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Crippled CEO Blog #071:

“What is quite unlooked for is more crushing in its effect, and unexpectedness adds to the weight of a disaster. The fact that it was unforeseen has never failed to intensify a person’s grief. This is a reason for ensuring that nothing ever takes us by surprise. We should project our thoughts ahead of us at every turn and have in mind every possible eventuality instead of only the usual course of events.”

– Seneca, Letters from a Stoic

A few times per week, I convince myself that my brother has just died. I imagine it thoroughly. I make myself really upset.

The reason for this is counterintuitive. I do it because I want to be happier.

And you are right, this doesn’t seem like a happy thing to do. In fact, it seems like it would make you quite sad. And it does, temporarily. But that’s the point.

However, there are three things that this exercise does that end up making me happier overall.

One: 

After I’m done, I obviously remember that my brother really isn’t dead. Focusing on something terrible that hasn’t happened makes me better appreciate many of the good things that I might take for granted. Also, if I get myself to really feel like something legitimately tragic has happened, I get some of the same benefit people get from an actual tragedy: your perspective shifts to realize what’s really important, how great life is, and what trivial BS most of my “problems” actually are. 

Last week, it looked like we might lose our largest customer in the worst way possible. Not only were they going to cancel the $1 million+ worth of orders that they had placed for the next couple of months, but they were also going to send back the hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of inventory they had already purchased this year. This is not the way I wanted to start the year after the pandemic.

And while I did treat this with the gravitas it deserved and made it a top priority to resolve — lots of people’s livelihoods (including mine) depend on my ability to successfully navigate these kinds of existential threats — I don’t think any of the people who were working on this closely with me would say that I panicked or was otherwise freaking out. I was focused on it when I could make progress, and I thought about it often, but I wasn’t completely consumed by it. We got lots of other things done last week. And eventually, we got everything squared away. Crisis averted. I think one reason why I was able to keep my cool was because this “emergency“ was nothing in comparison to the visualization that I forced myself to have that my brother had died the day before. Next to that, this is no big deal. It’s just revenue that we can get back later. I was able to put something legitimately serious into the proper perspective in order to stay calm and address it thoughtfully and rationally. 

Two:

Making yourself feel these emotions gets you used to experiencing them. It’s training. And like most training, it sucks and it’s painful, but the more you do it, the better you are at processing those feelings. 

Three:

Not only are you training for the emotional impact, you are also training yourself to handle events like the one you imagine. If you think through everything you would do if you lost your job, if that were ever to happen, you would be more prepared. Not only would it be less of a shock emotionally, but pragmatically, you would already have some ideas of what steps to take — steps you decided on at a time when you had more clarity, not suddenly thrust into this surprise emergency. 

Avoiding negative feelings, hopping from one happy moment to another, seems like a happier way to live, but it is building a foundation made of sand. You need to visualize the worst thing that could possibly happen, really put yourself in the situation, to create a more solid foundation for happiness, and to give you the tools to move forward with things when they go wrong, as they always do. 

(Did you like that? Your mom liked it. And it’s not the only thing she liked. I text her every week, normally late at night, and I could also send you a text every time I post the newest blog. Send a message to 484848 with the word CRIP as the message and you’ll get a text from me as soon as the latest one is up. Also, tell your mom I’ll see her later.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #070:

When I was in seventh grade, my electric wheelchair was dying.

Growing up, my chairs would last around five years before they were just breaking down all of the time and too unreliable to keep using.

This chair was on its last legs (or wheels) with a gang of quirks and idiosyncrasies I had to navigate to make it through the day. 

Unfortunately, power wheelchairs are expensive. The price tag on the chair I was going to get next was about $12,000. Insurance doesn’t help. There is no government support. We were responsible for the entire thing out of pocket.

And my parents didn’t have anywhere close to that much money to spare.

So, in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I took a Folgers coffee can with a hole cut in the lid, taped a label to the front of it that read “Eric Lupton’s Wheelchair Fund,” and parked myself outside of Walgreens. Even at 12 years old, my extroverted, salesman nature was already developing (a trait that has receded over the last decade or so, I think), and I engaged every single person that walked outside of that Walgreens. I didn’t ask them for anything. I just said hello, smiled, and asked them how they were doing. And over and over again, people put money into my can. I did this every day after school, a few hours a day, and all day Saturday and Sunday. After a week, I figured out that I was making about $20 per hour, which was pretty incredible. Even at $20/hour, though, it was going to take me 600 hours to reach my goal. We were only a couple weeks away from Christmas, and we expected the donations to evaporate once the holiday spirit expired. I wasn’t going to make it. 

My dad had a mailing list of all of his pool fence customers, and he sent out a letter to each of them — telling my story, explaining how I was trying to raise money for this wheelchair. The response was great, but we were still a long way off from our goal. 

I kept doing the Walgreens thing. Day in, day out. People gave change, or $1 — some gave a couple dollars. And some truly generous people would me give a $5 bill. 

Then one day, this dude, in a hurry, slides a $10 bill into my can. I’m stunned, and before I can thank him, he’s gone. I kick myself for not responding faster, and the guilt ate at me for the rest of my shift. When my mom came to pick me up, I told her the story, wishing I had been able to tell him how much I appreciated this outlier donation.

My parents took me to Longhorn that night so I could get what is still one of my all-time favorite meals: a loaded baked potato. I used to literally live on just baked potatoes. 

While enjoying my conduit for sour cream, bacon, and cheese, I looked up and realized that, at the table next to us, was the guy who had given me the ten dollar bill. This was the guy I hadn’t been able to properly thank. My mom was concerned that it would look like we were using his money to go out to dinner, but I was adamant about going up to talk to him, and she eventually relented and allowed me. 

I rode over to his table and reminded him who I was, and how grateful I was for the biggest donation I had received in all of my hours sitting outside of Walgreens. He was very humble about it, but then his wife started telling me that she worked for the Palm Beach Post, and she thought she might be able to get my story into the paper. I told her that would be great, and she took down my information.

While I thought the lady was very nice, I didn’t have high hopes for the publicity. I didn’t know what she did at the paper, and even at 12 years old, I had already figured out that those kinds of promises rarely came to fruition. I kept chugging along outside Walgreens, and checks from the mailing list kept dripping in. At this point, we were hoping that we could get close enough that my parents could bridge the gap. But it still wasn’t looking too great. And my dad was repairing my current chair almost every night, keeping it going so I could make it through the school day. 

But then, sure enough, we got a call from the Palm Beach Post. They wanted to do a story on my attempt at fundraising for a new wheelchair. They came out, took pictures, and put it to print. The headline read something like: “All boy with cerebral palsy wants for Christmas is an electric blue power wheelchair”. 

The story hit a nerve with people, and the donations started rolling in. We were pretty excited. It was going to be close, but it seemed like we might hit our goal. But then everything changed when we received an anonymous donation, who absolutely refused to identify herself (we just knew she was an elderly lady), for $5,000. I couldn’t believe it. My parents couldn’t believe it. Not only did we have enough for the chair, but we were able to set some aside for future repairs and maintenance. It was unbelievable.

There was no way we could have known when we started this what the path towards success would look like. We just started trying. And that’s usually how these things go. In the words of Conor McGregor, “God loves a trier.” There was definitely some luck that happened here, but luck is what happens when you are doing everything you can to get something done. There have been many times in my life when I have started on a path, not knowing how I could make it successful, or what good could come of it. And just like this, things happen. This is the rationale behind going to every industry conference I’ve ever attended. I never know why I’m going specifically, but I do know that making the effort to go allows for unexpected, spontaneous things to occur. You just need to take the initial steps and do everything in your power. And then use the results of that work to pull yourself up to the next level.

The other lesson here is to allow people the opportunity to step up and be generous. Create the opportunity for generosity. People want to help. Let them. It is a win for everybody involved.

(Wasn’t that touching? Your mom thought so. Speaking of me touching your mom, maybe be like her and get me to text you every Sunday by sending a text to the number 484848 with the word CRIP in the message. Also, share this with somebody who needs to take the first step, even if the rest of the plan isn’t clear.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #069 (hehe):

“When you see a good move, look for a better one.” – Emanuel Lasker, World Chess Champion from 1894-1921

Y’all know that I play chess. I have a 90 minute lesson with my coach, International Master Vitaly Neimer in about two hours. 

There is an unexpected benefit to playing chess. It’s also a benefit you get from playing video games. It is also a benefit I get from having cerebral palsy and being in a wheelchair.

It’s problem-solving. But not what you’re thinking.

It seems pretty obvious that practicing chess improves your problem-solving skills, and it does. That’s not the surprising part.

The piece that I have picked up from chess, and also from video games, and also just living my life as a cripple isn’t just an enhanced ability to solve problem, but perhaps more importantly, the understanding that problems which at first seem absolutely impossible, if worked on long enough, if tried again and again, if toiled over even when they seem hopeless, can eventually have a solution. It’s the idea that impossible problems aren’t impossible. Because being good at solving problems is awesome, but you won’t even bother trying if you don’t think there’s a chance. Doing these exercises that teach you, by example, that tough problems start out looking unsolvable gives you the motivation necessary to find the answer and not just give up. 

Like I said, I have started out with a healthy dose of this just by being lucky enough to be born with CP. At this level of disability, everything is a problem solving exercise, most of which initially seem impossible, and almost all of them are entirely unique to me. When all of your parts work like everybody else’s, someone else who moves like you can show you how to ride a bike or type on a keyboard. Nobody else is quite like me, so I’ve had to come up with my own ways of doing literally everything, from using a pen to typing to eating to using the bathroom.  Once you do this enough times, you start to assume solutions exist in every area of your life, and every area of your business. You find ways to upgrade your pool fence with options that weren’t supposed to be possible. You break the number one rule of mixing business with friends and family by ONLY working with friends and family. You have a record-breaking year during a global pandemic.

It is important to get better at solving problems, but it is even more important to train yourself to know that impossible problems can be solved. If you weren’t fortunate enough to be born with cerebral palsy, I recommend games. Chess is great. Video games are great. Puzzles are awesome. Do low stakes tasks that initially seem totally impossible. And then do them anyways. Doing the impossible takes practice, but it is a good skill to have.

(Why don’t you just share this with somebody? Do it for me. Also, guarantee you get next week’s post by sending a text message to 484848 with the word CRIP in the message. Your mom will be proud. She told me last night.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #068:

My dad didn’t care about my SAT score.

He didn’t really care about any of my scholastic test scores.

There was only one score that he cared about.

My credit score. 

While they wanted me to succeed and to, in general, get good grades, neither of my parents were really concerned about me getting the highest possible GPA.

But I started being told very, very young that my credit score was absolutely critical. My dad had impeccable credit, and no son of his was going to have anything below an 800.

And as an adult, I get it. I am a high school dropout, so those test scores I worried so much about don’t mean anything today, but being uber diligent about having perfect credit, like he was, has been incredibly important. 

It’s the reason I own my house. It’s the reason I own my vehicle. It’s the reason I have credit cards. But even more importantly, over and over again, it has saved my business. There’s no way we have have inventory for the season without our line of credit. We don’t make it through the 2008 recession without taking out loans. We don’t grow 10x over 9 years without bank lines, credit cards, and excellent terms with vendors. 

My dad was right about almost everything, all the time, that bastard (it was really annoying), but he was especially right about his insistence on a flawless credit score. If you can do one thing for your kids, besides feeding them a few times a week, help them get set up with a credit card they can start paying off early just to start building their credit while they are still living at home and you can guide them through it. My dad had me take out a loan from the bank when I was 18 with the sole purpose of paying it back one month at a time. 

If your own credit isn’t great, make a plan to fix it that’s on auto pilot. Figure out what you need to do to get everything current, make the payments automatic, and put the date that you’ll be all clear on the calendar. Your instinct is to not want to look at it. But in most cases, there really is a path towards redemption.

I’ve already started telling my infant nephew that I don’t care if he gets good grades, but he is definitely going to have perfect credit.

(This one wasn’t too bad, right? Maybe you should share it with somebody. Maybe you should make sure that you never miss the next one by sending a text message to 484848 with the word CRIP as the message. If you want.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #067:

If you run some kind of service business, this post is for you. If you don’t, it might not be.

For over 20 years, I’ve been helping people start pool fence installation businesses throughout the United States and around the world. At its core, being a Life Saver Pool Fence dealer / owning a pool fence installation company, is essentially a service / home improvement business. The big difference between a company that installs pool fences and, say, A/C units is that pool fences save lives and A/C’s save marriages. The product might be different, but the structure of the business is similar.

I say all of that to say that over the last two decades, I have figured out the four not-so-simple things you have to do to perpetually grow your business. All four of them are super easy to understand, and in isolation, easy to execute, but the trick is balancing them all simultaneously.

Each of these four steps is a cycle. Each one feeds the next naturally, before finally looping back on itself. I’ll attach a handy graphic that I made to illustrate.

Step 1: Advertise Online

Forget all of the other forms of advertising for the moment. As of January 24, 2021, Facebook, Google, Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok should be receiving 100% of your advertising attention and dollars. And the dollars part is important. If you’re doing it right, these things will bring in more money than they cost, so the idea is to invest as much as you can while still being able to handle the work and successfully do steps 2 and 3 (which I’ll get to shortly). You can handle this yourself at first if you have more time than money, and you can spend 30 to 40 hours going on Google and YouTube and learning how to run your own Facebook and Google Ads campaigns. Or you can hire a pro like Doug Betensky or Ashley Bissing. In my early days, I did it all myself. Now, time is the scarcer resource, so I have different companies managing different niches. You can decide your approach, but either way, this is a necessity, and I think this is the step most small businesses are missing. If you say you can’t afford it, you’re wrong. For one, because you can set any budget you like, but more importantly, because it brings in more than it costs. All of the steps are important, but none of the rest work if you’re not doing this one.

Step 2: Answer Every Call / Be the Master of Communication

If you’re doing it right, the inevitable result of advertising is people calling you, emailing you, messaging you on Facebook, etc. Over and over again, I have seen that the very best, most successful business owners are obsessed with making sure that every call gets answered, every email replied to, zero texts are left on read, and every DM gets a response. All of your advertising is for nothing if you are missing calls and not responding to messages. And yes, this is hard to do when you’re busy. If you’re doing a lot of the work yourself, it is going to be impossible to answer the phone every time. But it has to be prioritized. If you find yourself at the point where you know you’re missing calls, and the bar for how quickly you get back to folks has lowered, then this is the sign that you need to get help — either someone to answer calls when you are busy, or someone to help you in the field so you can answer them yourself. Either way, it has to get done.

And being the king / queen of communication doesn’t stop after the initial call. Keeping your customer in the loop every step of the way, especially when something doesn’t go exactly as planned or there’s a delay, is a game changer. 99% of the time when I get a call from a customer who is mad at their local Life Saver dealer, the real problem isn’t the error that they made, it’s that the dealer has been hard to communicate with. 1 Peter 4:8 says that “love covers a multitude of sins.” 1 Eric 4:8 says that “proper communication covers a multitude of sins.” Answering calls and responding to people won’t just get you more jobs, it will help you have more happy customers as well.

Step 3: Make Customers Happy Even When It Hurts

We all know that we need to do a good job, offer a quality product, provide excellent service, and create happy customers. And that is super important, but you have to take this idea one step further in your mind.

To really get this step right, you have to fix things that weren’t your fault. You have to refund people who don’t deserve it. You have to be willing to lose money on a job even when you did everything right. You have to simultaneously take a hit to your wallet and your ego. This is very hard to do. It’s counterintuitive. We don’t want to let people walk all over us, to take advantage of us. That feels gross and wrong.

But you need to make this your default mode. This is how you avoid negative reviews in a world where lots of people are totally crazy. This is how, when somebody asks on Facebook about the service you provide, all of the comments are glowing recommendations that feature your name. This is how you get referred over and over again. This is how you make people passionate evangelists of your company. And lots of times the person won’t fully appreciate what you’ve done. Maybe all you did was escape the one star review. But how much would you pay to get rid of that review? Probably a lot. It’s going to be there forever. And even though some people won’t appreciate it, lots of other people will. Your reputation will build. And one day, even though you are more expensive than the other guy, they will decide to go with you instead because they’ve heard the stories of your amazing customer service.

This requires long-term thinking, but if you plan to be successful in the long term, it makes perfect sense.

Step 4: Get Great Reviews

You created happy customers in step 3. Now, the next step is to encourage them to go online and leave you a glowing review. You can do this with an automated email or text system. You can make it part of your end of sale process. You can offer them some kind of reward for leaving the review. How you decide to do it is up to you, but what’s important is that it happens. Online reviews help you sell the job before you get there. They make your online advertising more effective and less expensive by decreasing your cost per acquisition rate. They increase your closing percentage. They are a one time investment that pays dividends for years to come. Get yourself reviews on Google and Facebook.

Those are the steps! You advertise online, that makes the phone ring, you answer every call and communicate like a star, that gets you customers who are already fans of you, you make them all super happy even when they don’t deserve it, you convince as many as possible to leave you a good review, then you use the money from the extra customers you got via referrals and the higher prices you get to charge based on your reviews and reputation to invest more in advertising online, starting the entire cycle over again and HOLY GUACAMOLE your business is growing like crazy, Eric changed my life.

NOW, here’s the thing. It’s easy for things to get out of balance. If your advertising is going well, it gets hard to answer every call and communicate super effectively. If your advertising is going well and you are doing a great job of communication, then you are getting lots of work, and your customer service might suffer. It gets more difficult giving a refund that isn’t deserved to a psycho customer when you have more work than you can handle. It gets a lot more tempting to tell them to go float. It is easier to be less vigilant about getting good reviews when you already have a bunch and things are going well. It might seem like a good idea to cut back on the advertising when you’re getting so much work from referrals. It is very challenging to get all four things right at the same time. That’s the juggling act. BUT, if you know that these are the only four things that matter, and you’re constantly looking you see if any of them are slipping, then you’ll be on your way to service business Nirvana.

Good luck, my friends. And may the Force be with you.

(COME ON. That one was good. The least you can do is share this with your friend who has a service company. If it really seasoned your taco, you can subscribe to get a text with a link to the next blog by sending a message to 484848 with the word CRIP as the message. I mean, your mom is texting me. You should, too.) 

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Crippled CEO Blog #066:

We are influenced by our role models. If you are a business owner, even if you don’t think of them in this way, you are influenced by the largest corporations in the world, the businesses that you are the most familiar with. You have learned from Walmart, McDonald’s, Toyota, and Coca-Cola that the goal is to appeal to the largest number of customers possible. The logic follows that the more people who CAN buy from you, the more people who WILL buy from you. You don’t want to do anything that’s going to turn away customers.

There’s a problem with this: it’s not true. Amazon, Google, and Target are the exceptions. For the rest of us, trying to serve everybody is the best way to be delightful for absolutely no one. Trying to appeal to the largest possible audience is the guaranteed path towards mediocrity, brand apathy, and being easily replaced by someone better or cheaper without a second thought.

Picking your customer, being as specific as possible to try to find, as my hero Seth Godin puts it, the minimum viable audience, and being diligent in focusing all your attention on serving that specific niche is just as important as offering the best product or service possible, and infinitely more critical than picking your name or your logo. 

Saying “no” to the majority of people allows you to earn the loyalty of those to whom you can say “yes.” Depth is better than width. And this isn’t some austere sacrifice. If 99% of the planet doesn’t like what you’re doing, that means 77 million people out there think your business, art, writing, or podcast sizzles their fajita. The beautiful thing about the Internet is that owning a small slice of the pie still gets you a large number of human beings.

Stop trying to make everybody happy. Stop trying to get every single customer — a lot of them aren’t for you and you’re not for them. Spend time deciding exactly who you want to thrill, and then go about doing the things that will make that person the happiest customer ever — for life. 

(Don’t be selfish. If you liked this, show it to somebody. And if you really liked it, guarantee that you don’t miss the next one by subscribing for a text alert. Send a text message to the phone number 484848 with the word CRIP as the message to obligate me to send you a text each week with a link to the latest blog.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #065:          

Once per year, I tell my Facebook friends I’ll help them solve any problem or answer any question, then attempt to seriously reply to each one. Last year, I published the questions and answers as a blog post, and I liked it, so I decided to do it again. A few of this year’s responses contain some detailed, tactical business/marketing/sales advice – stuff you can just literally copy and do yourself – so I think it should be really useful for folks. With no further ado, the questions and answers.

Q: What is the ultimate answer to life, the universe and everything?

A: Besides 42, cultivating kindness.

Q: Marketing small business online

A: Here you go. 😊  https://crippledceo.com/2019/11/crippled-ceo-blog-006-only-advertise-online/

Q: How to start a business. Registering/licensing. Idk what I’m doing 😩

A: You should hire Jennifer Gomez to help you register an LLC or Sub-S corporation. Also, the registration is the easiest part. You should be asking how to get customers.

Q: What should be the topic of the first book I write? (Jennifer Gomez, who asked this, is an estate attorney.)

A: “How I Defied the Odds by Being Gifted with Gravity-Defying Physical Attributes and Chose a Career Path That They Didn’t Help With One Bit”

Or…

“The Intersection of Volunteering and Law/High-Priced Professional Services: Doing Good While Doing Well”

Or…

“Hanging out with Musical Legends, and Other Stories of a 5th Grader”

Or…

“How to Kick Ass After You’re Dead / Everyone dies; how not to screw it up”

Q: What’s a good way to get an investment partner or partners without giving up complete control/majority ownership of a business?

I understand from their perspective they want to be able to make money, this isn’t out of the kindness of their hearts. But this is something I don’t want to sell in a decade, it’s something I want to last for generations. As such I want to be able to retain ownership.

A: Get loans instead. Lines of credit, SBA loans, etc.

Q: Why are yawns contagious?

A: Yawning is caused by a neurological virus. When you yawn, the virus travels out of your mouth and infects the people around you, who in turn are forced to yawn. Also, none of that is true.

Experts have published research that suggests the human propensity for contagious yawning is triggered automatically by primitive reflexes in the primary motor cortex — an area of the brain responsible for motor function.

One theory is that contagious yawning is related to empathy, and that people with higher levels of empathy yawn more often when someone else yawns, compared to people with lower levels of empathy or those with a mental disorder.

“Researchers have seen that yawning may not be as contagious to people with autism or schizophrenia,” Williamson said in a university news release. “More research is being done to determine the cause of this.”

She also noted that children under the age of 4 and older adults are less likely to yawn in response to somebody else yawning.

Q: Why is the world so ableist? Why do people treat us like tiny children that can’t do anything? It’s a whole new world chair level and one of my goals is to bitch and email and call until things are more accessible.

A: Because most people aren’t disabled. We are a very tiny minority.

Because most people who can’t do the things that we need help with are tiny children. Also, it is impossible for a regular person to gauge our capabilities, and not helping is rude.

I would avoid bitching and calling. Systemic change is slow and difficult. Spend that time making your own world more accessible and improving your own situation. That is a much better use of your energy.

Q: I do not have one million followers on Tiktok. Help me solve this problem in a way that doesn’t involve jeopardizing being an orthodontist or overtly exploiting my wife.

A: Before I finished your comment, I was going to go immediately towards exploiting your wife.

Post more. Keep getting better. Be super consistent. Exploit women who aren’t your wife. Grow your other channels. Use them to feed each other. Collaborate more with creators SMALLER or the same size as you and do it often.

Q: Do you think the KOMBI KEG would be a good franchise to invest in? I have the information packet here and I want to do it more than anything but the price tag scares me.

A: No.

Q: Need someone who wants to do good with their $$

A major company, or investors and backers for our non profit “ReesSpecht the Water” national water safety campaign

A: Make a list of 100 dream sponsors.

Plan out a creative mail and call campaign that will go to each of them.

For instance, first send them a toy Rubik’s cube. Along with it, send a letter explaining how reducing the number of fatal drownings is a puzzle, like the cube, and you need her help to solve it.

Next, send a cheap compass along with a letter saying how you know which way to go to stop children from drowning, you just need her help.

Follow up with a call.

Keep sending cheap $1-5 “gifts”, one per week, along with notes connecting them to what you’re doing, like the Rubik’s cube and compass, and then call after every 2 or 3 you send.

Send this pre-crafted, prepared campaign to your 100 DREAM sponsors. If you get one, you’re set, but I’d wager you get at least a few, if you really do it and you’re consistent. It might take 15 weekly letters with $1 gifts, but it’ll work eventually.

Q: How do I become the number one pool fence dealer/installer in the nation?

A: You do a loop of four things. The first thing you do is advertise. You get with Doug Betensky and you spend as much as you can on advertising as possible until you are too busy to continue answering the phone almost every time it rings/servicing customers properly. Step 2 is to be the king of communication. Answer every call. Get back to people right away. Let people know what’s going on. And so on. This gets hard when you get busy. This will typically start to suffer, and that’s how you know that you need to start finding help.

The next step is to create happy customers. This sounds obvious, but it is a commitment you need to take fully to heart. It means being willing to lose money on a job if you have to. How much would you pay to erase a one star review? That’s the question I always ask myself. Put yourself in a mindset where your instinct is to take short term hits knowing they will result in long-term success. Don’t nickel and dime. Don’t be petty. Give people more than they deserve.

Encourage these happy customers to leave you positive reviews and recommend you to their friends. Maybe offer them free lights for their reviews or something. But you need the reviews and the referrals. It makes your advertising more effective. You have to spend less on Google and Facebook to get jobs if you have great reviews, and you will also close a higher percentage of your estimates.

Then, take the money from the jobs you’ve done, from the additional jobs you got through referrals, and if you can handle it, invest more in advertising. For us, advertising on Google and Facebook is always a positive investment. You always get a profitable return. If you have the capacity to handle the work, you should spend as much as Google and Facebook will let you. You will eventually come to a point where you just can’t spend anymore money on those platforms, where there just aren’t any more clicks to get. But we can figure out what to do after that. If that is your issue, you are probably getting pretty close to being near the top of the list.

That’s it. That’s how to become the top dealer in the country. Guaranteed.

(Did you find this useful? Be kind and share. Also, get notified of every new post by sending a text to 484848 with the word CRIP.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #064:

A year ago, I was asked by a friend who owns a travel agency for advice on growing her business. She told me that she had a Facebook group with 100 members, and wanted to know what else she could do. This was what I told her:

“[The group] is an excellent start. You need to be producing content in video, audio, and written form. I would pick the one you enjoy the most or you are the best at, then use that pillar content to convert into the other two. So, if you are making videos, have those videos transcribed into text for a blog, and use the audio as a podcast. I would also start doing mini interviews with customers for your Facebook video series/podcast about where they are going and the cool stuff they are seeing, and then again when they get back to get their thoughts on where they went. You could then compile these into best of lists, testimonials on certain locations from multiple people, and so on. 

I would also host dinner or cocktail mixer parties for your customers where they can exchange vacation ideas based on where they went and get travel tips from you.

Maybe consider getting a stuffed animal mascot, like a little bear or something, wearing a shirt with your company name and logo on it, give it a name, and give it to customers to take with them on vacation and have them take pictures of it in cool locations. They can post the photos and tag the mascot, which should have its own Facebook/Instagram page, and they could send you photos to post as well.

I could keep going, but I think they should get the ball rolling for you.”

I could stop this right there, because that is some excellent advice, I really impress myself sometimes — I should do this marketing thing for a living, but that’s not actually the point of this.

When this came up in my Facebook memories, exactly one year later, I asked her if she had done any of those things. I assumed I knew what the answer would be, but I was hoping to be proven wrong. I wasn’t. She hadn’t done any of them.

This isn’t a rebuke on her. She did exactly what nearly everybody would do. 

As she said, “it definitely isn’t easy,” and she’s right. Those things aren’t easy. They take consistent dedication and growing outside your comfort zone. 

The path to improvement always seems difficult. Growing your business is hard, eating healthy is hard, going to the gym is hard… but are they harder than the alternative?

Is taking the steps to creatively grow your business and make it successful harder than letting it coast in mediocrity, struggling to get by, and having trouble paying your bills? Is eating healthy and exercising harder than the long term health complications that happen if you don’t? 

Each path has challenges and hard work, but it’s better to be dealing with the challenges of success and prosperity than the challenges of mediocrity or failure. 

If you have a New Year’s resolution, and it’s feeling hard, it might help to remember that it’s actually the easier, lazier route, when compared to the alternative. 

(Was this my best blog post so far this year? I think so. You should share it with a pal. And hey, maybe subscribe to my weekly text update by sending a message with the word CRIP to the phone number 484848. Thanks!)

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Crippled CEO Blog #063:

Michael McGahee and I have been compiling a list all year of cringe-inducing “corporatespeak” — buzz words typically sprinkled into Zoom meetings and emails by young professionals of huge companies (often companies who view themselves as hip and modern). I believe they do this as a form of signaling, letting you know how up to date they are with the current corporate lingo. 

It’s nauseating. 

You know some of the classic ones: let’s circle back, paradigm shift, synergy, and so on. 

But over the last year, we have compiled many, many more. 

My goal is to write a (fictional) memo using all 39 of them — the cringiest corporatespeak email of all time. 

Because this is how we are ending 2020.

The full list will new below the letter. Feel free to use it to see how many of these terrible phases are in your vocabulary. And if you have any more, PLEASE let me know in the comments. 

Let’s do this.  

—

Dear team (and remember, we are a team, not staff, because staff is an infection):

I just wanted to touch base about the great meeting today discussing the email about the phone call that originated from last week’s video conference. We managed to really set our intentions and think outside the box. 

However, I think we need to button some things up. It’s critical that we bird dog the project thoroughly to truly ensure that we are all aligned on this. 

If we can get our ducks in a row and focus exclusively on our North Star,  there’s no reason why we can’t move the needle in a serious way. 

Let’s unpack that for a minute. 

Does it scale?

That’s the question we most really drill down into and figure out. If I can piggyback on what Karen said earlier in the text message about the voicemail about the talk at the team building exercise, we MUST do a deep dive to make sure all of this is brand-aligned for us and our clients. 

Just to clarify, we are going to have to take a hair cut on this. The margins are very thin, so we really need you to sharpen your pencils on the pricing. Let’s put a pin in that for now. 

If we are going to be successful, we must pivot. 

What is the one thing I can do to make your day better?

That’s one question I use to shift the paradigm and to level up my thinking. 

But I can’t do this alone. If we are going to make this work, we need each and every one of you to be a cheerleader for this initiative. Please, wrap your arms around this for me and help me understand what’s needed. 

Let’s loop back in order to loop me in so that we  can close the loop on this. Because if we all work together, we can create an amazing synergy. We just need some boots on the ground. 

Let’s take this conversation offline. Why don’t we table this and revisit it later? And then can circle back at the beginning of next week and jump on a call to flesh this out. Just remember that I have a hard stop at 5 pm to meet with the annual trust fall event planning committee. I’ll follow that call up with an email, of course, so be on the lookout for that. 

Thank you so much, everyone. I think we are all in alignment on this. 

We’ll speak soon, and don’t forget: stay POSITIVE and test NEGATIVE!

Passionately,

Karen Karenson

Senior Executive Vice President Director of Employee Compliance, Development, and Accountability 

—

Here is the full list:

Circle back

Drill down

Take a haircut

Sharpen your pencil

Think outside the box

Synergy

Shift the paradigm

Birddog

Touch base

We’re aligned on this / alignment

Does it scale?

Close the loop

Move the needle

Loop me in

Cheerleader

Set your intentions

Why don’t we table that and revisit it later

What’s the one thing I can do to make your day better?

Just to clarify

Flesh it out

Pivot

Let’s make sure this is brand-aligned

I have a hard stop

Put a pin in this

Let’s jump on a call

Button some things up

Loop back

Ducks in a row

Let’s unpack that for a minute

North star

Let’s take this conversation offline

Stay positive and test negative

Wrap your arms around that for me

Boots on the ground

Deep dive

Let me piggyback

Level up

(Happy New Year, y’all. Thanks for doing 2020 with me. If my posts brought you inspiration or info or a laugh this year, maybe subscribe by sending a text with the word CRIP to 484848. I’ll send one message per week with a link to the latest blog post. Complete satisfaction or your money back. Also, it’s free.)

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Crippled CEO Blog #062:

If you’ve been reading these for a while, then first, thank you, that’s very cool of you, but also, you know that I’ve been making a fairly serious attempt to get as good as I can at chess. I started taking lessons three times a week from International Master (and all around great guy) Vitaly Neimer in July, and I spend a good chunk of my free time playing chess, watching videos about chess, and reading about chess. (And yes, I’ve seen the show. It’s great.)

There are three insights chess has put a spotlight on for me, which apply to real life, that I wanted to share with you — and I don’t mean the typical “thinking three steps ahead” trope you might expect. 

1. Chess Blindness 

When you first start playing chess, it is very common to just give away an important piece, like a queen, for no reason. You are looking at everything so intensely, but somehow you just missed this very obvious thing right in front of you. While this does get better as you practice, it doesn’t seem to ever go away completely, and there are tons of examples of even world class level grandmasters somehow going “blind” for a moment and donating a piece or making an obvious mistake. 

As you experience this over and over again (and I definitely have), you realize how much more susceptible you are to missing something important right in front of you because you’re focused elsewhere, on something far less important, than you think you are. You THINK you will notice this huge, critically important issue, but if you’re distracted elsewhere, there’s a good chance you might not. In chess, we are taught to take a moment each turn and look for checks, captures, and threats, a sort of mental safety check list, to try to help mitigate this. In real life, you can do something similar, but just being aware how likely you are to miss something both major and obvious will help you to be more careful. 

1. Time pressure 

All “real” chess is played with some kind of time control. Each player is given a set amount of time to play all of their moves. This can be two hours or two minutes or anything in between. Either way, when it’s your move, your clock is ticking down. 

“Time pressure” is the DRAMATIC impact on your play that occurs when you are low on time. Even the best players in the world become mere shadows of themselves when the clock is getting close to zero. 

We all know that we are prone to mistakes when we are rushed, or that we don’t think as clearly, but it’s hard to appreciate the full extent of how compromised you are until you see it play out on that 64 square board. In chess, you can go back and look at your game again, so the idiotic mistakes that you made because of the time pressure are clear as day, right in front of you. You typically can’t do that in real life, so it’s hard to speculate on what you would have done differently, but chess makes it brutally apparent. Being pressured by a lack of time makes you dumb. You do things that you would never in a million years do otherwise. Tim Ferriss refuses to jump on any opportunity or investment, no matter how good it seems, if there is a short deadline, or if he feels pressured by time. And it makes sense. 

Outside of chess, deadlines and time pressures are almost always artificial. You can almost always get more time if you need it. The sneaky thing about time pressure is that, in the moment, you know that you are rushed, but you still think you’re making the right decision. It is only after the fact, when you have more time to think, that you realize your mistake. The solution to this is, whenever possible, like Tim, don’t make decisions when you’re short on time. Prioritize giving yourself more time to think. Ask yourself, “What is the absolute worst thing that will happen if I don’t make this decision right now?” Usually, it’s not that bad. Give yourself the time, even when you think you don’t need it. You do.

1. Tilt

I first learned the concept of “tilt” playing poker. It has the exact same meaning in chess. The name comes from pinball machines, which would display the word “tilt” as an error message when the table was lifted or moved violently, as often happens when someone is upset. In chess and poker, someone is “tilted” or “on tilt” when something goes wrong, they get upset, and then start making bad decisions and playing poorly. 

My first ever blog post, #001, was actually about this. Scientific studies have shown that we lose a substantial number of IQ points when we are in a bad mood, and the more upset we are, the worse it gets. You can read that whole post right here: https://crippledceo.com/2019/10/crippled-ceo-blog-001-the-bad-decision-loop/. 

The basic idea of the post, and the lesson we can learn from chess, is that you’re incapable of making the best decisions when you’re upset by something terrible that has happened to you. You are tempted to try and fix the problem right away, but doing so only makes it worse. The solution is to wait. Don’t do anything until your state of mind improves. Waiting on purpose isn’t laziness, it’s a choice, and an action. And it is often the best one.

There are a ton of other lessons we can extract from chess and apply to our lives. The idea of prophylaxis (seeing a problem coming, and protecting against it ahead of time), how improvements come slowly, in inches — not miles, and so on. But I thought these three were the ones you don’t hear about the most, and were the most interesting to me. Now you can benefit from them without spending a couple hours a day getting beat up by better chess players.

PS: I’m giving a few of my friends chess lessons with IM Vitaly as Christmas gifts. I think it’s a pretty rad gift. If you would like to, as well, let me know, and I will put you in touch with him, or just go to his website PowerfulChess.com. 

(I bet you can imagine someone who would like this. You should send it to them. You should also subscribe to my weekly text message so you get notified as soon as I post the latest blog. All you have to do is send a text to the phone number 484848 with the word CRIP and the magic will happen.)

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