“The more you lose yourself in something bigger than yourself, the more energy you will have.” ~Norman Vincent Peale
We all want to be more disciplined in life. We know that certain routine practices will help our businesses to grow and our personal empowerment to “appear”. What we may not understand though, is that some actions are simply things we do to get to a certain goal or benefit while other actions are actually a part of who we are at our core. In other words, some actions are driven only by the desire to reach a goal, while other actions focus on the process itself— which is seen as a valuable experience and benefit—as well as on the goal, which is also seen as a benefit. One is a DISCIPLINE and the other a PRACTICE.
• A DISCIPLINE is a willful chore (sometimes looked at as a rigid chore) that you dutifully do to get something done or because you know it will yield certain benefits.
• A PRACTICE is a transformative action done with awareness and with a purpose in mind that resonates with who you are. It is an extension of what you truly believe and it yields certain benefits. Here are some more ways of looking at the differences:
A discipline is extrinsic
A discipline is born of something that must be accomplished
A disciple is often rigid
We may have to remind ourselves to do a discipline
A discipline is something we do because we know it will bring desired results
We usually do a discipline in spite of what we “really” want to do
A disciple is seen as a task
We often “white knuckle” through the discipline, looking for the moment it ends
We often do a disciple robotically, almost unconsciously
During a discipline we often focus on the end result
A disciple is driven by a GOAL
A practice is intrinsic
A practice is born of a belief system that truly motivates us
A practice is fluid and dynamic
The process of a practice is seen as transformative
A practice is something we do because is in line with our core beliefs
A practice is something we do because it gives us satisfaction
A practice is a belief
We are driven to do a practice because it is what we really want or love to do
We often are very away during a practice
During a practice we often focus on the process (the experience itself)
A practice is driven by a SENSE OF PURPOSE
Examples of Disciplines vs. Practices
Discipline: Calling past customers to keep your name out there and to drum up sales.
Practice: Calling past customers because you appreciate that they have put their trust in you to do business with you, and because you really do care about them. You want to know how they are doing and you want to see what’s going on with them, and see if they have any thoughts or questions you can help them with.
Discipline: Eating a salad because you think it will help you maintain your weight
Practice: Eating a salad because it is rich and healthful. Enjoying the process of cutting the cherry tomatoes in half, and slicing the purple onions, and smelling the fresh herbs. Then enjoying tasting each and every different flavor and appreciating the freshness of each ingredient.
Discipline: Doing regular customer events because it is a good business practice for increasing leads, sales, and contacts.
Practice: Doing regular customer events because you are a leader and an innovator, and you can’t wait to share good news and interesting findings with your customers and prospects. You look forward to the wonderful connection and ongoing relationship that your customer events create.
If we want to see real changes in our lives and in our businesses, we certainly have to do some things differently. That means we must take on new behaviors. At some point along the way though, if these new behaviors are not seen as exciting tools for change, and if they do not become a part of new core beliefs, the behaviors will either be dropped, or they will be continued but with a reluctant and resistant energy source pushing them. That’s no way to live.
You may have to start out some new behaviors with a discipline, but a discipline can become more. During the activity or task, be in the moment and appreciate what you are doing—really appreciate it, whatever it is. If a discipline is looked at through the eyes of our core beliefs, enjoyed as a process, and embraced as a powerful act of transformation, it will become a welcome and enjoyable practice.
Attitude is everything.
I’m sure you get the picture. Much of the difference between a discipline and a practice is in our attitudes and our sense of purpose. Many of the disciplines in our lives can be changed to practices simply by changing our attitudes and examining why we do the discipline in the first place. We can decide to function out of a true sense of purpose, attaching meaning to everything that we do. This makes for a far better business and a more enriched life overall.
Think about the disciplines you now engage in that can easily become meaningful practices in your life. Decide to create the self-awareness and the self-dialog to put you in a totally different arena with the activities you do on a regular basis.
“I do not waste my time in answering abuse; I thrive under it like a field that benefits from manure.” ~Henry Labouchere
Call it customer care, customer service, customer connection, or customer love. We can’t approach this topic too often. Regardless of the name, it’s the heart and soul of your business. Without it there are only waning sales, reduced profits, angry vendors, and mortgages that don’t get paid. No one gets away with bad customer service for long.
Today, all before 1pm, I make a number of important calls to four different businesses that were well-known names and very “reputable” companies. In each instance (multiple calls to some of them), as I waited for a company representative to assist me, I heard a nice pie-in-the-sky phone-hold message with lovely music in the background, and a confident and friendly pre-recorded voice bragging about how much their customers mean to them. One went so far as to say “our customers are the lifeline of our business”.
It was all great until a representative from the company (take your pick) got on the phone. From their end, there was no service, no patience, no friendly demeanor, no customer care or support, no connection with me, and positively certainly not a lick of going the extra mile for the customer.
What I did get were uninspired, monotone, almost lifeless voices of people who must hate their jobs and who work for companies that must not love their customers very much (since they allow this). On my end, I didn’t get even the slightest feeling that I was a valued asset or an individual whose business was appreciated, even a little. I certainly was not treated as if I were the “lifeline” of the business. I got treated like goop, poo, crap, by all of them (oh, and I was nice). I was an inconvenience to them, it was clear. This kind of interaction is frustrating at best and maddening at worst. I am getting to where I cannot stand doing business with most companies anymore.
I was definitely not impressed with how long I had to wait on hold for anti-service, or with how many ridiculous “if you’d like to” options I had to wade through on their elaborate phone systems to get to the choice I actually needed (which was customer service and which should have been the first choice offered. I think they can just delete “If you are calling to do a fundraiser…”). By the way, these lengthy monologues are strategically implemented tactics to get people to hang up so they do not have to deal with them.
Experiences like this are not only common today, but they are the unfortunate norm. When a business becomes just systems, efficiency, convenience (for them), profit centers (or what companies THINK are profit centers), things have already gone horribly wrong.
Whether a service or product is sold online or off, each and every customer MUST not only be valued, but they must be SHOWN that they are valued. Appreciation HAS TO BE COMMUNICATED. It cannot be just an idealistic “line” in your mission statement. Fancy phone systems sporting lovely voices dripping with elegant verbiage and well-spoken syntax won’t cut it. In business, what you say MUST be congruent with what you do. You are never so big, so much a household (or local community) name, so unique, so craved, so much the cat’s meow, that you cannot hit rock bottom in sales and profits and suddenly become history. Pride (not the good kind) goes before a fall.
I’ve said it a million times. This is the day that it matters—LIKE NEVER BEFORE. You may not see it mattering right this second, but the landscape and infrastructure of how we do business with customers is TOTALLY changing, and WAY MORE than 98 out of 100 people realize, and companies both big and small that practice customer crap instead of customer care will be gone before you know it—no matter how clever, how innovative, or how popular they are today.
Do you think droves of us we will never get fed up with being taken for granted? Don’t you know that thousands of us are already deciding to purchase our $4 cups of coffee from a different place, and many of us are driving a brand of car we never would have driven because we want a better experience? Do you think we will not sound the alarm in any way we can through our elaborate networks if we are treated disrespectfully?
Businesses must ALWAYS earn your business. In the same way YOU must always earn your customers’ business, too. People work hard for their dough. More and more we are no longer in a forced position to do business with any particular entity (except MAYBE the U.S. Post Office and even that’s changing). Hey, I am not saying things won’t go wrong, or than in your own business you have no room for making mistakes. Of course you do, we are all human, and your customers understand this. What I am saying is that there must be enormous substance behind the RELATIONSHIPS you have with your customers. That way, even if something does go wrong with a customer’s experience, you and the customer have an opportunity to connect and make things right.
It’s time that we as customers AND business people become willing and diligent to STOP doing business with companies who don’t deliver respect and meaningful connection. Price should NOT be the issue. We cheapen our society when that is all we look for. There’s more than one type of currency or savings. We need to be willing to lose a little bit of cash in the short term to support companies that provide us with a value relationship. This will actually save us time, stress, and money in the long term (less stress alone is currency enough for me).There are places I simply do not shop at any more. It is an inconvenience not to, but I don’t care. I will not throw my hard earned money away and purchase stress. I will only support business people who show me that they really want my business.
That’s my roll going forward. I hope you will join me. I also hope you’ll take this to heart and apply it to your own business. Are you wiling to invite people to leave you if you’re not connecting and doing your very best for them, always? You ought to be.
I think I will also start doing something new when I have to call a company, giving borderline businesses one more chance to make it right with me before I hit the road. I think I will start recording the call from MY end. I will say, “This call may be recorded and then uploaded to my server and linked on social media networks for quality assurance”. At that point I will begin the dialog. That way no one can sue me for slander when I actually blog about my experience, call the company out by name, and post the link to the “Customer C-rap” call! Remember, I’m not seeking perfection or companies who never make mistakes, I just want my business to be valued and appreciated! What do you think?
Have a Wildly Appreciative Week,
Margo
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“Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” ~Abraham Lincoln
This week I want to share with you a powerful one hour audio session (or class) on Creative Life Mastery.
If you have been ready to look at your self, your life, where you are, and where you want to go, then this session will help you to do it.
You are only responsible for YOU. That is an incredibly liberating thing to know. You are responsible for your own self, your own thinking, and your own happiness.
Aside from the tweets, the posts, the tumbles, the blogs, the uploads, the pressures to be there for others, and the pull your business or community have on you, there is a YOU that needs cultivating. Take this time to begin, or to continue in, that amazing process.
Enjoy this session. Put on the headset, close your eyes and lean back in your chair (NOT in your car), and enjoy gaining an understanding that will propel your into a new way of thinking, one that will help you master self and create a great life, and PLEASE, let me know what this session meant to you.
“It’s a small world but still heavy. Stop trying to carry it all on your back.” ~Margo DeGange (Yes, me, that’s right. I can quote things too, ya know!)
Here is a life and business lesson that has nothing to do with products, little to do with numbers, and a lot to do with building real wealth and long-term security.
The word “simple” has been showing up in my life a lot lately. I want to share a few of those instances, so bear with me, because I have an important point in mind that may help you quite a lot.
A very long time ago, my sister had a dream that I often think about. In the dream, she was in a long hallway standing outside of a big courtroom. There were many people standing and sitting in the hall, waiting to go in to see the judge for the final judgment. One by one they would go in, and come out sobbing—both women AND men! After watching this scene play out over and over again, my sister finally asked one of the people who came out of the courtroom, “Why is everyone sobbing?” The answered surprised her as the person replied, “because it was so simple we almost missed it”!
I have recalled that dream many times over the last few days, and then this morning while in my car listening to a talk show, I heard the story of a mother who’s son was dying of cancer. He was at the end of his journey, when his mom got into the bed next to him. She was right beside him as he took his last breath. His final words were powerful, liberating, and sweetly authoritative. “Mom, it’s so simple”. His message changed her life forever.
Then, on that same ride in my car this morning, on another show, someone said, “Life is so short. Why should we live it in turmoil?” Together these words and stories provide a clear (and simple) message that I felt so compelled to share. Live simply!
In our businesses and in our lives, the joy is in the journey (just ask Steven King), and becoming simple-minded is part of a constructive and pleasant ride. Sometimes we get so focused on problems, on scenarios, on results, we miss the in-between, where life and business really happen. We can become too concerned and too intense wrestling with things that really don’t matter much in the long run. What will matter though, in terms of popularity, profits, and plain old peace of mind, is how you use your personal energy, and therefore, how you treat others and yourself.
Simplicity is NOT for wimps. Simplicity has enormous power built right into it. Keeping everything on an even keel, not thinking too hard, and offering a great attitude to everyone you see throughout the day takes unusual strength and deep character, and it is effortless if you let it become your new mindset.
The “thinking too hard” thing gets us in trouble many times, and it makes others uncomfortable, particularly when we expect our colleagues and coworkers, our family and friends, and even worse, our customers, to “get” what we are all freaked out about.
Keeping it simple also opens you up to the creative energy that is vibrating out in the universe (deep, I know). After exercising at boot camp and taking a long ride this morning, I went home for a few minutes and sat on the sofa, and closed my eyes. I wanted to just “be”, and I was keeping it simple (and not trying to). I drifted off into a cat-nap, and awoke a short time later with a brilliant business offering to provide to my Decorators Alliance members. I did not have to think hard, brainstorm till I was blue, get stressed out, or be in turmoil. The simple life just brought the idea directly to me, with no effort at all, and that idea will no doubt help many others.
Simplicity is actually something that elicits good business practices and the creation of incredible products and services that tend to be very profitable. Simplicity keeps us in a place of clarity, and allows us to move quickly at a moments notice, and change directions in an instant. It also helps keep our blood pressure down, and allows others to easily communicate with us, and willingly be around us.
A lot of stress is self-created and totally unnecessary (although sometimes no one could convince us of that). Simplicity is an attitude of choosing NOT to be in turmoil about anything. Things may not be ideal, but worrying, or worse, taking it out on customers, associates, and the people you love, cannot change anything in a positive way, yet your good attitude can change your world, and definitely your business, in ways you never even dreamed of. It’s that simple!
Our stress-free life of simplicity (and real power) proves itself in how we treat our co-workers, family and friends—how we honor our bosses and how bosses appreciate the people who work so diligently to build a company that is not even theirs.
Complaining, not seeing the bright side of things (no matter how dismal the circumstances), and being in turmoil make even great moments a drag, and challenging times pretty much unbearable, for everyone, including you.
Stop stressing. Be kind and laid back and SIMPLE, to others as well as to yourself, and watch your life and business burst into true wealth and profitability. People will want to be near you and work for you, and customers will knock themselves out to buy from you. They may even want to have you over for a simple drink!
“Time is our most precious asset, we should invest it wisely.
~Michael Levy
This week, I thought I’d tell you about two (of the many) fabulous benefits that are now included in your Decorators Alliance of North America (DANA) membership. One of them is already in place, and hopefully you have been using it: A FREE MONTHLY online class (12 free classes each year just for being a DANA member) to help you save time in your business by reducing the learning curve and by reducing your research time on topics that interest you. These classes will also equip you with the ideas and motivation to get your business to a place of surefire success.
The second DANA membership benefit that I want to talk to you about is an extremely valuable one in my opinion. This benefit is brand new (newer than the one I just mentioned), and it actually goes into play on August 1st, 2009. It is designed to save you time, hassle, and money. It is FREE pre-written content each month that you can use for your customer newsletters, on your website, in your blog, or for handouts for your customers or events!
Each month the Decorators Alliance will send you out a newsletter (Not the quarterly DANA NEWSLETTER geared for Design professionals) called HOME DECORATING NEWS. This newsletter is designed for and targeted to homeowners. Once you get it—as long as you are a current DANA member— your are free to copy and paste any and all of the text from this newsletter for use on your business website, in your blog, and preferably in your own newsletter that you send out to the people on your list (and one of our upcoming FREE DANA monthly classes is on building your email list to make bigger, better, and more sales).
There are a few simple guidelines regarding this FREE content (free license). You can read about them on the DANA website, but in a nutshell, you do not have to site DANA as the author when you use the content but you cannot claim authorship by putting your name explicitly as the “author”, and, the FREE content is only the text, not the photos (although we will have a way you can purchases those if you want them, and we will also have upgrades you can purchase if you want us to do ALL of the work for you by sending the newsletter out to YOUR list for you with all of YOUR business info and logo on it).
So basically, with this FREE customer-friendly content we will be sending you each month in a sample newsletter, you can copy and paste the text, and you can use it just as we wrote it. ALL of the thinking, writing, research, and work has been done for you, and it is TOTALLY FREE with your DANA membership. We think you will LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this new benefit. Please email us and let us know what you think, and if there is a particular topic like Green Design, or Area Rugs for example that you would like us to have content on, be sure and let us know right away. Expect to get your first HOME DECORATING NEWS on August 1st, 2009. If you have not yet started an email newsletter for your local community, why not start it August 15th, and use the FREE content we send you to get going with that important marketing strategy? Your clients will love it and you will be sure to increase sales because you have an e-newsletter each month.
Just think, with this newest DANA member benefit, you will not have to come up with content each month to stay in touch with your customers and inform them on decorating tips and industry news they can use. We will share tips on design, color, fabrics, and trends, plus lots of other info—all designed to make you the hero in your customers’ eyes. BEST OF ALL THIS CONTENT IS FREE EACH MONTH TO YOU WITH YOUR DANA MEMBERSHIP. This one benefit alone is worth far more than your membership dues. This is important to us, because we want your DANA membership to really help you in your business. Between this fabulous benefit and the FREE monthly classes, you will be well-equipped for increased sales and wild success (by the way, if your membership is up to date, the link for your next FREE DANA online class will be sent to you on June 15th—this is a 2-hour, 2-part class instead of a 1- hour class, and it covers both May and June. The topic is on increasing sales by giving decorating presentations to clients—hey, maybe you can use your FREE DANA monthly content to create your customer seminars!)
“Before everything else, getting ready is the secret to success.” ~Henry Ford
This week’s Monday Message is a simple one. I want to help all of the Decorators’ Alliance of North America (DANA) members who have not yet taken the DANA Certified Professional Decorator Exam to get ready to take it and pass it (www.DecoratorsAlliance.com ).
First, you must be signed up to take the exam. If you are not, you can do that through the direct links at the end of this email.
Second, you must have renewed your DANA membership (www.DecoratorsAlliance.com ). If you have not, you can also do that through the direct links at the end of this email.
Finally, I am planning a very special (because I love you all) DANA CPD EXAM REVIEW SESSION. This will be a teleclass where I actually review the main points on the exam and help you to REALLY focus on what to study. This session is a BIG PLUS because it will definitely help you to be very well-prepared for the exam. If you are planning on signing up for the exam, or if you are already signed up, you should DEFINITELY BE AT THIS STUDY SESSION.
There is no charge for this fantastic exam preparation. I think this will help you to not feel overwhelmed with the study guide. I will essentially go over what is on the exam so you can use your study time well.
I have been communicating with many of you who have asked to be put on the list for the free study session, and I have those names. If you want to be added, just email me. If I have already let you know that you are on the list, there is no need to email me—I have your name down.
I am really looking forward to the study session. It should be very fun and very informative, and I think you will be excited with what you learn on the call—It will be a great session.
I’ll email you a few days before the call with the number and access code to get on the call.
I am scheduling the call for Tuesday, March 24th at 2 pm Central (3 Eastern), so please mark that down in your calendar, and be sure to renew and/or sign up for the exam. I will record this call so that anyone who signs up for the exam in the future will get this powerful study session.
Have a wildly successful and creative week,
Margo
Margarett DeGange, M.Ed.
Executive Director, Decorators’ Alliance of North America
979-777-2229
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DANA is the only organization offering the CPD designation. When you choose to take your CPD exam, you are provided with a comprehensive 3-part manual covering in-depth details of all areas of interior decorating, including best business and marketing practices. Register at the time of renewal and get an additional discount.
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Monday Message from Margo 
practices will help our businesses to grow and our personal empowerment to “appear”. What we may not understand though, is that some actions are simply things we do to get to a certain goal or benefit while other actions are actually a part of who we are at our core. In other words, some actions are driven only by the desire to reach a goal, while other actions focus on the process itself— which is seen as a valuable experience and benefit—as well as on the goal, which is also seen as a benefit. One is a DISCIPLINE and the other a PRACTICE.
The second 
