Buy Right From The Start

This was a funny sign in an eatery:

Our tasting panel samples each item before we buy it.

And the picture is of the guy  ready to dig into the food. 

There was another saying that I heard that I liked:

If you buy on price, you buy twice. 

In other words, never just buy the lowest price item if you don’t really like it, because in the end, you’ll end up having to buy a replacement for the cheapo, crappo thing you really didn’t like to begin with. 

Better to save up and get what you really want to begin with. 

A savvy shopper, indeed. 😉

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Gucci Bee Bag

Thought this was a pretty nice Gucci bag. 

Large decorated bee with expansive wings on the flap. 

Beautiful pink with white pearl studs. 

Brass chain and red, white, and blue shoulder strap. 

Priced around $1500! 

Small shoulder bag yet plush oversized and ornate make a big statement. 

Nice gift for that special someone or to treat yourself to Gucci! 😉

(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Getting The Biggest Bang For The Buck

So I had the opportunity to sit in on a colleague teaching a class in Performance Improvement. 

One tool that I really liked from the class was the Impact-Effort Matrix. 

To determine project worth doing, the matrix has the:

Impacts (Vertical) – Improved customer satisfaction, quality, delivery time, etc.

Effort (Horizontal) – Money, Time, etc. 

The best bang for the buck are the projects in upper left (“Quick Wins”) that have a high impact or return for not a lot of effort. 

In contract, the projects that are the least desirable are in the lower right (“Thankless Tasks”) that have a low impact or return but come at a high cost or lot of effort. 

This is simple to do and understand and yet really helps to prioritize projects and find the best choices among them. 😉

(Source Graphic: Andy Blumenthal)

Indian Wedding Rocks

Loved seeing this amazing Indian wedding.

The rocking music, the beautiful colorful outfits, the pageantry, and the adorned white horse.

While this looked like a relatively small and intimate wedding–perhaps quality balances out quantity. 

Although one of my good friends from India told me that he had 4,000!!! people at his wedding that was held in a stadium–I can barely even imagine how awesome that was. 

So happy…all life should be great times like this. 😉

(Source Video: Andy Blumenthal)

2017 Year Of The Customer

So here’s a resolution for all of us for 2017…

How about this year be the year of the customer!

– Where we care more about doing a good job for someone than we do about what time we get off from work.

– Where we talk to and treat customers with respect, dignity, and ultimately to solve their needs, rather than it escalating to a yelling match and oh, did I accidentally hang up the phone on you?

– Where we make the customer feel good about dealing with us and our organization, rather than wanting to beg for a supervisor or cyanide please!

– Where the customer isn’t lied to, manipulated, and taken advantage of just so someone can make another quick buck!

– Where the quality and value is #1 and it’s not just a shinny veneer on a car that accelerates on it’s own and with fake emissions test results or smartphone batteries that light up on fire and explode. 

– Where we don’t cross-sell and up-sell customers, like phony bank accounts or other things they don’t want, need, and never asked for just to make our sales quotas, and accrue the fine bonuses and stock options that go with them. 

– Where we don’t oversell the capability of a product, like fraudulent blood testing devices and medical results, and instead deliver what’s really doable and as promised. 

– Where there’s no error in the charge to the customer or it’s in the customer’s favor, rather than always an overcharge in the seller’s favor, and the price from the beginning is fair and reasonable and not hiked up 400% like on critical medicine that people’s lives depend on. 

– Where items arrive on time and work the first time, rather than having delays, making excuses, and causing endless customer returns of defective items or those that didn’t fit, look, or work as advertised. 

– Where the customer is happy to come back to and where they feel trust in the people, products, and services offered–not another Home Shopping Network or QVC shoddy experience of “It slices, it dices…the only tears you’ll shed are tears of joy!”

– Where we solve genuine customer needs or problems and not just “build it and they will come.”

– Where rather than a pure what’s in it for me (WIIFM) mentality, we suspend our self-interest and greed for the moment and we do for others, because it’s not just a job and we actually have a work ethic and care about what we do. 

 

– Where we delight! and wow!, rather than disengage and disappoint, and we put the customer first, and like first responders, we run to help and not run away. 

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Making The Deadline

It was funny at work recently.

The team was having some “technical difficulties” getting something done. 

It wasn’t like it wasn’t going to happen, it was just taking a little longer than expected. 

I was riding herd on this, since we had made a commitment to get it done by a certain date and time and it was important to get it right. 

After a number of delays, I started to question whether we were really going to be able to meet the deadline, and one of my colleagues asks about how the boss will react if we don’t make it. 

Then all of a sudden, they blurt out, “Is he going to sh*t a brick if we don’t make it?”

I was a little taken aback at the saying, but then it was sort of a funny image of the extreme kvetchy face a person would be making in such a situation–trying to pass not a (little) stone, but literally a big brick. 

As it turns out, we made the deadline–although we had to use the buffer time we had carefully built in–and the team did a great job, so no bricks, no stones, and just kudos all around. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Spending It All Down

So Parkinson’s Law states that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.“

The more time you have on your hands, the longer it takes you to do something. 

I find this to be so true…like on a day off, I don’t find myself typically getting any more done than on a regular work day. 

But what is true for time, also seems to apply to money. 

The more money you make, the more you need. 

And while you may get more or better quality for your extra bucks, you still don’t have a lot in net savings. 

Thus in line with Conspicuous Consumption, we spend more on luxury goods when we have more money and we spend more of our leisure time on doing the same basic set of activities when we have more time to spend.

Either way, more time and money often means more wasting of each, with people finding it extraordinarily difficult to save when they have (too) much of either. 

Perhaps, that why the big time hip hop artist, Kanye West recently tweeted about being $53 million in debt.

Or why Benjamin Franklin said, “If you want something done, ask a busy person.”

Your personal decision is what you end up spending your extra time and money on. 

The only real difference with time and money is that money you can put in the bank, but time passes whether you are busy or not.

Perhaps the best investment for both is to spend on education, experiences, on loved ones, and on helping others. 

(Source Photo: here with attribution to Parg)

That’s Getting A Little Personal

This was a funny advertisement hanging in Hot Topic in the mall. 

It says: “Get in our pants”–well, excuse you!

Using sexual come-ons to sell, sell, sell…is not a new marketing strategy. 

As they say in the biz world, “Sex sells!”

Perhaps a more targeted ad about quality, fit, and pricing would be more to the product point.

But why sell with facts, when you can sell with fantasy. 😉

(Source Photo: Dannielle Blumenthal)

Buyer Beware, Else Buyer Remorse

Just a quick lesson I wanted to share from my grandfather.

He used to say (or so my dad used to tell me), “You open your eyes or you open your wallet!“

Put another way is that “A fool and his money are soon parted.”

But I like the way my grandfather put it even better–easier to remember and no name calling involved! 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)

Not Exactly A Genie

Okay, we all like a genie in a bottle (with G-d’s help) to grant us our wishes for the good. 

A colleague told me that if he had a genie in a bottle, his first wish would be to have infinite wishes; his second wish would be for all his wishes to come true; and his third wish would be that all the wishes would be free of ambiguity such that the intent would be fully clear–nice!

But this is no genie…this is an umbrella in a bottle. 

Twist the top (handle) and pull it from the bottle (case) and whoola, an umbrella. 

Cute design, but when I tried to open the umbrella, it felt functionally, like a piece of garbage (IMHO). 

Oh genie, how about an umbrella that actually works and who cares if it’s in a bottle or not. 😉

(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)