How Love and Business Makes Success So Sweet

Success in life, business, and love is not that complicated at all. Us human beings are the ones who make it complicated. If we could only harken back to our much less encumbered existence when we were a child and everything didn’t have to have ulterior motives attached to it.

So how do love and business become bedfellows? How do you know if you are a success, or for that matter, a failure? Is it like Monopoly where you win with the most Hotels on Park Street, or is it something we’ve all forgotten about and yet is right under our noses? Remember the end of the Phantom of the Opera?

This is an article from the heart, for all the other hearts out there who worry way too much and make way too little in their online business ventures.

In my younger days, I once had a girlfriend who used to love to drive up to the toll booths in Connecticut, (before they took them down), and pay her toll, plus the toll for the random driver behind her. I got a kick out of that because I never would have thought of doing that. She just sped off with a big smile on her face and left the bewildered driver behind her feeling stunned and one quarter richer.

I’ll give you my simple definition of love and success so we can put things together and leave with something we all can use starting this very next moment.

For me, love has always meant wanting the highest, most noble thing for that person that you are loving. Success, in any endeavor, is when you get the love part right. So let’s not complicate it here OK? What does this all have to do with selling toilet paper you may ask?

Well, God made us in such a way that we have to eliminate every so often. Don’t ask me why but he just did. He also made trees and leaves in the beginning before paper was invented if you catch my drift. We’ve perfected the TP thing and we’re looking out for each other and making life just a little bit easier to deal with on a day to day basis.

If I denied my kid diapers, would I be loving him? No! Of course not! But trees don’t turn into diapers by themselves and everyone in between the trees and a baby’s butt are entitled to make a buck. That’s what our country was built on. All these smart scientists figured out how to make paper and BOOM, you’ve got pampers on the shelves and TP next to our thrones!

You see, the love part has to always come first before the success part.

How do you define your own success when raising your child? By the grades she gets? By how many sports he participates in? By how many super achievement awards she got? How many friends she has? No! These would all be off base. Your success is defined by whether or not you truly loved your child. All the things that you gave them for their highest good, you gave them the very soil that they needed to grow in. It’s like your garden where you plant a good seed in fertile soil and give it sunlight and water and it multiplies itself. You don’t make it grow but you give it all the stuff it needs for its highest good. It’s not that complicated.

It’s exactly the same in your business! You now have new kids and they’re called your customers and you have to provide the soil that they can grow in. Haven’t you heard the gurus talk about calculating the lifetime value of a customer instead of seeing them as a one time sale? There’s an obligation, a commitment, a deeper relationship to be nurtured and developed BUT with LOVE, NOT GREED! YES, it is much better to give than receive…but why is that so hard for us to accept nowadays? I think if you just open your eyes to the opportunities being presented to you on a daily basis, you just might find it to be true…which reminds me of one little story and then I’ll leave you with a few personal challenges…

Over on the other side of this beautiful earth planet of ours, there lived a family of modest means in a simple home located in an area where lesser fortunate kids used to roam the neighborhood, knocking on doors and begging.

It was Christmas season and presents and toys were strewn about the living room when suddenly a knock at the door! “Go answer it Tommy” the boy’s father said. The boy ran to the door and opened it to discover another boy about the same age who was extremely poor and begging for anything people would give him. Tommy ran back to his father and informed him of who was at the door and why. His father then told him to give his best toy to the boy at the door. Tommy then picked up an old toy truck of his he had been playing with. His father then said, “No, not that one Tommy, the other one” as he pointed to the brand new, bright red fire engine Tommy had received as a gift just an hour before. Tommy’s heart sank like a lead weight as he thought about giving away his prize possession. He sadly picked up the fire engine and took it to the front door where the poor boy was waiting.

Seconds later, Tommy came running back to his Dad who asked him what happened and Tommy looked at his Dad with a small tear in his eye as he said, “Daddy, when can we do that again?” Mom and Dad were next in line with tears in their eyes.

And so I challenge you small business owners to make up your mind to always give your customer that little extra something that they don’t expect. It has to be something of value that will contribute towards their well being. Be creative and give it some thought. If you have the right attitude, I guarantee you will come up with a great idea. Say you own a paint store…why not give your customers a free watercolor paint kit for their kids?If you own a bike shop, give each kid that comes in with their parents, a free pair of streamers to put on their bicycle handle bars. You get the idea.

Love has always been where it’s at and giving that little bit extra to your customers will definitely make you stand out from the crowd and make them want to do business with you the next time around. What goes around always comes around.

To Your Sweet Success,

Michael Spielmann