Andrea Wilson has written a terrific guide to providing great online customer service when a customer complains. She works through ten effective tips, including: In emails, use “exaggerated courtesy.” Since the person can’t see your expression or hear your tone of voice, your words must do everything for you. Read emails at least three times…
Zane Safrit is thinking about the role of failure, posted at the Duct Tape Marketing blog complex. I’m a fan of failure. Maybe it’s because I’m so familiar with it. That familliarity has taught me great lessons like humility, compassion, patience, perseverance, planning, flexibilty. And it’s taught me that no success comes without failure. In…
Want to build a billion dollar company from your small town? David Thomson wrote the book on it, Blueprint to a Billion, profiled on Fortune Small Business. (Brought to our attention by Be Excellent.) Here are the seven principles Thompson postulates: 1. Create and sustain a breakthrough value proposition. Create an entirely new market for…
“Good people are good because they’ve come to wisdom through failure. We get very little wisdom from success, you know.”–William Saroyan Your business will go through cycles of success and failure. Some days you will be toiling away in the valley of hard work, with little reward in sight. Later, you will find yourself on…
Naming your business is important. Sometimes, businesses end up with names that can project a bad image. Examples: George E. Failing Company. Despite the Failing name, they are celebrating 75 years, after having changed to the initials GEFCO. Glitsch Construction. Greif Brothers Trucking. Quality Prevention Company. I used a couple of these examples before, and…
Is wildlife tourism viable economic development for rural areas? My instinct tells me yes, but I keep craving some real data to work with. My little area of Oklahoma has just opened a huge project after five years of serious preparatory work (read the Enid News and Eagle story or visit the Great Plains Trail…
“Only those who dare to fail greatly achieve greatly.”– Robert Kennedy small biz rural entrepreneurship success failure
Contribute your stories, images to book showcasing role of young people in rural revitalization We read about “Youth Renewing the Countryside” at two influential rural blogs, The Rural Populist and Center for Rural Affairs. Consider contributing your story or photo to Youth Renewing the Countryside, a book in progress that will capture the best stories…
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