Archive For: Success

Give ‘Til it Helps

Often people say, “Give ’til it Hurts”, but I am more of a fan of “Give ’til it Helps.” It doesn’t just have to help them, it can also help you!

Recently I saw on Facebook (so you know it’s true) that volunteerism had declined. So I thought I would check it the research.

The Volunteering Australia website informs me that while more people are volunteering, they are doing it for a smaller amount of time. Young adults in particular have reduced the amount of hours they spend volunteering.

The great thing the research said is how good it is. Not just for the recipient, but for yourself as the volunteer.

Volunteering gives a measurable increase in:

Happiness
State of well-being
Overall state of mental health
Level of sleep
Self-Worth

Unfortunately, the volunteer rates a far lower in the city when compared to rural volunteering (34% vs 41%). Volunteering has also decreased for community services and emergency management.

From personal experience, professional associations are also declining in numbers of members and numbers of people willing to do things or give their time.

What about you? Do you volunteer? While we seem to get busier and busier, the health benefits for volunteering are outstanding and the costs are minor – it’s cheaper than therapy and almost as good for you.

Why don’t you look at how you can volunteer? It could be as simple as helping paint a friend’s room or patting dogs at the local dog shelter. It is amazing the benefits you will get.

Quite simply, Give ‘Til It Helps!

Are You Leaving Signs?

There are certain signs everywhere. Some are easy to recognise and others take a little more effort.

The sign above was a little something I left for a friend. Let me explain.

We rented our friends weekender at the beach very last minute and we knew that they had other guests coming after us. I needed to let my friend know that we had cleaned her place so well that her next guests would be impressed.

What better way to show that than folding the toilet paper. She even had a laugh when I texted it to her.

What about your team mates, customers and family? What little signs are you leaving them?

These little signs can speak absolute volumes. So are you leaving signs?

Have You Got A Secret?

This is Ron Gottlieb.

He is the CEO of Ricky Richards, a manufacturer and wholesaler of industrial and commercial textiles and they are the platinum sponsor of the SpecTex 2015 trade show.

Also, he has a secret.

Ricky Richards are doing something very different for their industry. They have an exciting new industry partner. Click on the image above to see a three minute video where Ron talks about it and reveals the secret.

What was really cool was how they announced it. Over the past few weeks Ricky Richards has been posting images on their social media sharing how they have a “special announcement” and that you need to come to the trade show to find out what it was.

Their email footers have also been encouraging people to come and find out “the secret”. So the industry has been abuzz with this secret and many have come to the trade show to uncover it. But you had to go to the trade show to find out what it was and from there they have released it to the market place.

The secret is a great one. They have partnered with Melanoma Institute of Australia and are committing to significant donations on an ongoing basis. There are some real synergies between the companies and it not only helps Melanoma Institute but also Ricky Richards’ clients in the selling of their products.

What about you? Have you got a secret? Can you “reveal” it in a way that attracts attention?

What’s It For?

So many people work hard to make a living but in the process they forget to have a life.

While work is definitely enjoyable and fulfilling, it is dangerous to make it the major cornerstone of your life.

Success is defined in so many different ways; fiscally, emotionally, spiritualy, visually, physically, socially, and randomly. So why would we try and meet all of these needs at the one place?

A recent conversation included the statement, “my work is my hobby.” This is a lie.

It is a self-deception to help justify the commitment to the job or the number of hours worked. It is important to have a hobby outside the workplace to let the mind reinvigorate, let the body refresh and let the spirit get reinspired.

So what’s your hobby, the thing that you do just for you?

If you don’t have one, then you have to ask yourself, “What’s it for?”

Well That’s Different!

My gorgeous wife and I were thrilled to be part of our friend’s wedding on the weekend. She is Sikh so the ceremony and formalities were very different to the western ones we are used to.

Your head must be covered (and there are bandana’s at the door if you need)
You must leave your shoes at the door (most people had bare feet)
It is the bride who waits at the temple for the groom to arrive (and yes, he was late!)
The temple reserves the pride of place for the holy scriptures (that’s it under the pink cover that the holy man is reading from)
The groom walks around the holy centrepiece connected to his bride by a long red cloth and she follows behind him. (This was done five times during the ceremony)

It is by experiencing different lifestyles and cultures that we remove our ignorance and fear. We get to have an appreciation of what is important to others and understand who they truly are. You may not agree with their choices or wish to make them yourself, but you get to understand them more.

There is a lot of fear in the world, fear of lifestyles, culture and different life choices, a strong fear of people who are “different” to us.

We would make great progress in eliminating those fears simply by spending time with those people. Not judging them by OUR standards but learning what are THEIR standards. We may be surprised at how similar they are to our own.

The same can be said with that person in the workplace who you just don’t understand. What can you do to understand them better? Maybe their approach is not wrong, just different.

There is a lot to be said for getting to know someone and understanding that their way is not right, not wrong, it’s just different.

Do You Deserve Good Service?

This is Rachael and Erin at the Virgin Australia lounge in Sydney.

As a person who travels quite a bit, I have earned access to the lounge. This week as I was travelling home from Sydney to Melbourne, I asked whether it was possible to get an earlier flight. They were able to get me the flight two hours earlier which was fabulous for me. Naturally when I asked, I was pleasant, cracked a few silly jokes and was even a bit playful. I figure they have a busy job, at the very least I could be nice.

They said to me, “If only all of our customers were like you.” I asked what did the “other” customers do and I was amazed at their response.

Some customers demand (demand, not ask for) an earlier flight and when they are allocated a middle seat they refuse to take it and get huffy.
Others in this situation tell (again, tell not ask) them to move someone else out of an aisle seat so they can have it
Some customers will demand an upgrade to business class because they are Gold, Platinum, tired – whatever excuse they think will get one
Some customers grab a couple of mints out of courtesy bowl without even making eye contact (ok so that’s not too bad)
Then they told me on several occasions that customers will walk past and empty the entire content of the mint bowl into their bag (and the bowl is pretty big)

While flying I have also experienced some pretty atrocious behaviour in how flight attendants are treated by fellow passengers as well. By no means is this poor behaviour confined to the airline industry. Most of us have stories of very poor behaviours from people who are looking for customer service.

Do you deserve good customer service?

Personally, I do not believe the customer is always right, but they are always the customer, but do you really think you are helping your situation by being rude and obnoxious? In many situations the person giving service is paid a fairly low amount, is fairly young (so may not have developed some of the resilience to deal with highly emotional situations) and deals with issues all day long.

So here are some guidelines on how to get far better customer service by acting in a way that deserves it:

Smile – it makes a huge difference
Be pleasant – sometimes you won’t get your way and it is not completely (or sometimes even partially) due to the person you are dealing with and that is no reason to not be pleasant.
Express dissatisfaction with a situation not with a person – once you make it a personal attack it becomes much harder to get a mutually satisfying situation and it is frequently some time later by huge regret at what you said.
Know there are more customers than just you – really, taking ALL THE MINTS is not considerate of others, it is the same with demanding all the attention of the customer service person when your situation will not progress and there are others to serve.
Have a healthy perspective. Is it REALLY that important? If I didn’t get an earlier flight, I would still get home just two hours later. Really, would that be worth flipping out over?
Ask for more but be ok if you don’t get it – I will frequently ask for an upgrade whether I am flying or renting a car. Often I get a better car, sometimes I get an exit row, twice I have been bumped up to Business Class or Premium. I usually ask in a friendly, joking kind of way. But I feel for the person behind the counter when people “demand” an upgrade because “Don’t you know who I am?” Intimidation is not a good strategy for service.
Have fun. Customer service people are human too. Typically their job is repetitive, a little dull and they tune out. If you use their name (no doubt they have a name badge), have some fun with them then it makes everyone feel better and you never know how they may look after you.
Smile – I know I mentioned it to start with but it is too important not to mention again. So many people forget to do this. They get so swept up in their own importance, their own problems and their own thoughts that they forget to smile. If you do nothing else, smile and I am certain it will make a difference.

If you can do these things you will be far more deserving of good customer service and you are more likely to receive it. It is not rocket science. In many cases it is simple courtesy and expressing your humanity. But it is forgotten far too often.

So do YOU deserve good customer service?

I Need Help

Hey All – I need a favour.

I am creating a new website all about success and I need some photos to put on that website. Now I was going to get some stock photos and then I thought – hey I know loads of successful people.

So what I need are photos that you own and are willing to give me permission to use on the front page of my new website. For the top 10 photos (as voted by me) I will give you an amazing super duper prize as well as feature you in my upcoming podcast.

Your picture has to represent “SUCCESS” and while you and I know your family are successful, I don’t need any family portraits. I am thinking achievements, awards, holidays, goals, etc etc. But please feel free to use your own definition of success.

The ultimate resolution will be 1600×700 so think long and skinny (like me lying down!!)

Feel free to spread the word.

Simply email the image(s) to me warwick [at] warwickmerry dot com with a bit of an explanation to submit your entry.

This is a competition of skill and not luck (so I avoid any gaming laws). Judges decision is final. Fun level is high. Entries to be in by end of June 2015.

The Super Duper Prize for Top 10

Profiling on the upcoming Success podcast
A recording of the Get More Fun CD
Copy of the One Page Marketing Plan and One Page Business Plan templates
Link to your website in Credits Area
Link to your website when they click on the image
My eternal gratitude

Doesn’t that sound great?

I will also put all entries on a gallery page with a link to your website.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Success is Smart (and Brave)

I spent last week hosting the Manufacturers Pavilion at Austech15, a trade show for those in the manufacturing sector.

You can check out some interesting observations and videos from the show (including the 3D printed push bike) here.

The summary from hearing the likes of Google’s head of Sales Engineering, the CEO of Committee for Economic Development in Australia, CEO of Innovative Thinking, CSIRO’s head of Additive Manufacturing (3D Printing), Director of AusIndustry and Dean of Engineering from Deakin University is very simple – BE BRAVE.

Too many firms in our manufacturing sector (and from my experience in many others as well) struggle to move from business as usual. This is not new, this is not unique and worst of all, it is not unexpected!

This article in Forbes from 2013 talks about it and in particular refers to the Sigmoid Curve which first came to my attention in the early 1990s. A quick Google search brings up many images, theories and case studies to supports its application.

Yet still we ignore it.

One of my clients has dedicated half of every Monday to work on the strategy of their business so they do not get stuck in the day to day of their business. By looking at what the industry offers, what the issues are and what roles they want to play, they are shaping their future not responding to it.

Success requires bravery and it requires us to be smart as well. What clever edge can we take advantage of? What unique approach will put you in front?

Once you know this, be brave and work for it.

Manufacturing is Dead, Long live Manufacturing.

At the Austech 2015 Trade Show and there was a lot of talk about manufacturing, as you would expect. But there was a lot of talk about the death of manufacturing in Australia.

Based on the empirical evidence at Austech, this is clearly not the case. Manufacturing is strong in Australia, but we are focusing on the negativity not the success stories. Some of the stories heard at the show prove that there are some fantastic companies doing amazing things.

It is fair to say that Automotive Manufacturing in Australia is in decline, but the feeling is that this is not a bad thing. The margins were extremely tight, the demands were high and the profitability was very low. Remove of the government rebates and financial incentives and it would be difficult to find profitable manufacturers in the mainstream automotive industry.

So what are the success stories?

One company, Lovitt Technoglogies based in Melbourne is a first tier supplier to Boeing in the aeronautical industry – among other things, they manufacture tail pieces for 737s and other equipment for the FA8 Super Hornets.

Another company based in Dandenong, Volgren is manufacturing buses made of aluminium. They they are more expensive than importing a traditional steel bus but because they are made of aluminum – which no other company does – they are lighter to run and that they are more cost effective, so the total cost of ownership is lower. What they are also doing is starting to export these buses to Japan.

We have another company called Tomcar making an urban utility vehicle that was originally made in Israel, but the owner of the intellectual property could not get them made to the specification he wanted, so he started having them made in Australia. They are now exporting them and selling them to the US Defense Force.

In fact, throughout the course of Austech Tomcar were searching for local suppliers to increase the Australian made content of the vehicle. Current the Australian made content sits at around 60% and their target is to lift it to 85%

There are some amazing success stories in the Australian Manufacturing Industry if we choose to look for them.

The significant shift for Australian manufacturing is that we are moving out of commodity manufacturing – mass production. Our labor costs become prohibitive to be able to afford to do that, but what we do have is the ‘smarts’.

Clever manufacturing is where the future of Australian manufacturing lies. There is no reason why we can’t manufacture high specification, high quality products that we can then sell to the rest of the world.

Both Roger le Salle from Matrix Thinking and Professor, the Honorable Stephen Martin, CEO of CEDA, stated at Austech that this is the future for Australia. One of the questions they asked is that instead of looking to Switzerland and Germany for high specification products, why can’t we manufacture them here?

We have a history of clever innovation and we have proven that time and time again. From farmers who invented the ‘stump jumpers’, which were ploughs that would jump over stumps to secure plastic bank notes and WiFi, Australia has created some amazing inventions.

David Lake, MD of ATTAR mentioned that his team were able to create some non-destructive testing processes that were previously thought impossible to do and by creating a unique team structure and management style within the business, continued to get significant innovation from his team.

Australia has some amazing universities and technical resources.

The CSIRO have recently created Lab22. They invested a significant amount on the latest in additive manufacturing equipment, typically referred to as 3D printing. Industry can access this equipment and CSIRO’s expertise and you don’t have to make a significant outlay. You can rent this Lab for some prototyping or looking at how you might be able to use additive manufacturing processes in your own business.

Australia has the ‘smarts’, we have the opportunities and we have the capacity. All we need is manufacturers who are willing to look beyond their current business to see what the future holds.

Now is the time to fully embrace being “smart manufacturers” looking for the niche, looking for the high specification product you can export to the rest of the world.

This kind of manufacturing would be ideal for our new submarines. Many visitors to Austech felt it was outrageous that our current Government is not letting Australian companies even bid for the manufacture of these submarines. There may well be politics involved, but it is important to know that we do have the ‘smarts’ to be able to do this – and we are a clever and lucky country.

Be confident that our manufacturing industry is recalibrating not disintegrating.

Manufacturing is dead, long live manufacturing.

PS Here are some videos of a couple of the interesting machines at Austech2015

Hilton Digital LED/CD Displays

Renishaw 3D Printed Bike

5 Axis Sculpting

Who’s Looking After You?

We had a fabulous weekend away at this old butcher shop that has been converted into a B&B with a very French feel. It was lovely and relaxing.

By the way, when I say “We”, I mean four of our friends and myself. My gorgeous wife had to stay at home.

I would have loved for her to join us but she was very unwell and I couldn’t afford to get sick as I am off to Singapore on Thursday to deliver two different presentations at a conference and I am just getting over an ear infection.

We talked about it and decided that she would probably just stay in bed for the weekend so I stocked up the fridge with yummy foods and then cleared out of there before the dreaded diseases got me.

It was a tough call. I wanted to be comfort to my gorgeous wife but I also got it was very important to look after myself and my own health. If I am not prepared to make tough decisions about my own health, who will?

So who’s looking after you?

Want to Achieve It?

As I write this we are in Mid May. The year is almost half over.

Are you almost half way to reaching your goals?

I was fortunate to be published in the highly regarded Leading the Way magazine on what it takes to REALLY achieve your goals and I thought others would appreciated it as well.

You can check out the article here.

What Do You See?

Is it just me or is there more and more negativity in the world today?

It seems not a day goes by without something else in my stream about people being killed, tortured or at the very least being treated badly.

It is not only people, it is also the planet and other important elements of life.

That can make it hard to remain positive and see the good in the world.

Abraham Lincoln said, “People are as happy as they make up their mind to be.”

This is also true about how we see the good in the world. For all the negativity and drama (for that’s what sells news services) there are also immeasurable events of goodness and greatness happening.

I choose to focus on the good and great things that happen and look to how I can add to that rather than get swept up in the negativity and trolling of the drama. Not only does this make me feel better but it makes me more fun to be around.

So what do you see?

PS An excellent article in Psychology Today expands on this further about Why We Love Bad News and concludes with the same outcome. We get to choose our influencers and our mood set.

How Good Are You?

Successful people often operate under a cover of feeling “not good enough”.

Many corporate leaders (particularly women) are expecting a knock on the door and their leaders to come in saying, “we know all about you. Who do you think you are to be holding this position?”

Not surprisingly, this never happens. In fact, it is usually the opposite. They usually achieve more and receive praise from their peers and superiors.

STILL they doubt themselves.

The reason they are successful is that they do not let this seed of doubt stop them from taking the action they need to. They also acknowledge their insecurities as well as their success.

It’s ok to feel “not good enough” just don’t let the feeling control you.

So, how good are you?

Got Barriers?

My gorgeous wife and I took some friends out to dinner on Saturday night to celebrate a big success they had. It was one of the nicer places in the area and priced to match – it was a great choice for a celebration.

One of the first impressions all four of us had was that it seemed that every member of the waiting staff had a nose ring, additional piercings and tattoos.

Now there are some great reasons why wait staff should be able to have body art and I am the first to admit it did not prevent them from giving good service. The important question is, are they a barrier for your customers.

Maybe a grungy cafe would be no big deal, but for a high end establishment it seemed out of place.

There are two key elements to consider here:

1) I could just be a grumpy old fart who is incredibly judgemental and old fashioned (that is entirely possible)

2) What simple barriers can you remove in your workplace or life to help make things flow more effortlessly?

Happy Birthday to Me!

It’s happened again!

Another year has passed and I had another birthday on the weekend. It’s my 47th and every year just gets better.

I received a stack of birthday messages including birthday bacon. The birthday bacon below is from my lovely friends The Kemps.

Even though it is my birthday, I want to give YOU the presents. So for this week if you order my Get More Inspiration book, I will give you, in addition to the existing bonuses at www.GetMoreInspiration.com, a copy of the How to Bring Home the Bacon recording from the recent Taking Care of Business show.

Head over to the Get More Inspiration website to order the book package and I will give you this recording worth $39 at no extra charge.

Until next time, it’s Happy Birthday to me and keep on having fun.

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