A Business Fable About Shedding The Three Fears That Sabotage Client Loyalty

Author: Patrick Lencioni

Naked service providers achieve a completely different level of client loyalty and its primarily about the foundation of any relationship, trust.  That trust is developed by being vulnerable and getting outside your comfort zone, the areas I most admire and aspire to myself.  That is what this great book is all about.  Lencioni does this in his unique style by writing the book and teaching the content as a fable.  He is a fantastic story teller and I really connected with the humor that was added in this book.  The main characters is in charge of ‘integrating’ a new team from a company that was expected to be swallowed up in an acquisition and he quickly discovers that his integration is going to require integrating the smaller company’s more effective consulting methods are what truly need to be integrated.

Of course the main character and whom is telling the story is faced with many challenges of learning this new style of vulnerable consulting service.  The humorous aspect is that the main character constantly narrates his thoughts as if he is saying them and then explains which I found myself laughing out loud from many times and the shock of what is really said versus what is thought brings life to the characters and realism to the story.  In fact, the impact of this I believe actually helps to convince the reader of each of the unconventional service methods that are presented through the main character’s learning by practice approach throughout the story.  I feel the book provides so many great examples (and realistic ones) all while clearly explaining the reasoning and doubts from the dialogue and thoughts of the characters.  It’s a fun story to read and an even better one to learn from if you are at all interested or involved in any kind of service to others.

The following is an outline of the “Naked Service” that is demonstrated in the book and is tough to digest without the context of the story or more examples, but here it is anyway, which I hope will wet your appetite and entice you to read this book.  It’s well worth it!

Fear of Losing the Business

Put your self at stake even when there is a risk to lose that business or jeopardize the relationships.  Honest and self assured consulting is the best approach here.

Principles:

• Always consult instead of sell – demonstrate value by serving
• Give away the business – give away advice and be generous even before they are a client.
• Tell the kind truth – Protect the client needs by telling every truth. Its presented with kindness and respect but never sugar coated even if the service provider will be sacrificed as a result.
• Enter the Danger – Step right into the middle of any uncomfortable situation to fearlessly deal with an issue that others are afraid to address. This grows great loyalty and shows integrity with an opportunity.

Fear of Being Embarrassed

Making suggestions even if they might make them look foolish.  Clients learn that this is a way to trust the provider.

Principles:

• Ask dumb questions – Asking more questions and possibly obvious questions shows courage and results in uncovering
• Make dumb suggestions – Suggestions without confidence often turns into a great insightful suggestion and is what is remembered, not that some suggestions are ignored or denied.
• Celebrate your mistakes – Being wrong is an inevitability and perfection is never expected, so acknowledge mistakes

Fear of Feeling Inferior

About getting past trying to look superior with a high level of standing or expertise.  To get over this, the service provider must be willing to purposefully put themselves below the client and make the needs of others (no matter what it is) more important than their own.

Principles:

• Take a Bullet for the client – Finding moments when we can sacrificially relieve some burden from the client and then confront them with the kind truth
• Make everything about the client – A powerful tactic by focusing on helping, supporting and honoring the client
• Honor the client’s work – Take an active interest in the client’s business
• Do the dirty work – Be willing to take on needs of the client regardless of the level of the work and do it humbly to earn gratitude and loyalty
• Admit your weaknesses and limitations – General weaknesses should never be covered up since it prevents you from doing best in areas you can thrive

Posted by Mike King under Book Reviews | 7 Comments »

Isn’t it true that results we achieve that come about by surprise bring a greater sense of satisfaction than results that take huge effort to achieve?  It certainly is for me.  In contrast, the results I get that take weeks or months of effort always seem to be more of a relief than an achievement should feel.

Building Up to Success

Often I feel that personal development can be one of those areas where you have a long time building up to success.  Change takes effort and making changes often comes at a price of long term dedication to tirelessly keep working away to change habits and to bring about change.  Not only a single change at a time, but in fact, many many changes combined can have the same effect of adding up to be a long term effort. For me there is certainly a combination at work with this type of experience as on one hand, my persistence to change I know will overcome whatever obstacles I face and on the other it can be disappointing when it takes as long as it does.  This certainty in achievement is a great confidence to build up and helps you tackle all of those unknown situations and obstacles.  Building that kind of confidence only occurs through repeated successes over time and having the ability to recognize achievement and be grateful for it.  After all, if you don’t know what success looks like along the way, then you certainly can’t build those successes up into self confidence.  Success and confidence can become a repeating cycle and what I’ve found is that it can actually become an insignificant event when achieving that success becomes expected simply due to your persistence. This kind of drawn out achievement being expected by a person eventually seems quite meaningless and in fact, it becomes the normal way of building up to success.

Achieving It!

So with all this building up to success there comes the point where you actually achieve what you were after.  If it was a long drawn out process this point may feel more like a relief than anything.  The work associated with this achievement could be gone now and that might be similar to having a chore or some other painful tasks gone forever.  However, the achievements that seem to feel the best and give you the biggest ‘high’ are the ones that come suddenly or unexpectedly.  There is no time passed to destroy your pleasure with an associated heavy workload and so the gratification that exists can be so much higher!  I know that any achievements that come my way out of surprise are often an opportunity to discover something new about myself where I am shocked to learn of some new skill or impact I had to help me achieve it.  It’s a joy to learn of these things and exciting to know that sometimes there is a great achievement just around the corner we don’t expect!

Posted by Mike King under Success | 11 Comments »

I’m happy to announce today that I have opened up an affiliate program for my new eBook – Building Better Relationships

Affiliate Program – What is it?

This affiliate program is a way for you to share in the profits from a great eBook as well as a way for you to help me get the word out for this new book.  My affiliate program is managed by ClickBank and it literally only takes a few minutes to sign up and you could immediately be earning 50% of any sales just by having it linked from your website as an article, a review, or an advertisement on your site.

Recommended Affiliate Steps

Step 1: First of all, the best way to encourage your readers to purchase anything is to first purchase it yourself and then provide a review page where you outline that product and recommend it.  Obviously this will work for my eBook as well and I’ve you to start as an affiliate by purchasing it and reviewing it for your readers.  You don’t have to purchase it of course, but that is the most effective way for bloggers to promote another product.  I know you will get the value you expect out of the eBook at its low price and what is even better, is that you can make that back after just 2 affiliate sales.

Step 2: Sign up as an affiliate at Clickbank.  All my instructions for how to do this are in my new affiliate page for the ebook. Signing up literally only takes a few minutes!

Step 3: Create your hoplink that tracks your affiliate sales from your review page and you will earn money for each sale.

Step 4: You can use ads on your site to promote the eBook as well and earn even more by offering this book to all your site visitors.  You can choose what kind of ad to use, from large sidebar boxes to several sizes of banner ads.  They are simple to ad to your side on widgets, in specific posts or by adding them to your theme so they appear on every page.  Many plugins for wordpress also exist for managing in post ads if you prefer to do it that way.  Again, my affiliate page for the ebook has advertising images you cna link to and the code is there for you to easily copy and paste into your site.  You simply will set your username in place of the XXXX codes to properly allow Clickbank to track that the sales are from your account.

Additional ClickBank Benefits and FAQ

• ClickBank costs absolutely NOTHING as an affiliate and only takes minutes to sign-up
• They have a low payout option in paypal set at only $10, so you can cash out for EACH sale from this ebook since you will earn $11
• Additional HopAds can be added to show random (or keyword based products) on your side from a variety of vendors

Posted by Mike King under Relationships | 4 Comments »

I am pleased to introduce this guest article by a new friend John, the creator of HiLife2B, where he hopes to inspire people and to help them achieve their dreams. Follow him on Twitter: @janyasor

1. Believe that even the smallest compliment can save someone’s life

2. Remember that one person can change an entire nation

3. Understand that kids are smarter than we make them out to be

4. Just because old people are old, doesn’t mean they’ve lost their youth

5. Talent can be found under the dirtiest rock or in the most hopeless slum

6. Just because someone is poor in wealth doesn’t mean they are poor in spirit

7. Poverty is the greatest gift you can give a person. It is only then that they will have a choice to either become valuable or die as a quitter

8. Let the naysayers say nay and allow the criticizers to criticize: in the end you will have found greater happiness having pursued your dream

9. If a baby can smile living off of only breast milk and a mother’s love, you can smile too

10. The prettiest people can do the ugliest things

11. You are no different than the squirrel on that branch. You both eat a lot, hibernate for the winter, and have a tendency to be curious of humankind

12. From the CEO of a major corporation to the lowly janitor who sweeps where his boss stands; they are all insecure

13. To be creative is the most valuable thing in the world; don’t let anyone tell you otherwise

14. People conform because there is strength in numbers, but true strength comes from the person brave enough to stand alone

15. Unrealistic goals are hardly ever achieved not because they are impossible, but because everyone is too scared to make them real

16. Don’t be afraid to let those go who are hindrance to your high self-esteem, the life blood of your success

17. Embarrassment is a pointless emotion that only serves to confuse and over exaggerate reality

18. The only ways to stop negativity is to avoid it completely or face it head on

19. Irrational self confidence is worth more than rational defeatism

20. To live in no one’s reality but the one you’ve created for yourself is to achieve true happiness

21. Giving is one of the most underrated tactics to getting what you want

22. Fear the person who dreams unrealistically; one day he may acquire what he desireshel

23. Everyone has a weakness

24. Live and die as your passion; to be known as anything else is an insult to your existence

25. Do not deprive yourself or others of the gift of cartoons. Their creativity, hilarity, and curiosity have made me who I am today

26. Quiet patience and adaptive persistence are the two keys to perpetual happiness

27. Never feel ashamed of your natural instincts. They are there for a reason

28. Look at the people you are following in their footsteps. Is that the person you wish to be?

29. Don’t indulge in distractions that are short-lived and derail your long term efforts

30. To create a piece of art is to exist as a God within your mental domain

31. The movers in this world are the ones who create and consume only what coincides with their ultimate vision of themselves

32. Things are never as they seem. Always dig deeper to find the gold beneath the rock

33. Stereotypes don’t come out of thin air; all that is left for you now is to disprove them

34. Any crack in your resilience will be exploited if you don’t patch it up from time to time

35. Being assertive is a sign of a steadfast will

36. Negative people don’t deserve your time; positive people crave it

37. When your beliefs are tested, bring evidence to prove them wrong (granted you actually feel the need to)

38. When you have the strength to ask for more even after being knocked down countless times, there is nothing you can’t achieve

39. To look down to the ground is a sign of weakness. Look forward to showcase your unshakable confidence

40. Even one who is deaf can produce the most beautiful music

41. How much do you want success? How far are you willing to go?

42. A true genius is one who can sit for hours intensely focused on what he loves

43. Do not screw around with your time. It is the only thing within your absolute control

44. The only sense of entitlement you should feel is toward living your passion

45. The answers are always right in front of us. Just open your eyes

46. If you do not want to put in the work to make your dreams real then you do not deserve the right to put down anyone who fails in trying

47. The human brain contains 15-33 billion neurons; do not tell yourself that you are not creative

48. Do not let yourself fall into despair; it is a massive waste of time and emotion

49. People don’t tell you to try new things because it sounds “adventurous”. They say it because it actually works

50. If today was your last day, how many of these words would you actually follow?

51. To be an authority of any kind, you must earn and emanate respect

52. When in doubt, just laugh. Find amusement in how absurd your situation is then come out of the gate with full force

53. Don’t admire those who are simply hard workers with lots of awards under their belts. Idolize the people who are successful by working hard doing what they love

54.  Life won’t let you you get by with being stupid. You have to have knowledge of some kind to live in this world

55. Don’t confuse being stupid with being stubborn. Sometimes trying harder is all it takes

56. Do NOT allow anyone to disrespect you or make you feel less than you know you are

57. Don’t blame someone else for being better than you. Blame yourself for not working harder

58. Hard work is not something we should run away from. It’s pointless work we should fear

59. Don’t carry everything on your shoulders; that’s what friends are for

60. When you’ve lost your spirit, spend some time with youth. Their thirst for life and exploration will no doubt re-invigorate you

61. The fact that nothing in life is guaranteed is both a blessing and a curse

62. There is never only one choice: you don’t have to go up after you hit rock bottom. You can also choose to stay there

63. Sometimes you have to realize when you just aren’t good at something; this is the best time to regroup

64. Using old-age methods to solve new-age problems is setting yourself up for failure

65. When you’ve been sitting in the same spot for hours, trying to get something absolutely perfect, give yourself more than just a pat on the back

66. Not many people will risk everything in order to achieve what they want; in other words, be a risk taker and you will reap the rewards

67. Even when you know you’re close to the finish line, never let up

68. The only thing you can change about people are your relationships with them

69. What’s happened in the past is done. The future does not exist yet. The only thing in your mind should be what you’re doing now

70. You may be a great writer, a doctor, a lawyer, or a banker, but at your very core, the only thing we are best at is being ourselves

John is the creator of HiLife2B, where he hopes to inspire people and to help them achieve their dreams. Follow him on Twitter:  @janyasor

Posted by Mike King under Life | 42 Comments »

This article is a short story of the struggle that life can present and how it aligns with personal development.

A young man that had grown up with taking on new things developed a real love for adventure and uniqueness.  He was always comfortable doing things that others dare not do.  Some of these things were in regular activities like hobbies, sports and school.  School was easy since the teachers told him everything he needed and quickly realized that if he actually paid attention the content was easy to digest and understand.  This was especially true, as he was a audible learner so quickly picked up on the classroom teachings.  Sure, he had some learning talent and inspiration to start well in school but this become a much larger cascade effect.  In his case, school became easier and easier and it only continued to build his confidence and learning skills.  Doing well in school and learning quickly was his first obvious experience with going against the grain.  Others struggled to learn and had a hard time in school and that seemed to be the general theme for the masses.  This independent style he had in learning added more to his confidence and he continued to develop a sense of self that didn’t fit into the mass mentality.

In going against the grain and knowing he could learn quickly, he also challenged himself to develop that skill in new uncommon sports, hobbies and skills.  Each of these presented a challenge to overcome and he developed an internal motivation to tackle any challenge head on and with full force to quickly overcome it and move past it.  Years went by mastering this skill and going against the grain of society’s seemingly normal outlook that life is bleak and tough.  He would have no part of that however, every challenge was welcomed and he continually overcame adversity with hard work, dedication and that massive motivation that was built up inside him to grow and conquer whatever he faced.  All this made him feel even more confident and satisfied by experiencing many successes in life through achievement.  He chased more and more achievements and as years started to pass, realized that the achievements were leaving him less and less content and that success had to be more than this.  He started to know that success was more than this but never realized what he was missing or what he was needing in order to have that.  For a some time, the confidence he had built up inside surfaced as arrogance and egotism which quickly impacted his influence on others and success was not something he could grasp when it came to his influence with others or even with himself.  Influence with himself is really one’s ability to change them self and grow.

Finally with the support of close friends, a deep spiritual journey and a number of significant events and training courses, he was fortunately enough to face the bitter truth which would reveal to him that his confidence had been shielding him from seeing what was really important in his life.  In fact, he had so much to discover about himself that he literally felt like a different person.  He changed drastically and stepped away from directly chasing success and started applying his learning skills to learning more about his influence on others and how to interact, work with and to connect with others at a deeper level.  It wasn’t until he was able to get past the confidence shield that self-discovery was even available to him.

So, with having a new appreciation for no limits learning, it became a much more valuable area in life and the realization that the best things to learn and experience are only available when he gets past his own limits, whether they are known or not.  Often the limiting beliefs are unknown without stepping out of the common safety box we live in and seek out adversity, challenges and all the other skinny branches of life.  He put this into action and started taking on new things not previously explored and putting his opinions on the back burner in order to have a more open mind for new activities and connections with people.  It was in these new adventures, new challenges and areas previously unexplored in life that really helped him to enjoy more, learn more and experience the best things in life.

With all these changes, the change itself actually becomes the journey of his life, since the value of change becomes more and more apparent he’s realized that it is the one factor that limits people more than anything else.  His own shift has changed him, created new beliefs around the fact that change is required to create opportunities, experiences and improvements in life and should not be avoided.  If improvements come about from change, then to improve is to change.  Both for himself as a person and in how he can impact the world, these beliefs have changed and the fear and limiting beliefs around it have faded away and completely out of mind and consideration.  His now strong beliefs in the ability to change is what makes improvement and personal development easier for him.  And he knows this is necessary to impact the world.  It’s this ability to go against the grain, learn from it and eliminate the fears of facing new challenges and instead learning from them.  This same belief bleeds out to the process of changing the world and improving it as well.

Morals of the story:

1. Success should never be measured by self achievement or at a single point in time
2. Confidence is the biggest shield against self discovery
3. The “skinny branches” in life are where the fruit is
4. The belief of change enables changing the world

Posted by Mike King under Success | 20 Comments »

Do you have relationships you want to strengthen?

We all strive for relationships to be improved somewhere in our lives and that is what this eBook is for.  It’s a guide to explore how you can begin to build better relationships today and get much more out of them in your life.  Relationships are the single most important things that impact our lives and affect our health, mindset and happiness.  This book explores the different aspects of relationships and how you can quickly and easily put specific actions and behaviors into place to break old negative relationship habits, and to form new healthier, stronger, more meaningful relationships.

View the eBooks page for more info on Building Better Relationships and hopefully, future eBooks as well.

Three Methods to Learn

Learning is obviously the main topic here at learnthis.ca and there are many ways to go about it and each person has their own learning styles.  There are three main styles of learning:

• Auditory (learn best by listening and hearing)
• Visually (learn best by seeing and observing visually)
• Kinesthetic (learn best by feelings, hands on and direct involvement)

Because of these styles, I wanted to make sure they all exist in this eBook as well to ensure it is useful to ANYONE.  And that is why this is so much MORE than an eBook.  It includes:

1. The eBook itself to read ( it is 38 pages with over 13000 words)
2. Not everyone learns or enjoys reading.  Some of us are audible learners or have more time available to listen than to read.  That is why there is also a full MP3 audio recording of the audio book read by the author, Mike King!  You will gain access to download the mp3 audio with the PDF upon purchase.
3. The best way to change habits and to make improvements is to actually take action!  That is why this book includes a 3 page workbook to help you assess your relationships and ensure that you reflect and plan specific actions to make the most of your relationships.

I’ll be updating my eBooks page on the LearnThis.ca site here with reader’s quotes and referrals for the book so I’d be happy to include any links or references from readers if you purchase it.  I’d love to hear your thoughts, would great appreciate any promotion you can help me with and I look forward to the reactions from this Book.  It was a joy to write and even more to learn from and put it into action.  I have a lot of work to do as well, as relationships are certainly not easy, but absolutely worth every second of investment.

Get The eBook, the Workbook AND the MP3 audio version all for one low price! View my eBook page here for ordering Building Better Relationships and future eBooks.
Twitter account (optional) Website (optional)	Only $22 US PDF, Workbook and MP3 Audio

Posted by Mike King under Relationships | 13 Comments »