Most entrepreneurs I’ve met are looking for opportunities to make money all the time. If they followed the advice on these start up websites they wouldn’t just copy stuff and they’d be too late in getting the product or service to market and the opportunity would have gone.

Look at Loubi (Christian Louboutin to you), if he hadn’t read an article about a slashed out shoe with a red line, then thousands of rich women around the world wouldn’t have fallen off his killer heels to, legs in the air, show off his signature red soles.

Dear reader and fan, I want you to take a look at the mind of an entrepreneur. Let’s take one successful one, Stefan Topfer, Editor of this Small Business Blog and one unsuccessful one, the aforementioned aberration, Tony Robinson OBE. They have two things in common; they’re both badly dressed (fleeces – urgh) and they look for business opportunities all the time.

The Recycling Opportunity

So, yesterday, Robinson rang Topfer and the conversation went like this:

Robinson: I’ve just seen on the BBC News site that a scientist has proven that giant dinosaurs could have warmed the earth with their flatulence.
Topfer: Ja – I mean, so?
Robinson: Well, where is the equivalent place today where hundreds of dinosaurs, produce masses of hot air?
Topfer: In your House of Commons and House of Lords?
Robinson: Precisely and why will this supply of huge volumes of hot air continue ad infinitum?
Topfer: Would that be because it is mainly a boys club eating vast quantities of posh nosh provided by the City and the top 100 CEOs and one or two media moguls.
Robinson: Yeah that and their humongous expense accounts that they can spend on Big Macs and pasties. It makes you feel good to know that we can now recycle all that dinosaur fuel for the benefit of the people.
Topfer: Ja, I mean nein, I mean how?
Robinson: You’re fab at technology, do the math and turn Parliament into a massive great hot air heater channelling warmth into the council housing, parks, stations and shop doorways where those with no dosh to pay for heating live.

I won’t carry on – as Topfer told Robinson never to speak to him again. The point is that here are two dinosaurs discussing a business opportunity that utilises a source of natural energy that has been available for thousands of years. There’s nothing original here apart from the possible opportunity.

Stuff to ignore

So ignore the stuff on websites that is ‘conventional business guidance’. ‘How to come up with a great business idea?’, ‘How to pitch your idea to investors?’, ‘Getting finance’ ‘There’s a business in you’, ‘What needs to be in your business plan?’, ‘Get a mentor from a Bank or Corporate’ and ‘How to sell’. the enterprise essentials are much less complicated and far more common sense and natural than this guidance.

Most successful entrepreneurs that I’ve interviewed haven’t done any of the things that are regarded as ‘good business practice’. Most don’t like borrowing money, especially from banks. Their business planning is always in their head. Most of them are action rather than words people. They often copy and improve other people’s ideas and activities like crazy. The point is that time is money and opportunities come and go and they can’t be wasting time on this theoretical business stuff.

Instead, my advice to a start up, from my award winning series of entrepreneur interviews (see my book ‘Stripping for Freedom’) is:

Look for what customers want and are buying that you’d relish providing too.
Then, preferably by bootstrapping, check that you can afford to produce it as a product or service.
Then test market your product or service with its ‘twist’, like Louboutin’s red sole or, more likely, with an additional service that the competition aren’t providing.
Then from what you have learned launch your new business always remembering that you may need more products and services or even businesses to make the earnings you need to make.

Let’s Twist Again

This ‘copying and improving with a twist’ is important to the success of many entrepreneurs.

For example, the unique ‘twist’ that Stefan Topfer achieves with WinWeb is that he is absolutely passionate about beating the global competition not just by great cloud software and infrastructure but with exceptional customer service too. His customer service people are mentors. He’ll sack people that ‘sell’ his products and services as he believes in the customer buying what they choose that is absolutely right for them.

The great news is that everyone starting a business on their own can provide their own ‘twist’, a unique level of service, to support a product or service that customers already understand, want and need. Just get your offer out there as quickly as you can after testing it.

-Finis-

Option 1. using independent contractors/freelancers/other micro-businesses
Option 2. taking on partners or if you’re a limited company or social enterprise, other directors.

OK so I know that my two preferred options fly in the face of government advice, guru advice and business school advice which urges you to grow your business by taking on employees, particularly qualified business managers and leaders, but to me it is all a question of risk. My two options are risky but I believe, if negotiated and managed carefully, are not as risky as taking on a senior employee.

As my businesses have always been B2B service businesses my main worry and focus has always been winning and keeping customers. In over 26 years of starting and running my own businesses I’ve got a better track record of winning and keeping customers using my two alternative options than I have with employees, as executives and managers, however well trained. Most are fine but it’s the ones that are not fine that have proved deadly to our customers, our income, our profitability and most of all our own morale.

The main advantage of option 1 – independent contractors is that you retain total control of your business, it is flexible, it is a service agreement which is easier to manage in time and money than an employment contract with the associated regulations and it is a tap of skilled resource that you can turn on and off dependant on your workload and you don’t have all the associated on costs of employees including purchasing equipment.

Because most contractors/micro businesses want to continue being contracted in the future I find they become like partners of our business and we grow our businesses together. For example I have worked with the same contract trainers and the same designers and developers of learning media for over 20 years. We all pay each other on time too – as soon as we possibly can.

The main disadvantage of this option is that it can play havoc with your margin. However if you go for a very high quality and unique service you may be able to ensure the price you charge covers using contractors and remains competitive.

The main advantage of option 2 – taking on partners/directors – is that it is bootstrapping par excellence. Let me explain; I recently entered a business ‘to what do you owe the secret of your success?’ competition. My answer was ‘my business partner of 26 years, Clare Francis’.

We both invested time and money in our business, we’ll work whatever hours, whenever, in order to succeed. When times were hard we didn’t take money out of the business. We never needed status perks like employees ask for.

We are equally passionate about our customers and our offer to these customers, so much so than many are now friends too. We have complementary but different skills and most of all we trust each other – so implicitly that we don’t have to waste time overseeing each other.

I just love successful business partnerships and believe they are responsible for more successful start ups growing into substantial micro businesses than any other single factor.

My business partner Clare and her husband, Charles, also managed a very successful family business. Indeed, many of my successful micro business owner friends, who say they are going it alone aren’t really. They often, have a spouse or partner, beavering away in the background supporting the business and often holding down a job in the early stages of the start up in order to bring in family income.

Partnerships are my preferred option but it is as tough and careful a decision as deciding to live with someone.

Trust and passion is everything, in my opinion, to success in your own enterprise. This total trust and passion is there with my co-founder of the Enterprise Rockers, Tina Boden, and all the wonderful band leaders of our movement.

We trust each other so much and share the same passion that we’re all putting our own biz money and time, for no return yet, into making it all work.

So, before you do as the gurus recommend and take on a senior employee, do consider whether you’d be better using independent contractors or taking on a partner.

There is a better way of getting help than from Government and Big Company funded start up and micro business support programmes. That’s not to say we don’t want their help and a lot of these free offers of help are good and needed.

Many of my friends and colleagues that are excellent micro business advisers and mentors give their time free to help on many of these programmes. However, whether you get one of these excellent advisers and mentors is a lottery.

Not all help is good for you and your business.

It shouldn’t be pot luck as to whether you get good help or not. In fact some of the help on offer, sadly, should carry a health and wealth warning.

UK examples of stuff that may be ‘Hot or Not’

For example, in the UK we’ve got a plethora of government backed initiatives, often with Big Company offers, designed to help start-ups and small businesses, such as ‘There’s a Business in You’; ‘Start Up Britain’; ‘LEPs’; ‘College start up courses ’; ‘Business Link’; ‘Mentorsme’ and ‘Self-employment programmes through A4e and other major welfare to work providers’.

On top of this there are lots of awards and business pitch competitions sponsored by Big Companies where the winner will get money plus help from a corporate executive or TV celebrity entrepreneur as part of the ‘prize’.

Beware The Know It All Executive

For 26 years now, along with hundreds of other business owners, I’ve warned against the many advisers that think because they’ve been in a senior management job and had some training in coaching, advising, consulting or mentoring that they possess the know how to support start-ups and micro-business owners.

Starting and running your own micro enterprise is not, primarily, about formal research, planning, loans and management skills. Indeed, most corporate managers are lost without a formal business plan, a budget with money to spend already there and some staff.

Worse still, many of the people that design the start-up or micro business owner support programme or competition, that these corporate executives will act as advisers or mentors for, have no experience of starting or running their own micro enterprise.

Blind Alleys

It is the blind leading the blind as no-one knows, including the prospective or existing micro business owner, whether it is useful or dangerous help being offered. Even the big company product and service discounts that are part of the support or prize package may be stuff that you don’t need and may be very unhelpful to getting on with the business of winning and keeping customers.

As Lord Alan Sugar says ‘The last thing you want is government interfering in business because they don’t know what they’re doing. What you want is for them to create a level playing field’

The Better Way

So, recognising that many start-ups may not be able to pay for micro business owner friendly, professional advice what is my better way.

Only allow yourself to be advised, coached, trained or mentored by someone that other micro business owners can vouch for.

Always ask the adviser or mentor at the very first meeting what experience they have of starting and running a micro business (0-9 employees) and if you’re not convinced ask for someone else to help you that other micro business owners can also vouch for.

The Rocking Better Way

As you may know, I’m a co-founder of what will be the biggest self-help community of micro business owners in the world – the Enterprise Rockers.

We help each other to, as Lord Sugar recommends Government should do, level the playing field. No obstacles to our opportunity to succeed. We also trade with each other and help each identify what does help us and what doesn’t.

If you’ve started and registered your business -join our movement and ask other micro business owners what and who is best to help you to survive and thrive. You’ll find that the best helpers are Enterprise Rockers too.

In addition and coming soon , if you can afford to pay for professional advice, the Enterprise Rockers are creating a directory of micro business friendly, proven, practical, professionals. They’ve all started and run their own micro businesses. Our directory will be called SpeedBizSolutions and it takes the risk out of those times you’re looking for an independent professional to help you and your business.

There’ll be free help too if you’re not sure what you’re looking for. See you in the Rockers!

I always chuckle to myself when big companies that sponsor awards to start up and existing small business give, as part of the prize, mentoring or advice from a senior executive in their company. Perhaps it is no laughing matter.

Firstly, it’s arrogant to assume that starting and running a micro enterprise is so easy that someone without any experience of doing it, just because they’re a top corporate executive, can offer useful help. Start ups and micro enterprises are not boiled down versions of corporates!

Secondly, because the fledgling micro business owner doesn’t know what is good and what is bad support they could implement something that turns out to be the kiss of death to their business.

A colleague, Robert Craven, has just written a blog describing how a potential start up lost their redundancy money to unscrupulous ‘support’ providers. How were they to know that they were being conned? One of the reasons we founded the Enterprise Rockers movement is that we felt that a massive community, ‘the power of plenty’, of micro business owners could be self sufficient and we could sort out the wheat from the chaff.

It is important that we do sort out what’s good and valuable from the vultures and the ‘well intentioned but dangerous’. The right micro business to micro business support will lead to 80% of start ups surviving over 3 years with 6% becoming substantial, employing businesses. Essential enterprise skills and know how make all the difference to success. So, it is worth seeking help.

We should encourage prospective and existing business owners to continue to learn and to continue to seek support.

We never know all about enterprise

Twenty four years ago when my business partner, Clare Francis, and I were nearly two years into our business we learned something that saved us from the scrap heap. It was incredibly simple and it was learned by watching videos of our influencing, selling and presenting.

Not only was our product and service offer usually wrong we were often presenting offers without having really found out what our potential clients wanted. Frankly we were desperate to make a sale and no-one wants to buy from people as desperate as we were. We weren’t unskilled. We’d both done postgraduate business courses and we’d both been at Director level in UK subsidiaries of American multinationals. We’d been superbly trained but not on how to start and succeed in our own business.

What I learned this week-end

This week-end I was at the FSB Annual Conference in Scarborough. On top of my membership fee I paid another £100 to participate in the events during the day. My prediction is that these two days were worth thousands of pounds to me in future earnings and hundreds of hours saved of wasted effort.

The three things I learned were:

1. How to improve my use of Linked In so that I can influence someone I wish to make contact with to speak to me. I learned this from the brilliant presentation of Andy Lopata.

2. How it may be worth resetting your goals in a different way if you get stuck in a rut and are not improving your performance. I learned this from the inspirational Roger Black, former Olympic silver medallist, who got silver by focussing on running his perfect race rather than seeking to beat his competitors.

3. This third one is a bit of a cheat because I didn’t learn this at the Conference. On the Saturday lunchtime, co-founder of Enterprise Rockers, Tina Boden, and I met the supremely wise, Andy Peers. Andy is one of the foremost experts in setting up and running social enterprises. I’m certain that everything he advised Tina and I to do will mean we do get over 500,000 micro business owners in our Enterprise Rockers movement. We will make Britain a fairer and better place for micro enterprise.

So, maybe we ‘get the Enterprise T shirt’ for having started and run our own business, but we never truly have fully earned it. That’s because we must keep learning from others and seeking the right kind of support in order to survive and thrive. .

It’s motivating and good fun too. Keep learning.

———- ENDS ———-

On jumping into the taxi to take me to Lime Street station from my hotel I said to the taxi driver ‘Heck you were quick, you surprised me’. To which the taxi driver said ‘That’s what my wife says’. I laughed and it was a fab trip to the station and the taxi driver certainly earned his tip for cheering me up and educating me about all the new exciting development in Liverpool. That Liverpool taxi driver was the real deal. Everything you hope a taxi driver will be and that comes from real experience of handling hundreds of fares.

Intrepreneurs ain’t entrepreneurs

However, many of the speakers at the Congress weren’t. The reason they weren’t is they were people with monthly salaries in jobs. They were passing on what they think is important to be a successful entrepreneur. But really they were still just successful people in jobs not the real deal entrepreneur/enterprise owner. That’s different. They have budgets and functions and staff – it takes quite a bit o success before a start up gets any of these. They hadn’t taken a risk, on their own, with their own money to start and run their own enterprise. Only those that have are the real deal and can new starts authentic advice.

It’s simpler than they make out

The problem is they were magnetic, interesting people and you could tell why they’d got to the top and why peers might regard them as great leaders and entrepreneurs but what they were saying was dangerous. Indeed it is safer if prospective enterprise owners ignore their advice – difficult I know – because they’ll overcomplicate things for you and over-complication usually leads to very expensive ways of doing business.

Sir Richard Branson and Lord Sugar, despite their many critics, are definitely the real deal and although they’re now at the top of large organisations they haven’t forgotten what it is to start your own enterprise. Hearing from them is a reality check. Some things they said that show they are still totally in touch with practical realities. Branson is in favour of student type loans for start ups, and so am I. The difference between him and many of the other speakers is that he says, something like ‘it doesn’t take much money to start a business’.

Lord Sugar says something similar when he advises start ups that a good tip is to ‘work out how you’re going to make the salary you need in your first week of trading’. They know the value of a £pound and they see a few £thousand as a significant investment. Many bank advisers aren’t interested in loans under £50,000. Yet you or I investing £500 in our start up enterprise will be regarded as a serious entrepreneur by anyone who has started their own business.

Enterprise isn’t complex and it’s about your ability to sell products and services. It is not about leadership, business planning, strategy and pitching to investors.

Multiple income streams and test trading

Two weeks earlier I’d been in Leeds City library at an event for people thinking of starting their own business. Apart from my wonderful co-founder of the Enterprise Rockers, Tina Boden, the speakers made setting up and promoting your own business sound very complex. Why? Because all of them were speaking at the event for free. They hoped that the delegates might seek them out afterwards and pay them for their advice. If they made starting up sound easy no-one would pay them to help them. Again, advisers are not always the real deal.

What was disturbing were the number of people I spoke to that after listening to advice from the stage thought they had to work one business idea into a serious business plan and then get the finance to fund their plan. Two people I spoke to were very relieved to hear from me that you should test as many ideas as you can.

In fact testing is more important than planning. Certainly you can start with more than one product or service and can have multiple ways of making money. You may even choose to have money from a part time job or freelancing to help you in the early months.

Happiness is more than one egg in the basket

One person I spoke to went away happy that he could start, virtually the next day, seeing if he could make some money from both landscape gardening and making bicycles easier to ride by perfect fitting and alignment. He had been trained in law and was very confident at writing and was even more pleased that he could blog about totally different subjects and lead prospective clients to two very different websites.

The big lesson to me from all this is that real entrepreneurs that have started and run their own business know that the focus is on what can I sell, to whom, by when in order to start earning my living through my busness. That’s the real deal.

I’m on the train. I’ve been at my publishers in London checking on new cover designs for the third edition of ‘Stripping for Freedom’ and before that I attended an entrepreneurship conference. Unfortunately, I’m with my co-author, the hopeless Tony Robinson OBE. This accounts for the unusual over garments I’ve put on for the train journey. These include a sou’wester, a plastic mac, gloves and plenty of loo paper covering my shoes.

Regular readers will be pleased to know that I’m all French today. Namely, I’m dressed by Jean-Paul Gaultier and accessorised by Louis Vuitton. I’m shod, red soled, by Christian Louboutin plus I’ve a few random dabs of Chanel – pour la bonne chance.

The first reason I’m now covered up is Robinson will at some time try to open the Dairy Stix for his coffee and later, he will open his badly shaken bottle of Diet Coke. The second reason is that when he gets bored of watching YouTube videos of himself he will want to play his favourite ‘Buzzy Bee’ game with me. This involves him telling me to say to him ‘Buzzy bee, buzzy bee, have you any honey?’ He’ll then take a few mouthfuls of Diet Coke, holding the liquid in his mouth. I’ll say ‘Buzzy bee, buzzy bee, have you any honey?’ He’ll then spray Diet Coke all over me.

Now, back to my advice on what advice not to take from the many so-called small business experts and entrepreneurship gurus you may encounter at events:

1. Ignore anything that you cannot immediately see how you could make it work for your business. There is lots of advice, purported to be useful for ‘SMEs’, 99% of all businesses, which is clearly nonsense and straight from corporate gibberland. The advice doesn’t work for the 70% of all businesses that have no employees at all and 96% of all businesses with less than 10 employees where the owner just wants to earn a decent living and does all the important work themselves.

2. Ignore anything that sounds expensive. Serious entrepreneurs with serious businesses seem to make serious investments in all sorts of things that could leave you seriously overstretched. Most start-ups and micro biz owners risk their own money in their business but have no intention of building a major corporate entity, taking on major bank loans with guarantees and/or sharing their business with outside investors.

3. Ignore anything where the speaker is not telling you ‘how’ to do something but rather is advising you to pay someone just like them to give you some good advice. It seems to me that some of the entrepreneurs speaking at events actually make their money from advising businesses or from their celebrity and investing in others’ businesses. There seems little evidence that they know how to start and run their own micro-business.

Google the speaker’s name before you attend the conference. If they aren’t credible at knowing what it’s like to be doing what you do then skive off to Harvey Nicks – it’ll be a much better use of your time.

Finally, remember the Golden Soculitherz Rule, which I understand has been adopted by those crazy #Enterprise Rockers @EnterpriseRocks: ‘If you’re starting and running a micro-biz only take advice from someone who has started and run a micro-biz or is employed by someone who has started and run a micro-biz’

It became big in income but never had more than six employees. It was a sales agency in the wooden box and pallets industry. Many years later, when I started my own business, I realised that nearly everything useful that I’d learned about enterprise had come from my Dad as my business mentor.

He was an unlikely ace business mentor. My Dad left school at 14, picked everything up as he’d gone along, and was a complete eccentric, a showman and a storyteller who instinctively turned anything formal into a party. At football, Hull City, he had a seat just behind the Directors’ box so that he could hurl abuse and one-liners at them from start to finish. I wouldn’t sit with him.

Corporate Crackers

The point is that what I’d learned in Senior Management, even Managing Director, at two major American multinationals didn’t help me much in my own business. This was despite having received the very best business training and completed two Post Graduate Diplomas in HR Management and Business Administration. All this was next to useless in my own micro business as against the valuable help I gained from my mentors.

My business partner of twenty five years, Clare, felt the same thing. She hadn’t realised it at the time but her corporate jobs and training hadn’t prepared her for running her own business but what she’d learned from her Dad, who had his own property business, was invaluable.

No surprise then that we decided to have a mentor, another micro business owner, for our first couple of years in business. We gave him our corporate contacts and in return he asked us wise questions which stopped us doing many of the foolish things we were about to do. No money exchanged hands although a heck of a lot of money went behind the bar during our, frequently scheduled, mentoring sessions.

Sitting or Standing Up Mentors?

One of the many theories I have, which perversely academic research and government policy has yet to pick up on, is that if you’ve got a primarily ‘standing up’ business you’re best to have a mentor that has a ‘standing up’ business too. ‘Standing up’ businesses would include most building trades, cafes, shops, blues bands, chocolate makers, ice cream makers and micro-breweries.

Similarly if you’re in a ‘sitting down in an office’ type business then choose ‘a sitting down in an office’ type mentor. I’m definitely not saying only get a mentor from a similar trade or industry, only government and BigBiz think in sectors, but do get someone who really understands what you have to do each day.

Oh and beware of men in suits if you’ve got a ‘standing up’ business’ or you’re a woman. I’m sure there are exceptions to these rules of mine for choosing a mentor but there won’t be many.

Sir Jimmy Fixed It for Us Every Day

Wrestler, DJ, marathon runner, TV presenter, volunteer hospital porter and the greatest charity fund raiser of all time, Sir Jimmy Savile, died recently. He was buried in Scarborough, where I live. Thousands turned out to acknowledge his real achievements for the people of Britain both at his service in Leeds and his burial in Scarborough. He was truly a man of the people, an inspiration to many of us, and the very same person on the telly as he was in the cafes and streets of Scarborough.

He made us feel better about life and he genuinely helped many thousands of people through adversity. He was eccentric to the last. He was buried in one of his trademark track suits, in a gold coloured coffin placed at an angle in the grave, so that he ‘could see the sea’. He was also a highly successful micro business owner, millionaire and a cracking volunteer biz and personal mentor.

Two of his proudest possessions were on his mantelpiece in his Scarborough flat. They were individual letters from Princess Di and Prince Charles thanking him for his help to them, as an informal mentor.

Lots of my business owner friends seem a bit crazy. The craziness is often just appearance and behaviour that shows we’re our own boss with our own values, passion and beliefs. Some can wrongly view this, like Sir Jimmy Savile was viewed, as not professional or not to be taken seriously. We are passionate about what we do and it’s bloody hard work doing it but we can be very useful business mentors too.

Get Mentoring

My businesses have benefited a great deal from the handful of business mentors I’ve had down the years. Most of the mentoring I’ve had is over the phone or nowadays by Skype. I usually contact my mentor when I’ve got a problem or see an opportunity that I want to talk through before taking a decision. I’ve also had a great time and learned a lot as a mentor to others. I have had some training on being a better mentor and I’m going to do some more shortly.

There are lots of places around at the moment where you can find a mentor or get some training to become a better mentor yourself. One such place is the Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs, which I help run, and you can find out more here about Get Mentoring – free mentor training and free mentors.

Thinking of your business communications as ‘pitching’ may for some appear a little salesy yet there is nothing further from the truth.  Pitching in this sense is simply about  understanding, developing, and effectively communicating your authentic ‘personal brand’. It really doesn’t matter how many times you’ve won an award for excellence or how many features and benefits your product/service has, decision makers want to know about the person behind the business and will normally be influenced in their decision making by what they think of you rather than your business. I am reminded of a quote by Malcolm Levene who recently said “Being in demand for your services…is a direct response to how you behave and express yourself to others. These days that’s what counts”.  I think Malcolm is right and that engaging authentically with the customer or supplier, getting your ideas and passion across is far more likely to lead them to the next stage of buying or supplying.

If you’d like some tips and ideas to improve your pitching skills, take a look at the series of short videos from Paul Boross (aka The Pitch Doctor) on his You Tube channel. His message is simple – “You are the message, You are the Product, You are the Pitch”.

Most of the calls you make are free anyway and the calls you pay for are very cheap – above all Skype is convenient. I’m sure most people feel the same way about it, as there is a hell of an uproar when the service goes down.

Calls from traditional telecoms are perfect (well, most of the time anyway), but expensive and not very convenient at all.

Peter Hinssen, in his book “The New Normal” writes:

The perfect is the enemy of the good, especially if the good is cheaper, faster, or more convenient.

I agree – Skype is the perfect example of a “good enough service provider”, beating the “perfect” telecoms at their own game.

PS. Let’s hope Microsoft does not try to make Skype “perfect”, mind you that would be a first, IMO.

“

Quality is remembered long after the price is forgotten!
~ Gucci Slogan

Expensive, for me, is a long term measurement. It does not stop with the buying process, it has to do with the number of re-installs, down time, ease of use and many more aspects of the product or service I have purchased. Take all that into account and Apple Macs are cheap!

What is more I’m not even interested in comparing products on that level anymore, for me the only question is which of the Apple Macs I’m going to upgrade to next.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you had customers like that for your products or services?

Easy – just make sure your quality is up there and then you will find loyal customers. Combine that with great customer care and you have customers for life.

What is your Quality of Service like?