It’s time to stop complaining. Some people need a bit of tough love, so I am here to tell you to just stop because it’s not them. Do you complain about your staff?
Do you complain about your competitors? Do you complain about Amazon? Those are the common ones those are the ones I hear about more than anything so let’s cover each point.
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Your Staff
First off, do you complain about your staff? Your staff are human beings just like you. They don’t have to come work for you to try and help you out. They need a job. It is your job to make their job enjoyable.
If you want people to be happy at your place of work, then make it enjoyable for them. You have to give them the conditions and the workplace, and the job and the responsibilities that will make them happy.
There is nothing wrong with your staff but there is something wrong with the way they are managed. Now, of course there will be occasional bad eggs, but they will stand out like a sore thumb.
And you can replace them.
There’s always a bad apple but it’s not all of them. But you’ll find that if things aren’t just right, people will talk to each other and they’ll complain and it will spread like a virus and it will be infectious.
And you’ll say all my staff was complaining. But what did they have to complain about?
Are you being a stickler for all the rules — all the wrong rules? Have you ever taken any advice whatsoever on how to be nice to your staff? Have you ever said thank you?
Or do you feel, “Why should I say thank you? I pay them at the end of the week? That’s what they are getting paid for.”
Is that your attitude? Perhaps it’s a slight change of attitude. But did they complain about you? You wouldn’t know because you probably don’t speak to them and ask them .
What you find is that lots of you may think some of these modern companies are great because they all have a lovely company culture, and all the staff love to work there.
It’s never the case, not the people who don’t always love to work everywhere. But there is no reason why they can’t enjoy it.
You can make things better, by learning to make a more enjoyable workplace. There are books, courses, and all kinds of free, instructional information, that you can learn from.
There are all kinds of free online learning tools if you just search for it. You could search for how to improve the workplace. Much of it is down to communication.
And I know it sounds horrible, because you’re thinking, “Well I can’t really hang out with the staff.”
You don’t have to hang out with them. People respect strong management. Remember Steve Jobs? Apple was horrible and they hated him. But he is respected because he was driven and he had a vision.
He made it clear to everybody what the vision was so they could cut him a little slack. Perhaps, but you didn’t see people leaving Apple in droves. And if you’ve ever heard, he used to shout and everything.
It’s the culture and it’s the communication. If they understand your vision, your drive and you can involve them in that journey by asking for their opinion, then you will have employees for life.
These people have successfully brought up kids and are very very capable of managing anything including you and can cope with any disaster that is thrown at them.
They can cope with your job, so give them a bit of respect.
Competitors
Why complain about competitors when they’re not really competitors? They are people selling the same thing as you. They may be chasing the same market or the same customers.
Now if they are way ahead of you, you may struggle to catch them, however why not analyze everything they do and your other competitors?
Analyze everything and look at everything that they do successfully. Then look at everything they don’t do successfully. Copy all the things they do successfully.
And do the bits they don’t do and then you catch up and possibly overtake. Another option is to niche down.
If they’ve already got it also, why not find your own niche within your nation? Own that and create your own category.
If somebody is in landscape gardening and they go into the inner city to do landscape gardening or something like that, they are going to run into others doing the same thing.
Find your own niche within that realm.
What about if you are a barber in town? There might be seven other barbers so be the one who specializes in wet shaves.
Get yourself trained, make it known, and then do something different. Find a new category.
But remember if you listen to last Friday’s weekend challenge, one of the things I challenged you to do is to make your business more enjoyable.
Get to know these competitors by phoning them up. I know this is left field and you’re thinking you must be kidding.
But trust me — why would I tell you this? Why would I suggest it, if it wasn’t going to be something?
It is a good idea. I know we don’t like to step outside of our comfort zone and we certainly don’t like to think about getting to know our competitors.
But if you get to know them, then they become friends and allies instead of competitors.
So just call your competitor up and invite them out for coffee. Be sure and buy them a coffee don’t invite them to your place. Don’t ask to go to their place and please don’t meet them at McDonalds.
Meet them in a place convenient for them. Your competitor is going to want to know why you want to chat, so be sure and tell them that you just want to talk to them and get to know them.
What you suddenly will find is that they are just like you. They have things in common with you and they are amazing about things.
You’ll have tons to try to talk about and loads of things you will have in common and before you know it , they will become your friend.
You can to talk them about normal stuff in the industry and trade. Now you don’t have to complain about the competitors , because this guy is now your friend. No longer a competitor — he is your mate.
Remember the thing about keeping your friends close, but your enemies closer?
Amazon
So let me just say this — get over it! Amazon is here to stay and they’re not going away anytime soon.
Eventually the European communion will break them up as insists they’re broken up as a monopoly. If they get too powerful however it’s the way things go.
Do not complain at them in one go and then go buying your stuff from them. It’s probably not worth not buying from them because they’re not going to notice a difference.
But Amazon is the way — and they are changing the way we work. Do stuff like them look at the way they work and think what can I learn.
This is the way the world is going so don’t complain about it. What can I learn from here in the UK? We complained about all the foreign car companies.
We said, look what happened to our car industry. Look what happened to all our manufacturing things. Because we thought we were great complacent, snooty snobby, whatever you want to think but we didn’t go with the flow we did not change.
And look what happened. All the manufacturers in the far east — they’re all brilliant they’re all better than ours.
You know no more their source only made in China and it is fantastic and it’s half the price of ours. Stop complaining do what amazon does — ok?
Just stop complaining. Thank you for making my life happier.
Toolbox Tip
This is Tuesday which means it is time for a quick tool box tip. Now this is for you if you’ve got a website — so let me tell you about Google Webmaster Tools.
You need to register it with Google. When you go to the google page on a web site go down to the bottom.
In the bottom left, There are three little tabs. — Choose the middle one which I think is advertising.
Click here to instantly download our FREE Book
“The 71 Ultimate Marketing Tools”
Click the middle one to go to the next page. Scroll down to the bottom you’ll see a load of links to Google Analytics, Adwords, and in the middle somewhere you’ll find Webmaster Tools.
Get your site registered. You will be an amazed to what you’ll find out. You have to have if you don’t have it.
Be sure to tune in tomorrow for my interview with Omar. It is going to be great.
