David Heinemeier Hansson, co-founder 37signals
Signal vs. Noise Podcast: http://bit.ly/jWp99e
Overheard: “I love her like a sister, you know. Which means I hate her like a sister.”
So, one day the relationship is strong and the next day it’s weak.
One day it’s sugar, the next day it’s poison.
One day it’s nutritional, the next day it’s garbage.
One day it’s healthy, the next day it’s a heart attack.
You can’t keep putting up with crap just because you think the seemingly-clean half is the payoff. Get a better relationship. Get a better filter for keeping crappy relationships out of your life. Dump shit that stinks – simply for no other reason than it stinks!
Crap is meant to be flushed down the toilet, not kept around the house.
If you have the guts to say something supportive and productive, you both win! Whatever you say, they hear. And whatever you say, you hear.
Make whatever you say worth hearing, worth following, worth repeating. Because the other person’s gonna hear it, your brain’s gonna follow it and somebody’s Facebook Wall is gonna repeat it.
Have the guts to say something helpful!
Just met a cool woman, Ashley, who discovered that she loves organic chemistry and is getting her degree. Her Organic Chem subject was really frustrating at first, but after persisting she discovered that she really loves it. And she’s good at it!
By finding her strengths, Ashley discovered she’s a Superhero!
She admits never having a similar strength or persistence for fashion design, like her sister. In fact, given the options between Organic Chem and fashion, fashion would always remain a frustrating subject for Ashley no matter how much effort she put into it. Her sister, on the other hand, has a knack for it and is putting all of her energies into it.
Ashley and her sister both work equally hard. But if they’re gonna spend 14-hour days in their careers, they’ll be so much more productive, creative and successful utilizing their strengths.
Superheroes know exactly what their strengths are!
Seeing what your strengths are, in black and white, can be very helpful. Get a head start with Strengths Finder 2.0 by Tom Rath
[amazonshowcase_ab2d8e1c922d9a296082de7bdd6d0c53]
I’m not referring to a brand as a logo and a typeface. I’m referring to the new kind of brand, the one is formed by the entire experience of a customer’s interaction. That experience gets branded into his or her memory and leaks into the buzz of modern culture. If you can’t make a good customer experience from start to finish, you’ve failed to generate brand value that will attract customers to come back for repeat business and tell their friends to come back, too. That’s how good customer experience directly affects the bottom line.
Increasingly bad customer experience seems to be a leading indicator of decreasing revenue. We saw this effect at Circuit City, when a new CEO fired every expert sales associate in the organization and hired new, cheaper, inexperienced ones who didn’t know what they were doing. Customers left the stores with incorrect information or with their questions unanswered. They went to Best Buy instead.
Original post: http://www.dustincurtis.com/dear_dustin_curtis.html