My Grandfather, Ernest Sands, was a railroad guy. After World War I he began working for the railroad and pretty much never stopped until they kicked him out at retirement. I vaguely remember his retirement party. Mostly though, I remember him working. And the best memory was him working with me. Every Saturday morning, before normal people were awake, we would walk for four hours or more delivering handbills. Handbills, at least that's what we called them, were a one piece door hanging advertisement for a local cleaners (where my Mom worked). I received $10 for my efforts, which seemed like a king's ransom to an eleven year old.

When you and I shop, I think it's easy for us to see who is handling customer service well and who is struggling. We know where we are having a good, even pleasant experience and conversely we know where our treatment sucks. We also know why one place is a better experience than another - it's the people.

Some companies profess a good philosophy or a customer driven mission statement and that is a beautiful thing.

I hear Gary Vaynerchuk talk about it all the time. But long before that I was at the National Association of Realtors Convention and Daniel Pink had the members of his audience do an experiment. We placed our index finger on our foreheads and drew a capital letter E. Whether we drew it to read ourselves or to be read by others said something about our ability to empathize with others. Two-thirds of the audience showed the E to someone else. Pink explained that while we seemed an empathetic crew, interestingly, the higher people go on the corporate ladder, the more we see them draw the E to themselves.

In the line at the grocery store and a little (like 4 foot 7 little) lady was checking out. Her last item scanned was a rotisserie chicken. She handed the cashier her money, it was counted and the cashier said, "I'm sorry, this isn't quite enough." Before even the words, "I'm sorry, I won't be able to get it," came out of her mouth, the man next to her in line (a very big guy who looked like a mature Sinbad) said, "Let me get that, ma'am."

"No, no, that's okay," she said.

Ever go All In?

"ALL IN" for the business professional revolves around several areas: business, yes, but also the rest of our lives. To be truly "ALL IN" in life means more than just work. It means with the family, your body, your mind, your soul. It's about balance, yet a sort of imbalance.

One of the things about doing a podcast, a blog, or a youtubechannel, is that in order for it to work, it takes time and patience.

The other thing it takes, is consistency.

Consistency is looked upon by some to be the pillar, or at least one of them, of success.

On the other hand, Oscar Wilde said that “consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative

Sometimes in life we have to do things that we really don’t want to do. We can moan, wail, complain, but the thing still has tohappen.

So, how do you get yourself to execute that difficult thing, when you just don’t want to do it?

I like two things: Planning and making the dynamics of the thing easier.

A customer service group noticed two candy stores in the same neighborhood that offered, pretty much, the same candy. Kids, however, preferred one over the other by leaps and bounds. When asked "WHY?" children responded that the one store always gave them more candy while the other store took it away. Was this true or simply a perception?

Blood Test…. Ever had one? Silly question, huh?

I heard an interesting analogy the other day where someone equated performance feedback with a blood test.

You might have low iron, a thyroid issue…. If you never had a blood test, you might never know. Now that doesn’t mean you DON’T have low iron or a thyroid problem, you just don’t KNOW you have the problem because you didn’t have the blood test.

Has the day ever gotten away from you?

You thought you had this to do list or whatever it was and you just seemed to not have enough time.

Some of that might be the myth of time management, but some of it might have to do with our expectations of what we can or cannot do within a given timeframe.

I heard something really interesting the other day and it goes like this: Most people grossly over-estimate what they can get done in a day and under-estimate what they can get done in five years.