WHY do you do?

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. - John Lennon 

As many of you know, I work at Western Canada’s largest self-serve automotive dismantling/recycling store. Yes, I work at an auto-wrecker. But it’s not just an everyday run of the mill auto dismantling recycling facility: it is a used Auto-Parts Retail Outlet. I told you that to tell you this: 

People don't buy things from companies, they buy ideas. 

Customers don’t realise what they are buying; for this reason, many staff equally do not realise what they are selling; therefore, all parties involved believe that they are buying and selling used car parts from a field full of old cars. WRONG. 

We sell ideas. We not only sell ideas, we sell knowledge. The biggest “idea” we sell is that we are going to do whatever we can do to help the customer “believe” so that they leave satisfied and we create the IDEA that it is a good idea to come back again one day. Of course, optimally they do go home with someTHING as well. 

Companies call this “creating repeat clientele” and see it from an economic/financial standpoint: 

Repeat clients=Greater Revenue=Higher Profits 

Of course, companies are in the business of making money, but it has become increasingly apparent to me over the last few years that many companies (as well as many individuals) do not know WHY they do what they do. Do companies and individuals simply want to make money (to please shareholders and bring home a paycheque), or is there a greater good that can be accomplished by doing what they do? Companies want to create demand for their customers. But WHY? If we have customers that still come to us to buy THINGS, we aren't selling ourselves properly. We haven’t created the DESIRE for them to come back…You can buy things anywhere, after all. 

Companies tell us WHAT to do, but they don’t tell us WHY we should do it, so it is difficult for these companies to have truly engaged staff. Of course, some staff will take it upon themselves to find why they do things or what makes them happy, but without engaged staff you just have people going through the motions and not actually believing in what they are doing. Happiness is everything and if you aren’t happy doing what you do, don’t do it. Each day you have to ask yourself why you do what you do in order to be successful; if money is the ONLY reason that you go to work, then you should likely reconsider what you do for work. 

Personally, I wholeheartedly believe that I go to work each day to help people. Companies look at quarterly reports and financial statements and write missions statements, but they are ultimately accountable to two groups: stakeholders (including shareholders and employees) and their customers (who rely on the company’s services for their own wellbeing). So if the company is not doing what is right for the customer, writing mission statements doesn't mean anything. 

Corporations (which I have interchangeably called companies) often give their stores or branches or locations (or whatever you would like to call it) many tools to be successful. Tools can be in the shape of coupons, promotional sales, extended warranties, loyalty cards, radio or print ads, etc. but if the employees are not using these tools to their full potential, these tools are useless: this ends up failing the company (because of wasted investment (both creatively and financially)), the employee(by not living up to full potential) and in turn, the customer (who suffers the most). Promotions are designed to give all parties a mutually beneficial result.

Remember:

"We miss 100% of sales we do not ask for", and 

“You can’t buy something you don’t know exists”. 

Poor customer service comes in many forms. Some might think having to bag their own groceries is unacceptable. Some might not like the prices of something and believe it is the fault of the cashier (caused by customers’ unrealistic expectations). Some might think that when a customer service agent is blatantly rude that they should their business elsewhere. I agree with (and only with) the latter. 

Having worked in customer service and sales for the better part of the last 15 years, I can assure you it is a two-way street. Customers bring money, but good customer service brings the clients back. Customers often lash out; unacceptable. Employees of companies can also lash back: MORE unacceptable.  

Sometimes all it takes to put things in perspective is to take half a step back and to put yourself in the shoes of the other side. Picture yourself talking to you and see how that makes you feel. Maybe the employee is slouching over or avoiding eye contact or seems to be more concerned with what their co-worker is having for lunch than what the customer is ready and willing to spend money on (ie WANTS and/or NEEDS). Angry customers should consider how they would like to be spoken to and conversely, lazy employees should consider how they would like to be treated when they go to a different store run by a different company. Everyone is a customer, but not everyone is a customer service agent. Having said that, it is not all about courtesy, but it is all about respect. 

When I started working at Pick-n-Pull, I was a 19 year old student who needed a part time job to pay for my partying habits. I worked there because I had friends who worked there and it was convenient and fun. I also got to learn about cars but really I didn’t care about cars and still don’t. I never thought that 7 years later (after being gone from the company for almost 3 years) I would get a phone call from the newly promoted Store Manager (who started the month before I did) to ask if I would like to be a part of his sales management team. I would consider this among my top two greatest professional accomplishments. I have been successful in my career so far for one main reason: I do everything I do because I believe in what I am doing and I try to have a good time while I do it. 

Every day, my goal is to learn something new. I learn from my manager, I learn from my staff and I learn from my customers. I learn about how to manage, I learn about how to be compassionate, I learn about cars and most of all I learn about how to teach other people how to learn like I do. I walk through the doors every morning interested in getting better at something. Business is about meeting goals and making contacts or new customers or whatever but it is really truly about doing something that you love to do and being happy. 

I don't LOVE stacking up tires or buying cars or filling antifreeze or cleaning batteries but I love helping people. As it turns out, by doing these simple things, I can help make people’s (customers and staff) lives better. 

 I want to come to work to work hard and have fun while I do that. I know you all want that too.  

People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it. 

You like what you read, watch this for further insight: http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/simon_sinek_how_great_leaders_inspire_action.html

Being Cold vs Having One

*Cough, cough*
“Robitussin!” It’s like bless you for coughs...

Of course, bless you is like bless you for sneezing, which most people say to sneezing. With the World Junior Championship of Hockey starting today in Calgary and Edmonton, it's only fitting that people in the media are talking about how mild a winter we are having so far in the great white north. This week’s topic is:

Cold Season

More often than not, I find myself having the sniffles. I usually have excuse – it’s allergy season, or I’m just getting over a cold, or I’m just getting sick, or I am allergic to your horse/cat/dusty dog... of course, I’m stubborn so I won’t go to the doctor, but as I get older I feel like it might be a wise move – that is, seeking the council of professionals. On a different topic for a different day, it has likely been about fifteen years since my last visit to a scheduled doctor’s appointment (though I have been for filling prescriptions or emergency anaphylaxis treatment).

It’s not that I don’t go to the doctor because I don’t think they will help – obviously it’s their job to be helpFUL and for the most part they are competent, but it’s just the general inconvenience of driving down there and waiting in the waiting room and then waiting in the mini room and telling them what’s wrong (even when there may, in fact, be nothing blatantly wrong other than the fact that you just waited for an hour to get a little chicken scratch of a piece of paper requesting the pharmacy to give you a bottle of pills or a vile of serum that you requested by name. I do understand why the process is in place, but for a non-drug abuser like myself it is just a simple pain in the figurative rear end.

People often complain about the horrible conditions they have endured in Alberta hospital waiting rooms and as recently as this last weekend, my cousin, a BC paramedic with a nurse wife had the joy of visiting the Rockyview hospital after eating cashews in a chexmix. Yes, he is allergic. Of course, he was admitted nearly immediately – not because he is in the Canadian health care system, not because of his large and sometimes intimidating stature, but rather because of the severity of his ailment. My experiences have yielded similar VIP treatment as well. When it is an emergency, the triage nurses are pretty good at identifying them as such. Sorry to say, but if you are not in some sort of trauma, please don’t take up the seats in the emergency rooms. It is the people with non-fatal, non-emergency injuries or sicknesses who have generally bad experiences in the hospitals and skew the data for long wait times.

I complain about being sick, but it’s really my fault whenever I am. Not sleeping enough, not washing my hands thoroughly enough or often enough, not drinking enough water, or in a more obvious and general sense, working in a service industry, dealing with not only a close-knit coworker group, but with the general public as well – touching money, talking to close-talkers, or dealing with close-dealers. When I was in Japan in 2003, this was around the tail-end of the big SARS outbreak. At this time, many germ-conscious Japanese were sporting masks and even to this day (as I saw my mom’s photos of her recent trip) I was interested to see that many still do. Maybe they’re on to something.

Of course, there are varying degrees of what one might refer to as “being sick”. From a working standpoint, being physically unable to safety and effectively do one’s job is a reasonable excuse not to go in. But I’m the kind of guy who got the “attendance award” in junior high because I missed so few days in the school year. People who just “call in sick” make me question the goodness of the human race. Being sick for the sake of using up sick days is immoral and unjust to the people who are generally healthy. Many companies have ways to incentivise workers who do not use their sick days positively by adding vacation days, or negatively by docking pay for missed days. I remember hearing of kids in high school calling in for each other to skip class or even better calling in sick for themselves, but doing so first thing in the morning while their male voices were lower and more adult sounding. Crafty, but I never did that mainly because I was going to have to be at school anyway so I might as well go, but also because I would have been scared of the consequences I might face if my parents ever found out. And I don’t have a low voice.

What can you learn from this post? Well, don’t lie. Cover your mouth when you sneeze or cough. If you’re smarter than I am, you’ll visit a doctor more than once every ten years but if you aren’t really all that sick, do yourself and everyone else in the waiting room a favour and don’t go to the emergency.

Thanks for stopping in.

Here's a photo to warm you up.
Huntington Beach, California

Get the Clean On - Make the Mess Gone

You shower, everyday, right? I hope so. Or at least every second day...the point is you have a personal hygiene schedule, I would expect, so why is it so difficult to maintain a certain level of hygiene for your house? The laissez-faire attitude of someone-else-will-do-it can only get you so far, but eventually there comes a time when you just learn to shape up and clean up. This week's topic is:

HOUSEWORK

There was a time when chores were chores and you had no idea why your mom and dad would make you do them. It was because they were mean parents, the WORST! and didn't remember what being a kid was like. They just make up chores cause they can. Vacuuming, picking up clothes, stacking shoes nicely, hanging up your coat. Some were easier than others and of course, being kids, you took shortcuts or lied and said you did something but really just swept the crumbs under the counter...

Well, now we're all grownups. We have our own places to live and we all have jobs. Guess what: chores still exist. Of course, we don't have kids to do the work for us but chores being chores are just that - chores. If chores were fun we would call it fun time. But then we would avoid fun time like the plague.

So if you don't want to do chores, why do we? Well, they have maid services. Paid people who come to clean your house. It doesn't cost all that much and they generally do a pretty good job. That's all fine, but I live in a 1200 sq ft townhouse. I don't want to say it all comes down to money, but when you don't have a lot, why would you pay someone to do something you can do just as well in about an hour.

Well, procrastination is the key to this puzzle. I hate cleaning the bathtub more than anything in the world and I'm often unmotivated to pick up the vacuum and walk it up and down the stairs. It is, however, somewhat gratifying running the vacuum over the carpet and hearing nothing but the clickity-clack of little rocks and dirt flying up through the vacuum hose and into the canister. It's gross to think about it but it's one small victory in the battle of home maintenance satisfaction.

I love to cook. I'm not all that good and my food usually comes out too spicy, too salty, too burnt or a mix of all three. For this, my kitchen MUST be clean. We're not talking countertops made out of Lysol, but a little bit of daily TLC wouldn't hurt the kitchen's ego. To make matters worse, we don't have a dishwasher. I know it's a pain but it just means dishes have to be done literally every day. There is no way to hide them away, close the door and walk away to clean dishes. It's a horrible job, but with no kids around, it has to be done...but grownup people. Movies often portray horrible messes in kitchens with dishes stacked to the ceiling and garbage bags flung all over, empty beer cans astray on the floor and a fat guy with a half eaten pizza lounging around in a mustard stained la-zee-boy recliner. Well, my house doesn't have enough dished to stack to the roof but if it did, it would be impressive (damn you, raise ceilings). Alright, so my point. I like the kitchen clean and these days it's because I like it clean, not because my parents tell me I should.

I have no problem with mess, either. But selective mess is the key. You see, the key itself is the difference between DISorganized and UNorganized. Disorganized, of course, if your average "oh my god, it's time for work and I don't know where my keys and wallet are" versus the unorganized "I, personally, know where everything is that I need but if YOU came to my place to try to find it, you would be as lost as a sheep with no herd (or something else that gets easily lost)". For those keeping track, I'm the unorganized type.

Sorry to jump back to kitchens, but this is a place where I will always be lost. Moving to a new kitchen is like falling asleep on a road trip and having no idea where the heck you are when you finally wake up. The plates are in the corner, in the side, up top, to the left, on the bottom on the right...it's insane. Don't even think about finding a specific kind of glass! Glasses organized by colour, size, weight, genre... Even cutlery drawers are confusing sometimes.
But it all comes down to chores. Maybe the kitchen owner was having a bad/great day that day and thought it would be a horrible/great inconvenience/prank if they put the spoons in one drawer and the forks in another. Maybe they just don't really care about how messy the food cupboards are, or maybe they were being lazy and they asked their kids to do it for them. Maybe all or none of this is true and maybe, just maybe (and most likely) they just really didn't want to care about anything because it's just another chore.

Thanks for stopping in.

Commenting on the Comments

Sometimes I misspell a couple words, but I'm pretty good. Sometimes I mess up my punctuation, but not often. sometimes don't properly capitalize of my words, but that's because i'm SOMETIMES too lazy. When people are ranting on a public forum, this ALWAYS annoys me. This week's cultural topic is:

FORUMS

News sites and forum sites insert the "comments" section at the bottom of the page for the readers. It allows readers to elaborate on the story or voice their own opinion about the topic in question. It is supposed to ad value to the story and increase enjoyment of the reader. My enjoyment is drastically reduced when the aforementioned conditions are not met.

Counterproductive comments. A Vancouver Canucks fan coming onto the Calgary Flames or the Calgary Herald website leaving a comment saying "Calgary Flames Suck" is not productive. Sure the Flames are having a tough year, but we obviously didn't go to the website to see some uneducated fan of a different team voicing their unwarranted (though sometimes truthful) boisterous exclamations. You don't see me going onto the Maple Leafs website talking about how their 9-1 win over Atlanta probably won't happen again this year...

Unnecessary additions. Comedy pairing announcing a show in Toronto with comments like "Come to Ottawa" which is clearly not their intention in the first place. www.jakeandamir.com If they wanted to announce a show to Vancouver, or Sweden or Montreal or Missouri, they would announce it. Thank you Jake and Amir for acknowledging your Canadian fans. And dear Canadian Fans, if you live in Edmonton, you will just have to wait a while longer.

Poor spelling and grammar. Not only are naysayers ruining my reading experience by telling me things I don't want to read and don't care about, but they are commenting negatively without proper grammar! This is not a text message. This is not a casual conversation with your buddy after the game. This is the internet. Oh, and in case you didn't know, anyone with the internet CAN access your ill-advised, poorly worded, rantings - and they DO. "Kippersof is a amazing golie. He is to kewl for the calgery flamers." If this made sense and had factual data to back it, it might be acceptable but in it's current state, let me tell you: it does not.

"First!" That drives me insane. Enough said.

Listen, I get that people want to affirm what a news story is talking about, but keep it to yourself. Going onto the Globe and Mail or New York Times forums to post "that is really horrible" talking about a suicide bomber does not positively affect anyone's day. Everyone knows that terrorism is bad. So thanks for agreeing but affirmation does not necessitate redundancy, and no one in northern Manitoba needs to know that Joe-blow from Oklahoma City agrees with a generally understood fact of life: bad things are bad. (no disrespect if you are from any of these places)

The world has ups and downs and everyone understands that different events affect different people differently. This is what makes everyone individuals. Obviously, it's not reasonable to assume that people aren't going to disagree with what reporters report, or that everyone in a certain area is homogenous in thought or opinion. Forums allow for public discourse and people expressing themselves is what makes a forum a forum. But next time you disCOURSE, please make sure you aren't being disCOURTEOUS.

DKH

Next Gent

Sometimes opportunities present themselves and you jump. But you jump maybe in a slightly wrong direction. You miss the landing, you crash, and everything goes horribly wrong. This week's cultural topic is:

The Reset Button

Starting over from the point of failure? Vanilla Sky touched on the idea, but that was in the form a "lucid dream". Sad to say, folks, but that just doesn't exist. People talk about going back to high school or university or getting married or buying a house "knowing what they know now". Yeah a time machine would be nice - you could talk to your past self and fix little issues that had come up in your past in their future. This causes problems with the space-time continuum and according to Doc Emmett Brown "having information about the future can have disastrous consequences. Even if you're intentions are good, it can backfire drastically!"

I won't compare it to sports, because obviously many athletes would love to not have taken that penalty or shot the puck/thrown or kicked the ball differently, not to mention that happens hundreds of times of day in tens of different sports on hundreds of different levels to millions of different players in every single country in hundreds of different languages in tens of different dialects and if a reset button existed it would simply be re-reset by the reseter's opposition in an eternal dual of resets and time may even cease to continue. It does exist in some recreational golf in the mulligan, but it also usually results in a penalty stroke. OK - RESET.

Do you think Columbus got it right on his first try? Of course not. In fact, he tried four times to make it to India via the Atlantic Ocean before the Americas were officially considered discovered. (Not to mention - why does USA get a Columbus Day and Canada doesn't? Our 1490s history looks pretty similar to me...) Columbus is kind of a hero, but don't you think he would have preferred to have found India like he had planned? RESET.

It's like when you're cruising down the highway and you see that red and blue flash coming up in your rear view mirror. Hearts start racing, palms become sweaty and studies suggest that an overwhelming majority will reflexively hit the brakes. Makes sense, but if you are the one they want it's probably too late and if you're not the target, you probably don't have much to worry about anyway. You are in control. RESET.

Photography is always a hit and miss. Sometimes the shots come and some days they don't. The nice thing about photography though, is that you CAN try again. No one is going to know if the shot was the first shot or the last shot from a shoot. And the truth of the matter is that it doesn't really matter. Often all it takes is one. Photoshop helps too.

As we all know, my positing has been sporadic at best. A good friend of mine, Dale Vaughn, has a growlingly successful website, www.nextgent.com a type of open forum for the next generation of gentlemen. I have the opportunity to do some work with it and possibly get some great exposure, but here's the thing. In real life, there is not reset button. We learn from our mistakes and try again. So that's what I'm doing right now - getting the fingers moving, the mind rolling, and the creative juices flowing. You can look for me there soon, but for now, let's focus on not needing that reset button to (re)begin with.