It is always a crapshoot answering your mobile phone from a number that you don’t recognize. In one particular instance, what I thought was a phone call from a recently signed client, turned out to be a cold call from an organization that had reached out to me via LinkedIn previously. Their LinkedIn message had […]
Category Archives: Grounded
I Got Caught with a Coke
I was on my way out of the store with a 16-oz Coca-Cola in my hand on a Saturday morning when I spotted my cardiologist walking into the store. We made eye contact, and both exchanged a brief greeting, the nondescript kind that involves no personal information when two people know they know each other, […]
Grounded Again … But Delta Comes Through In the End
On Wednesday April 5th, I delivered a presentation on Retail Branch Transformation at a New York Bankers conference in Syracuse, NY. Everything went great, there was a big crowd and the presentation was well received. Then it’s back to the airport to fly back to Tallahassee and a drive back to Valdosta, where I was […]
The Best $250 I Ever Spent – On Creating a Memorable Experience
I recently attended the 2017 Payments Conference put on by the National Automated Clearing House Association (NACHA). This is a gathering of all of the stakeholders in the payments biz and generally is a great big meet and greet for those of us who have spent decades in payments. One of the highlights of this […]
Paying it Backward
I was chatting with a good friend and pro speaker, Chris Petersen, and she shared a cool story. Seems she was in line at a Chic-fil-A to grab a quick bite on the road, and once she got up to the window, the server told her that her meal had been paid for by the […]
Cocky Goliaths Can Fall Hard
The year was 2004. Two software giants were duking it out for supremacy in the microcomputer market. Well, that’s not really true. They were not equally gigantic, at least in relative terms. The giant was Microsoft and in 2004, it had a revenue of $36 billion. Its “competitor” was Apple and in 2004, it had […]
Be The Best You Can Be #throwbackthursday
I was recently Master of Ceremonies at the CBA of Georgia Leadership Division conference at the Contemporary Resort in Orlando. The final keynote speaker was legendary coach Bill Curry. He is best known as coach of Georgia Tech, but he also coached at Alabama, Kentucky and, most recently, became the first coach for the fledgling […]
I Don’t Have Time to NOT Be an Asshole
My wife Samantha and I were traveling out to Cody, Wyoming to visit with our daughter and her husband. This involved three flights; from Valdosta to Atlanta, then to Salt Lake City, to Cody. The flight from Salt Lake City to Cody is a small commuter type jet, maybe 70 passengers. As we were boarding […]
Great Service is in the Eye of the Beholder
Is good self-service superior to great personal service? In many cases, maybe even most cases it is. I think we get into trouble when we assume we know what a great service is and strive to achieve a service standard that may not be what means good service to the customer. I was in Minneapolis […]
Does OK Mean I Agree or I Understand?
Words matter. They convey a specific meaning, both to the speaker and to the listener, but the meaning sent is not always the meaning received. Picture a husband or wife coming in the door to his or her home after a hard day of work. Their spouse is in the kitchen, busily preparing dinner. “Hi […]