Surround Yourselves, Customer+Relatinoship, and Biting down on the Challenge

Action Hero

This week’s action here is Bud Brigham. He has had a very unique, hard, difficult, and interesting life, and has been able to overcome problems and be one of this country’s success entrepreneurs. Here are some points that I thought were great. (Again, you can follow him here on Action Hero’s site.

• Be the Best You Can Be: No, this is in no way promoting the Army, yet, if you are interested, you are more than welcome to be the best you can be in the US Army. Bud references this as he talks about what his goal in life is. He wants to be the best he could be. We all should! We need to find what is wrong, fix it, and move on from it. We can't be perfect. There is always room for improvement.
• Don't be a prisoner. Bud explains his life as one being the oldest of six, divorced parents, and alcoholic father, who later dies from it. He did not let this limit him from achieving his goals. he moved on, found a supportive wife, and created a life for his own. 
• Surround ourselves with good company. He actually says we should surround ourselves with the smartest and the brightest. I like this point because, we won't improve if we always put ourselves with those that aren't smarter nor brighter. This is profound when wanting to become a better person, one that is the best we could be.

  

The $100 Challenge

With the recent change of my goals with the $100 challenge, I've been able to see a lot more success. I am currently in the production cycle of the business, with hopes to be able to sell. One thing is interesting, we should not be afraid to find support in strange places. I know that my current work does a lot of soldering. I did not realize that they have supplies that they no longer use. So, I just have to ask, and they can provide. 

It takes money to create... NOT! I was able to raise the basic $20 dollar capital. But, I was able to get $100-200 worth of supplies and equipment. This is capital and assets that will assist in the promulgation of the business.

This becomes more exciting everyday!!!

Customer Relationship

Many years ago, when I was the young and stalwart man who was assistant managing a frozen custard shop, I worked with peers. I worked with kids that were one or two years younger than I was. They were friends from school, yet I was their manager. A lot of those times, I was having a hard time realizing what is going wrong everyday. Then it hit me. It was our customer relationship. It soured. It wasn't because of me, but it was because some of our employees had a lack of social skills. 

This week we talked about making our relationships work with our customers. This is something that I have great experience in and is something that we should note. Zappos, a great shoe distributor is known for their services, but most importantly, their customer relationship skills. They are great at making their customers happy. One important thing to note: to allow this to continue, they hire those that really want to help with their culture. Zappos pays potential employees money to quit before they start working. That is to filter those that want money and those that want to ensure culture. 

So to you future Assistant Managers, help your employer find those that are willing to assist with your culture and not their filthy wallets.

Action Hero and Few Steps Back

Action Hero
Phil Romano, the man known for Fuddruckers and Romano's Macaroni Grill, is under the dissection of this week's action hero. He has brought up so may great points in his video, (found here). Some of the principles that I picked up were:

• Create Things: Creativity is important. Phil Romano, in his spare time, spends time doing art. He finds it is a way of tapping into one's own creative sphere. This will allow for logical thinking, creatively. 
• Lesson: Find out what people want and need, and create something off of that idea. He reminisced about a time he delivered paper, and created a personal service, earning $25 dollars a week. 
• Be Serial: Doing the same thing over and over again can be tiresome. He was a serial entrepreneur, finding opportunities and taking advantage of them whenever they came. 
• There is only one life: This is living life to its fullest potential. Not having regrets, and being able to accomplish one's goals and desires. Life is short, life is only once, so take advantage of your time.
• Fear is a great motivator. I thought this was interesting. The idea of fear is the opposite of faith, which I am an adamant believer in. But the idea of fearing failure, and working towards back-up plans, being provided for, and overcoming the idea that failure could be imminent is what fearing is. With this idea, we would want to overcome failure and be able to respond and prepare for failure is utilizing fear as a tool.

So those were some things that I was able to learn from Phil Romano. 

$100 Dollar Challenge
The next step for the $100 Dollar Challenge: Create a Elevator Pitch. As this is the next step for the $100 Dollar challenge, I have put a lot of thought into my current venture. I don't like it, just yet. It is a young idea, and I feel that I need to do more research into it. But, I do have a backup plan. I am changing it into Media Pro. This business will tend to various organizations involved with audio. In the audio industry, not the music industry, there is a need for audio cables. What I want to be able to do is create custom cables and resale that to customers. Audio cables bought at stores run from $10/15 to $45-100+. This is great, if you are looking for a generic spec cables. There are many audio cables, various cable connections, etc. The business would utilize your specific specs, create them, and ship it out. I would also integrate a replacement program to give those that want to replace their cords a discount of a purchase. This plan is more thought out, what do you think?