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An Interview with Jeanne Bliss on the Updated “I Love You More Than My Dog”
Dec 26th
The one time I uttered the words ”love” and “customer” in the same sentence I practically got laughed out of the boardroom. That was 17 years 3 months and 5 days ago and as you can tell by my razor sharp memory of the event, my ego is still smarting a bit from the experience.
So when I first read and reviewed Jeanne Bliss’ book I Love You More Than My Dog in 2009 (see my review), I have to say that I felt vindicated. Jeanne Bliss (@JeanneBliss on Twitter) outlined how some of the most beloved companies got their stellar reputations for having rabidly loyal customers. In her research, Jeanne uncovered the five basic decisions that companies made that generated this insane level of love and loyalty:
- Decide to Believe: Beloved companies trust their employees and their customers.
- Decide with Clarity of Purpose: Companies who decide to focus their operations on why they exist for the customer are rewarded with loyalty and love from their customers.
- Decide to be Real: To what degree do you “get” your customers? Companies know they can’t be real if they don’t know what it’s like to be their customer.
- Decide to be There: Beloved companies are “there” by giving their customers what they want.
- Decide to Say Sorry: It’s how a company says “I’m sorry” that makes them beloved by their customers
Introducing an Updated Release of I Love You More Than My Dog
In October of 2011, I Love You More Than My Dog was re-released in paperback and updated. So, I thought I’d follow up with Jeanne Bliss and get an update on the book and its impact on business. My interview of her follows:
How did small businesses embrace “ I Love You More Than My Dog “?
Jeanne: The small business community responded to this content very enthusiastically. My goal in writing it was for a small business owner / operator to see themselves in this book – both through the case studies and also through the challenges common to every type of business. The response and interest in pursuing these five decisions in the conversations I have had with small business owners around the world (and I love these conversations) has been what I had hoped – that these five decisions are relevant, within reach and not usually a cost decision but a direction decision. How should we decide to grow?
Which of the 5 decisions did many businesses easily adopt and why?
Jeanne: The most obvious and “easiest” of the five decisions to adopt is “Decide to be there” because this is about operational reliability, process and stability. That decision was the clearest for business owners to build a path of actions for how to be reliable. And in this world of social media, that is critical. If a customer can’t tell someone they know what they get from you and how they get it, then you don’t have the baseline for a story about the experience of your company.
The other decision that many “aha” lights have gone on for and many have importantly worked to improve in their business is “Decide to Believe.” This decision is about deciding to believe your customers by releasing many of the policies that protect a business from its customers and it’s about deciding to believe and enable belief in a company’s workforce by investing in training and development and by believing that people want to bring the best version of themselves to work. I am very encouraged that this has also been a focus area because this fundamentally is a shift for many organizations and is one of the true differences attitudinally between a “beloved” company and an “everyday” company.
Which of the 5 decisions did companies find very difficult to adopt and why?
Jeanne: Companies still struggle with “Decide with clarity of purpose.” I think that’s because most companies, especially when they are starting out have so much on their plate in the “doing” of the work, that focusing on “why” we are doing this regarding improving customers’ lives is not focused on intently. As business grows, this becomes more and more important to unite decision making across the organization. It’s hard to stop and find the time to have this clarity and make sure it doesn’t turn into a long protracted “mission statement” exercise instead of what it’s meant to be – which is an operational lens through which to guide decisions you make to run your business.
What is it that companies are most afraid of when it comes to adopting the 5 decisions of becoming beloved?
Jeanne: What has impressed me the most is that small business owners are pretty fearless! I haven’t seen fear as much as wanting to make sure that there is enough time to calibrate for making decisions in this manner and making these part of the fabric of the business.
Do companies really care about being beloved?
Jeanne: This is such a great question! The word “beloved” means that you grow and become prosperous because you are the kind of business that draws customers to you and keeps employees because they can’t imagine being a part of another mission, another organization. This word is pretty galvanizing as a commitment and is aspirational financially– what this book has proven out is that having clear direction for how you will and will not grow your business is one of the most potent arrows in the quiver of beloved companies.
But what these companies have goes beyond financial prosperity – to prosperity of the human spirit. Employees stay and become more valuable, and customers become the army that grows the business for them. Companies want this when it’s understood that this is what it means to be “beloved.”
That’s one of my great goals in writing … to try to transport the reader to these environments so they could feel how differently it was to be inside of one of these companies – and whey they earn the right to growth in good times and bad.
What are companies who DON’T adopt the philosophy of being beloved missing out on? What don’t they get?
Jeanne: There are a lot of companies who are proficient and professional. They do the work, they get it done, but the spirit is different inside of their organization. Their customers are not fiercely loyal to them. Customers shop them on price frequently because there is not an experience and an attitude wrapped around the delivery of their products and services that magnetically pulls them and keeps them there. And their employees see the work as important – but they often miss and don’t connect to the higher purpose of the organization. People come to work, they execute tasks, they go home. Customers buy products and services but aren’t out in the marketplace with the megaphone of the internet selling their company for them. Interactions are transactional – there’s no relationship, no bond. And by the way these five decisions can and are successful in both B-to-B and B-to-C businesses.
Customers at the other end of our decisions are human beings. And we all respond when a company decides to conduct itself along these five decisions. In fact what we see is that in B-B when this is more unusual, the beloved companies prosper even more.
Do you have any examples of a small business who adopted the principles you discuss in your book?
Jeanne: One of the great adopters of these five decisions is a beloved small business called Simplicity Sofas. The owner Jeff Frank is a zealot about how he will and will not guide his company toward growth – and they are adopting every one of the five decisions. In a depressed marketplace (especially for the furniture industry) their results are astounding.
What are some of the updates that you’ve included in this book?
Jeanne: With the paperback coming out this year, we had the benefit of looking back at how the companies who run their business with these five decisions have done in the financial downturn. So we embarked on redoing all of the financial research for these businesses. And the results are that they have ALL prospered during the downturn. They are above their competition even in a depressed market, some of them having had their best years during the downturn!
Why should people who have the original get an updated copy of the new book?
Jeanne: With these new updated financials inside this book - get it to prove to your people, your board and the people who manage your financials – that making these five decisions pays off. And get the paperback in volume – because with this greatly reduced price, you can use the contents to continue your transformation toward becoming “beloved.”
How do you recommend that people read and use the book?
Jeanne: Reading and absorbing content is a pretty personal thing. But here’s a few ideas/suggestions:
- For leaders – read the book all the way through to at least understand the five decisions and how they impact you. Go to the last chapter and determine how proficient you are in making the five decisions today. From there you can prioritize the order in which you’d like to make some changes. If you’d like you can send your organization through the electronic version of the audit. And if you email me, I will also send you a paper version. Info is below.
- For folks leading teams throughout the organization, we’ve found that some companies have reading groups where they read a chapter a month and then focus on each of the five decisions.
Most importantly, understand how your organization needs to customize your business to your translation of the five decisions in your operation. Do this thoughtful work with multiple cross functional groups in your organization.
Is there any supporting information such as a web site, etc?
Jeanne: There is! What I really wanted to do is provide folks with an ongoing journey for using this information to guide their business growth, so there are quite a few resources I offer at no charge on my website along with a few that have a bit of a price tag associated with them.
Here is a list of the free items you’ll find on the Customer Bliss:
- The first chapter of the book
- A ten question high level snapshot
- An Depth Online Diagnostic
- Videos: Difference between an everyday company and a “beloved” company and Impact of beloved and prosperous companies
- Culture Kick-Start: 45 Cards to Change Your Culture
- BELIEVE “In a Box”: Nurture a Culture of Belief Shared by the Beloved Companies
An Interview with Jeanne Bliss on the Updated “I Love You More Than My Dog”
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Academic Inventions Generate More Income than Government Ones
Nov 1st
Universities and federal laboratories often license their inventions to industry as a way to commercialize those technical advances. Which generate higher royalties?
Recently released data from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) indicates that the average university invention brought in significantly more in licensing income than the average invention from a federal laboratory in 2009, the latest year for which data are available.
The chart below indicates that the average license made by an academic institution earned nearly three times the income of the average license made by a federal government laboratory, $99,385 versus $36,512.
Of course a simple comparison like this doesn’t tell us why university inventions generate more royalties. Perhaps the average university invention has been licensed for longer, allowing it to generate more income. Maybe universities license more of their inventions to companies in industries that pay higher royalties. Perhaps university technology licensing officers drive better bargains than their counterparts in federal labs. Maybe the terms of university technology licensing agreements are different from those of federal labs.
I would not be surprised if all of these factors account for some of the difference in royalties earned by university and federal laboratory inventions. But I’m curious if readers know of others.
Academic Inventions Generate More Income than Government Ones
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Small Business Insurance: More Than General Liability
Oct 11th
When most small business owners talk about business insurance, they are referring to basic general liability insurance. That is not a knock on the insurance acumen of small business owners in any way, but rather an acknowledgement that the most widely recognized business insurance coverage is general liability (i.e., coverage for slip-and-fall accidents). And to be fair, general liability is an extremely important piece of a small business’s insurance program, if not the most important piece.
However, general liability is not the only coverage crucial to the success of a small business. There are other, relatively well-known coverages like property and loss of income that many small business owners are quite aware of. But there are many more beyond general liability, property and loss of income that, if left out of a small business insurance program, can have a nasty effect on a business should a loss occur.
Below is a list of important “additional” coverages every small business should consider:
- Professional Liability
- If your product or service includes expert advice, you have a professional liability exposure that is not covered under general liability.
- Workers Compensation
- Workers compensation should not be considered an obligation that must be purchased when you hire employees but rather a protection for your business against frivolous lawsuits brought on by desperate employees.
- Hired and Non-Owned Auto Liability
- If your employees run business errands throughout the day with their personal autos, your business is exposed in the event that the employee gets into an accident.
- Employee Dishonesty
- I’d like to believe that everyone is honest, but…
- Electronic Data Processing Equipment
- Computers and electrical devices often have their own (low) property sub-limit. Add this coverage to ensure your electronic equipment is adequately insured.
- Property In-Transit
- For those of you who travel, your business property may not be covered while it’s moving.
- Employment Practices Liability
- Your employees are not your friends and even if they are, they still might sue you.
- Cyber Liability
- If you have confidential or personal information on a business computer, there is a hacker trying to get at it right now.
These are just a few of the types of coverage you should consider in addition to your general liability coverage. I work for and with small business owners every single day. I know the constant cost/benefit analysis associated with every decision.
Business insurance is not “one size fits all.” Find your greatest needs and address those first. Then work your way into the additional types of coverage necessary for future growth.
Good luck!
Small Business Insurance: More Than General Liability
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Need an Investment in Your Business? Locavesting Has More Than a Few Great Ideas
Sep 25th
What if I told you that business lending is expected to grow 66 percent by 2013?
Yes, yes, I’m aware of the economic slowdown; I’m writing this review after the U.S. debt crisis and a stock market week rocky enough to make me skip watching CNBC and Fox Business channels for a long time. And no, no, I do not have ocean-view property in the middle of the Moab to sell you.
The aforementioned growth is referenced in Locavesting: The Revolution in Local Investing and How to Profit From It by Amy Cortese, a renowned Brooklyn journalist. The book explains:
“Analysts at the Gartner Group project that P2P (Peer-to-Peer) lending will expand…to $5 billion in loans worldwide. The brisk growth…will be driven by investors seeking higher returns and borrowers shunning (or being shunned) by banks.”
Ready to learn more? Good, because this book is one of the most honest showcases of monetary hope to the small business community, online or off. Locavesting examines how communities and small businesses band together to establish alternative financing to reluctant banks. I asked the publisher for a copy after seeing it in a bookstore, and was emotionally well rewarded by its text, summed up in the conclusion’s first sentence: “What would the world be like if we invested 50 percent of our assets within 50 miles of where we live?”
Learn about financial resources that can develop your community
Cortese infuses historical connection into her examination of alternative funding, much like that in The Economics of Integrity by Anna Bernasek and The Mesh by Lisa Gansky. Starting with Blue Sky legislation launched in Kansas, Cortese shows how American culture has conducted and reacted to overinvestment that correlates with the national mood of the stock market.
The author’s tone towards traditional markets is never sullen, but she is definitely critical of standard investment considerations. “A-ha moments” abound that bring historic events into context with attitudes towards small business today. Here’s a quote that reflects that enlightenment:
“There is a strong perception that small companies and startups are extremely risky–that’s the reason, after all, the SEC created such high hurdles for those companies to raise money from ordinary investors…Larger companies may have the resources to better weather a downturn, but size no longer guarantees safety. Who would have thought that Lehman Brothers, a 150-year-old investment firm that had just logged its most profitable years, would vanish virtually overnight?…At least you can rest easier knowing that a local business probably isn’t dabbling in highly leveraged derivative trades…”
Cortese also informs us how alternative small business investment can beneficial, such as in the following quote on co-ops:
“In the United States, about one in every four people belongs to a co-op of some sort. The country’s 29,000 co-ops collectively generate $654 billion in revenue….Co-ops tend to fill a need that the marketplace is ignoring. And often they are at the forefront. Those crunchy-granola natural food co-ops were instrumental in establishing the organic and natural foods market — well before John Mackey opened his first Whole Foods store in 1980 or Walmart glommed onto the organic trend in 2006.”
The funds and programs explored in Locavesting run the gamut from long-established community banks to newcomers like Profounder. You will read about a Local Investment Opportunity Network (LION) in Port Townsend, Washington, or the support to Cops and Doughnuts, a bakery run by Clare, Michigan, police officers. Contributions from rural America are brought to light through the book’s opening view of Milk Thistle Farm, an upstate New York organic dairy farm well known in New York City, and Slow Money, a program that connects local investors to food enterprises.
You also read about the pitfalls that some experiments have encountered, such as Prosper.com’s dealing with SEC claims “despite compliance due diligence” prior to its operation. Cortese notes that the SEC “is acutely aware of many of the issues holding back small business capitalization.” Other challenges include conducting due diligence on small businesses and capitalization in some instances due to the recession.
Yet interviewee Alan Cantor, vice president of philanthropy at the New Hampshire Community Loan Fund, sums up why individuals poured $4.5 million into his fund, “double the amount last year:”
“People are tired of finding out about collaterized debt obligations and tranches and all this chicanery that was happening with their supposedly traditionally invested money.”
Locavesting ends each chapter with a pro-and-con review of each fund devised. Also, if you are inspired to create an alternative fund for your community, you will have contacts and websites for more information. Deciding to provide contact information is a brilliant and welcomed touch.
Putting small business in the spotlight
As someone who has been reviewing business books for nearly two years, I can say it’s been difficult finding books that provide financing suggestions tailored to small business. A lot has been written about Wall Street, and yet so much of Main Street has been overlooked in print. This wonderful read puts small business front and center and is great for background education or for learning about financial resources broader than Kiva and Kickstarter. Read it along with Wealth Creation for Small Business Owners to get the best ideas on how to manage your finances before seeking investments.
Locavesting is an ingenious finance book, but more importantly, a savvy beacon that can help small businesses and communities muster critical ports in a fierce economic storm.
Need an Investment in Your Business? Locavesting Has More Than a Few Great Ideas
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Marriage Makeover, Mend Your Marriage, Make It Better Than Before
Sep 21st
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Marriage Makeover, Mend Your Marriage, Make It Better Than Before
How To Sell Your Home On eBay® In Less Than 17 Days
Sep 17th
New Amazing Resession Proof Home Selling System. Easy Step-By-Step Tactics Gets Your “Hard To Sell Home” Sold On eBay® In Less Than 17 Days. Multiple Sales Tactics Used To Capture The Sale So You Get Paid. 70% Commision On $97 Sale
How To Sell Your Home On eBay® In Less Than 17 Days
Canadian Micro Businesses Are Better Exporters than Their American Counterparts
Sep 13th
Micro businesses – companies with fewer than ten employees – account for a fraction of exports in most Organization of Economic Development and Cooperation (OECD) countries, according to data released recently by the organization. As the figure below shows, in none of the OECD countries (where data were collected) did the share of exports belonging to micro-enterprises exceed 21 percent of the nation’s total.
But the OECD found wide variation across countries in exporting by micro businesses, with the share of the total accounted for by companies with zero-to-nine employees ranging from 3.6 percent in the Czech Republic to 21 percent in Slovenia.
The OECD didn’t go into detail about why these differences exist. But they might reflect variation in industry composition across countries, the physical size of the nations, and the strength of the micro business sector, among other things.
Compared with their foreign counterparts, U.S. micro businesses are moderate exporters. The United States was eighth of nineteen countries among those nations where data were collected.
That performance was much worse than that of our neighbors to the north. In Canada, 18.5 percent of exports came from micro businesses, as compared with 10.3 percent in the United States. Whether this difference is explained by the size of the two nations, their industrial composition, or the strength of the micro business sector, Canadian microeterprises are much better exporters than their American counterparts.
Created from data from the Organization for Economic Development and Cooperation
Canadian Micro Businesses Are Better Exporters than Their American Counterparts
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Is it More Difficult to be a Creative Entrepreneur than a Creative Employee?
Sep 6th
A recent study in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin by Evan Polman of New York University and Kyle Emich of Cornell University made me wonder if it’s more difficult to be a creative entrepreneur than a creative employee. For those of you who didn’t read the study, the punch line is this: In a series of four lab experiments conducted on college students, the authors found “that people are more creative for others than for themselves.”
This is one of those studies that are too indirect to provide specific answers about entrepreneurship. After all, the researchers were conducting experiments on undergraduate students and were examining creativity in exercises that have nothing to do with starting or running a business – drawing pictures of an alien and solving a brain teaser. Therefore, it’s quite possible that the authors’ findings wouldn’t hold for the kind of creativity that real business people employ in running their own or others’ businesses.
On the other hand, the study raises very interesting questions about the creativity of business owners and employees. If the pattern found by the authors – that people are more creative when acting on behalf of others than themselves – extended to business activities, it would have important implications small business management. For instance, the pattern might mean it is easier to be creative when you’re an employee than when you run your own business. It also might mean that business owners should frame their efforts to come up with new and better ideas as something they do on behalf of their employees and customers rather than for themselves.
Obviously, I’m in the realm of speculation here triggered by an interesting, but distantly related article. But since the questions it raises are so interesting, I’m wondering what most of you think of the study’s main finding. Do you think it would hold true for small business owners? And if it did, what do you that the findings would mean for how small business owners should go about being creative? Finally, if you don’t think the main finding would hold, why wouldn’t work in small businesses the same way it worked in the lab?
Is it More Difficult to be a Creative Entrepreneur than a Creative Employee?
View full post on Small Business News, Tips, Advice – Small Business Trends
Affair Repair: How To Save Your Marriage & Make It Better Than Before
Aug 12th
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Affair Repair: How To Save Your Marriage & Make It Better Than Before
Writing naked (nakeder than Orwell)
Jun 27th
Here are Orwell’s rules, edited:
1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print. You don’t need cliches.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do. Avoid long words.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active. Write in the now.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent. When in doubt, say it clearly.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous. Better to be interesting than to follow these rules.
The reason business writing is horrible is that people are afraid.
Afraid to say what they mean, because they might be criticized for it.
Afraid to be misunderstood, to be accused of saying what they didn’t mean, because they might be criticized for it.
Orwell was on the right track. Just say it. Say it clearly. Say it now. Say it without fear of being criticized and say it without being boring.
If the goal is no feedback, then say nothing. Don’t write the memo.
If the goal is to communicate, then say what you mean.
My best tip is this: buy a cheap digital recorder. Say what you want to say, as if the person you seek to persuade is standing there, listening. Then type that up. Simplify. Send.
View full post on Seth’s Blog
