Perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business, is only to be sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.

- Robert Louis Stevenson

“You have to like helping people.”

Today I heard that twice in the span of two hours: the first time from a bridal consultant, and the second time from a hotel concierge.  They both love their jobs.  They can’t imagine being successful or happy in any service job without having that attitude.

“Welcome to Great Harvest Bread Company! Would you like to try a free sample?”

If you’ve been to one of their franchises, you’ve heard the welcome. When my cousin Rich was younger, he’d go into the Chapel Hill NC store and ask for a big slice of bread, which he’d top with about two tablespoons worth of butter and maybe some honey. He never bought anything. They never glared. And they’re still happy to give away free loaves (however many you need) for any charitable event you need them for.

Many franchises display a placard with their operating philosophy, which goes like this:

What’s the gimmick?
Why the big free slices?

If this is the first time in our bakery, you may wonder why everybody gets a slice of bread for free. Most people assume these are “samples” so they can “try before they buy”… except they’ve never seen samples this big.

Our breadboard is not a “sample” board. It’s a place where anybody can get a hunk of fresh bread whenever they want, even if they never buy a thing.

Some people think a business is just to make money, so naturally our breadboard is confusing. But we are a business for two reasons: to make money and to have fun. Either one alone wouldn’t be enough. The day it stops making money, or it stops being fun, we quit.

The breadboard is our fun. The cash register is our money. So you see, when you’re at our breadboard, you’re keeping this whole thing going, just as much as the people at the cash register. People are happiest when they make other people happy. As bakers, we’re happiest when we see people eating our bread, right when it comes out of the oven.

Some people worry that we don’t know what we’re doing. Trust us–we won’t go broke. In fact, every time some guy runs in, grabs a big slice, and runs out smacking his lips, we seem to get more customers. The cash register takes care of the breadboard–but the breadboard also takes care of the cash register, and everything is going great for us, all around.

We do ask one little favor. Please take a slice even if you’re not hungry. Save it for later, or feed it to a hungry seagull–you won’t hurt our feelings a bit (actually some of our biggest fans are gulls!)

So just relax about the free bread. We’re relaxed. Waltz right up to the breadboard, tell us what you want, and help yourself to the butter!

—

Thank you to Brian at Katzung.net for posting the full text.

For some reason, I dip into this book again and again. Lewis writes about his time at Salomon Brothers in the early 1980s, but the stories still seem painfully relevant, 25 years later. I’m glad I don’t work on Wall Street.  How about you?

When it came to speculation, European investors didn’t require a great deal of encouragement or instruction. They’d been doing crazy things with money for centuries. The French and the English, in particular, shared a weakness for get-rich-quick schemes.

…In need of a euphemism for what we did with other people’s money, we called it arbitrage, which was just plain obfuscation. Arbitrage means “trading risklessly for profit.” Our investors always took risk; high-wire act would have been more accurate than arbitrage. In spite of the responsibility implied by my job, I was ignorant and malleable when I advised my first customers. I was an amateur pharmacologist, prescribing drugs without a license. The people who suffered as a result were, of course, my customers.

– Chapter Eight, “From Geek to Man”, Liar’s Poker by Michael Lewis (1989).

Read more excerpts at Google Book Search, Liar’s Poker.

Here’s what the folks at Red Kite Creative report:

In the past few weeks, I’ve had two clients (one current and one potential) tell me that the main reason they contacted me for their project work was the large quantity of well-written, very positive testimonials I have on my website.

You can tell customers how wonderful your business is until the cows come home, but a great recommendation from a past client goes much, much further to establish your credibility and the value of doing business with you rather than Competitor A, B or C.

To want to own a restaurant can be a strange and terrible affliction.  What causes such a destructive urge in so many otherwise sensible people?  Why would anyone who has worked hard, saved money and often been successful in other fields want to pump his hard-earned cash down a hole that statistically, at least, will almost surely prove dry?  Why venture into an industry with enormous fixed expenses (Rent, electricity, gas, water, linen, maintenance, insurance, license fees, trash removal, etc.) with a notoriously transient and unstable workforce and highly perishable inventory of assets?  The chances of ever seeing a return on your investment are about one in five.  What insidious spongiform bacterium so riddles the brains of men and women that they stand there on the tracks, watching the lights of the oncoming locomotive, knowing full well it will eventually run them over?  After all these years in the business, I still don’t know.

– Anthony Bourdain, “Owner’s Syndrome and Other Maladies”, in Kitchen Confidential — Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly (2007)

I just read an great article by online marketing consultant Donna Gunter: 10 Secrets to Asking for Effective Client Testimonials for Your Website. Her tips are more sophisticated than most free web advice on writing testimonials, and I think she’s generally spot on.* I especially like her Secret No. 9:

9. Create a system for requesting testimonials. If you’re selling information products online, incorporate a testimonial request and testimonial writing guideline into your follow up autoresponder system. If you work with clients on an ongoing basis, incorporate your testimonial request into the sequence of your regular correspondence and follow up with your clients. If you work with clients only on a short-term basis, incorporate your request into your invoicing process and provide either an email address or online form to make the process as easy and automated as possible for them.

Implicit in this system is the idea that you’re doing “regular correspondence and follow up”. And if you are doing those things right, not only will you get great testimonials, but you’ll also have a much better chance of keeping your client constantly happy — or at least knowing sooner rather than later when you need to change course.

——

*I’d argue with a couple of her points — particularly her advice about short testimonials — but do read her article. You’ll be the smarter for it!

Alien Skin Software is not a normal company. Sure, we like money. Send us as much as you want. But our most important goal is to enjoy our lives. Since we spend way the hell too much time working, we try to find ways to make work fun.– Alien Skin Software, Corporate Philosophy

Man, I hope these folks keep winning.

Hired to replace Robert Dynes in the aftermath of a management meltdown in which UC administrators flouted, circumvented and violated university policies governing pay and perks, the 63-year-old [Mark] Yudof knows his mission when he officially takes over next month.”I’ve really got to get the trains running on time (at UC). There are a lot of things I believe in, like global initiatives and dealing with the deferred maintenance on campus and being absolutely competitive for faculty,” he said in a recent interview in the East Bay. “But I’ve got to get the platform right. I’ve got to regain the trust of Californians and the Board of Regents. I’ve got to get our (number of employees) down and our budgets down. Then we can start talking about what else we want to do.”…

He recognizes that many problems are entrenched at UC. But that won’t deter him.

“There is a saying, ‘A crisis is a terrible thing to waste,’ and that is my view,” he said. “And my view is that some things we probably should have done 10 years, five years, 20 years ago may get done when you have a crisis.”

– Tanya Schevitz, San Francisco Chronicle in Next UC president - homey image, hefty mission, Thursday, May 8, 2008

Demarketing requires discipline: the discipline to decide what you’re not going to do, and then the discipline to stick with the decision.  Some people have this kind of discipline in spades:

Xiang Yu was a Chinese general in the third century B.C. who took his troops across the Yangtze River into enemy territory and performed an experiment in decision making. He crushed his troops’ cooking pots and burned their ships.
He explained this was to focus them on moving forward — a motivational speech that was not appreciated by many of the soldiers watching their retreat option go up in flames. But General Xiang Yu would be vindicated, both on the battlefield and in the annals of social science research.

In The Advantages of Closing a Few Doors (New York Times February 26, 2008), John Tierney discusses the work of MIT behavioral economist Dan Ariely.  As Tierney describes, Ariely proves scientifically that brainpower is not a sufficient driver for discipline:

Most people can’t make such a painful choice, not even the students at a bastion of rationality like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where Dr. Ariely is a professor of behavioral economics. In a series of experiments, hundreds of students could not bear to let their options vanish, even though it was obviously a dumb strategy (and they weren’t even asked to burn anything).

The experiments involved a game that eliminated the excuses we usually have for refusing to let go. In the real world, we can always tell ourselves that it’s good to keep options open.

…Your child is exhausted from after-school soccer, ballet and Chinese lessons, but you won’t let her drop the piano lessons. They could come in handy! And who knows? Maybe they will.

In the M.I.T. experiments, the students should have known better…

But they didn’t act like they did.  Read the article and learn about the psychology.  Then remind yourself that discipline is hard, and prepare yourself for the effort.