Failure Eludes Me

Today we're going to talk about a program that I've been promoting for many years called Failure Eludes Me. Why do I have the right to brag that failure eludes me? Because no matter what I've done in my life I've learned the key ingredients to success. Now does that mean that everything I do ends perfect? Does that mean that everything I do makes $1,000,000? Absolutely not but I've never experienced a real failure. The keys to business are very simple. It's not complicated at all. It's customer service. It's quality service. It's consistent service. Keep your mind off the money. 

Transcript

Welcome to MikeAndJoConsulting.com. Allow us to introduce ourselves I am Mike Bonventre and I am Jo Fabrizio. Together we are Mike and Jo Consulting. Mike and Jo Consulting is sponsored by LadyLawPublishing.com. Our podcasts are going to be a combination of myself or Jo or the two of us and occasionally guest speakers from different industries and different businesses throughout the nation. Together Jo and I will share more than 70 years combined personal and professional experiences in many diversified fields with you. We are entrepreneurs, we've consulted entrepreneurs and we have a wide range of experience in many different social issues. Thank you for joining us. Today's podcast is Failure Eludes Me. Hello everyone welcome to Lady Law Publishing Speakers Bureau. I'm Mike Bonventre, one of the speakers under Lady Law Publishing Speakers Bureau. Today we're going to talk about a program that I've been promoting for many years called Failure Eludes Me. Why do I have the right to brag that failure eludes me? Because no matter what I've done in my life I've learned the key ingredients to success. Now does that mean that everything I do ends perfect? Does that mean that everything I do makes $1,000,000? Absolutely not but I've never experienced a real failure. The keys to business are very simple. It's not complicated at all. It's customer service. It's quality service. It's consistent service. Keep your mind off the money. I was lucky enough to grow up in a family business. The year I was born my father started his own business. It was a service business, so growing up with my father as I got older, I was able to work with him on weekends, holidays, and summer vacations. He built his own house over several years. A little bit at a time as he could afford it. I work with contractors like bricklayers, siders, roofers, and electricians. I was exposed to entrepreneurs from a young age. There was a local diner where all the entrepreneurs used to sit around a big round table and have coffee with the owner of the restaurant. The restaurant was open 24 hours a day, so anytime you went there was a good chance that there were eight or nine or ten entrepreneurs sitting at that table. As a young man I was exposed to hundreds of people 20 years older than me and I get to see the money hungry people who are always chasing new money. I got to see the short cutters who were always looking for new suckers to do business with because nobody would promote them. Then I sat with people like my father and successful people who didn't make as much money as those money focused people. I saw the honest hard working people who made a great deal of money and kept it all. they saved a ton on marketing and advertising because the word of mouth was fantastic. 

So being in business, people naturally come to you complaining that their bosses are idiots and all they need is money. If they had money, they thought they could do anything. Over the years I've found a few of them interesting and kind of like a younger me. I would finance them take a percentage of the business and try to help them build their dream. What we found out in most of the cases that people who didn't succeed and notice I'm never going to use the word failure. They never failed. We've cut some things short. We've stopped doing things, but we never considered it a failure. One day I told my father I took on a 90-day partnership and lost $10,000. I told him I failed, and he looked at me and he said you didn't fail. He said during that 90 days did you learn a lot? He said you learned valuable lessons that will never happen again. You invested $10,000 in 90 days of your life to learn valuable lessons that you could never learn and certainly not for $10,000 that $10,000 loss and that realization that business was not going to be a lasting business was worth more than any four year $60,000 investment in college. That knowledge and that practical experience is going to save you and make you hundreds of thousands of dollars throughout your future. We've never spent a lot of money on marketing and advertising. I just don't see the sense of paying $1000 a month for a billboard that sits in the same place. I'd rather spend $75 or $100 on a magnetic sticker or vinyl stickers that could be seen 24 hours a day in all parts of my community even when I travel out of state at a onetime investment is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The other thing is creating a trademark. What's your trademark? Oh yeah, I decided I'm going to be known as the guy in the Hawaiian shirt. For years I've worn a Hawaiian shirt and cargo pants. Long pants in the winter, cut outs in the summer.

I've spoken to multibillion dollar corporations, small, medium, and large corporations. I have consulted for government, county, and state law enforcement agencies. You're going to find me very easily just by asking around about the guy in the Hawaiian shirt. Aside of going above and beyond the Call of duty and servicing my clients to the utmost of my ability. This camera is not going to stay so I'm going to show you, my sidewalls. I love the ocean and my office has all kinds of ocean decorations this camera just doesn't want to stay off them. So, ‘Oh well,’ improvising, going with the flow. Taking it as it comes. It's all formatting successfully, mastering your camera and you know what we're going to continue. Very simple everything you do you do your best of your ability. You give your customers the best service you can possibly think of you review your competitors You provide what everybody's complaining that they don't provide. The key really to most businesses whether they're service or educating or carpentry or landscaping whatever it is show up on time answer your phone. People will wait two weeks for you as long as they don't have to wait two hours to hear from you. If you haven't called me back within two or three hours, I'm calling the next person and once they answer the phone, I'm committing to them. Sorry you snooze you lose. Answer your calls answer them in person don't use automated push one, push two, push 5, push 16, because you're losing me in about 60 to 90 seconds. Show up on time give an estimate maybe even a little higher than you know you're going to do it for. So that when you show up and you do your excellent service you can actually give them a break. They will love you for saving $10, $20, $30 or $50. In the end they are going to talk about you. With me it is, you Know that big bald headed guy with the Hawaiian shirt? My goodness he answered the phone, he was professional he was on time. He did everything I expected him to do he did a little bit more. If you just adapt those things no matter what you're doing success will be around every corner. My father's model when I was growing up was don't pay attention to the money. Be the best you can be, and money will chase you like a junkyard dog, and he was right. People don't mind giving you a tip. People don't mind referring you. The money that I've saved on marketing and advertising is just amazing, because we have satisfied customers and we have satisfied customers not only locally but around the state around the United States and even worldwide now, thanks to social media. LinkedIn and Facebook. Today folks I'm going to encourage you to join my YouTube channel. We're going to be putting on events getting in depth with real people asking questions and getting answers about their particular dreams and hobbies and goals. If you watched Undercover Boss, you'll see that most big corporate execs have no clue what's going on in their franchises and in their corporations. They don’t know what's going on. Most of them are incapable of performing those duties. So are you one of 100 employees making one person at the top rich when really, you're the backbone of the business. Without you they don't make a good impression. Without you they don't deliver satisfactory service. Without you they can't regain the millions. Not everybody's geared to be an entrepreneur. But if you are, if you're frustrated every day that you're getting minimum wage or even a good wage, but you could do it better. Then just do it. Fear causes failure, second guessing causes failure. There's an old saying that in sales you're going to hear 99 ‘No’s for every ‘Yes’. When somebody says yes to me, I go out there and do my best to find 99 ‘No’s so I can hurry up and get to the next yes.  No is not defeat. ‘No’s are not negative; ‘No’s are an opportunity to figure out how to represent yourself. How to do it better. How to nail down your camera or something floating around the room without stopping. First impressions don’t come twice. Remember when you're valuing your business and your employees your receptionist is more important than you and your service workers. Your receptionist is the first impression that people get when they call your business. You don't want them hearing yeah um yeah alright. I don't know. I'll want to hear a nice cheerful, hi thank you for calling lady law publishing, how can we help you today? That's the first impression people get. Your service and salespeople are second but as good as they are they're worthless if the actual service people don't do what the salespeople promise. Make sure that your salespeople and your service people are connected on the same page and coexist seamlessly.  Without your service people in sync with your salespeople they are just making second bad impressions. Then your service people make sure that you're in touch. Don't be an undercover boss that comes out of the Crystal Palace once in 10 years and just has no clue how their business is run. Be in touch with your employees. Make sure that your employees are interchangeable. We've consulted many service route businesses and each route person has established their own little fiefdom. We changed them up. You're going to do route one this month you're going to do route 2 next month. you're going to do route 3 the month after that. We're going to keep you interchanged so you don't develop your own way of doing things which slips slowly but permanently away from the company's mission. Keep everybody interchangeable. If somebody gets COVID they're replaced by somebody else who knows their customers has serviced, their customers and everybody does it the same way. Simple tiny little things. Are you going to be loved for it? No but you know what it's kind of like kids. If everybody hangs out at your house and everybody loves your parents, there's a good chance you're all getting away with something and getting over on them. Same way in business. Your business is like a newborn baby. When it's hungry and it's crying for something, you don't go cut the grass or wash the dog. You feed the baby. Your business is your baby. Your business is going to grow to be your child and your child in is going to turn into a bunch of friends which are called employees. You have the rule the roost and you do it not by being a dictator not by being a mean threatening boss. You do it by being involved by establishing a rapport with the people that work not for you but with you. These people aren't your slaves and your servants they're the key to your success. That's why failure no matter what industry you invite me into even if I don't have a clue about it, I have the basics starting from the top down that will improve your existing business or help you start your own business with minimal mistakes minimal expenses. Contact us at MikeAndJoConsulting.com to suggest topics or potential guests for our show.