No News Is Good News

We all know that “the news” has an overwhelmingly negative slant: plane crashes, murder trials, political scandals, natural disasters and the like get all the attention, and news outlets rarely focus on positive stories.

For example, where’s the positive side of the story about the recent Asiana Airlines crash? Yes, two people tragically lost their lives, but am I the only one who is amazed and interested to hear the details about how over 99% of the people on the plane managed to survive?

You can find such positive-based stories if you search for them hard enough – but it’s easy to be overwhelmed with sensational accounts dwelling on the negative.

For the same reason, “bad reviews” of your business will spread faster and wider than anything positive ever will. It’s a fact that people just love to spread “negative” news.

Here’s a recent “close to home” example…

My beautiful wife Michele and I went out to eat last Friday night at our favorite local restaurant.

We almost never tell anyone about our meals there (or anywhere else, for that matter), but in the past few days I’ve told a number of people about this particular experience.

Why? Because it was (uncharacteristically) negative, that’s why.

Here are some of the things we were disappointed with…

1. As soon as we entered the restaurant, we noticed that the stylish, modern fireplace in the lobby was not working (our waiter later explained, “Yeah, I think it’s just broken”) – certainly not a major point, if that had been the only issue that night.
2. The restaurant itself was strangely near-empty, causing us to wonder if something was wrong (but we chalked it up to it being the day after a holiday, on a hot summer evening).
3. Our main courses took an unusually and inexplicably long time to arrive at our table (and we both ordered salads!), long after we had finished our appetizers.
4. Our waiter gave a half-hearted, weak “pitch” for dessert, instead of the usual carefully-choreographed show this restaurant is known for (Michele remarked that this was probably his first day on the job).
5. Then, worst of all, after all of this disappointment, our waiter took FOREVER to bring us the bill – so painfully long a period that for the first time in my life, I actually stood up at our table in the middle of the restaurant, credit card in hand, in an attempt to get someone’s attention. When our waiter finally arrived with our bill, his excuse was that he got held up at another table (only one other table in his area was occupied!).

Michele and I left, unsatisfied, and have since shared these disappointing details of our dining experience with several friends, neighbors and clients.

As regular customers, we see this as a strange exception (after all, the food was excellent, as usual, and the manager did apologize to us and remove the charges for our appetizers from our bill). We will certainly return to this restaurant again and give them another chance. But we’ll be skeptical, knowing that there are about a half-dozen similar high-end restaurants within just a couple of miles that should be happy to have our regular business.

On a similar note…

Last week I posted about ending my five-year relationship promoting a once-great company. Before its co-founder sold it to the current ownership, the company helped improve the lives of many business owners, including mine.

Therefore, you would think that among the dozens of comments from business owners on that post, at least some of them would have been positive.

Nope. Not a single one. Zip, zilch, nada.

Moral of the story: Especially in today’s social-media-crazy, ultra-connected world, how important do you think it is for you to be especially on your toes to provide excellent experiences for your customers, clients or patients?

Today more than ever, you can’t count on people to spread positive news nearly as much as they’ll spread the negative.

And now I’ll finish up our current series by sharing my final three ways you can multiply your maximized resources. These areas are all critical for you to keep up the momentum you’ve found over the past few weeks of taking action on what I’ve taught to make the assets you have work harder for you.

X. Find Your Pot Of Gold

You must always have a goal you’re working toward in order to stay on course. Don’t be afraid to aim high – just make sure you stay clear on what your goal is and exactly what you need to do to get there.

You’ll need to continue to hold yourself accountable to your goal, and raise the bar as you accomplish milestones along the way.

XI. Stay At The Top Of Your Game

Once you’ve mastered these resource-maximizing strategies, you’ll need to make sure you’re staying competitive and constantly coming up with new ways to use your new tools.

Be sure to celebrate your successes – but don’t rest on one level when you have more achievements ahead of you. If you want your business to continue to succeed and prosper, you must continue to learn, innovate and grow in your knowledge and skills.

Remember two powerful sayings I prominently display on signs at all of my live events:

“Lifetime Learners Are Lifetime Earners”

and

“All Top Performers Have Coaches”

I attribute my own continued success to my dedication to constant learning and to making sure to pay for the very best one-on-one and group coaching I can find.

XII. Wealth From The Inside Out

Wealth and riches are defined within yourself – not by your sales or profits, or what others think of you, or the world around you.

You can use all the strategies I teach in both your business and personal life to reach a greater level of success. When you consistently make it clear exactly who you are and what you stand for, you will automatically attract the right people to you, in your personal life as well as in business.

You’ll continue to reach your goals as long as you define them well, build a solid road to reach them and take consistent action to make them a reality.

Throughout these last seven lessons I’ve shared how you can take a hard look at the resources you currently have right in front of you and maximize them to build the business and lifestyle of your dreams. Next week, I’ll start a three-part series on the most powerful form of marketing ever created: word-of-mouth.

Until then, make sure to focus on delivering positive experiences to your customers, clients or patients – because they’re all prone to accentuate the negative.

If you need help with any of these areas, steps or processes, try my FREE test drive of SSSMarketingUniversity.com to gain access to my collection of resources, tools and expert business coaches – all there to help you succeed more than you ever have before.