That’s why I haven’t posted here in a while. (In case you were wondering.)

I apologize for this and appreciate your patience.

It will be worth the wait, I promise.

I travel often and stay in hotels all the time. I recently took a trip to the Bahamas with my son and some of his friends. We stayed at the Atlantis Resort, a very expensive, very nice resort, somewhat like Disneyland only with an ocean and marine life theme. For business reasons, I sandwiched the six-day stay in the Bahamas with two days in Miami on the way out, and one day in Fort Lauderdale, Florida on the way back.

On my brief stay in Fort Lauderdale, I stayed in a Motel 6. That means I went directly from a five-star resort, to a one-star hotel, all in less than 24 hours.

The difference was shocking.

What was shocking was how much better it was at Motel 6.

Now don’t get me wrong. The Atlantis Resort is very nice, and the folks there treated me very well. At one point, the toilet in my room stopped working, and they fixed it very fast, apologized, and even gave me a $50 credit later in the day for my troubles. I wasn’t expecting that and was impressed. So I’m not saying the Atlantis Resort is bad. I’m just saying from the standpoint of a smooth customer service experience, Motel 6 kicked their butt.

I have found this to be true more times than not; supposedly “cheap” hotels offering a fantastic customer experience over very expensive, swanky hotels. I shall explain.

When I checked into Atlantis, I had to give them a credit card, ID, passport, birth certificate, and a note from my fifth-grade teacher. Even though I had pre-paid my entire stay, they still had to check and double check and triple check that I was who I said I was. It was a pain.

When I checked into Motel 6, I had to give them…nothing. That’s right. Nothing. Not even a credit card or a driver’s license. I had pre-paid the room just like with Atlantis. I just gave my name to the nice Indian lady, she looked up my reservation, smiled, and handed me my room key. The entire process took about 25 seconds. I was floored. In a good way.

At Atlantis, I was shocked one day to find they had charged $750 dollars to my debit card. $750. Can you say pissed? I can. Remember, I had already pre-paid the entire room. So why were they charging me all this extra money? Even worse, at no point did they ever tell me they were going to do this. They just did it. This overdrafted my checking account and caused me some minor chaos in my financial life.

I figured it was some kind of mistake. Yet when I went down to the front desk and complained, they told me that they had indeed done it on purpose, giving me a bunch of robot corporate speak about how they must pre-charge x dollars per day of stay to “cover incidentals” blah blah blah. I screamed and they eventually reversed the charge, but the damage was done.

When I stayed at an independent hotel in Miami they also charged me $150 for “incidentals”. Good lord. At least this time they warned me they were going to do it, but it would have been nicer if they had told me that several months prior when I had first booked the room. It took them an entire week after I left to clear the charge. Nice.

I mean, c’mon guys. If you’re going to assume I’m a criminal and I’m going to rip you off and you need to charge me money for “incidentals”, then okay, I’ll pay it, but couldn’t you at least tell me when I book the room that I’ll have to do this so I can budget accordingly?

Motel 6? No extra charges on my debit card, ever, for any reason. Again, I was shocked, in a good way.

At Atlantis I wanted to get on the internet. Like most fancy hotels, they wanted to charge me for it. $20 a day to be exact. I was staying six days. That’s $120. For internet. Uh…no thanks. I asked them if I could bring my laptop down to the lobby to use their internet there for free. No. There was one tiny room way across the resort where they allowed you to use their internet for free for 15 minutes a day. Insane. It was a ripoff and a hassle. For no reason.

At Motel 6 the internet was 100% free. Moreover, I connected to their internet faster and easier than I did at Atlantis. The download speeds were way faster too.

I figured a nice place like the Atlantis would have an airport shuttle. No. You have to pay a taxi $35 to drive you there from the Nassau airport. Both ways. That’s $70.

At Motel 6 I asked if they had an airport shuttle and then cringed for the answer. “Why yes,” said the nice Indian lady, “It’s complimentary. When would you like to leave for the airport?” I told her 6am and asked if that was too early. “Not at all,” she said, “The shuttle will be ready right out in front for you at 6am”.

The morning I needed it, sure enough, it was right there, ready for me at 6am. And it was free. (Though I happily tipped the guy heavily.)

Want more? There were more towels in the room at Motel 6 than in Atlantis or the Miami hotel. There was more soap in the bathroom too. The room was also surprisingly large, semi-separated like a suite. The bed, although it didn’t look like much, was every bit as comfortable as the beds in the more expensive hotels. The decor in the room wasn’t nearly as nice, but I was so impressed with my experience after the other hotels I didn’t care.

And of course the granddaddy of them all, Motel 6 was a fraction of the price of both the other hotels.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I have officially become a huge Motel 6 fan. Every time I travel from now on, I’m going to be checking availability and pricing on Motel 6 in addition to my usual hotels. I’m serious. Since Motel 6 is a franchise, it’s possible that I just happened to stay at one that was very well managed, but I don’t think so. Either way, I’ll find out, because I’m definitely staying at Motel 6 again.

I recently went to get something to drink at a deli after one of my appointments. When I walked up to the counter I saw a very large sign that the employees had made themselves and displayed prominently. The sign was a huge picture of Johnny Cash. In big, black, block letters it said:

“SUPPORT SMALL BUSINESS. USE CASH.”

I had an immediate negative reaction to the sign. I ordered my drink, but I won’t be going back to that deli again.

Why?

Because as I just mentioned in my last post, cash is a pain in the ass. I have hated cash my entire life. The fact that in order to purchase something I have to pull out a piece of paper or a hunk of metal like some soldier in the Roman Empire and hand it to someone in the computerized internet age is ridiculous, and I had that opinion far before there even was an internet.

Yet here was a business not only telling me that they wanted me, the customer, to use cash, but also subtly implying that if I didn’t want to use cash, I was some somehow “against small business”. Nice.

Why did they want cash? Because they didn’t want to use credit cards. Why is that?

I didn’t talk to them so I don’t know for sure, but I can give you two solid guesses that I would bet money on based on my experience consulting with hundreds of companies over my business career.

The first complaint they would have is that they would be forced to pay a 2% or so charge on every transaction. I have worked with many restaurants and I am simply staggered when I hear this excuse.

Here’s a thought…why don’t you raise your prices 2%? The amount of new business and increased size per order would more than make up for any actual loss in business due to a mere 2% increase in prices, which frankly is something 95% of your customers base wouldn’t even notice. Use credit cards for the convenience of your customers, pay the fee, and raise your prices 2% if you have a problem with it. This isn’t rocket surgery.

The second complaint they might have would be something about how credit cards support the Big Evil Banks™. Politically, I agree with them. I can’t stand the big corrupt banks nor the big bailouts they’re constantly getting from governments all over the world.

However, none of this is your customers’ fault. He just wants a cup of coffee. He has nothing to do with those big banks and likely doesn’t even work for them. Why are you punishing him by making him use inconvenient cash when he has nothing to do with the problem? I have very strong political opinions myself, but never in a million years would I dream of inconveniencing my customers because of them.

The ills of the world are not my customers fault, and considering the number one purpose of a business is to create and keep customers, doing things to purposely create a worse customer experience because of my own political biases sounds a little odd.

Now if the goal in your business is to make a political statement, and you consider this goal more important than making money, then I guess go ahead. Enjoy going out of business soon. If your customer base happens to overwhelmingly supports what you’re doing, that of course is a different story, but that’s not what I’m talking about here.

There’s nothing wrong with taking a stand, but taking a stand to the detriment of your customer’s satisfaction is rarely a good idea.

Many of you have already taken the advice I’m about to impart. If that’s you, congratulations. You win a million dollars. I’ll mail you a check. Oh wait. I don’t use checks. Never mind.

I have always hated writing checks. Even way back in the 80′s, far before the internet, I would sit there at the grocery store waiting for the stressed-out mom in front of me in the checkout line while she wrote a check, and I would think, “Can’t we just wave a card over some kind of scanner that instantly debits our checking accounts? We have to actually fish out a pen and write down on a stupid peice of paper what we want to spend? Then hand it over to some clerk? Then have them mail it to some bank? Then have the bank mail it to some other bank? Then mail it back to us? Then we have to save that damn thing for seven years for tax records? Then we have to balance our checkbooks once a month to figure out which checks have hit the bank and which ones haven’t yet?”

It all sounded very 1950′s to me. Even in the 1980′s.

Like most people nowadays, I pay most of my bills electronically and make most of my purchases with debit or credit cards. However there were always those small handful of expenses where I was forced to actually pull out this antiquated device called a “pen” and write a stupid check. So like an idiot, every year or so I would order new checks. Handwritten checks, laser checks, whatever.

About a year ago, I ran out of checks. Before going to re-order them, I stopped myself and forced myself to think. Of all the monthly bills and expenses I had in a given month, only two required me to write a check and mail it. Could I find some other way of paying those without having my own checks? Of course I could! I resolved then and there to never write a check ever again for the rest of my life.

That was a year ago, and I’m proud to say that since then I have never had to write a check to anyone. I have no checks anywhere in my house or office, and never will again.

I know some of you are already thinking “Oh yeah, I use my bank’s bill-pay service, and they cut checks and mail them for me.” Yeah, that’s the second best option in my opinion. The problem with doing it that way is that you then have an unbalanced checkbook.

You can’t check your bank balance and instantly know how much money you have, because some of those mailed checks haven’t cleared your bank yet. It doesn’t matter if you mail them or your bank is mailing them, they’re still checks, and they’re still being mailed. On the other hand, I can check my bank balance whenever I want and instantly know how much money I have.

That’s why instead of using my bank’s bill-pay service, if I truly have to pay some neanderthal company or person who won’t take credit/debit card payments, I either give them cash (if it’s an informal relationship) or pay them with a money order. That way, the money is instantly removed from my checking account, and once again I know exactly how much money I have at all times. No balancing required. (I still review my checking accounts once a month for errors, but that takes way less time than balancing them.)

“Money orders?” you say, “Those are a hassle!”

That’s what I thought before actually using them. As long as you don’t need to use them often, they’re actually not a hassle at all. They cost 30 cents at most big box grocery stores. So once a month, when I’m at the grocery store (because I have to be there anyway to get my food), I walk over to their customer service desk and get my two money orders.

It takes less than 3 minutes (since I do my shopping when no one else is there) and costs a grand total of 60 cents. I then slap the money orders into a pre-printed, pre-stamped envelope and mail it on the way out of the grocery store (there’s USPS mailbox in the same parking lot). Boom. Done. No check writing. Instant debit from my account. No balancing. No purchasing checks. I’m in love.

Now if you want to use your bank’s bill-pay services to have them cut your checks, that’s okay too, because at least you’re removing yourself from the flow of work. I’m just saying I like my way better. Someday soon, everyone will have their own personal PayPal account (or similar) and we won’t even need paper to move money any more (even cash will become a thing of the past, thank God), but until then, stop writing checks. It’s a waste of your time.

Today we’re going to talk about the TRAF system. I’ve talked about it before and it’s extremely important to your time management, life effectiveness, and peace of mind.

Every piece  of incoming data into your life, be it an email, text, voice mail, piece of paper, piece of snail mail, receipt, or whatever must be run through the TRAF system. You should start getting into the habit of using TRAF automatically whenever a new item appears in your life.

There are only four valid things you need to do with an incoming item:

T – Trash. Throw it away or delete it immediately.

R – Refer. Forward it to someone else to handle it.

A – Action. Create a new item on your to do list to deal with the item later.

F – File. File or archive the item for retrieval later.

Notice that “Read it and then leave it there so you’ll have to read it again later” is not one of your choices, and that’s the beauty of TRAF.  TRAF forces you to deal with the item productively and immediately, and ideally only once. A few key points on using TRAF:

- Your two favorite items, by far, should be Trash and Refer. The more things you can Trash or Refer, the better your life will be. Make Trashing and Referring your two best friends. Most people are scared to delete stuff or throw stuff away, and this is a huge mistake. I myself was like this for many years.

I worked on it and worked on it, and today I love to throw things away. Deleting huge swaths of emails or throwing away piles of magazines makes me very, very happy. I suggest you adopt a similar attitude.

- People forget that filing (paper) or archiving (digital data) creates work. Before you choose File in TRAF, refocus on the item one more time and ask yourself these two questions: “How bad would things be if I never found this ever again?” and “How easy is it to look up this peice of information if I delete/trash this?”

In a Google/YouTube/Wikipedia cloud-based world, I think you’ll find the vast majority of the time you won’t need to file or archive it at all. TRASH IT! By the way, this is a key skill for your paperless office.

If your item requires Action, and it literally will take you less than two minutes to do it, then pause whatever you’re doing and just do it right now. This is a David Allen technique and it’s quite valid. Adding a task item to your to do list that takes less than two minutes to finish really doesn’t make any sense.

However if it does take more than two minutes, resist the urge to do it now. Instead, add the task to your to do list for scheduling and prioritization later. Very important.

Let me repeat, all of this applies to emails just as much as it applies to papers on your desk.

You’ll experience an immediate boost in productivity the very first time you use TRAF. Give it a shot.

I started out at age 18 with no job, no money, no education, and sub-par people skills. By age 19 I had my own house (a condo, actually, but I owned it). By age 20 I was making the inflation equivalent of $72,000 a year, driving my cool sports car (that was completely paid off…no car payment), living in my upscale condo, with a lifestyle better than a lot of men I worked with who were decades older than me and more educated, men with debts, marriages, kids, low to average incomes, and a lot of stress.

Today I’m going to talk about how this all started.

In the summer of 1990 I finished my senior year of high school. I sat down and wrote out all of my financial goals, both one-year goals and ten-year goals. I clarified them and put deadlines on them. I knew I wanted to start my own business, but I also was able to admit to myself that I was too young, immature, and inexperienced to actually do that.

So my plan was to get a job in the tech industry (which was on the rise back then), stick with it for a few years, build my income as much as I could, save money as best I could, learn as much as I could, then quit and start my own business. I also knew I wanted to do all of this without going to college. Stories of super-successful Bill Gates-like guys were rolling around in my brain, and I was convinced I could achieve success while skipping that whole “college thing”.

This meant that mission number one was find a good tech company and get a job there. At age 18. With no college degree. And almost no experience. Hm. By that time I was living in a crappy apartment I was barely able to afford by working for a temporary agency, occasionally, doing data entry work, but that was it.

So I whipped up a resume, and it didn’t look good. During high school I had done things like volunteer for the local science center, do a little computer work for my dad’s little business, and by then I had done some temporary data entry gigs for a local hospital and insurance company. Pretty pathetic, but at least it was something to put down other than “Education: High School”. I put these  on my resume and made them sound as rich and impressive as possible (which is what everyone does on their resume).

I ran down to the local copy center and made several copies of it plus a cover letter. Then I put each resume in a nice manila envelope, and had my sister write my name on the outside of each one, since her handwriting was much better than mine.

Next, I cracked open the big fat phone book (there was no internet back then) and looked at all the big, fancy computer companies in my area. I made a list of the ones that seemed interesting and seemed like they were doing well financially from things I had heard.

Then I hopped into my piece of crap 1979 Toyota Supra that barely ran, and drove out to all of these companies. I walked into each company asking to speak to the HR manager, offering my resume for any positions they might have for a stupid, smartass 18 year-old kid with no education.

Okay, I didn’t say that last part. Instead I said something like “A smart, eager young gentleman with a diverse work experience.” I sounded so dumb I had to try not to laugh when I said it. I’m sure I looked pretty classy standing there in my crappy clothes and long 80′s-rock-star hair with the Steven Seagal ponytail. Oh yeah.

Sometimes the receptionist would actually let me talk to the HR manager, where I would smile and act impressive and hand him my resume, but usually the secretary sneered at me while holding her nose. In those cases, I just handed the resume to her with her promise that she would forward it on to the HR manager.

I did this for several months. Often I would return to the exact same office and offer my resume again.  Finally, I had two companies bite. I applied for the entry level jobs they were offering, but I was turned down. A little later, one company offered to take me on as a temporary worker for one month. I leaped at the chance…and…they hired me! Well, “hired” is a relative word when you’re a temp. I was “hired” for just a month.

The company was, at the time, one of the largest software companies in the world, selling DOS utilities. I attacked the job with gusto. As the month drew to a close, I researched all the jobs they had posted internally and applied for all of them I could even remotely qualify for. It was now 1991, a recession year, so there wasn’t much there. The month ended, and I left, hearing nothing.

A few weeks later I got a phone call saying that I was “under consideration” for one of the crappy entry-level tech jobs, specifically telephone technical support (this was well before they outsourced that kind of thing to India). They wanted me to come in and take a test on my skill with DOS. I happily agreed, even though I knew next to nothing about DOS, being a BASIC, Apple IIe, and Commodore 64 man.

I borrowed a DOS book from my uncle who worked for Hewlett Packard, read it from cover to cover over a weekend, and on Monday I took the test.

A few days later I received the phone call. They had liked me in the interview, but I had failed the test and was not going to be hired.

Crap.

I knew that the tech support department was still growing though, and that they would still need more techs. So I re-read the stupid DOS book again, this time taking notes and re-reading any parts I didn’t understand, which was a lot. Then I drove out to the company several times, re-delivering my resume over and over and over again, driving the receptionist and the HR department crazy.

Finally, finally, I received another call. They were going to give me another chance. Yay! But I would still have to successfully pass the DOS test before being hired. Crap! I just said “No problem!”.

I studied again. Went in and took the test again. Then left and waited by the phone. For days. And days.

Finally, I got the call. “Well, Caleb,” the HR manager said, “It is my pleasure to offer you the position of Technical Support Specialist. You did it, kid.” I had gotten the job. While I screamed with joy and danced around the room, the HR guy gave me a warning, “Now look, Caleb. Most people we’re hiring for this position are people in their twenties and thirties with college degrees. So the fact you’ve never been to college and are still a teenager ..well, I would just keep that to yourself for the time being.” Again I gave him a “No problem!”.

At age 18, I now had a job making more money than my high school teachers. It was one of the happiest days of my life. Even better, it was an hourly position, which means I got overtime pay, which I loved. Every time they asked (or demanded) we all worked overtime, while all the married middle-age guys bitched and whined, I jumped for joy. More money! Yay!

It was all uphill from there. My goals, desire and persistence had paid off. Soon I moved to different companies and eventually started my own business by age 24. But that’s another story.

Many years ago I rented one of those storage unit thingies. You know, the garages with the bright orange doors that you rent monthly to store all of your crap that you really should throw away but can’t bring yourself to? In my case, I actually had a reason in that I was storing client equipment and paperwork…as well as some crap that I should have thrown away.

Thank goodness I’ve simplified my life since then, but back in the old days I used to horde useless crap just like any other good commercialized American.

I forget how much the monthly rental fee was, but it wasn’t much. Somewhere around $80 I think. For over a year, I paid my rental fee every month, on time, and had no hassles. I visited the storage unit about two or three times a month, so I was actually using it and not wasting my money. In other words, I felt very good about the purchase.

One day I’m opening the mail in my office and I pull out a letter from the storage unit company. It stated in very large, bold letters that I was “SERIOUSLY DELINQUENT!” and if I didn’t “PAY IMMEDIATELY!”  then in three days they were going to literally tear off (destroy) the padlock to my unit (a lock I had to purchase myself, per their instructions), go through all of my stuff, and auction it off. (Apparently there’s now a TV show called Storage Wars where they film storage unit owners doing this…auctioning off other people’s crap. Nice.)

I was bewildered. After all, according to their letter I was “SERIOUSLY DELINQUENT!“. Could I really be this late in paying such a small bill? I found it hard to believe I was months behind on any bill I had, much less this tiny one. I checked my books to see if I had paid them last month. Sure enough, I had, and the check had cleared the bank. Hm.

Then I looked for the due date on the current month’s bill. Sure enough, I was late in paying them. Four days late. Four days.  In my entire business and personal life, I had never encountered a company that considered four days late as  ”SERIOUSLY DELINQUENT!“. Here I was, a mere four days late, and they were ready to break into my garage and auction off  thousands of dollars of my stuff in order to get their single payment of eighty bucks.

None of this made any sense. I assumed there was some kind of bookkeeping mistake on their end.

The next day, I drove out to the storage unit and walked into the office. The place was run by an old couple who apparently lived there. Or at least it looked that way. The old woman was behind the counter and greeted me warmly as I entered. I showed her the late notice and ask her if there was some kind of mistake.

“No mistake,” she said sweetly, “On Tuesday we’re going to auction your stuff off if we don’t receive payment.”

“Okay,” I said, “I’ll make a payment right now, but if you look at the date of the letter and the due date on my bill, it shows that I was only four days late.”

“Yes,” she said, looking at the paperwork.

Very calmly, doing my honest best to not take any kind of snarky tone, I said, “So if a customer is four days late, you break into his unit and auction his stuff off?”

Immediately her entire demeanor changed. The pleasant look on her face vanished and her eyes darkened. Instead of a normal tone of voice, she now spoke in a clipped, angry chitter.

“Well,” she sputtered, “If you read your lease, you would see that it clearly states…” She went on and on about their billing policies, the entire time her tone was one of anger and defensiveness.

When she finally finished, I said to her in a very calm voice, “I’ve read my lease, and I don’t remember every detail, but I’m sure you’re right. I’m sure that’s exactly what it says. Now, from a customer service standpoint, when you tell a long-time customer who’s never been late that you’re going to auction his stuff off when he’s only four days late…does that make sense to you?”

“Well,” she said robotically, “The lease you signed clearly says…”

And on and on it she went. I smiled, paid her, wished her a good day, went back home, cleared some space in my garage and a bedroom, borrowed a truck from a friend, cleared out my storage unit, and moved everything into my house. Problem solved.

Not only was the the stuff in my storage unit valuable, but some of it was owned by my clients. A lot of the paperwork was highly confidential  If the owners of the facility were going to brainlessly and robotically have and enforce such an insane policy, I couldn’t afford to lose thousands of dollars of paperwork and equipment, as well as seriously cause problems with my clients, all because of some minor, one-time bookkeeping delay.

I later learned that in the storage unit industry, this kind of authoritarian policy is normal. Just a year after this happened, one of the companies I was consulting with, a large regional plumbing company, had the exact same problem with their storage unit. Due to a minor bookkeeping delay with their AP person one month, they were a few days late paying their storage bill, and the storage unit actually bashed open their lock and inventoried their equipment for auction.

The president of the company was enraged, and immediately ordered his staff to cancel the storage contract and remove all their stuff from the unit and somehow find a way to store it on-site. Which they did.

Hey, perhaps the storage unit industry has a good reason for this insane policy. Perhaps the vast majority of people who rent storage units are evil, lazy financial delinquents who constantly rip people off and refuse to pay their bills. I don’t know. I do know that when companies like this enforce insane policies like this over the concept of logic and customer service, not only do they lose a LOT of business, but they lose that business from the best and most responsible types of customers in the marketplace…which would be other businesses.

Way back in 1945, a radar engineer named Percy Spencer was standing in front of a magnetron radar. Suddenly, and for seemingly no reason, the chocolate bar he had in his pocket melted, as if by magic. Curious, he got some unpopped popcorn and placed it in front of the radar. The popcorn popped! All over the room!

He was trying to make a better radar, but instead it seemed he stumbled across a machine that could magically heat objects with no burner and no fire. A light bulb went off in his head. He proceeded to perfect the technology, and his invention is something you have in your kitchen right now: the microwave oven.

In 1968 a clever guy named Spencer Silver was trying to create a new super glue that would be the world’s greatest adhesive. He failed. Miserably. As a matter of fact, his glue was so crappy you could glue something together and then easily peal it apart later. A light bulb went off in his head, and now his invention is something sitting on your desk right now: the Post-it Note.

A few years later, a team of scientists were trying to invent a new miracle pill that would lower people’s blood pressure. They tried to perfect it, but it never made the grade. It was considered a failure.

However, one of the scientists noticed that the drug had a very odd side effect. It would cause people to grow hair. A light bulb went off in his head, and now that same drug, called minoxidil, is in use all over the world. You may have heard it called by its marketing name: Rogaine.

We don’t realize how many great discoveries were made completely on accident. However! All of these discoveries were made by people striving for something and taking action. No discovery, even the accidental ones, ever happened to some guy sitting on the couch while watching American Idol and heating a Hot Pocket.

Many times in life you will surprise yourself by finding success in an area you never planned on, but this can only happen if you are actively moving towards a solid goal that motivates you.

There’s been a lot of talk in politics over the last two years about the “one percent” and the “one percenters”. Usually it’s a negative connotation. Today I’m going to forget about the political side of the discussion and focus on the financial side, which to me is much more interesting.

First off, “one percent” doesn’t really mean anything. What does it really mean if someone is in the “one percent”?

Essentially, if you make more than about $344,000 a year or if your personal net worth is over $8.2 million, then congratulations, you’re in the one percent.

Wow. That’s a lot of money. I don’t think most people realize this. That means if you make under $344,000 a year and you’re worth less than $8.2 million, you’re in the bottom 99% just like the rest of us poor schlubs. Somehow I think those protesters last year wouldn’t consider you a “99%er” if you made, say, $250,000 a year. But again, I’m trying to avoid the political side of this (as difficult as that is).

An interesting side note is that if you make over $154,000 a year, you’re in the top 5%, and if you make over $112,000, you’re in the top 10%.  Amazingly, if you make just $66,000 a year, you’re in the top 25%! It’s a little depressing to think that 75% of the American population makes less than $66,000 a year. Inflation being what it is, $66,000 is not very much money. If you lived in the typical American city and had a kid or two, at $66,000 you’d be really, really strapped. Again, wow.

What kinds of jobs, businesses, or careers are most likely to get you into that 1%, $344,000 a year range? Glad you asked! There’s a very cool chart the New York Times did located right here that illustrates this beautifully. Take a look. It’s very illuminating.

Some of the jobs on there are the obvious ones, like managers, lawyers, doctors, and executives. Accountants and auditors are also clearly prominent. Industries such as banking and insurance are strongly represented. No surprise there. Sales is also strongly represented, and most people forget that being a commissioned salesperson is one of the fastest ways to get to very high income levels. If I didn’t own my own business, I’d be in commission sales.

You’ll also see some very weird stuff in there. Like secretaries. Secretaries? How many secretaries do you know that make over $344,000 a year? If you know any, could you give them my number and tell them I’m not married? And that I love them? Thanks.

Another huge category is teachers. Teachers? Really? Teachers? All this stuff I keep hearing about teachers not getting paid enough, and here they are, one of the biggest categories of the one percent! Hmmmmm. Looks like I’d better have a chat with my daughter’s school. I had a feeling my property taxes seemed a little high…

Then we have retail sales clerks. Huh? That cute checkout girl at Target is making $344,000 a year? I had no idea. Hey, forget the secretary. I’ll take that multimillionaire Target checkout girl. On her smoke break she could go buy me that new Lamborghini.

My point here is when you actually dig into something to look at the real numbers involved, you might be very surprised at what you find. $344,000 a year is lot of money, but it may not be as far beyond your reach as you might have once thought.

There once was an independently-owned supermarket with a clever and effective management team. They regularly met with customers and received feedback.

Proactively talking to customers and determining what they want. So far, so good.

During one of the meetings the customers overwhelmingly said they wanted more fresh fish. So the supermarket went into overdrive, getting up early in the morning, running to the dock, purchasing the freshest fish they could find, rushing it back to the store, cleaning the fish beautifully and neatly wrapping it and proudly displaying it as “FRESH FISH”, which it was.

Giving customers what they want. So far, so good.

The management team checked the sales figures after a while expecting to see a huge surge.

They saw nothing. Sales, even those of the fish, had remained flat.

After screaming a few “WTFs?”, the team went back to the customers and talked to them again. “We gave you fresh fish, just like you wanted. What’s the deal?” The answer they received was interesting.

“That fish isn’t fresh,” the customers said.

“What?” the team responded, “Yes they are. They’re fresh from the docks. We have guys down there at 4am getting that fish. We even have signs that say “FRESH FISH.”

“It doesn’t look fresh,” the customers said, “The fish is too neat and clean and wrapped and nice. Fresh fish are kinda dirty, just laying in big piles on ice, like at the fish market.”

So the supermarket changed things around a little. Every morning they still ran down to the dock to grab the freshest fish and bring it back to the supermarket. However this time they stopped wrapping the fish. They also didn’t clean the fish very well, and made sure the fish looked a little more “raw”. Instead of wrapping the fish nicely, they just got some big white plastic crates, filled them with ice, and flopped the fish on them in an almost haphazard fashion. Just like a real fresh fish market down at the dock.

Sales of fish skyrocketed. The supermarket was happy. As were their customers.

You have two never-ending problems in business:

1. You don’t know what your customers really want.

2. Your customers often don’t know what they really want.

The only way you solve problem number one is by proactively asking customers what they want. It’s amazing to me the number of business owners and salespeople who never do this.

However asking is only 50% of the battle. Many times customers are not going to be 100% crystal clear on what they want, even if they clearly tell you what they want. Or what they think they want. Or, in the case of the supermarket, the type of buying experience they want to have. The only way to solve this problem is by testing.

Only by asking and testing can you get to the bottom of what your customers really want. Not just what they say they want.