I’m not talking about being bad at saying the words “thank you” to be polite, but at really expressing thankfulness to the people around me. Saying “thank you” to my mom when I pick up my daughter after some “grandma time” is easy. Telling my mom that I appreciate her taking the time to be a significant part of my daughter’s life, on purpose, that’s different.

I am aware of the gratitude that I have, but if I don’t express it…is it real? I’m not sure.

I also noticed that I was terrible at telling my customers that I appreciated them for choosing Date-Line. I had taken their loyalty for granted and I decided I needed to start expressing my appreciation when they did us the honor of allowing us to produce work for them.

So I designed a thank you card with our logo on it and started sending out at least one card every business day in January of 2012. It didn’t take long before I decided it would be fun to make some original cards that were funny or silly to make the message more personal. I designed a handful of cards and continued sending them out, at least one every business day.

Soon it occurred to me that others might like the designs. Travis and I decided we would start selling the cards in our lobby for cheap. As in 50¢ for a 5×7″ card with an envelope cheap. The point wasn’t to make a bunch of money, but to share something we were already making and give people an avenue to easily express their own “thank you’s”.

We set up a spinning rack in our lobby and customers really responded to them. I made a few more designs and continued sending cards out, at least one every day.

After a while I came to Travis with another idea. This time the idea was borderline crazy, but Travis and I have worked together for a long time so he is used to it.

I told Travis that it would be fun to create a program where we actually gave the thank you cards away. For free.

We talked about it for a while and worked through the logistics. It’s funny, my first fear was that no one would sign up. Then I did some math on postage and that fear was quickly replace with the fear that everyone would sign up. We decided it was worth it and I’m not afraid anymore.

Today I am excited to announce that our Free Thank You Cards program is now accepting participants. It’s really simple, too. Just fill out a small form and we’ll send you some free cards the next day. After that we’ll fire of new original designs every 3-months in August, November, February, and May.

Saying thank you matters and this is our way of proving how important we think it is while giving something to our customers as a way of saying “thank you.”

I hope you will take 30-seconds and sign up today.

After the game I asked him if it was a success or a failure. I was surprised to hear this 13-year old reply that it was a success because they learned about the other team.

Now, I know that the score screams “FAILURE!” but the kid knows something most of us don’t. Failure, even monumental failure, can be lined with success if we are willing to change our perspective.

Scientists understand this, and we as business owners should too. After all our business are science experiments, aren’t they?

To most of the people in that gymnasium one team succeeded while the other failed. And in the context of the immediate situation, perhaps they’re right. Except when you are a student of a game, or business, or life, it’s worth examining failures for latent successes.

While my nephew’s team was “failing” they were doing so while the other team put on a clinic about how to win. I mean, they were on the floor to see someone show them how to put up 18 goals in 20-minutes. Heck, I don’t even like soccer and I learned a few things.

My nephew is used to playing outdoors on a large field and the indoor game was very different on a small field without a goalkeeper. The other team was also very aggressive. While my nephew’s team seemed to be trying to develop plays (which would work better on a larger, more spread out field) the other team was hacking and slashing to steal the ball and take quick shots on the unmanned goal.

And there were valuable lessons about leadership to be learned. My nephew had put the team together and was the unofficial leader. He was learning what it meant to be responsible when things go off the rails. Was the loss his fault? No. But as the leader was he responsible to rally his team and show everyone a way forward. Yup.

The same goes for business. There will be days when you have to take your lumps. When nothing you do seems to work or your competition just seems smarter than you.

The worst thing you can do is to dismiss those failures and move on. Don’t linger on your failures, but examine them to learn how to improve. And share those insights with your team to inspire them for future success.

So when you feel like you just can’t get it right, maybe it’s time to take a few minutes, adjust your perspective, and recognize the immense value of getting your butt kicked.

CARE TO SHARE?
What is something valuable you have learned that made a failure look a little more like a success?

We paid a fee and the resorts shuttled us from the pier to their location, allowed us use of their private beaches, amazing pool areas, and fed us lots of wonderful food. It was great, and that was that.

Except that was only the first layer of what the excursion was really there to accomplish.

Sure, the resorts collected a fee and provided a service, but that’s the short view. That’s only seeing the immediate transaction.

In addition to providing the service they were paid to provide the resorts seized the opportunity to, subtly, sell the resort as a destination for a future vacation.

No one ever asked us to make a reservation, but the excursions were all about positioning.

Each resort featured different elements, but both did a masterful job at making us want to come back.

In Cabo San Lucas the Casa Dorado gave our group from the boat access to a pool side suite while we were at the resort. We enjoyed the beach, the pool, the buffet, and were shown exactly how nice their accommodations are. Without ever “selling” us anything, we were enjoying a living brochure.

In Puerto Vallarta the Paradise Village Resort featured an amazing beach, a crazy pool with Alligator themed water slides, and an activities team that coordinated games, poolside dancing, and water aerobics during our visit. Everything about the visit seemed to be telling us that we were missing out on so much more by only staying for a few hours.

These resorts are excellent examples for your small business and mine. When your customer purchases something from you are you doing something that makes them want to come back for more? When you do X for your customer are you dropping subtle cues about Y? Does the thing you are doing provide an opportunity to introduce something more?

And what of the folks who aren’t your customers? Are you willing to do crazy, amazing things for people who aren’t your customers yet because you recognize that those crazy amazing things might make them want to become your customers?

As I see it everything is positioning. And we are either positioning on purpose to tell a great story and provide a great experience, or we are positioning on accident and will get what we get.

CARE TO SHARE?
Have you enjoyed an experience with a company that did a great job of positioning themselves for a future sale or more invested relationship from you? What was the result?

Here’s what I can piece together from fragments of offline analog memories:

My wife, 5-year old daughter, and I recently took a 7-day cruise to Mexico and we made a decision to spend the week offline. The internet (or at least a slow, bastardized version of it) was available on the cruise ship…for a fee…but we spent a solid 168 hours without it.

I wasn’t sure how it would go. I love getting e-mail, reading funny tweets, googling anything and everything, and judging people for posting the most ridiculous things on Facebook (not you though, never you) so I was nervous about leaving it all behind. I knew Travis, Rhonda, Bridget, and Melissa had everything covered in Date-Line Land, so I wasn’t worried about that. This was personal.

Except the most amazing thing happened. I actually enjoyed it.

I can be a compulsive refresher. Updating my RSS feeds for the latest articles, checking my e-mail over and over again, refreshing Hootsuite for the latest tweets… My friend Brendan asked if it was nice to be “unavailable” and I told him that, more to the point, it was nice to be unable to instantly distract myself from my current reality.

I can’t just stand in line at the store, or endure a red light while driving. I am compelled to distract myself with bite-sized bits of…I don’t even know what to call it.

Now, we weren’t without technology on the trip. We watched TV at bedtime, enjoyed a couple of movies on an iPad, and I read a few books on my Kindle. But consuming information or entertainment by reading a book or watching a movie is different than scanning the latest tweets compulsively.

Instead of constantly updating and refreshing and trying to know everything about everyone before anyone anywhere, I sat with a book. Instead of dealing with one more e-mail that proves how important I am, I played mini golf with my daughter. Instead of trying to get better and smarter and faster, I took a nap.

I’m not saying that my love for the internet has waned. I’m saying that I want to manage my consumption habits better. To do things on purpose and not because I can’t sit still or wait patiently for a few minutes.

I certainly don’t want to give up the internet, but I do appreciate the importance of disconnecting for a few days. I want to be in charge of when and how I use the internet.

Not the other way around.

CARE TO SHARE?
Do you control your phone or does your phone control you? Are you addicted to your web browser’s refresh button? Could you disconnect completely, at least in your free time, for a day? A week? A month?

It went down like this: My wife, daughter and I were enjoying a lunch break at Sea World San Diego. We were chatting and watching some very wet park guests float down the river ride that wound below the covered hut where the lunch tables were. Our table had four chairs and sat next the the railing around the hut. My daughter was nearest the railing with my wife across the table from her, and I was next to my daughter, facing and empty chair.

At some point I noticed a rather nefarious looking bird standing a few feet from our table. This bird was probably 12″ tall, but my memory puts him at closer to 24″ or even 30″. He had a sharp, pointed beak and looked like he was up to no good.

During our lunch I swear the bird was watching me. Not us, me. Oh, and slowly moving closer. I never saw him move, but he always seemed to be getting closer.

I jokingly mentioned to my wife that the bird looked like trouble and if he wanted my cheeseburger I wasn’t going to fight him for it.

Apparently the bird understood english.

Lunch was drawing to a close. I had about 1/3 of my burger left but was basically done, and we were all talking about what we would do next. In an instant of beautiful and terrifying grace the bird flew up and perched for a split second on the back of the empty chair across from me. He then swooped across the table, grabbed the remains of my cheeseburger, and was back on the ground with his cheeseburger.

At the moment I was sure I was going to have my eyes pecked out, but in hindsight it got me thinking about how the bird was teaching me how to get what I want.

1. Decide what you want
   There were others in the hut with a variety of foods for the bird to covet. The bird wanted a cheeseburger. Often I don’t get what I want because I’m too vague or indecisive about what it is I’m after. The bird was focused and deliberate.
2. Position Yourself Patiently
   The bird watched and waited. Slowly creeping closer, raising only a little suspicion. He didn’t move too quickly. He read the situation, developed a plan, and waited for his opportunity. I’m often impatient, wanting immediate results.
3. Be Prepared To Move
   When the time was right the bird was ready. He was patient, but prepared to move as soon as he saw an opening. I often squander opportunities to get what I want because I’m not prepared to act on them. (See #2)

I’m not going to advocate stealing other people’s lunches. The bird was wrong. And scary.

But I certainly learned a thing or two from the bird about the personal disciplines required to get what I want. Whether it’s developing a relationship, building a business, making a huge sale, or running a marathon, the bird’s techniques work.

And discovering these simple truths only cost me part of an overpriced theme park hamburger.

And a minor heart attack.

It was on one of these trips that I had the idea to put an M&M dispenser in our lobby and start a partnership with College Coffeehouse to offer our customers a discount on coffee.

My wife needed to travel to Phoenix, Arizona for work twice in 2011 and my daughter and I tagged along each time to enjoy a little sunshine and pool time. We stayed at the Hilton Easy Mesa and fell in love with the M&M dispenser they feature in their lobby. Each time we would go into or out of the hotel we would score a quick cup of M&M’s.

It was such a simple thing, but so memorable. So “wow.”

I still haven’t found the perfect dispenser – ours often dispenses an unsettling amount – but I wanted to bring a similar experience to the lobby here. And that got me thinking about coffee.

We often have customers that bring in a project and then scoot down to College Coffeehouse to grab some coffee while we quickly complete it. So we talked with the fine folks at CCH and worked out a deal to offer our customers a buck off any purchase of $3 or more.

It’s not a big deal. It’s not like winning the lottery. But Travis and I want to create an atmosphere of generosity, one in which we can give a little “wow” to our customers.

So as I wrap things up to leave for a few days I’m excited about more than just seeing new places and experiencing new things. I’m excited about what this trip will inspire. I’m excited about how we will be able to better serve our customers because of something that I notice while I’m out.

And I’m excited about the fact that the little things that make Date-Line just a little bit better aren’t really little things at all.

10AM the next day.

I knew we would have no problem meeting the short deadline (after all, that’s what we do) so I assured the representative we could have their design printed, assembled, and delivered to the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce on time.

They quickly sent us the files via our online file submission system and we were under way.

I had actually created a similar 4-panel design for the Christmas party my church put on in December so I had a solid system in place for assembling them quickly.

The artwork they provided featured 3 identical side-by-side panels that we printed and cut to size, leaving additional white space on one end to form a tab. We then scored the piece at the edge of each panel so that it would fold nicely, and then glued the tab on the edge of the left-most panel to the inside back of the right-most panel to create a triangular display piece.

The pieces were a lot of fun to put together and turned out beautifully. Once again, a great design + our expertise = really cool finished pieces, done in flash.

Their piece featured a gate fold, where the outer panels fold toward the center, so we were excited to tweak our folding equipment to accommodate such a unique layout.

The design work was done by ACCAP’s Program Manager Brook Gamble. She told me that she was able to pull off the design despite not being a “real graphic designer” (her words) with the help of a colleague who aided her in working out the margins and bleeds for the piece.

In addition to the technical elements of aligning columns to ensure that cutting and folding worked properly, the piece is a work of art. As you open the brochure you are met with a lovely two-column photo spread with colors that work seamlessly with the rest of the design.

Inside are 4 panels with information about ACCAP and more photos running along the top edge. (Click the photos to the right to see larger views)

We were so glad to get to print these beautiful brochures and think that Brook (with her colleague’s help) did an amazing job putting together a first class design.

Because of this I want to share some ways you can make sure your business data is safe and secure when the whole world falls apart. (This is also useful for more banal situations like fires, floods, and hard drive failures)

It should go without saying that you need to be backing up your data. But because we humans have a difficult time doing the simple things that are good for us I’m going to remind you. You need a backup. More than one in fact.

If you don’t have a backup you are screwed when the zombies overrun your business. You’ll be hacking and slashing your way to safety while your computer, and all the data that lives in it, is smashed up. Zombies don’t care about your data.

But let’s say you’re ahead of the curve and actually make a routine backup, preferably every single day, but you keep it on site. The good news is you have a copy and when your PC decides to have it’s own internal zombie apocalypse you won’t lose it all. The bad news is that when the real zombies bust in it’s likely that both copies will be destroyed when you set off the small explosives and run for refuge.

To avoid this I recommend maintaining 3 copies of your data: The original, a local copy, and a remote copy. I employ this strategy by running automated daily backups of all my data (using SyncBack) to a network attached hard drive and then making a weekly backup of the local backup drive to keep at a remote location.

When the zombies show up, and yes, they will show up, my local data will certainly be destroyed but my remotely stored data will be safe.

I use Dropbox as well, which is not a backup but does offer cloud-based access to my files even if every computer I own is destroyed. Other services, like Carbonite, allow you to do real backups to their servers so that you have a remote, online copy of your data.

My point is this: one copy is good, but if it’s stored near your original it is very vulnerable. An additional copy of your data stored remotely ensures that at least two locations have to be destroyed by zombies before you actually lose your data.

To recap:

• Make routine copies of your data
• Make routine copies of your data (repeated for emphasis)
• Automate that backup if you can
• Keep an additional copy of your data somewhere offsite
• Expect the zombies…they are coming

Unfortunately it seems likely the zombies will wreak so much havok, so quickly, that things like electricity will be old news. And without electricity your data is likely useless. Heck, you probably won’t even need your data when if the smoke clears.

But it’s good to be prepared, just in case.

CARE TO SHARE?
What tips do you have to offer on software, services, or habits that help keep your data safe from zombies?

But machines also cause us to pull our hair out. Machines laugh at us. Machines enjoy our suffering.

So, when a machine goes down for the count we aren’t about to let it go gently into that good night.

Behold:

The song “Exclamation Mark” was graciously provided by my friend Mark Heimer of the No-Fi Soul Rebellion.

Oh, and don’t worry. Our fully operational fax machine is on 24-hours a day to receive faxes for our customers at (907) 479-8056.