Be a Resource

There is no more important advice one can give in business than this: make yourself useful to others. Indeed, I strongly recommend that you make that your primary objective when you wake up each day. Serve others, help them, and worry about your more formal job duties after that. Don’t worry: your “real” work will get done.

This isn’t my idea. It’s wisdom of the ages, passed down by great business coaches such as Aristotle, Benjamin Franklin, Dale Carnegie, and most recently, by Thomas Stanley, Ph.D., in his terrific book, Networking With Millionaires. (Dr. Stanley is most famous for his #1 bestseller, The Millionaire Next Door, which I also highly recommend).

I’ve been using this strategy for years to advance my business – it fits my personality to help others whenever I can, so I’ve been doing it without much reflection, at least until I read Stanley’s book. It was at that time that I turned this good practice into a career strategy: I guess you could say that this expert gave me “permission” to do with zeal what I’ve already been doing all along.

Now I’m giving you that same permission. Be helpful. Go way out of your way. This alone, done right, will make you immensely successful in whatever you do.

This is customer service taken to a whole new level: that elusive five-star level. Around Coiné, for years now, one of our favorite mottos has been, “My job is to make your job easier.” It just makes sense; we want to be invited back to do more work for our clients! So, rather than being another imposition on our clients’ already busy work lives, we try whenever possible to help them lighten their load.

We do this in innumerable little ways. Case in point: at Coiné Language School (www.coinelanguage.com), we don’t do translation: it's not in line with our core business. But if we are asked to, we’ll find a translator and get it done. That’s one less worry for our client, so we're happy to do it.

Our first foreign language class came about because I met an American who wanted Portuguese class. It was soon after we started. We had a little brick-and-mortar one-room schoolhouse downtown, and I was still the only teacher. I was visiting local companies that catered to foreigners, especially the many Brazilians in our town, to ask if I could post flyers. They all said yes – that was one more way that they were being useful to their clientele. Then one insurance agent said, “You know, if I spoke Portuguese, I’d get a lot more business. Do you have a teacher for me?”

“Yes we do,” I said, before I’d even considered the question. The fact was that “we” (okay, “I”) didn’t, but I was already dialed into the local Brazilian community, and I knew a few people who would be great at this assignment.

Now I had another problem: our fee structure was such that my one student would pay me less than I would pay her teacher. So, I spread the word among other Americans. We collected a local executive, a family of four adults who were traveling to Portugal for their son’s wedding to a Portuguese girl, and the fiancé of a Brazilian. We were in business.

Suddenly Ted’s English School, as we had been calling it, became Ted’s Language School. Today, almost half of the students of Coiné Language School are American professionals who have to travel for their work, and thus have a real need to speak Spanish, French, Portuguese, Chinese, German…. What started as an inclination to serve has turned into a huge profit center.

More recently, I was pitching a large car dealer on Coiné’s customer service programs. He took a pass, but said that he needed a top-notch sales trainer. I knew a great one to recommend, but he wanted to hire this person as an employee. I didn’t know any quality sales pros who would be willing to switch companies for this guy, but networking had introduced me to the owner of a large recruiting firm.

So, I did them both a favor (at no charge) by making the introduction. Now I had two successful business owners who were inclined to help me, one of which, the recruiter, is representing Coiné when his sales pros make calls all over the Boston area. (It was his idea; I hadn't even thought to ask).

At Coiné, we hate to say no. It’s our inclination to say yes that makes us useful – and that endears us to our clients, and to our friends, and to acquaintances as well.

If we can help someone and if we think they deserve it, we will. That doesn’t make us good people. It doesn’t make us anything we’re not already. It’s a pleasure to help others, and often that service comes back in the form of returned favors.

My latest passion is creating a one-stop source for every single charity in Greater Naples to hook up with donors and volunteers, and to communicate better with each other. For instance, one night there were three prominent fundraisers, only because each organization involved had no idea what the other two were up to (there are at least 135 NGOs in the town of Naples alone). Donors had to choose between these three events. What an avoidable mistake! Yet this has been going on for years.

So there’s a need here in town – I suspect it’s the same everywhere – and it’s right up the Coiné Foundation’s alley. We set up www.naplessocialaction.blogspot.com in twenty minutes. We began contacting nonprofits and listing their events on that blog; our actual web site (www.naplessocialaction.org) should be up in a month or two, followed by similar sites for Boston and Westport, Connecticut.

Guess what? There’s no better advertising; no better way to meet every mover and shaker in this incredibly affluent town. Is that why we started this project? No. We saw a need. We spoke to a number of people at nonprofits say they wished things in town were better organized. Jane and I recognized right away that this coordination would serve the constituents of the nonprofits greatly, and that’s why we created the Coiné Foundation (www.coinefoundation.org) to start with.

What does all of this have to do with you? My intention is to inspire you to act. What we’ve done to help others and what you can do will almost certainly be quite different. That’s a good thing. You talk to people who could benefit from your aid all day long. You live and do business in communities that have needs – for what? That's for you to figure out. It should be easy, once you start looking.

Help other, just because you can. Be useful. Be a resource. It will get you where you want to go in life. You can bet on it.

For more on outstanding customer service, I recommend you give another Coine blog a visit:

www.naplesresource.blogspot.com