Continue reading »]]> When turning down an invitation or an idea, I often feel that I have to add a reason to my response. Every time I attempt to mutter an excuse that seems reasonable, I end up sounding pathetic and disappointing. When you absolutely don’t want to agree to a request, say no and let it be a complete sentence.

If you find yourself explaining your answer, or worse, saying “Yes” because your “No” isn’t strong enough, here’s how to ensure your NO is a complete sentence.

1) Prepare your response in advance.

Honestly, people come to you for help because they know you’ll say yes. It’s easier to ask you than to ask anyone else. If you don’t have a planned response, you’ll often say yes because your were caught off-guard. Start training yourself to say no by turning down requests that you absolutely do not want to do, ever. Have a few rejection responses memorized. You can always change your mind later.

Quick Answers, “No, I can’t make it.” Or, “No, I have other plans”, then smile and stop talking.
If they continue to ask Why Not, respond with quick questions of your own, “Have you asked anyone else?” “Why are you asking me? Will have them responding to you and often turns the conversation around.
You can simply say No – or if you want to be polite, say “No, thank you.” Period.

Rule of Thumb: By agreeing to every request, you’re eliminating your options of spending time doing things that you really love, that energize you and keep you feeling optimized. It’s far easier to jump on board later than it is to get out of a commitment after you’ve agreed.

2) Ask something, anything.

It’s easy for people to ask you for help, because they don’t have to reciprocate, so it’s about time you asked for them to return the favor. You can feel better about agreeing to their request when you set some boundaries of your own. Maybe the reason you’re always on the receiving end of requests is because you never make any of your own.

“I’ll agree to help with your event. Will you help me with mine?”
“I can help out for a few hours; will you put together a few other members of the team?”
“I’ll attend your event; will you give me a few minutes to present to your group? “

Rule of Thumb: Rather than being viewed as a community giver, everyone knows you’re a pushover. Say yes to people who are truly interested in a partnership.

3) Only fools rush in.

Just because technology provides instant answers doesn’t mean you have to. Never agree to anything on the spot. Buying yourself time to respond ensures you agree to commitments with a clear mind, avoiding the regret of an immediate response.

“I have to check my calendar and get back to you. What’s your deadline?”
“Can you put that request in writing so I’ll know what I’m committing to?”
“Who else have you asked?”

Rule of Thumb: If you really want to do it, or you really want to help out a friend or loved one, say YES. Do what you love and help those you love. Follow your heart and you’ll never make a mistake.

Continue reading »]]> Turn on the radio, and most likely, you’ll hear advertising by big corporate household names, unless you’re listening to the Experience Pros Radio Show on AM 560 KLZ. The Experience Pros Radio Show, hosted by the popular duo, Eric Reamer and Angel Tuccy, features positive business talk on the radio every single day. Along with their collection of guest hosts, the show is dedicated to providing inspiration along with useful business topics that range from increasing revenue, using social media, motivating your employees and improving customer service. Though they are making a name for themselves across the country, their intention is to make a name for their advertisers, most of which are small companies and first-time radio advertisers. Commercial advertising is big business, and usually, cost prohibitive for small companies. Small business is not only the backbone of America; small business is the driving force of the Experience Pros Radio Show.

Commercials Are A Full-Contact Sport

This Sunday, watching the television commercials will be just as much of a draw as the competitive football game taking place. As Angel Tuccy posted on her Facebook wall “Unless the Broncos are playing, the only reason to watch the Super Bowl is for the commercials.”

In general, commercials really do get a bad rap. With the innovation of hi-tech television recording devices, most people skip watching the commercials and use that window of opportunity to take a kitchen or bathroom break. Except for one unprecedented Sunday of the year when commercials become just as much a part of the main attraction as the featured sporting event. Big companies with big dollars pull out all the stops to grab the consumer’s attention. They’re clever. They’re funny. They make you laugh, but most importantly, they keep you glued to the television.

On any other day of the year, you tune out television and radio commercials. Especially on music stations where the radio is playing in the background, you’re barely paying attention at all. Except on talk radio. Talk radio offers advertisers a more engaged listener to the station or to the program hosts. Talk radio listeners tend to have the volume turned up for active listening. This is good news for advertisers because when the commercial starts, your audience is still engaged. Which usually equates to premium advertising rates that often exclude entrepreneurs, independently owned retailers, and micro-sized companies.

Yet, the Experience Pros Radio Show is home to almost 2-dozen small companies who band together to share the costs of airtime and have an actual presence on the radio. Rather than being fully supported by big corporate names, these are small, local independent companies who are known by their neighbors in their community.

Working Together, Doing Great Things

There are a couple of larger corporations helping spread the revolution of kindness on the airwaves; CAP Logistics and Boyer’s Coffee were familiar names prior to joining the show. CAP Logistics is a large-freight handling company, with a vision to make a global impact on the world. Using collaboration as the backbone of their partnership with the Experience Pros Radio Show, CAP Logistics hosts a daily 40-minute segment sharing stories of great people doing great things in their community. The radio program brings to life the stories that are shared in the magazine that CAP Logistics has founded; ICOSA Magazine. ICOSA Magazine is distributed all around the globe, yet the radio interviews are exclusive to the Experience Pros Radio Show.

Boyer’s Coffee, a Colorado Proud company, chose to partner with the Experience Pros Radio Show because of the opportunity to be creative with their marketing efforts. More than buying commercial spots, Boyer’s and Experience Pros are collaborating together to be more involved in the Colorado landscape. Though their partnership appears to be on the air, their biggest impact will be off-the-air and in the community.

Most of the advertisers on the Experience Pros Radio Show have less than 10 employees, but that’s not stopping the effort to turn them all into household names that you recognize and trust. If you’d like a bird’s eye view of the revolution, pay attention to the growth of these local companies: The Growth Curve Institute, RMK Cartridges, ALMC Mortgage, Avail Computer Services, C Squared Computer Consulting, Cybertary of Littleton, Frame de Art, Water 2 Wine Centennial, Dental Wellness at Dry Creek, Extreme Relationship Management, My Favorite Non Profit, Nylund’s Collision Center, Trinity Title, and the Colorado Association of Sales Helpers.
The Most Positive Business Talk Show

The Experience Pros Radio show started as a one-hour once a week Internet radio show in January 2009, hosted by Digital Buzz Radio. They moved the show to the KLZ airwaves in November 2009 with a 30-minute daily broadcast at 10:30 am. In January 2011, the show changed their time slot to 11:30am, with hopes that broadcasting before the Dave Ramsey Show, their audience would grow. Six weeks later, they partnered with Colorado National Guard, The Growth Curve Institute, and ICOSA Magazine in order to expand to a 2-hour daily time slot. Critics were concerned that Reamer and Tuccy wouldn’t be able to take the leap from 30 minutes a day to 10 hours per week, but anyone who listens regularly knows that this is what the duo was destined for. Dr. Ivan Misner, founder of BNI dubbed the show “The Most Positive Business Talk Show in America”.

The Experience Pros Radio Show broadcasts daily from the Crawford Broadcasting studio in Denver, CO, simulcasts on three more Crawford Broadcast stations: KJSL in St. Louis, MO, and WYDE and WXJC in Birmingham, AL. The show also airs on the Salem Communications network in Minneapolis/St. Paul on 1570 KYCR. The coverage for all six stations crosses into seventeen states with a reach of 17,000,000 people.
The Experience Pros Radio Show is the exclusive radio home to the Colorado National Guard, ICOSA Magazine and Fan-Braggin’ Fridays. Other unique and exclusive segments include “Life on the Bright Side” hosted by Dr. Camillo DiLizia, DMD, and every week, Michael Russo calls in from Australia to share “Business Tips from Down Under”. Every Monday, professionals learn how to handle business growth by listening to “Navigating the Growth Curve” with James Fischer. A favorite among listeners is “Non Profits Who Care”, hosted by Ralph Grills, owner of My Favorite Non Profit.

“Experience Pros has one of the most engaged and motivated listening audiences,” says Ely Delaney, owner of Your Marketing University.com, and a guest on the show from Arizona. Listeners such as Brooke Hengst of Your Castle Realty and Scott Peek from Lincoln Homes Shows both commented on the Experience Pros Facebook page that they have “rescheduled their daily schedule to include listening to the Experience Pros Radio Show.”

Since The Experience Pros Radio Show hit the airwaves in November 2009, Tuccy and Reamer have provided a marketing engine for their sponsors. Advertisers have more than just commercial spots; they put together monthly marketing campaigns that run simultaneously with the radio show. Each advertiser is promoted on the Extreme Customer Service Directory and collaborates to help each other grow. “Collaboration is the key behind every thing we do,” says Reamer, “At Experience Pros, we are starting a revolution by bringing business professionals together in an innovative way. The broadcasting microphone has turned out to be the best way for us to get the message out for local business. It’s a great partnership on collaboration.”
The Experience Pros Radio Show is creating a revolution in how people are treating people in business. The radio show focuses increasing business by improving your customer relationships. (http://www.ExperiencePros.com)

Check your local stations or the Tune-In App to listen to The Experience Pros Radio Show.

Continue reading »]]> During a recent radio interview with James Fischer of the Growth Curve Institute, the conversation turned to describing the point at which a company’s employees turn away from the worker/drone mentality, and begin to embrace the mindset of ownership thinking.

At Experience Pros, we call this happening the point of “Cultural Completion”, and it is a definitive metric for systemic business growth.  When employees begin having a more global awareness of the company’s overall business, the culture of the workplace environment shifts dynamically from “I have to” to, “We get to”.  This is a milestone that every business owner and operator strives to reach, because from this point forward, leadership boils up from within.

Does your company have “Cultural Completion”?  If not, what are you doing to guide in that direction?  We strongly encourage business owners to connect with James Fischer at the Growth Curve Institute to discover how to bring about a shift in your own corporate growth curve.

Continue reading »]]> Every business has a set of regularly occurring tasks that must get done every month in order to sustain, or in our case, grow the business.  These include, but are not limited to the following:

- Connect with clients
- Pay bills
- Invoice clients
- Update web content
- Develop the pipeline, etc.

The length of your list is probably determined by the complexity of your business, which can be easily assessed by the number of people you have working for you.  The more complex, the more monthly, weekly or daily tasks you will have.  How do you make sure that they all get done?

We create lists.  We know that won’t come as a big shock to anyone who has purchased either of our best-selling books, “Lists That Saved My Life” or “Lists That Saved My Business”.  But perhaps a more relevant question is, “what do you do”?

We have lists for the beginning of every month.  We have lists for the beginning of every day.  We even have special lists for Thursday afternoon and every 20th of the month.  Why so many lists?  Because without them, essential aspects of our business get forgotten or neglected.

Do yourself a favor today.  Right now, while you’re thinking of it… write down a list of things that you have to do regularly in your business.  You’ll probably recognize that every list begets at least one sub-list.  Write those down, too.  When you’re done, you will have taken a major step forward toward making your business delegate-able and and duplicatable.

Why does that matter?  Because eventually, your company will grow to the point where you will want to either hire someone, or as we have done, outsource it to someone else. Better to be ready for that time, than disorganized and stifled.

Continue reading »]]> Every now and then, a book comes along that changes everything.

Lists That Saved My Business is one such book!

Best selling authors Angel Tuccy and Eric Reamer offer their very unique, and equally effective thoughts on how to develop your business through your greatest asset… your customer relationships!