Make a Little Change

I just moved my desk.

It wasn't an earth shaking, ground breaking, overwhelming undertaking. In fact, the total distance traveled for my Ikea stainless steel-topped buddy was less than 10 feet. But the move has made me very, very happy.

Before, my desk was facing a wall--stuck somewhere between my printing center and packing area. It was in the middle of my store, making it so I had to crane my neck to watch what was going on at the front door and front counter. When my eyes needed to take a break from my laptop screen, I'd look up and stare at the big FedEx calendar on the wall--lovely, but seeing those days flying by and deadlines approaching did little to help my anxiety levels.

But now my desk is in the back of my store, facing forward, giving me an uncraned all-seeing perspective on my shop. From my new perch, when I need a break from my screen I look up and see my whole store--my little kingdom--and it makes me proud. When I spin my wheels, as I often do, I can reset my mind by getting a glimpse of the big picture; I can analytically see things that I want to focus on, and realize a little better when my time has been tunneled into some fruitless endeavor.

This seemingly inconsequential desk move has gotten me a little bit unstuck. And so I want everyone to consider making a similar little change. In doing so, your perspective will shift, your vision will focus and refocus, and your intentions, productivity, and mood all just may improve.

Maybe your little change isn't a desk move. Maybe it's a moving your workstations. Maybe it's cleaning out that neglected corner of your shop, or that cubby that you avoid at all costs. Maybe it's switching roles with an employee for a few hours and seeing things from their vantage point, and they from yours. Or maybe it's simply taking five teeny minutes every couple of hours to walk outside, catch your breath, and reset.

Sometimes making a little change makes a big difference. Try it.

#Change #ShakeThingsUp #AskUncleMarty

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Originally published on the AMBC blog on October 18, 2016.

Friday the 21st

Friday was "one of those days" at Uncle Marty’s.

One of my biggest printing customers—one of Cornell’s largest departments—submitted a nearly 3000-page color printing request on Thursday afternoon. It was a good job, involving different sizes of paper that needed to be folded, trimmed, and collated into packets. Their deadline was Friday at noon.

My main high speed printer was running continuously Thursday afternoon and evening. As the final section was finishing, I noticed that the prints looked like they were dirty; they looked like they were on a darker stock, even though they weren’t, and had progressively gotten darker. I called my printer service contractor right away, but had to leave a message because it was after hours. I couldn’t use about half of what we had printed.

Thursday night I tossed and turned, trying to figure out how I could fix this. Maybe the printer would be better in the morning and I could reprint the tainted, tinted pages. Maybe the printer contractor would get my message and show up early make it all better. Maybe my customer could extend their deadline a bit to give me time to reprint everything once the printer was fixed. Or maybe I'd have to comp my customer and present them with sub-standard quality. The latter choice seemed the most likely, though the thought of it nauseated my obsessive, perfectionist brain. I got to the shop early on Friday morning, hoping for a miracle. But instead I found … a flood.

I've had three other floods in the past five years, so this made flood number four. We had had considerable rain overnight, and those millions of raindrops must have decided that my store seemed like a nice place to hang out. The whole back of the store, from my desk to the back hallway, was soaked.

I've learned from my three previous floods to not keep anything important or irreplaceable on the floor. I now have risers, pallets, and slabs all throughout my storage area to keep things dry. Thankfully, all I lost this time was some coffee packs and scrap cardboard. But I had a soggy store … again.

After I left a message for the maintenance department at the company that I rent my space from, I called the printer contractor again to see when the technician would arrive. The company hadn't received my message the night before, but the person I spoke with assured me she'd send someone to my store as soon as possible.

Then the kids started showing up. I hadn't had a chance to check my calendar for the day yet, and totally forgot that I had scheduled a team of students to come in to help me with a focus group for my impending rebranding. I need strong millennial feedback and opinions on my new colors, logo, hashtag, and layout before I finalize them, and so here came a group of eager students, ready to talk branding with me. I felt horrible turning them away, trying to explain in my flustration that it just wouldn't be possible that morning. Many of the students offered to stay and help, but I decided that I just needed to be alone.

I decided to try printing again, wondering if cooling down overnight helped my printer any. And it did! The prints looked almost OK. So, I reprinted the last half of the job—in reverse, so in case the problem came back the worst pages from the night before would be replaced by the best pages of the reprint. And indeed, by the end of the reprint the pages were starting to darken again. Regardless, somehow—all alone, with wet feet, waiting on every customer—I managed to pull together a finished product that my customer was pleased with when they came to pick up a little before noon.

In the meantime, maintenance people started trudging through my store, splashing through the back as they went, and assessed the situation. It took them a while to find the source of the water, but they eventually determined that someone had put a bucket on a drain spout from my roof to collect rain water or something. But that filled up and the water all spilled down along the side of my building and started coming through my wall. So, maintenance got their big vacuums and spent the day sucking up water.

Then my credit card processor went down, and stayed down for most of the day. The company said it had to do with my local ISP conflicting with the processor's system or something. I'm still unclear on the details. Anyway, I figured out that I could work around the issue by switching networks, though when I did that it made my internal network of computers and printers not function properly. So, each time I had to run a card, I had to switch the network over and then switch back afterward. In itself, this would have been a huge pain. But somehow, on Friday, it seemed perfectly normal; it seemed to make sense that it would happen then.

At 3pm, the printer technician finally showed up. He wasn’t in a rush whatsoever. I told him I had a couple of emergency calls placed at this point, but he said he only received a standard request and didn't realize it was a priority. He replaced the drum, and got my printer back to normal in a jiffy.

Friday was tough. There were moments when all I wanted to was go into the bathroom, shut the door, and scream. But I couldn't do that because the bathroom had been completely torn up by the maintenance staff in their efforts to find the source of the water! The ceiling tiles were taken down, insulation bits strewn everywhere, and the floor covered in some sort of dusty, filmy, icky mud. Yuck.

Now it's Tuesday. The bathroom is still destroyed. The areas that maintenance didn't get to in the carpet on Friday are starting to become musty and stink. Someone’s here now to shampoo the carpet and do a special mildew treatment, which of course meant that we had to haul everything out of the back room and into the vacant store next door. I’m glad I wore boots today. I miss my new little office nook, now vacated just a week after I made it. But I’ll be back in it again soon, with clean and fresh smelling carpet.

So why am I telling you all of this? Maybe I just need to vent. Maybe I want you to understand, though I write a lot about looking at the bright side, staying upbeat, providing uncompromisingly stellar customer service, blah, blah, blah, that some days just totally suck. Sometimes it takes every ounce of your being to smile through the chaos and put the customer first. And sometimes we don’t always succeed at that. But when we do, it’s often possible to make more progress on rainy days than on any other.

There were moments on Friday when I just had to laugh at the situation. After all, I've had worse days. I've had much worse days. At times I took a step back and looked around my store—at the water, at the crew cleaning in the back, at the pile of 1500 scrapped color prints, at the cables all over the place for my network switcheroos, and at my disheveled reflection—and realized that I was doing my dang best; I was freakin’ rocking it!

As Dick Van Dyke often reminds us, sometimes you just have to put on a happy face. Sometimes you have to make your own sunshine.

#Flood #OneofThoseDays #RiseAbove #Flustration #AskUncleMarty

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Originally published on the AMBC blog on October 25, 2016.

Ask Uncle Marty™ Live

I had the privilege of doing a live version of Ask Uncle Marty™ during the speed rounds at the 2016 Retail Shippers Expo last week in Vegas.

The speed rounds are cool. Experts from across the retail shipping, mail, and business center industry host eight-minute round table discussions with Expo attendees on topics ranging from shipping freight, large format printing, and gift wrapping tips to small business accounting, maximizing point-of-sale software, and marketing with Pokémon Go. Speed rounds are billed as the "retail shippers' version of speed dating," and are a favorite part of the week's events.

My table, I'm honored and grateful to say, was full for most of the sessions. People had questions! And they were good ones! We tackled store design, maximizing traffic patterns with smart layouts, where to start with small business social media, how EDDM from the USPS works, and so much more!

I encouraged everyone to write to me. My favorite letters and responses get published bi-monthly in MBC Today, as they have been for a couple of years now, and others will soon be shared on my blog.

I'm seriously encouraged and profoundly grateful that people from all over the country are reading and enjoying Ask Uncle Marty. What started as a humble tongue-in-cheek Dear Abby-style industry advice column has grown to encompass marketing and image tips and consultations for businesses and organizations of all sizes (though the amazing small businesses in the retail shipping, mail, and business center industry will always be my BAE).

Here's to a fabulous future!

#AskUncleMarty #AMBC4ME #RetailShippersExpo2016

The Frog Got Toad, and Other Lessons from Delta

Bottleneck

I got to McCarran Airport on time. 

I had checked in and checked my bag early this morning, so all I had to do when I got to the terminal was drop my extra suitcase at the baggage drop.

Rarely do I check a bag. But I had lots of stuff from the 2016 Retail Shippers Expo--supplies and swag for my Marketing with Marty™ seminar, samples and swag for a practical packing breakout session, signage and swag for my Ask Uncle Marty™ Live speed rounds, and of course a top hat and wig to make co-hosting Employees vs. Bosses: The Ultimate Showdown with my cohort Fahim, of the famous #FahimFix, as ridiculously fun as possible. But I digress…

I soon found myself in the baggage drop line. At a quick head count, there were 50ish passengers winding through a maze of ropes, just to drop off prepaid checked luggage with a single Delta employee at the counter. With each painfully slow interaction at the counter, exponentially more fliers poured into the accordioned line. There was little recognition or empathy for the winding throng of passengers and their anxious, panicked, astonished stares.

After about 20 minutes of barely moving, another agent came out and called the flights that were about to take off. She let passengers trying to catch them skip to the front of the line. She was treating a symptom, not the cause.

Meanwhile, someone a few dozen suitcases behind me realized that there was no line at the curbside check-in and sent his son to check it out.

When the curbside team realized the bottleneck inside, one of their agents came in and announced that, "If you're not paying cash and not flying internationally, come and drop your bags with us at the curb. We're much faster at processing them (throwing serious shade at the counter rep we were all frustrated with) and there's no line."

I ducked under the rope, out of the maze of annoyance, dropped my prepaid bag at the curb, and booked it up the escalator, down the hall, through security, down another hall, to the tram, and all the way down Terminal D  to my gate near the end. (Why is it always the gate near the end?)

The Frog Got Toad

I made it to gate D38 with five minutes to spare. As I plopped and sighed into a seat, the gate agent made an announcement.

"Today is National Tell a Joke  Day. If anyone would like to come up to the mic and share a joke, we'll give you two free drink vouchers. You'll probably need to get a little toasted on your flight to Detroit anyway."

Was this Delta!? Could this moment of

levity be from the same formal, traditional, scripted airline that I'm so used to?

One passenger felt inspired, stepped up to the podium and proclaimed, "A limerick, a play on words, and a riddle walked into a bar. No joke." A few people looked up and grinned.

Another gave it a shot with, "What happens when a frog's car breaks down? It gets toad." A collective chuckle rose from the impatient passengers. Smiles broke. Tensions eased.

Laffy Taffy

As I boarded, the gate agent gave out Laffy Taffy. Yes, Laffy Taffy in honor of National Tell a Joke Day!

The agent, while making my phone go "bloop" on the scanner, told me that her favorite flavor is banana. There was one banana taffy left, and we both spotted it at the same time. So I picked sour apple, leaving the banana for her.

As I sat in seat 18D--on the aisle as us tall, gangly folks tend to prefer--announcements came that one more passenger had to be taken off the flight to reduce the load for safety. Per usual, a $400 travel voucher was offered. No one bit.

Then my new gate agent friend came on board. She upped the ante to a $500 travel voucher "and a banana Laffy Taffy." We had a volunteer; the problem was solved.

Little Things Are Big Things

While some were just doing triage, consequently getting farther and farther behind, other Delta team members saw the root cause of the problems and did what they could to loosen bottlenecks, put the customers first, and brighten the collective mood.

I suspect that Delta marketing peeps had a hand in the taffy idea. But I know that their empowered, personality-driven curbside check-in and gate agents were the crucial make-or-break link that calmed frustrated passengers and brought a little humanity back to air travel.

Delta has taken little steps toward improving the customer experience and embracing the millennial mindset--valuing individuals and fostering a personal connection with clients. Here's to many more … and a couple more agents at the baggage drop counter.

#Delta #LaffyTaffy #NationalTellaJokeDay #AskUncleMarty

Branding, Baltimore, and The Lifetime Millionaire

I had the privilege this past weekend to present a Marketing with Marty™ seminar at PC Synergy's PostalMate regional training event in Baltimore, Maryland. It was an honor to be asked to speak, and I was overjoyed to oblige!

The Marketing with Marty™ session I led was my newly revamped Inside Out Marketing 3.0. The class focuses on brand and image, and the essentialness of supporting your brand through the design, layout, atmosphere, and attitude of your brick and mortar store. We learn how to market our businesses from the inside out, getting it right at the core--inside our stores--so customers' experiences when they visit reinforce the positive feelings of the external marketing messages that they initially responded to. It's a fun class, and I love sharing it!

I drove to Baltimore, which gave me a few hours to catch up on my backlogged podcast queue. One of my favorite podcasts that I listen to faithfully and habitually is Lewis Howes' The School of Greatness. It's just plain inspiring.

I don't know how Lewis and his team vet his guests, but they have a knack for coming up with the most engaging, uplifting, and turn-your-life-upside-down-in-a-good-way humans that really make you think about your walk and expand your dreams of what could be … in business, relationships, health, wellness, and more.

One of Lewis's most recent episodes is a solo show titled "The Lifetime Millionaire," and it captivated me as I crept along the construction-laden stretch of I-81 called "Pennsylvania." The focus of the episode was branding.

Lewis shared how, on a recent trip to Buenos Aires, he noticed a pair of Coca-Cola branded shoes being sold alongside Reebok, Nike, and Adidas. He marveled at the intensity of the Coca-Cola brand that has such loyalty and power to put their logo on shoes--a place a soft drink brand should never be--and get a prime price for them!

Throughout the episode, Lewis mentioned brand and design as an investment with an invisible return. We can't measure the dollars we put into design with metrics, like we can with many other ventures. But the return is absolutely there, even if we can't wholly define it.

Branding is never final. Periodically, it needs to be revamped and recharged. Logos, slogans, and taglines don't last forever, and need to be updated to stay current and relevant. Websites and social media profiles need to be constantly tweaked, and completely overhauled from time to time. Each time we upgrade, we see more visits, more shares, more engagement, and more opportunity springing forth. Investment--both money and minutes--in photos and quality artwork will set us apart and above. As Lewis says, "The premium goes up when you invest in premium design."

As I idled through traffic, I listened, learned, and marveled at the simple, sensible, salient message that gave me a clearer understanding of branding--both for the necessary work I need to do on my own and for helping others with theirs. I strongly encourage you to listen to The Lifetime Millionaire episode, and subscribe to The School of Greatness podcast on iTunes. You'll be glad you did!

I had a blast in Baltimore, networking with others in our unique industry, learning, growing, taking stock of what we have, imagining what could be next, and thinking in new directions. Thank you, PC Synergy and attendees, for inviting me to be part of such a worthwhile weekend!

I look forward to presenting Inside Out Marketing 3.0 again in a few weeks at the Retail Shippers Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. I hope to see you there!

#SchoolofGreatness #Branding #LifetimeMillionaire #LewisHowes #AskUncleMarty

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To listen to The Lifetime Millionaire and learn more about Lewis Howes and The School of Greatness, please visit lewishowes.com/podcast/the-lifetime-millionaire/.

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Originally published on the AMBC blog on July 19, 2016.

Team Cancer Crushers

I was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive non-Hodgkin lymphoma in the fall of 2012.

By God's grace, my cancer was detected in its early stages and treatment was expedited. With the help of a brilliant local oncology team and consultation from top specialists at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston, we attacked the beast with heavy ammunition and intrepid optimism. 

In March of 2013, scan results declared "complete resolution and response to chemotherapy" and I transitioned from cancer patient to cancer survivor. I've been blessed with a favorable recovery journey ever since.

Without the miracle of modern medicine, exceptional caregivers, precious family and friends, and interceding prayers, I would never have fared through this episode as I have. Encouragement is simply receiving courage; for it, I can’t express my gratitude as fully as it needs to be. 

I'm very happy to once again participate in the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life as a co-captain of the Cancer Crushers: superheroes fighting for more tomorrows! 

The American Cancer Society does wonderful things for cancer patients, their caregivers, families, and friends. They help with screening and prevention, support survivors, and invest considerable amounts into research (something that is critical as we work together to beat cancer).

Please visit our team page to join Cancer Crushers, join another team in your neck of the woods, dedicate a luminaria, contact us to become one of our team's sponsors, or donate if you’re able. 

Thank you so very much for your support!

#CancerCrushers #AmericanCancerSociety #RelayforLife #CrushinIt #AskUncleMarty

The Importance of Back-End Customer Service

My brother has been working with me for a few weeks, helping me out during my busy season. And during the last few weeks, he's spent a lot of time on countless calls to the company from which he recently bought a custom computer.

This company, which shall remain nameless, is the best of the best in custom computers. When my brother was shopping around, their customer service was top notch. They even called him after he'd had the computer for a week or two, just to make sure everything was as it should be.

But now there's an issue, and the situation has been flipped around completely. My brother has spent hours on the phone, on hold, trying to reach someone who can help. A couple of times he's reached someone who couldn't immediately help, but took his number and promised to call him right back … and never did.

The computer is still under warranty--a warranty that my brother paid an extra $300.00 for--yet he's had a nightmare of a time getting anyone who can help him. All he needs is an RMA number, and for them to arrange for shipping so his computer can get the service it needs. It shouldn't be complicated.

Customer service is not just front-end. In fact, back-end customer service is even more important, yet it's often overlooked because it's not considered marketing; it's not considered visible.

But it is visible. A customer with a positive resolution to an issue will be much more likely to tell people about their experience, and negative outcomes exponentially more so. It's word-of-mouth, and it's your reputation; it's everything.

Reputation is no longer contained to our zip codes. In our social media age, reputation is global. It's reflected in our communications, in our recommendations, and in our reviews. And sometimes the best reviews are the results of resolutions to bad situations.

Stuff happens. Maybe you overlooked something on an order, had a shipping claim, guaranteed something that requires service, or failed to fully explain a policy up front. This stuff can lead to a concerned customer. How you handle that concerned customer is what will set you apart, and what will allow you to soar or to cause you to crash and burn.

Unfortunate events, handled correctly, can show your customers your level of professionalism, care, and admirable intentions. In the same token, unfortunate events, handled incorrectly, can be detrimental.

So next time a situation arises where you need to take action, show your best back-end customer service. Work with your customer to make it right.

Making it right is never wrong.

#MakeItRight #CustomerService #AskUncleMarty

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Originally published on the AMBC blog on May 31, 2016.