Free Health Care for local Employees
By Michael Kline
Wouldn’t that be nice! Well, I’ve been working on a project that comes close for many of our local service employees. Most people don’t know about currently available programs with sliding fee scales that are remarkably affordable. Meanwhile, we’re working on yet another new program.

I’ve been working with Patricia McMurry, Executive Director of the White Mountain Community Health Center to see if they could invent an affordable product both employers and employees could embrace to fill some of the health care gap. To make sure the program is what is really needed,  we’ve been interviewing employers around the valley to collect their stories, identify their concerns and determine if there is something we can contribute.

So far we’ve learned that  while many have the valid excuse that health insurance is simply too expensive for either the employer or the employee to buy, we also learned that some wouldn’t buy insurance if it was half the price, or at any price at all for that matter.  Not surprisingly, the feedback runs the gamut from totally compassionate employers who would make any personal sacrifice to protect the well-being of their staff, to others who would run sweat-shops with orphans to make a buck. I’m happy to report most are safely waffling around the middle somewhere, feeling frustrated, confused, uncertain and uncomfortable about the whole situation.

Some employers have offered to pay for limited health care programs only to be told by their employees that they would rather have the cash and take their chances. These employees often state their logic is that’s what emergency rooms are for.  We also know that many young workers feel invincible; I can appreciate that, having been one of them. I spent twenty years without health insurance and I figure I saved about $40,000. I do not recommend this approach. I was lucky enough to only visit the emergency room twice in those twenty years and I appreciate it was a lot of luck.

We have an idea:
Given that some affordable insurance plans won’t even pay for an annual physical, even though most of us know that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Further given that many employers and far more employees cannot afford to buy comprehensive insurance.  And finally, given that we do not have the power to fix the entire system anytime soon and we have no idea what the politicians will do or not do…

We want to create a package that does three things:
1.       Offer an amazingly low price, for at a minimum, an annual physical for every eligible employee (like any benefit, eligibility to be determined by employer).
2.       Promote education through a number of means, about preventative wellness including awareness around nutrition and exercise, ergonomics at work, reducing stress builders, etc.
3.       Promote a work culture of healthier living. This might include changing rooms at work, company sponsored weight-loss clubs, or gym memberships, or a lunch-time walking group. The point is, we cannot pretend to be building productivity if we are not promoting healthy, energetic, positive people.

Help create this small piece of a very large puzzle. Don’t wait until the program is being promoted to not like it; now is the time to share your input. If you think you  would be interested in making an amazingly small investment per employee (perhaps shared with them), and would like to talk with us about your ideas and concerns, please email me or contact Patricia at the White Mountain Community Health Center (603) 447-8900x321.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

By Michael Kline
Conway Daily Sun, Wed. Aug 23, 2011
Do you have an extraordinary life? What does it take to realize such a thing, and is it possible for ordinary people to obtain? I suppose we need to know what we mean by extraordinary. I feel fortunate to live such a life, and yet I can’t define it except to say you’ll know it when you’re there, and that if I can do it – well, anyone can.

The most astonishing thing to me is how simple it is to get an extraordinary life; problem is, it only becomes clear once you know you’ve already achieved it.

You would be hard pressed to find anyone more ordinary than me. The humblest of beginnings taught me well. A series of successes and failures taught me still more, and more importantly taught me that there is really no such thing as successes and failures; only outcomes and lessons. If I can schlep along, hammering out an amazing life, then surely you can too. Finding happiness or perhaps we should call it peace, or maybe contentment, or comfort, or fulfillment, or confidence, or faith; finding that elusive quality to define our life as amazing, is within the grasp of every ordinary person.

Is the answer money? I know you’re waiting for me to say something deep and meaningful about the riches of life not involving money. Bologna I say. I had the privilege of stating with nothing (being a slow learner, I even got to repeat it a couple times!).  I’ve come to place a real value on having some money. Cash can be an ugly, divisive weapon that ruins people’s lives. It can also be an important tool that eases a great deal of stress; but so does faith or confidence. Money buys opportunities, but so does creativity. Money allows us to take care of ourselves, so we can contribute to others, which is the biggest favor we can do for ourselves. Money frees our minds and our time to pursue more leisurely thoughts and activities. These pursuits enrich our lives, expand our minds, and improve our homes, families, and community. These efforts help us find our own voices, so we can then help others find theirs, and nothing says extraordinary better than that experience. So I say money is not necessary, but it sure can help. If you have the ability to make, and the discipline to save money, life can be much easier, but remember, emotional pain and baggage has no budget. Hard mental and emotional work on yourself is the most worthwhile investment you can make, but there are no short cuts for anyone.

For me, the arrival at my happy place involves a deep appreciation of my past, faith in my future and the relationships I enjoy with family, close friends, community, and work. Work as a business coach deals with helping people make money and live a better life in a balanced and healthy way. I am so grateful I get to be of service to others and make a living doing it. Making a living is the financial reward; the love is the spiritual reward – well balanced.

I’d like to say my clients are extraordinary people, (sorry guys), but the truth is, they are really ordinary people just like you and me. They are ordinary people living extraordinary lives; even if some of them don’t know it yet.

I believe that if you are reading this article, you have the power and the responsibility to create or recreate your life into an extraordinary experience. You can do this through ordinary work, with ordinary skills, but not with ordinary attitude or beliefs. In fact, maybe I can define it after all - you arrive at extraordinary the moment you say it is so.

Your assignment is to know yourself, control yourself and motivate yourself. Try to remember who you really are and what’s important to you. Practice self-discipline and push yourself to take action beyond your comfort zone on a regular basis. Find the inspiration you need wherever and however you can, but not just in theory – make a commitment to take action right away. Get a constant source of fuel for your spirit and use it to get in the game. When you follow your passion and help someone else follow theirs, you will create two extraordinary lives at once. More importantly, you will become addicted to helping still more follow in your path. So come on, be ordinary; just do it extraordinarily well!

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

When to Fire a Client
By Michael Kline
Imagine if you only worked with clients who inspired you and appreciated your knowledge, skills and passion. Imagine a world where most days, you felt almost guilty getting paid to do the work you do because you find it so rewarding. Welcome to my world. I consider myself incredibly lucky to get to do the work I do. Most of my regular followers know it wasn’t always this way, of course.  I have spent plenty of time being grumpy, wrongfully unappreciative of my life, and wasting time placing my energy in the wrong places. Decades of hard work and lots of difficult and expensive lessons have taught me that happiness is a decision. There are plenty of people in this world whom I was born to serve. That makes me happy. I want happiness. Like you, I’m happiest when I feel productive. Productivity drives happiness. Passion drives productivity. Let’s follow our passion.

Are you doing the math yet? Passion = Productivity = Happiness = Success. If you work in your area of passion, and you work with clients who feed the passion, you can only be successful and happy.

If you truly want to grow your business and enjoy your work, you would do well to limit your work to those clients who feed your passion. It may be time to drop the duds. Eventually, you will get frustrated, limit your service to them, or get short with them. If you’re trying to please clients who are not your target market, or who don’t truly value your service, they will eventually become unhappy with you and fire you anyway. It is far better to be proactive with your less-than-festive client relationships.  Here’s what I suggest:

Make a list of your favorite clients. I don’t mean just financially speaking, but that’s an important part, so let’s get that out of the way.  Analyze the profitability of the relationship – those who pay the most are not necessarily the most profitable – sometimes they end up costing you money depending on the time, energy and resources they demand. Make a list of the best clients you have now, and write down why you identify them as your best. Write down if the issue is financial, friendly, inspiring you to do your best work, refers others to you, make you more inventive, a joy to work with, etc. Now make a list of your least favorite clients and their traits and characteristics that earn them a spot on that list. 

Can any of the negative clients be coached into becoming a better client? If not, can you afford to tell them that you can no longer service them? You’re not going to like this – but I would argue that you cannot afford to keep them. It’s time to refer them out to someone else with whom they may be a better fit. If you take the time and energy now wasted on your worst clients, and invested it in marketing yourself to your ideal target audience (prospects with traits similar to your best clients), you will greatly improve your cash flow, your energy, your productivity and live a longer, more fulfilling and happier life.

At this point, most of you are in one of two camps. One, you argue that this is easy for me to say, but reality requires you to “suck it up” and stick with the dud clients. Or, perhaps you believe me, but you’re panicking over the thought of losing revenue.  There is a caveat. If you’re going to make your life enjoyable and make more money, you’ll need a good plan to find the replacement client who will pay you more to do better work. More important than the good plan however, is to create the room in your life for the better clients in the first place, and to create the desperate need in your gut to go get the new clients, so you can stop taking the lazy, unfulfilling path of least resistance you’ve been stuck on. It’s scary, lonely and difficult; why do you think everyone isn’t wildly successful and happy?

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

From Conway Daily Sun, July 20, 2011
By Michael Kline

All the great teachers of personal success, life happiness and general well-being talk about gratitude.  I agree it is one of our most powerful tools.  In business, as in our personal lives, we have the opportunity to use gratitude to make our lives more fulfilling.  The conflict comes when we confuse gratitude with the notion of being satisfied.

We’re told the easiest way to have what you want, is to want what you have.  If we took this advice literally, and we all wanted what we had, there would be no desire for self-improvement; we would still be living in caves, and no business would ever be started. So if we don’t mean the words literally, what do we mean? How do we balance the benefits of being grateful with the benefits of still wanting better for ourselves?

First, let’s make sure we all understand the value of gratitude in the first place.  Most powerful is the art of expressing appreciation for what we do have, shining our focus on the positive.  We get more of that on which we focus our energy.  If we focus on what we don’t have in our lives, or what’s wrong, we are more likely to get more of what’s wrong.  If we focus our energy on what we do have and what’s good in our lives, we generally get more of what’s good. This goes hand-in-hand with having Faith (in the spiritual sense) or Confidence (same thing using a business word). When we express gratitude, we cannot be feeling fear at the same time. Fear of things not working out, fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking like a fool, fear of losing our job, our business, our home, disappointing our family, our employer,  or employees – all these fears disappear the moment you express gratitude for what’s going well. In the environment of gratitude, you are free to stop asking the question “Why doesn’t anything work for me?” and start asking “How can I create more of what I want?” When you ask either of these questions out loud, you are likely to hear your brain start thinking of answers to the question you ask. You don’t really want the answer to why bad things happen – you do want the answer to how to make good things happen – so ask the right question, and listen carefully for the answers to flow.

Gratitude is a powerful tool. Do choose to be happy with what you have.  Do not be satisfied with what you have as being all there is, or all you need for the future. If you are not happy with what you have, having more won’t make you happy either. Be happy first (yes, that’s a choice). Then go about setting bigger goals and being grateful for the gifts you have that allow you to go after them.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

By Michael Kline

This past Independence Day weekend, I worked at our stores every day.  In between customers, I wrote this column and worked on some seminar projects for clients.  Of course it occurred to me that the 4th of July is a perfect weekend to celebrate our nation’s history and enjoy fun time with family and friends.  Does working through a holiday diminish our lives in some way?  Actually, I feel a little bit lucky to have the honor of working so our visitors can enjoy there long weekend with their families. Living in a vacation destination, we need to serve and entertain our visitors on their holiday. We can take off on a week day and play when it’s a little less crowded and more enjoyable anyway.  But this has me thinking about the value of our work.

Is the work you do really, really important? Did you save a life today? If not, what great contribution did you make to society that really matters?  If you have a seemingly mundane job, please read on.

It doesn’t matter if you are support staff at a software company, a hotel desk clerk, server, lawyer, accountant, nurse or retail clerk… the work you do makes other things possible – important things.

You are making a valuable contribution. If you’re the nurse who literally saved a life today, your contribution is easy for all to see. If you are the retail clerk at a clothing outlet who helped a mother dress her daughter for a big event which boosted her self-esteem and made her confident to grow into the hero of our future, your valuable work may be less readily appreciated, but is no less valuable to the world.

Maybe you’re the host at a campground that rented a piece of ground to a guy in a truck. That $20 plot of dirt may have allowed a father to bond with his kids in a way his generation never did. This effect of your work could last for generations of child development and respect and caring for ourselves, each other and the earth. What could be more important than contributing to the experience of a family camping vacation?!

You see, it doesn’t matter how menial your work may seem, it exists because it supports a bigger world and when you look at the bigger picture of what really happens as a result of your work – you realize you are a super hero.  Your approach and attitude can change your work from mundane acts to critical, life-changing heroic acts making the world a better place. 

This is important work we do; put on your cape and go save the world!

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

Conway Daily Sun, Wed. June 22, 2011
by Michael Kline, The Entreprenologist

7 Steps to this, 5 pillars of that, 3 most life-changing what-evers, and let us not forget 8 Minute Abs… who buys this stuff and why?!  Is any of it believable? Does any of it work?  I certainly have never tried the 8 Minute Abs workout. For personal and business development however, I have the books and the training tapes and I follow the blogs from gurus like Seth Godin, Anthony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, E-Myth, Verne Harnish (Gazelle Coaching), Steven Covey (7 Habits), and dozens of others.  I do think that yes, most of it really works, most of it is totally true and applicable to the real world, and most of it is worth every penny they charge for their material. I also think most of it isn’t really anything that new.

I’ve been teaching business development in one fashion or another since 1992. We now enjoy in our workforce, employees that we not even born then who are convinced they know far more than I do, and when it comes to the 8 Minute Abs Workout, or how to use any I-Gizmo, I concede.  Sounding like your father? (I know – shoot me now)!  I’m glad our youth are smarter than me – it’s progress, but I’ve learned a few things in the last twenty years that only experience can teach.

I’ve experienced that knowledge isn’t wisdom.  I’ve experienced that knowing something intellectually is not the same as being motivated to do it. Wisdom seldom changes. We need to stop looking for the new short cut to happiness and study the tried and true principles that have always worked.

There is nothing new.  What appears new is the same wisdom with more modern language, more current examples and sexier metaphors; if the new program/system/method is of any quality, the meaning and the intent is all the same as the old stuff.  Earl Nightingale, the father of the self-help training industry said most everything Anthony Robbins says today. I got a promotional email from Robin Sharma and a blog post by Seth Godin this week both talking about lessons we learned from Stephen Covey in the late 1980’s. In 1976, Stephen Covey studied self-help literature for the previous 200 years and brought us back to principle-based teachings that had been abandoned in this country for prior fifty years. His research was new; his wisdom was ancient. For this reason, I still use Stephen Covey’s principle-based lessons in my work today; it never gets old and there are no better or more current answers, especially relating to EQ vs. IQ.  The growing importance of EQ (emotional intelligence) will have to wait for another column, but Covey covers the basics very nicely.

I’ve experienced that we do better when we stop working so much on technique and work more on character and principles. With the proper foundation, the techniques and methodology fall into place more easily. In business, we must have technique, but we must always be coming from a desire to be of service. I don’t mean to be trained in what to say to customers, although that’s important – I mean to have a sense of service in our hearts; to be passionate about the experiences our customers desire and passionate about our role in making that experience possible.

In my experience, we read these motivational and educational books and go to the seminars, and then it’s near impossible to implement the ideas into real life. Most business owners or managers do not have the time to figure out how to distill the wisdom of the best ideas into a workable plan they can actually execute.  Further, if you had the workable plan, who has the focus, discipline and time to follow through and get their employees on the same page?

I have taken the concepts from the best of these gurus and distilled them into a plan I call the Five Steps to Freedom.  It contains a little attitude of Tony Robbins (a little Tony goes a long way), the fatherly advice of Brian Tracy, the systems of Michael Gerber (of the E-Myth), made modern and more sophisticated by Verne Harnish, polished with the principles of Stephen Covey in mind, and some Wayne Dyer wisdom of the ages. This is all ancient wisdom, modernized, translated into super-simple lingo that applies to small business and orchestrated into a fill-in-the-blank checklist ready to use in your company.

Even with the availability of all the wisdom, the training and the tools to make it doable, the reality is most business owners will never change. They will continue to work slavishly in their business instead of working on their business, because change is seen as the hardest work of all. Getting what you want is easy. Knowing what you want is hard. Change is easy if you decide you want it.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

By Michael Kline, Entreprenologist
Conway Daily Sun, Wed. June 9, 2011
I’ve spent a fair amount of time thinking about the potential or plight of small independent, local-owned businesses. The valley enjoys some terrific local businesses, especially in the hotel and restaurant categories, but how do you compete with the advertising budgets and amenities of the big names?

While it’s true that visitors are sometimes drawn to brands they know and trust, compared to retailers, at least it’s easier for hotels and restaurants to get people to try something local and unique. You’re not selling handbags or tools; you’re offering an experience to someone who is looking for a different experience, so you have a reasonable chance to compete with the giant national marketing budgets. In addition to being terrific citizens and community supporters, our local restaurant group, Valley Originals has done an excellent job delivering the perfect message to dine local.

One of the dine-local marketing messages is that the owner is always on or nearby the premises. I love that! From a business development point of view, I wonder if this raises a question – most are on premises because this is their passion, and they make sure it’s perfect. Others are there because things fall apart when they’re not doing everything themselves. This happens in many, many businesses of course. My favorite restaurant owners happen to also have the job of managing their restaurants, so please don’t misunderstand me. If the owner wears the hat as one of the staff, that’s fine. Otherwise, the owner’s presence should be a bonus to the guest, not a requirement to make things function. The first is a sign of a gracious and grateful host; the latter is the sign of a lack of systems and training. With the latter, the owner’s presence is not likely to be sufficient to fix the problems.

When you dine at a national chain restaurant, you don’t expect or need the presence of an owner. You usually get what you order, the way you expect it, quickly and efficiently. Rare, because of constant training, but when something goes wrong there’s no ego getting defensive; just a manager with the power and training to make things right and beg your forgiveness. Is it elegant, romantic or exquisite? Compared to some local establishments the answer is yes; compared to others, the answer is definitely not. The point is that you don’t need the presence of an owner to have a meal – exquisite or casual. The desirable local feeling is created by the owner’s relationships with the customer, not their need to be onsite to put out fires in the kitchen.

If you want to feel local and caring, I like it when I’m greeted at the door by the owner; I like the hugs, the checking on us at the table, the good nights and the thank you all coming from an owner. That feels special. We frequent and recommend our favorite place mostly for this experience. An owner who can create the same culture among the entire staff has a winning business.

The biggest threat to local establishments is not the competition; it’s the owner with more ego than systems. If the owner created the systems and training as if they were a chain restaurant, they would then be on the premises by choice rather than need, and they could go to work on their business, not just in their business.

I’m intentionally leaving out examples of negative experiences – a food critic could help here, but I think if a restaurant deserves praise or criticism consistently, everyone will know it anyway. You can use your imagination if you must. Overwhelmingly though, our local restaurants and hoteliers are amazing, and deliver en experience beyond the expectations of their guests and beyond hospitality standards in other markets. 

To make sure we’re in that special group, let’s all take a look in the mirror (me too, at my own stores). Of course we have real challenges hit us from other sources every day. But are we to blame for some of our troubles? Of course, and if we’re honest, the more troubles we have, the more blame we should take. In the good economy money was so easy; did we get spoiled? Let’s stop blaming the economy, the government, taxation, and big name competition until we have our own house in order.  

I’m here to say that dining and shopping local is the way to go.  If you are a local eatery or shop that needs help, please stop taking it out on your customers and let’s talk systems and culture development.

 The secret weapon of the local owner is to be able to build relationships with the customers and the community. Otherwise, you’re just selling cooked groceries.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

By Michael Kline
Many a venture has failed due to a lack of resources. According to so and so, most businesses are underfunded, according to someone else, most business fail due to poor management, according to the guy selling business planning software, it’s the lack of planning that leads most failures to the brink. According to my own research, surveys show that the over 120% of statistics are exaggerated!  In case you didn’t take statistics in school, that was a joke – I like to point out my humor as I know I can’t afford to lose even the smallest chuckle.

I don’t care what the statistics say – anytime anyone quotes the SBA, or the National Association of Charging Businesses to Belong, (I think it’s NACBB), I ask one or two more questions and never get any more answers – just headlines, really.  So what does it take to make a business work? What resources do you really need to open or grow a business? This is a question I have been both asking and taking stabs at answering for over twenty years.

First up, I don’t buy the blaming. It’s never a lack of money. It’s never too much government regulation, lazy employees, a jerk for a landlord or stupid customers who don’t appreciate your quality.  I’ve been through all of those personally, and I promise that while all the above may make grown men cry like a congressman, they are not valid or acceptable business failure reasons. Those are the excuses we create to soften the blow to our egos for a while, but the reason a business fails is because of the owner; no one else has the job of being responsible for the business. You will notice I didn’t say the blame belongs to the owner, just the reason. Sometimes, closing a business is a good decision and can be something to be proud of, not ashamed of. If a business model no longer makes sense, or the market disappears and the business has no interest or talent in developing a new product line for a new market, then only an ego-driven maniac would continue indefinitely.

Certainly, resources are needed; not just financial, technical knowhow and marketing savvy, but also emotional stamina, never-ending creativity and general resourcefulness.  If you were a manufacturer of buggy whips when the new “horseless carriage” came out, you could have gone out of business and blamed the auto-industry. Or, you could have come up with one of the bazillion auto-related accessories to manufacture instead. If you closed, it’s not the lack of demand that drove you out of business; it’s your lack of desire to continue with something new that drove you out. You see, I’m not picking on owners to place blame; blame never empowers. Rather I’m trying to create a gift – by making it clear that you and only you have the power to make it work. Responsibility empowers. Don’t let foreign competition, or a slow economy, or competition decide for you. If you’re ready for a new chapter in your life, move on or move up. Even when most people are down, there’s always someone who is up. That could be you. If you’re ready to commit to do whatever it takes, then assume responsibility and call on your own resourcefulness.

Coming from a place of no tangible resources myself, I find that resources are not nearly as important as resourcefulness.

Making Money from Kindness
Conway Daily Sun Wed. May 25, 2011

By Michael Kline

Does Kindness Weekend have anything to do with business or is it just about school-yard bullying and politicians? I’d say it has to do with every aspect of our lives, but this being a business column, we should discuss kindness and its role in making money. I know; I’m crass.

First let’s get passed the actual business side of this particular kindness event. In life, as in business, we get that on which we focus our attention. If you want more sales, focus on your sales efforts; if you want more kindness in your life, focus on kindness. It is more effective to focus on sales than to focus on fear of financial failure. It is also more effective to teach and practice kindness, than focus on fear of bullying or conflict. Focus on what you want. This event is simply a community wide focus on kindness.

Cynics might say this is some sort of business gimmick, and I’m devaluing the message by talking about making money from it. Being involved in the event, I can tell you first hand it is about quality of life; both the benefits of kindness and making money. Kindness Weekend was conceived out of a desire solely for public benefit. To fund the event, the N. Conway Village Association invested in it to bring traffic to the valley, so it is being promoted as another reason to bring families to the valley for Memorial Day weekend. Of all the things we could create to sell for a profit, what could be more beautiful? The event is sponsored by The Evergreen Institute for Wellness, with their message that Kindness produces physical health benefits for the giver of kindness. When you do something for someone else, it can reverse feelings of depression, provide social contact and decrease feelings of hostility and isolation that can cause stress, overeating, ulcers, etc. With everything to gain, nothing to lose and no cost, who would even want to argue with that? So, what about you making a profit from all this?

Business is about making money. Some think it is more profitable to be unkind. They are wrong. K=R=P is a formula Tom Peters uses to explain the impact of kindness on business. In 1982, Tom Peters authored the world-changing business book In Search of Excellence, and more recently, his new book 163 Ways to Pursue Excellence.  The formula stands for Kindness = Repeat Business = Profit.  Far be it from me to challenge the mind of Tom Peters, but I would change the R to stand for Relationships. The repeat business he talks about comes from the same relationship-building trust that increases productivity, reduces turn-over, sick time and labor problems with employees. Better relationships also help negotiate better terms with suppliers. So my version of the formula K=R=P is Kindness = Relationships = Profit.

Consider an extreme example featured in a New York Times article in May 2008 – American Airlines and Southwest Airlines held annual meetings in Dallas on the same day. Airline pilots picketed the American Airlines meeting while Southwest pilots bought full page newspaper ads thanking founder Herb Kelleher for his 37 years of service. Animosity between management and labor is near impossible to navigate when there is no trust. We see this in our political system globally, nationally and locally. We see it sometimes with our own staff relationships. Without kindness, there is no trust, without trust, there is no relationship. Without relationship, we’re fighting and clawing our way through all our dealings. Kindness is no longer an option in business. It is critical to the customer and the employee and if you’re smart (and I know you are), you’ll make it critical with the supplier, landlord, neighbor and even wrong numbers. Everyone is a potential relationship.

My regular seminar students and column readers know I talk a lot about building trust. In all business relationships, trust reduces cost and increases speed. Dr. Stephen Covey calls it “moving at the speed of trust” in his book Predictable Results in Unpredictable Times. If your customer needs a lawyer before signing a contract, it is far more expensive and time consuming than making a hand-shake deal. If you have to “sell” your employees on a new idea, you would enjoy greater productivity if you had instant buy-in based on trust. This is not to say you should expect people to follow blindly doing as they are told; those days of curmudgeonly bosses are long gone. This is about leadership, which involves employee in-put, which is a form of kindness. I hear some of you grumbling, so hear me out. I know that you know what you’re doing. I know you don’t have time for every employee’s ideas. I know you want to be able to trust your employees as well, to empower them to be their best. So how do you become the cultivator of employee engagement? We have a system for that! Yes, we have a system for everything, as you have surely read in previous columns. An effective business development process has a management system that provides the framework and structure for employee engagement in an orderly fashion that respects input efficiently, maintains focus, creates accountability and drives productivity like nobody’s business. It allows for, no – it requires kindness. Good thing kindness is free.

In researching this column, I was online listening to Tom Peters lecture at Cornell University. When Tom tells you that his ridiculously over-the-top-big-time selling book In Search of Excellence really didn’t say anything more than take care of people – maybe there’s something to that. How to make it fit in the real world can be complex, but the message is simple.

Albert Schweitzer said: "Constant kindness can accomplish much.  As the sun makes ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust and hostility to evaporate."

That’s good for business.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.

By Michael Kline, The Entreprenologist
Originally appeared

For as long as I can remember, I’ve heard the old adage “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”. To some people, this is sage advice telling them to find and maintain business contacts. Others use the cliché phrase to explain away their frustration that in some unfair way, someone else with more contacts got the job, the promotion or the deal. Is it fair? Is it even true? Either way, what can you do about it?

I’ve been putting a lot of thought into relationships lately.  Sales people know that building relationships is important.  We know that if you have a good relationship with suppliers, you might get better deals; with a customer you make more sales, and so on. So if you don’t have a relationship where and when you need one, you need to build one as fast as possible. Since most people agree relationships are built on trust, if you can quickly build trust, you can more quickly build a relationship. This is not something you can fake, as most people have enough instinct to sense a trust-faker. If you suspect that someone is trying to manipulate you into a business relationship, trust your instincts. If based on integrity, the fastest route to trust is to first extend trust. Given the opportunity, most people will be trustworthy and will reciprocate. Next, make and keep promises. You might be thinking you need to build trust to get someone to buy from you and how can you keep a promise until they agree to buy from you?! It is not the Catch-22 you think. Make a simple, easy promise; to do some research, return a call, keep an appointment, get a quote, provide a sample, or deliver a service-style that meets your brand’s experiential promise. This is where the relationship begins; as astonishing as it sounds, if you can under-promise and over-deliver on the simplest and earliest contacts, you will often be ahead of even the most sophisticated competitors.

Keep in mind that promises aren’t always easily identified by you, but they are by others. Your advertising, your image, your logo, your reputation and your price levels all create expectations, or promises. Sometimes they are made outright and sometimes they are implied and sometimes they are imagined and perceived by others unbeknownst to you. Regardless how your contact came to have your promise, if you consistently deliver on those promised expectations, you will have a trust “savings account” that you be able to “spend” when needed on better deals, faster sales, forgiveness for future errors, preferred status and given the benefit of any doubt by your customers, suppliers, employees, partners, or investors.  We can evaluate ourselves (check the balance of our trust savings account) by asking what would happen to our business if an unthinkable disaster occurred. Are our standards beyond reproach? Does our community of stakeholders trust us enough to stand by us no matter what? This is how we check the balance in our “trust savings account”. We make small deposits and withdrawals from our trust savings constantly. Thankfully, the exact balance is only truly known when disaster strikes; we hope to never really need to know and never to become overdrawn. If your account is very small, any little error has the business effect of a larger disaster.

Businesses and the people who run them sometimes think they can “manage” their relationships through emotionless technique as if people were some sort of predictable software program. Following a disaster, the communication experts create press releases; the prettiest spokesperson delivers explanations and positive spin on anything they can. This seldom works. The best method and time to manage disaster is the same method and time to produce more and better relationships with all your contacts. The best way to build all your resources for good times and bad is through building – no, earning trust from the very beginning of the relationship. It’s not who you know, it’s how well they know you.

Last week, I witnessed a disaster beyond imagination at a small business. It involved the death of an infant at an in-home day care. I have never been so close to anything so sad and so personally tragic that the business owner could not even contemplate or comprehend that aside from the personal grief there was also a legal and financial aspect to the situation. Long before anything was known of the situation aside from the startling news feed “death at a day care - more at eleven”, long before to the licensing agencies and the local police concluded the death was the unavoidable result of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome, while the local TV news teams were still scouring the neighborhood looking for anyone to say something controversial or negative about the child-care provider, the business’s fate had been sealed. Unanimous and unwavering support, confidence and absolute love poured out of every crack and crevice in the community. Even the parents of the deceased infant lobbied the licensing agency to make sure the day care remained open to continue caring for their older child who had also been entrusted to the center for two years. Every client not only remained loyal and supportive even before knowing the circumstances, but past clients heard the news and came to lend their support. I wonder how many larger day cares, public schools or even churches could garner such trust as this amazing woman who spent the last eighteen years selflessly serving her customers, nurturing their children and earning their trust, all to squeak out a month-to- month living.

This single mother, turned stay-at-home-mom, superhero-business-owner, school sports volunteer and part-time community college student could be charging thousands of dollars per day to advise fortune 500 companies on the basics of building client relationships. I’m glad she’s not because she’s doing more important work as she helps shape the minds of little humans. I teach business concepts, yet once again, I’ve learned priceless lessons from my baby sister, the superhero last week. I love you sis – you continue to motivate, impress and inspire me.

If you think you have too much sophistication, education, experience, age or wisdom to learn from the most humble person with a good heart, you may be missing out on the most valuable business lessons available; more importantly, you may be missing out on a richer, more fulfilling life.

Michael Kline is a local retailer, success coach and trainer. He may be reached through his website, www.klineseminars.com, or e-mail, mike@klineseminars.com.