My tip for world domination is simply this — take responsibility. You need to take responsibility for your actions. Now you probably do, but I mean more than normal.
My business is Fire Protection Online and it’s in the UK. It’s an ecommerce, but it is also a warehouse. We have staff, around 12 or 13 — something like that.
Last night, I was being interviewed by Tim Paige’s Conversion Cast podcast for Lead Pages, and I suddenly realized I don’t know how many staff I have.
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But I’ve been into my work today and I saw an organizational chart and not including me, there were 15. I actually guessed there were 12 or 13, but there’s 15. Isn’t that funny. It’s another story.
So in my company, like I say, I am not there. However over the years I’ve learned to accept responsibility for everything that goes on in my business.
Now this also applies to my life in general. Did you listen to Monday’s episode, where I explained that there is no wrong.
That’s how you get your team and your staff to take on more and to be more involved and not be scared, is by explaining that whatever they do, they can’t get it wrong.
They can do it good enough for now and they can learn to do it better the next time. But you’re not going to tell them, ‘Oh, that’s not bad, but you should have…,’ you are going to let them learn for themselves.
Now your turn, you get the same effect, this happens over a period of time, you’ll find ‘Oh, I am different.’
YOU Have to Take Responsibility
But you are going to take responsibility. So to give you an example, and I am just making this up, in our business, we service and we sell smoke alarms, safety signs, fire alarms stuff, fire extinguishers, things like that.
We also, despite being in ecommerce and you know, an online company, we service fire extinguishers, we have teams of people who go all around the UK servicing fire extinguishers, once or twice a year.
Now if, when one of our team is out and about maintaining a fire extinguisher, they could be in the top end of Scotland which is, it’s probably about 600 miles away.
Someone who has never been to our office, if that service engineer does something wrong, the customer doesn’t like it, the customer by the way, the customer if they don’t like it, they don’t have to pay, they get it all for free.
They can complain, we have an independent review thing or trust pilot we use, so people who have purchased from us can then review, they have to have purchased, so they’re genuine reviews and if they give us a one star, nothing we can do.
We can’t edit them, they can say we are horrible, nothing we can do. But if that happens and they then contact the company, even if they don’t contact the company, that is my fault.
Even if I was off in Vancouver, in Canada like I’m every other month, or if I was off skiing, if I didn’t even, I wouldn’t even know the customer, the order, any of the details. It is my fault. Let me explain.
I know that a lot of you listening in are thinking, ‘what is he talking about? What is he on?’ But no, let me tell you. It’s my fault because I set up the company. I set up the initial systems.
I set up the system for hiring people. I set up, or an actual fact, I didn’t, I set, I hired the person who eventually set up the system for hiring people. I trained that person.
I enabled them by explaining they could do no wrong so, I delegated the tasks. I set up an organizational structure. I gradually replaced myself in all positions in the company.
It was my decision to start Fire Extinguisher Servicing division, which by the way jumped off. We, using what we know about online marketing.
That actually did 6 figures in its first 12 months. Just as an aside, with no extra advertising. Cool eh. I explained how we are going to hire the person that supervises and coordinates the maintenance.
I explained how the system is going to work. I let my staff go with it. And then they do it. So we have a Service Coordinator who reports to her Services Supervisor, Customer Services Supervisor who reports to our General Manager and everything through it, doesn’t involve me.
But if something went wrong, it’s because the person at the end of the line was not given the correct information. So that’s service technician.
That Service Engineer wasn’t given the exact correct method or explanation. They did not explain why we do it like we do, why customer service is more important than money to us, why the customer is everything and we don’t care whether they pay for it or not.
We just want them to get what they expected to get. We didn’t communicate that and the reason we didn’t is because somebody did not explain to the Service Coordinator why that should be so and someone didn’t explain, a step up, and someone didn’t explain and it all comes back to me.
The buck stops here.
Train Them From the Get Go
Now you may think this is a really odd thing to do but it also includes if we purchase stuff from a supplier and we overpay.
It’s because I have not put the training in place for people to understand or not organize for the systems to be developed so that the person cannot get it wrong. That is my fault.
And it’s something that we learn ongoing. But once you start to realize this, once you start to realize this that’s your fault, you’ll start to apply it to other parts of your life.
So when people complain about competitors and about Amazon’s pricing and about all this kind of stuff, Amazon is just doing what they are going to do, and anyone else could have done it.
And anyone else could come along. And try and copy them and do it. It’s not going to get any better. You have to take responsibility for what you’re going to do to change, to combat it or to think differently.
Take responsibility. So again, it’s not necessarily your fault, or anything like that, but it’s your RESPONSIBILITY to do something about it.
Moaning is not going to get you very far. You must have met people who complain and moan like mad about everything. That doesn’t help. You need to take responsibility.
In your personal life, you may have kids. Something goes wrong, you will figure it out. You take responsibility. You just do it like that. It’s an instinct. It’s what you do. I hope you do anyway.
But it’s kind of just a thing that we do. There’s no, ‘Oh gosh you don’t run around in circles like a chicken with your head cut off, saying I don’t know what to do.’
You know whether to call a doctor, you know whether to call a friend or a parent. You know whether to take a sick child upstairs and pop him in bed and stick a bucket by the bed if they are not feeling well. You just do it.
It’s the same in life. Don’t complain about everyone else. Don’t come up with excuses, with stories, as Tony Robins would say. Don’t create excuses for why your life is not great.
Take some responsibility and do something about it. And this like I said, applies to everything.
By the way we have not had a customer in Scotland who’s complaining and giving us a one star review. And our Service Coordinator is wonderful, so is her Supervisor, so is his manager.
That was just an example of what could happen. But like I say, everything is responsibility so if I don’t turn up to something on time, it’s not the responsibility of the traffic jam I got stuck in, it’s my responsibility for not having left earlier in case I got stuck in a traffic jam.
And it means that I didn’t respect the person’s time enough, etc., etc. I just think differently about it. This is an eye opener. It frees you up. Stop complaining, stop moaning about everyone else.
Get control. Once you get control, it’s fabulous. Anyway. I hope that makes sense.
If you are not quite clear what I mean, go and you want to, or you want to talk more about this by the way, did you know I do training? Did you know you can get one on one time with me?
Have I not mentioned that? It’s kind of new, giving real easy access. Go to the website, go to www.marketingforowners.com/freetime. Read what I can offer you and there’s a calendar there.
If you want to grab a 25 minute one on one where I contact you, there is a calendar, you can just book me. Anytime that’s available.
Pick the convenient one and we can discuss your business and I can show you how I can double your business with less effort.
And it’s all round holistic thing. If you feel your business is bit stuck, I can help you with that. These things are just a bit of it but honestly I have been doing this for a long time. And all this stuff works.
Drive Time Podcast
Anyway it is Thursday. It is time for a drive time podcast and today is a super duper one. It’s called the ‘Social Pros’. It’s by two guys, fantastic guy called Jay Baer and Adam Brown.
Now Jay Baer is from Convince and Convert. He’s one of the leading, absolute top sought leaders in social media.
He consults with big businesses, he’s written books like Utility and all sorts. Fantastic. Really really top guy.
Adam Brown is from Sales Force. What’s bigger than that? I don’t have to say anything more about that. I highly recommend it.
They have chats on leading edge of things. Some of the stuff they talk about, some of the people they talk about are just, just got such great ideas. Well worth a listen.
So just go to, just google Social Pros podcast, or go to iTunes, look up social pros. You’ll find it, dead easy. It’s also got some award, I think it was last year for the top podcast or something rather.
Fantastic. Well worth a listen. I will be back tomorrow. We’ve got a really good Weekend Challenge tomorrow. All about emails. Another one for marketing tip. I’ll see you then.
