Friday Mar 23rd, 2007: Issue #784
I hope that your Friday is a bit more restful than mine! I’m having to write this issue of Kickstart between coats: the kitchen ceiling is currently drying before I can apply the second coat. Then I have wood paneling to fix on the wall (about 20 feet long), followed by a coat or two of paint on the walls. Meanwhile, Delia is busy undercoating the doors and other woodwork.
Ah, the pleasures of teamwork!
All of which means that I may not be as fast answering emails as I usually try to be - but if you do write with any questions, I will get back to you as soon as I can.
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We went out to buy new curtains for our living room (yes, that’s the next redecoration project on the list - currently scheduled to start on Monday). What a palava!
We found some really nice ready-made curtains that were affordable, but when we took them to the sales lady, the fun and games started.
We have very large windows - both height and width, and so would need two pairs of curtains to fill the space. The store doesn’t hold any stock - they only display things, so would have to order in the curtains we wanted from head office. But we would have to pay when we placed the order.
The sales lady pointed out that as we need two pairs, they wouldn’t guarantee that either the color or the pattern would match. She said this in a matter-of-fact way that suggested such a mismatch was perfectly okay.
Of course, it wasn’t, and I said so.
She explained all the technical reasons why a mismatch was likely.
I asked what would happen if our curtains turned up and we didn’t find the mismatch acceptable.
Her attitude was that as we had been warned, there would be no recourse. They would not issue a refund.
Talk about having a company policy that is guaranteed to put your customer’s back up!
Needless to say we declined to purchase - much, it appeared to the sales lady’s surprise - and decided to look for a store that is a bit more customer friendly.
I’m always amazed at how many businesses put blocks in the way of good customer relations like this. They develop corporate policies that are, no doubt, determined on a cost-effectiveness basis by the bean counters (apologies to any accountants who read Kickstart) who tend to run companies these days.
But there is only one answer - find a different company to deal with. One that has either not forgotten the value of a happy customer, or one that has recently learned that lesson.
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A report on the radio news made me seethe with rage.
An old lady and her even older husband had run a country pub (here in the UK) for over 40 years. It was a popular pub and they were successful publicans. The lady is in her early 70’s and her husband was some years older.
Sadly, the husband died and the lady applied to have the license to run the pub transferred from her husband’s name to her own.
Then bureaucracy struck.
“Oh no,” said the licensing authority, “Even though you have run a successful pub for over 40 years and know more about the business and practice of being a publican that all of the licensing authority put together, there are rules to be followed.”
The rule is that all new applicant for a pub license must sit a formal exam. No exceptions.
The old lady sat the exam and failed. Her comment afterwards was her answers were based on years of experience, whereas the questions appeared to have been set by someone who had only ever read a text book.
She was probably right.
But of course, where petty bureaucrats are concerned, rules are rules and can never be wrong.
The end result is that a successful, experienced businesswoman has had her livelihood taken away from her because the right way to do business, which was ingrained into her soul by years of hard work was less important to the licensing authority that a piece of paper.
A world with no rules would be a very dangerous place, but a world in which the rules cannot be tempered by common sense is simply heartless.
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There have been some very unsavory posts on the forum in the last couple of days. Pictures that you would not want to stumble across over breakfast. (Unless you are a certain Aussie chap of my acquaintance who has asked that they be forwarded to his ‘personal account’). 
Hopefully, that particular brand of nuisance poster has been stopped now. I’ve added a few extra security measures to the forum and have a few more that I plan to install over the weekend.
I work quite hard to keep the forum as safe and friendly a place as possible. It does take time, but I think that it’s worth it.
The Kickstart Forum is potentially a fantastic resource that we can all benefit from in so many ways.
Here are a few:
* If you have a question related to Internet marketing.
* If you have a question related to business.
* If you have a question related to personal development.
* If you just want to interact with other Kickstart readers and shoot the breeze.
* If you enjoy sharing your knowledge.
The forum is free to use, easy to join, and simple to post in. Newbies to forums shouldn’t find it difficult or intimidating - and even if you do, just fire me off an email and I will help!
Let’s cut to the chase here.
What I’m saying is that running the forum does create work for me, but it is work I’m very happy to do so long as I feel that the forum is steadily growing for all of our benefits. If it stagnates, the time involved in weeding out the spam will not be worth it.
We currently have 58 registered users and 190 posts, so a real community is starting to build. Let’s keep the momentum going!
http://kickstarttodayforum.com/
The topic categories are not set in stone - if you would like to see any other categories added, just post in the sticky thread in the general conversations section. I’ll consider anything within reason (except suggestions by my Aussie friend who I mentioned earlier!)
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So far, 77 Kickstart readers have viewed the video on the Simple Money Machines site. there is no name capture (unless you want to enter the prize draw) and nothing to buy. The video is only 5 minutes long.
If you are one of the 77, or if you view it in the next couple of days, I would love to hear your thoughts on Simple Money Machines. Do you think it really offers a great way for new and intermediate online marketers to set up money-making sites quickly and easily, or do you see this as another in a long line of good ideas that are ultimately disappointing.
I have my own thoughts and am experimenting with a couple of ‘machines’ to test the system out. But I would really like to hear what you have got from the video while it is still in the pre-launch phase. After it launches I’m sure that there will be so much hype that it will be impossible to get real reactions from anyone!
You can watch the video here: http://www.urlnex.us/simplemoneymachines/
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An Inspirational Thought
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A small gift for you …
Author Elbert Hubbard told the story of an incident during the Spanish-American War. It was imperative that the president get a message to the leader of the insurgents. His name was Garcia and he was known to fighting somewhere in the mountains of Cuba, but no mail or telegraph could reach him. Someone said, “There’s a fellow by the name of Rowan who will find Garcia for you if anybody can.”
Rowan took the letter without hesitation. He sealed it in a leather pouch strapped over his heart. He landed in the dark of night off the coast of Cuba and make his way to the mountains, and after much difficulty, found Garcia. He handed him the letter, turned around and headed home. Hubbard tells this story in “A Letter to Garcia.” Rowan didn’t ask, “Exactly where is he?” or “I doubt if I can do it.” There was a job to be done and he did it.
Instead of making a dozen excuses why you can’t complete the task, think about Rowan. Deliver the goods!
If you’d like to read the full story of ‘A Message to Garcia’ you can download my free ebook version from here: http://www.kickstartdaily.com/garcia.pdf
(Right click and select ’save target as’)
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Don’t keep it to yourself - send them to
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The Quote of the Day
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Bruce Barton said,
“Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances.”
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Today’s Power Thought
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Success, as we are so often reminded, is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. ‘Take massive and continual action’ is the mantra of our age.
But I think that there is a step missing in the success formula that is so often trotted out.
What comes before that massive action?
Action makes things happen and drives us towards our goals, but how do we start taking action? What is the fuel that sparks our action-engine into life?
Motivation.
If we are not motivated in the first place, we simply can’t be bothered.
Then that other buzz-word of today, procrastination, comes into play. Tomorrow will do. I’ll do it later. I can’t be bothered.
Motivation is like a river. It flows through us, occasionally irrigating a few seeds, once in while dropping some silt, but mostly sweeping on by. It runs right through our fingers.
Even though we know that we need to bottle it, by the time we’ve thought that, it has gone.
But you know what? Rivers can be dammed.
Enough of the metaphor. How can we build up the reserve of motivation in our life to such a high level that taking action becomes the easy part?
We have to have an itch to scratch.
Very few people will be motivated to take massive action to achieve something that they feel luke warm about.
We all need a burning desire to achieve something great.
But each of us is motivated by a different set of desires: love, money, companionship, self esteem, material possessions, safety, novelty (Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs explains it well).
Personally I’m motivated by the desire to support my family and the fascination of new things.
Knowing that helps me to tailor my goals so that they are in tune with what I know lights my fuse.
Your motivations are going to be different to mine, but understanding them will have exactly the same result - you will be able to tune your life around the reality of who you are.
So take some time today to think who you are and how you can build that into your goal planning.
Once you manage to achieve that, your river of motivation will be harnessed, taking action will be the natural result and ‘I’ll do it tomorrow’ will be a thing of the past.
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Fascinating Facts
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Under the category of extraordinary statistics come the fact that somebody has bothered to calculate how many pounds of toilet paper each nation of Europe uses per year, on an averaged personal basis.
Now I’m sure that you really want to know who uses the most and who uses the least …
The Swedes are the champions of toilet paper usage, wiping the, er, floor with everyone else. They get through an average of 18.5 pounds of the stuff per person per year.
The French bring up the rear (so to speak) with a paltry 8.5 pounds per person.
The British are sixth. We manage to scrape into 6th place at 10 pounds for each of us.
My family, however, seem to have more in common with the Swedes, getting through, as they do, several volumes of War and Peace ever day!
What’s wrong with squares of newspaper on a hook? That’s what I’d like to know!