  Connect with accountants around the world. I now have resources in Australia and UK, as well as forensic accountant specialists, IRS resolution specialists, QB trainers, bookkeepers, auditors, basically every speciality i can think of.  I’d have never met them without Twitter or something like it.

-  More quickly built virtual resources than ever before.  This adds on to the other above - I used that connection to increase capacity very quickly and am now networking with CPAs who are advising in specialty areas directly to Capitol Hill.

-  Gotten customer service issues handled with big companies faster than I thought possible.  After spending days on the phone, having everything resolved within 15 min of a tweet.

- Got mentioned by Twitter CEO @ev.  OK, that’s just ego, but I thought it was really cool. I’ll be in his timeline on Twitter forever.  :-)

- Picked up clients who had never heard of me outside of Twitter.  That one blew me away.  I didn’t think that I would be getting clients so quickly.  I’ve only been doing this for about 4 months now.  And these guys had never heard of me, my website, my books, nothing - it all came from Twitter.  

- Incredible resources.  I hired @ScottBradley (by the way, if you’re wondering what the @ signs mean, that’s how you refer to people on Twitter.  To find Scott, go to www.Twitter.com/ScottBradley, or if you’re on Twitter, type @ScottBradley in a tweet and he’ll get notified of your tweet)  Scott is a rock star of social media networking.  He worked with the Toilet Paper Entrepreneur - a guy with zero database and no social media presence, and with no outside PR or publicity, turned his first published book into a best seller.  Plus he got him as many as 70K unique visits per month to his site.  I never would have even known about Scott without Twitter.

So, where am I going with all this?  Participation = Value  (Thank you Clinton Swaine of www.FrontierTrainings.com for that great saying)  I am choosing to participate fully in Twitter and so it has value for me.  It’s not just creating value for customers that equals success, it’s also creating value for your own time and involvement.

This isn’t a plug for everyone to go out and join Twitter.  The point is if you’re doing something, do it so it adds value.  In or out, either way.  But if you’re in, go ALL IN!

In the case of United Airlines, you might have already heard of “United Breaks Guitars”, the story of a Canadian band and their trials & tribulations at Chicago O’Hare airport.  One guitar was broken and they got tangled up in red tape.  At least according to the band’s song, they did everything right and United wouldn’t step up and solve the problem.

I was one who jumped right on the band wagon along with “Sons of Maxwell” when the song came out.  Why not?  The song was catchy, the lyrics clever and the lead singer has a great voice.  Is the story true?  I have absolutely no idea and chances are no one who is spear-heading the anti-United campaign knows either.  What we do know is that United did nothing about it.  

There are two schools of thought about that.  (1) There is concept that any publicity is good publicity.  Look at the Trump-O’Donnell feud.  It helped ratings for both of them.  Heck, I wonder if I could pick a fight with Trump?  As long as he didn’t sue me (and bury me in legal fees), it would certainly be exposure!  On the other hand, I don’t want the hassle.  But some people might see picking on a big company as a way to get your name in the press.  And if your belief system is any publicity is good publicity, then this could work.  So, if that’s the case and you’re United - what do you do?  (2) In today’s world, the Internet has a long memory and anybody who knows how to do a YouTube video or write a blog and especially if they understand how to build SEO & could get something pasted across 1000 website in no time flat, you could buried in bad press quickly.  So, every customer complaint could be deadly to your business.  Deal with them fast.   But, does that mean you give into customer service blackmail?  Where do you draw the line?

Now, let’s look at Twitter over the past two weeks.  Twitter has grown very fast, probably too fast according to some critics. And the spammers are there in force now.  If you’re on Twitter, I’m sure you know exactly what I mean.  ”Grow your account by 16,000 followers in just 30 days”  ”Make $300 per day on Twitter” and on and on.   They don’t give any content, just a lot of spam.

Two weeks ago Twitter did something about it.  Using some automated programs they got rid of the spammers.  And like any program out there, there were some glitches.  At least two people that I know got their accounts wiped out and suspended.  One was someone I know because we travel in similar circles.  She had a big following at 15,000+ people.  Gone in a night.  Her account was suspended as well, so she couldn’t grow it back. 

She sent out a shout out to a few of the people she knew with decent sized accounts to tell us what had happened.  She had posted on Twitter’s forum, sent numerous “slips” for customer service and no response.  

The CEO/founder of Twitter goes by @ev on the Twitter boards.  She kept posting comments to @ev asking for help, but no response.  I know what it’s like to feel helpless and I hate that feeling more than anything, so jumped into the fray.  My friend wrote a blog post outlining exactly what had happened.  I did a tweet saying something about @ev needs to pay attention to a Twitter mistake with a link to the blog post.  

And, in a move that floored me, @ev responded to me in his timeline.  (That means it went out to his 1.3 million followers).  He said he’d look into it and he said my name (which was cool).

He looked into it alright, within 2 hours it was fixed.

Besides the comments from friends (like:  ”Oh, I see the CEO of Twitter is now reporting to you.”) it was great to see his responsiveness.  I’m certain there was nothing deliberate here.  It was just a goof and I imagine he had gotten flooded with complaints from spammers.  It wasn’t until someone outside the spam label stepped in that there was real attention given to what was going on.  

And I got about 300 new followers inside of about 15 minutes of the posting.  So, any publicity IS good publicity.  But when it’s actually for a greater purpose, it feels that much better. 

My friend has been lavish with her praise and thanks to @ev and the Twitter crew.  Another smart move by her.  This isn’t the time for the “I told you so” dance. Let Twitter get the props, as they should, for fixing a problem. That’s just smart business.

And what have learned from the lessons of United and Twitter?   Pay attention to problems when you can.  Fix it if you can. 

And the questions I don’t know the answers to:  What if it’s not your problem?  What if you can’t fix it?

He gave some very interesting advice to a struggling, desperate for any clients, CPA.  He said, “Fire a client a month.”  

He went on to explain the old 80/20 rule.  20% of the people cause you 80% of the problems.  And instead of concentrating on them, spend your energy on the 20% who give you 80% of the money.  So I did it and something unexpected happened.  I suffer from the “I want people to like me” disease and I know how debillating that can be.  Because the fact is some people don’t like me and never will.  So, if instead of trying to make someone happy who can’t ever be happy no matter what - I just fire them.  

It was powerful!  It meant I got to choose!

Since that time, I’ve built and sold two CPA practices.  I started back again with a different model this past year.  And one of the things I’ve tried to do is follow a different path.  After all, if people come to me to save taxes and I am 100% certain that I can do that, how could they ever be unhappy?  What’s more the savings are always much more than the price they pay me, so there is a ROI (return on investment).  So, as long as we can deliver that savings, everybody is happy and I don’t need to worry about it!  Right?  Wrong

Money is a highly charged issue and as soon as you start talking about that and working in that arena with some people, other issues come out.  Those issues are rarely clean.  It’s not “Gee, I’m unhappy that you saved me $50K I didn’t expect and now I have more money.”  There is something in them that just doesn’t feel right about having the money.  They’re not worthy.  The world isn’t abundant.  Whatever the belief system that is getting in the way - there is a concern that it’s not right.  

So they find something to be unhappy about.  And then, we’re right back in Customer Service.  I remember once I had a client complain again and again because the envelope to them was addressed wrong.  They got the return, they got their money, but they could not let go of the fact that the receptionist had mispelled their street name when she put the label on.  

In the old days, I would have fired them.  In today’s world of “please everybody because the Internet has a long memory”, there is this crystal tower ideal that everyone can be made happy and that customer service demands are realistic and solvable.  But sometimes they’re not.

I learned so much from him in just 3 short hours, but wanted to share two things that I took immediate action one.

First, I really appreciated the level at which he played his own game.  If it was worth doing for Clinton, it’s worth mastering.  And that means hours and hours of practice and study.  I came away re-energized and re-committed to first clear out the clutter and things that I felt I was doing that weren’t that important and secondly to master the things that are left.

The other was a real, practical way to create an internal Master Mind Alliance.  I use Napoleon Hill’s definition and spelling of “Master Mind” because it is different than the popularized “mastermind”.  Hill’s “Master Mind” referred to a master mind that took over a group when it was on purpose and running well.  The alliance created a synergy that became real and palpable.  The term “mastermind” is a bastardized form of the original concept that has come to mean the group itself.

I like the idea of working toward the higher purpose for the group- the creation of synergy that makes it all worthwhile.  Again, Clinton’s ideal - play full out or don’t do it.  

One of the strategies is to create an internal master mind alliance, or an imaginary group to consult with.  And Clinton had solutions on taking that to the next level as well. He’s commissioned a painter to paint the people he’d most like to create an alliance with.  They are figures from history and some are still alive.  He’s got them all looking you straight in the eye.  Best of all, he’s got some prints just hot off the press.  So, he took some of the group back to his studio to see where he worked with his lifetime students.  Lining the walls were the pictures.

My husband Richard and I both selected prints of the people that we’d most like to have in our group.  There were a lot (hundreds) to choose from.

Here’s who I have right now on the wall in my home office:

J.K. Rowling, John F Kennedy, Buckminster Fuller, Queen Elizabeth I, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Louis XIV (France) and Cleopatra.

For me, they collectively symbolize the ability to see something that isn’t there and then create it, powerful vision, courage and strength in the face of huge adversity, powerful oration and (in the case of Louis XIV) the ability to turn the known world upside down and make it revolve around him.  I rather like the last one. LOL

This morning I’m getting read for my teleseminar in an hour “Opportunities & Pitfalls in 2009 Tax Law Changes”.  I normally take some alone time before I do one to make sure I’m focussed.  This morning, I’m not alone.  I’ve thought about each of my alliance partners and asked the question “What would XX do in this situation (fill in the blank)?”  

The answers that come back to me make me want to be play bigger and bolder.  I like what happens with an Internal Master Mind Alliance.

Please check out Clinton’s website www.FrontierTrainings.com.  He has a FREE 3 day intro course in LA and in San Diego in August.  I’m changing some plans so that I can attend one of them.  He’s that good.

Here’s the 3 day course Play to Win:  http://www.frontiertrainings.com/playtowin/?fn=Frontier_Website

In the past year, I’ve watched and modeled my successful clients in their online businesses.  There are so many different paths to money, it can be very distracting.

Along the way, I’ve been building up my Facebook and Twitter.  I’m right now at about 750 friends on Facebook and over 10K followers on Twitter.  There is something about the “life at 140 characters” speed that I like.  It’s great training for copywriting as well.  Everything is a headline.  What is successful and what isn’t?

But until just a few days ago, I never really thought Twitter worked for making money.  Then I noticed that my following on Twitter started becoming more prominent in my tax practice and at TaxLoopholes.  We’re meeting new people, helping people save a lot in taxes and making new connections with great professional resources - all through Twitter.  

Jorge Manzitti (www.LatAmConnect.com) sent me this link from an article by John Chow. http://bit.ly/11PDhy  John Chow is the rock star of making money online.  I was surprised to see how successful his tests proved Twitter could be for marketing.  

Take a look at the article.  Twitter isn’t just for telling your friends you’re going to go get coffee.  It’s serious business too.

Yesterday, one of my highly successful business clients presented a technique she has just learned to write a book in 6 hours.  I’ll walk you through it step by step just like she presented it.  There may be parts you don’t want to do and that’s okay.  Just remember the closer you stay to the model, at least the first few times you do it, the better your results will be.

Start off with the front and back cover.

Write the title and sub title, then get a cover designed.  The cover should be formulaic:

Title

Sub Title

Picture

Your name (author)

Then do the back cover.

Elevator pitch of the book

What another would say about your book

Your bio

Print both the front cover and back cover and hang them up where you work

This will focus your book and make it more real to you.  Now it’s possible that the eventual cover looks nothing like this, but for now, it does.

Step Two:  Start with a blank piece of paper (probably a big flip chart).

Draw two big circles, one higher than the other and connect them with a line.

The first big circle is labeled “topic”.  Off of the Topic Circle draw three more circles and connect them with lines.  

The second big circle is labeled “answer”.  Off of the Answer Circle draw three more circles and connect them with lines.

The topics sub-circles represent sections of information about the topic.  This is the “Why” and “What” of the book.  So, let’s say you are writing a book about Twitter.  You might have a circle that says “instant messaging.”

Off of each of these sub-circles are 3 more sub-circles and off of each of these  have 12 lines.  These lines represent 12 statements about the sub circle (or chapter).  Six should be negative (never instant message about every boring detail of your life) and six should be positive (occassionally instant message positive inspiration quotes).

Complete this for all of the circles.  If you have more than three topics, save them for the next book.  By keeping this form, you’ll write a balanced book.  One of my challenges is ending up with a chapter with 3 pages and another with 30.  This will avoid that problem.

Now go to the “Answer” circle.  Each of the 3 sub-circles has 3 sub-circles to further define the “how to” part of your book.  Each of that 3rd level has 12 statements - 6 positive and 6 negative.

The positive and negative statements become tweets you can use to promote your book, even as you’re writing it.  For example, the statement has a bit.ly link that goes to your page with the book with a Coming in Two Weeks (or whatever) statement.

Each of the descriptions of the subcircles become Facebook comments (which can be longer than Twitter’s 140 characters)  And the longer circle explanations become blogs.  All of this promotes the book.

Can you really write a book in 6 hours?  Well, apparently some have - but you have to be able to dictate it.  I’m not sure many people can type that fast!

Let me know what you think!  Will you do it?

UPDATE:  Just got a message from my client.  The gentleman who taught this system to her was Opher Brayer.

In case you haven’t see the video by Sons of Maxwell, a Canadian band, singing about their struggles to get United Airlines to accept responsibility for a broken guitar, well you’re in for treat.  It’s actually great singing and lyrics.  I’ll give you the link in a second.

The bigger part of the story, though, is about how anyone can say anything about you and your company.  We all have those less than finest hours.  And although we hope that our customer service policy can turn anyone into a raving fan, even when we mess up, sometimes it’s not possible.  Plus, there are the times when you run into a just plain crazy person.  It’s pretty hard to solve someone’s problem when they aren’t reasonable or even rational.

So what do you do if someone goes viral with a complaint about your company?  Learn from United Airlines…and do everything opposite!

Respond quickly and with clear solutions.  Don’t ignore a problem.  Don’t pretend that 2.5 million views of a cute video won’t affect your next shareholder’s meeting.

Here’s a good article about that: http://mattsingley.com/blog/2009/07/why-you-must-deal-with-negative-pr/

Here are 10 Motivators that humans all share.  Which one does your product or service satisfy?

10 Motivational Triggers That Make People Buy

1. People want to make more money. 

2. People want to save money. 

3. People want to save time. 

4. People want to look better. 

5. People want to learn something new. 

6. People want to live longer. 

7. People want to be comfortable. 

8. People want to be loved. 

9. People want to be popular. 

10. People want to gain pleasure.