Does it PAY to be different?

One thing I've noticed about many successful businesses is that - they INTENTIONALLY try to be different.

Richard Branson's Virgin brand tries to distinguish itself from the competition (no matter what new industry he's entering)....

Oprah distinguished herself by coming up with a completely new way to do the "Talk Show" - breaking free from the "Donohue"-style format - and projecting her ratings to stellar heights....

Sometimes people become different by going to extremes. Madonna has often gone to extremes in her "sexual image" simply to be different (and gain attention and notoriety)....

Being different can get you some attention - just for the "novelty" value. It's probably not enough to sustain you, though.... However, if you're different in a way that your customers value, it could be an important advantage in your favor....

What do you think - does this hold true? I appreciate your thoughts....

- Dien Rice

Dien,

I just went through a customer service training class at my day job and learned how 'different' is making companies stand out and be more successful. The class used another company as an example to learn from.

Here in Arizona, we have a major Airlines based here. They are Southwest Airlines.

They have the lowest employee turnover rate out of all the airline companies and lower than a lot of the major companies in the US period. Their employees are rated some of the happiest employees for most US companies. There has also never been a Strike in the history of the company. There are several other stats, but they are besides the point. The point is "Why are these three things important"?

These three things are important because of how they gained the high rankings. They were simply Different in how they interview their employees for employment.

They welcome all employment applications. They break them down in a usual manner at first. They then do some one on one interviews to weed out a few more individuals, not so different. The difference is in the final interview. All applicants applying for the same position in the company are taken to a big room. One of the top managers comes into the room. This person has an extremely good sense of humor and a sense of well being in others. He is also very social. All the applicants and this manager have a big social hour in this room. Talking a little bit about the company, but mostly to have fun, as if at a party, without the booze. Unknown to the applicants, they are all being interviewed for the job, in a different way.

During the social, notes are taken on the most outgoing, unshy, upfront people. The ones that are not so social, not laughing and having a good time are more than likely not going to get this position.

The result is employees who all have something in common. They all love to have a good time and are not afraid to have a good time - even with complete strangers. This makes for a happier work place where they do not want to leave for other employment.

This company has never had a non profitable year in their history. The key is Difference.

Thanks for asking Dien,

Dennis


Protection Generator not only protects your thank you page the right way, it builds it for you!

Being different really works, and can be applied in so many ways.

In Las Vegas, I had the privelege of serving as Director Of Engineering / Operations from July 1998 to December of 2000. I gave myself a "Christmas Present" that year...and retired after 28 years in the telecom business.

Being different has paid off big time for me as an individual. Reading about successes like Southwest Airlines (The book "Nuts" regarding Herb Kelleher and Southwest Airlines was really neat!), as well as a number of other individuals has been key for me to be willing to be different.

When I assumed the position in Vegas, I even started out different.

Though I had been in management for many years, I had always kept my installation and field skills sharp by being a field manager with my employees, versus the "I got promoted and now I'll sit in my office" kind of guy.

I was living in Seattle at the time, and saw an opportunity for the position of Director Of Operations / Engineering for the Las Vegas Market in the classifieds of the Seattle Times. The opportunity sounded very interesting, and I had wanted to move to Las Vegas for a long time anyway, so I thought...what the heck.

But I took a different approach to applying for the position. I instead applied for a position as an installation contractor through a temporary placement agency, rather than actually going straight to the company.

I was hired to install a number of equipment racks, and a couple of DS-3 multiplexers, and I hauled myself on down to Vegas, and began work “in the field” for a couple of weeks.

I found that I liked the company, and decided to apply for the position of Director for the Las Vegas market.

The VP's office for the Nevada market was local, so I got a copy of my resume, called the VP, and asked if I could speak with him for a moment. He agreed.

I walked in, closed the door, and gave him my resume. There was a moment of silence. He then asked me what I had been doing at the company for the last few weeks, and I told him I had been installing equipment racks and such, and he sat back and a very interesting discussion took place.

He asked me to keep all of this silent, to continue working, and he would contact the regional VP, and get back to me. He also asked for a documented report of the changes that I would make in the market, should the job be offered.

So I went back to work, and kept my mouth shut. I also began writing the report.

I didn't hear anything for over a week, then got a call that he wanted to see me. Could I come in the following day? Sure! He also said I should be prepared to meet 2 key regional VP's regarding the position.

I tweaked my report that evening, and headed for the meeting the next day.

The 2 players were the VP's for the multi-state region, and they couldn't believe the approach I had taken in looking at the position. We discussed the method I had used, kind of a "stealth" approach, and they were impressed with the whole concept.

The meeting then turned to my observations of the work force, any changes I thought needed to be made, and on and on.

We talked for a number of hours, and then called it a day. They said they would be in touch.

The next week, on a Monday morning while I was in the field doing an installation, I got a call about 10:00, and was offered the job over the phone.

They then asked me to come to the breakroom area at noon.

I started cleaning up my tools, and headed for the offices. I walked in, and had about 20 minutes until going to the breakroom. While sitting at my "contractor" desk, there was an announcement on the overhead speaker system. It asked all employees to meet in the breakroom at noon, as there was to be a special announcement. I now, for the first time...was nervous!

As approximately 80 employees gathered in the lunchroom area, I took my place among them, and wondered what would be next. We hadn’t rehearsed this, so I just sat there…nervously.

The VP took the floor, and began telling the story of how he had been looking for the right person for the Director position for about 4 months, and that he had finally found the right person. He began to read my resume of the previous 25 plus years, but as of yet, had not said who the person was. When he was finished, he said, "So, without further explanation, I would like to ask John Palma to step forward."

I will never forget that moment. The place was in shock. It was definitely a different way of doing things.

Fortunately, during my time there as a contractor, I had made many friends, and had earned some respect as an installer. So even though they were very surprised, I had taken care to win the folks as friends during the waiting period I had been going through.

There were some tense moments during the next 2 weeks with a couple of the managers who had previously been giving me orders, as they all now worked for me, but we got through those issues and worked everything out.

We bonded as a team, and began making a number of the changes over the next few months in the market that I had observed needing some work while I had worked in the field.

During the next 2 1/2 years, the market went from being number 26 of 26...i.e. Nevada was the worse market in the network of cities, to number 1. We accomplished it through a number of very practical but different ways of serving our customers.

Since I had the responsibility for managing every department except sales, I could get everyone together and work on problems as a team. This proved to be a first for this group.

I created a “war room” to solve problems. I choose to cover the fancy walls with $15.00 sheets of 4’ by 8’ sheets of marker board, all the way around the room. I changed the sign on the door from Conference Room to War Room to convey the fact. At first I had some resistance, as it was taken as a negative, like we were going to get together and fight with each other. But when we got together for our first session, I explained to them that the war wasn’t in our midst, it was “out there”. I explained that we were at “war” with our competitors, and that if we didn’t work together as a team, putting aside departmental turfs and such, we would be our own worst enemy, and bring ourselves down as a market. Though there were a few fights, everyone soon learned I meant business when it came to solving our problems, and there were no sacred cows or departments immune to being called on the war room carpet. When daily problems arose, we would get folks together right then, define what had occurred, and hammer out workable procedures and compromises as a team. Things began to change. The group began to see the whole picture, rather than just their own little group. The customer and their needs became the focus. I got it through their heads that the customer didn’t exist to fit our procedures, but rather our procedures had to exist to fit the customer. 2 of the 9 managers didn’t like the group approach, and after 2 months of trying to get them to work with me, I found it was futile. They were “empowered to seek employment elsewhere”.

Other creative approaches were employed, and it was really a cool 2 ½ years of my life.

I have now been gone from the company for nearly 2 years, but I am still very close to the management group that we had. They were a great bunch of folks. I have many fond memories of how being different paid off both personally for me in securing the position, and then for the market in moving to be number 1 in the company.

In fact, I still get together with them for to play poker, and I really feel for them in the industry of today. It’s a shame that the telecom industry has been devastated with all the scandals and such.

Anyway, I have now started a newsletter, and I hope to be different with it as well.

Since “retiring”, I have gotten interested in this whole information product arena. I have been very disappointed with the bulk of "newsletters" I subscribe to. Most are way to full of "buy this by mid-night" kind of stuff, and most seem to lack the thought provoking and practical ideas that one would expect to offer to someone in exchange for the time they invest in reading and trust they give to an “information publisher”.

I hope I can be different, even in this new venture of becoming an information publisher. I have a lot to learn, but so far, I am enjoying the process.

I apologize for the length of this post…I get carried away with the memories of times gone by.

John Palma




http://www.cluelessinlasvegas.com

Hi Dennis,

Thanks for sharing that info about how Southwest Airlines picks their employees... Fascinating stuff! Definitely a different way to do it - and it seems to work too !

I guess a lot of people say it's good to "think outside of the box" - but how do you do that? I've recently been reading this book on that topic - "The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy" by Tom Monahan. It's well worth checking out... (I don't get any benefit or "kick-back" by mentioning it - it's simply a good book...)

Thanks Dennis - that was an excellent post!

- Dien

John,

What can I say - incredible story! It shows that doing thing differently certainly got people's attention - and I'm sure it helped to land you the job!

Your "war room" concept seems pretty good too.... I've read that Intel has also done this kind of thing in the past. It helped to build a sense of camaraderie among the employees, so they all worked to "beat" the competition....

As we now know, Intel's beaten their competitors in the microprocessor market, but it was very very competitive back in the late 1970s and early 1980s while they were doing this.... (The book about Intel which I read is "Marketing High Technology" by William Davidow, who was the head of Intel's marketing at that time....)

By the way, I've also been intrigued by Vegas - though I've never been there. I'll have to make it out that way some day!

John, thanks again for sharing your success story.... :)

- Dien Rice

> Being different really works, and can be
> applied in so many ways.

I like this theme John..."being different"

A while back there was a post on people needing
"motivation" and maybe they are not suited
for business. It's possible that what people
are referring to as "lacking motivation" could
be a case of finding their "authentic self"
or "being different" ...right now some of
the "new age" philosophers are putting heavy
emphasis on self empowerment through expressing
your "authentic self". I think your newsletter
and any products or services around this subject
is timely and sounds exciting to me.

Any tips you have on how you go "against the
tide" and keep afloat is of interest to me.

There is some interesting stuff on this topic
by an author called : "Barbara Sher"...you
might want to do a search online and check
out her website and writings...

I guess I have always been sorta different. That statement is not meant to be boastful or prideful, so please understand that is merely an observation as I re-live events and experiences of my life.

As I have been working on the newsletter, I have been asked about how the Las Vegas angle came about. I had never really planned it to happen, but as I wrote the process out that has resulted in the Las Vegas Business Newsletter, it dawned on me that my whole life is different.

I had visited Vegas for a few days at a time for about 7 or 8 years, and really enjoyed it. I was Director Of Engineering at a telecommunications company in Minneapolis, and the company I was working for at the time was bought out. We had a choice. Move to Rochester New York or lose our jobs. I had no desire to go to Rochester, and decided to "take my chances" on my own.

I really loved business and marketing, even though my entire career at the time had been technical. Somehow I was roped into attending a Tony Robbins "Mastery University" set of seminars that spanned a year, and there realized I had sort of an entrepreneurial drive (Michael Gerber calls it an entrepreneurial seizure). It that had been buried for years in my corporate "life". I then became a seminar junkie, and attended a number of seminars, as I knew I had to get my "entrepreneurial tool chest" fully equipped.

Side note...I had dropped out of school in the 10th grade, and married a really wonderful girl. I was 15 at the time, and she was 14. We have now been married 34 years, and have 8 girls and 2 boys.

Though I had done pretty well in the telecom field over 25 years or so, and rising to the Director level without an education of any kind, I knew there was a lot about life and business I had never been exposed to, at least from an educational standpoint.

I signed up for more training seminars from the likes of from Jay Abraham, Jim Rohn, Bill Myers, Ken Kerr, Dan Kennedy, some more Tony Robbins, threw in a little Robert Allen, and some Wade Cook stock market stuff and a few others...just to add to the recipe. I turned my car into a rolling university with all kinds of cassette tape series sets from the likes of Brian Tracy and others through Nightingale Conant, and began reading business books by the truckloads. I should have bought stock in Barnes and Noble.

While learning everything I could from these wonderful people, I opened a number of restaurants, did some telecom contracting, dabbled in several direct mail ventures, developed and sold telecom training seminars to sales folks, and a few other things for a few years.

Then, I ended up in Vegas with my family in 1998. I already posted the way that came about. I loved the city, and it seemed a natural for me.

So, with all the things I had learned during the previous years, I guess you could say that I saw the city from a somewhat different view than most visitors, and even most folks who lived there.

I also involved my family in everything (we have home schooled our children for the last 20 years), and took my boys (they are now 19 and 21 years of age) and son-in-laws to a number of the business seminars as my partners. The girls in general haven't ever really had the same drives for the business world. Anyway, we learned together, and business and marketing was, is, and probably will remain our focus.

My boys and I would walk the strip, go to all the new mega-casino openings, read everything we could about the concepts of business that the casinos applied, and on and on. We loved it.

Another side note...we even got to meet David Copperfield, Lance Burton, and of course Siegfried and Roy, and in general just enjoyed the city.

I was really amazed at the business successes in Las Vegas, as well as many of the failures. But I also observed that most business owners, and visitors in general, didn't really see the thought that went into the city. Steve Wynn is a master business builder, but most visitors really don't "get it". They think the whole gambling thing just "happens".

Anyway, since business in general was a constant focus around the house, I just developed a number of observations, and then transferred the concepts to other business types, whether in Las Vegas or not.

Then recently I began writing all the things I had observed over the years, and found I had a rather lengthy document. I emailed it to my boys, who are at the moment in Hawaii for a while on an "adventure", and they thought it was something others might like to read about, so the newsletter "was born".

So, I came up with the URL "clueless..." because that's the way I perceived most of the people in Las Vegas. I then built the web site, and am proceeding from there.

By the way, the clueless thing isn't a put-down, it's simply that they don't generally come away with ways for them to do some of the same things Las Vegas does "back home".

Will it work? Who knows. But I love the topic, and I am enjoying the experience of developing the whole newsletter thing.

I didn't mean to dominate this board, or to imply that I have it all together, so I hope no one takes offense at my posts. If my rambling is offensive, I apologize.

Nor do I even remotely think I am anywhere close to the folks I have had the privilege to listen to and learn from over the years.

I also don't have the illusion that the newsletter is mysteries that came from Moses on a couple of stone tablets either. The info is just observations that can hopefully be thought provoking, and helpful to others who are in the battle for business success every day, and to help them be different in their approach to serving their customers.

I have had my share of failures and blunders, and some of them have been pretty ugly. But since I never had the privilege to attend a real university for a real education, I consider it my tuition cost for my own private education.

Different...but hopefully not weird.

John Palma


http://www.cluelessinlasvegas.com

I for one don't think you're dominating the
board. And thankyou for giving more information
how you were lead into your field. From what
you've expressed I think you're one of the
fortunate ones who have "found their calling"...

Thanks John..