Tag Archives: Goals

Why not make customers happy

I was on my way to an internet cafe, pondering what I just heard in a phone call from Smart. And the thing that finally stuck with me was, why don’t Smart and Globe and all those other big companies just make you, me, humans, their customers happy, even if it would take some extra effort in specific cases like mine. And I think that’s even what Napoleon Hill basically states: if you just serve your customers, other people, you will be successful. And from my point of view, in my case, the solution of the issues that annoy me so much my Smart internet connection is very simple:

Put someone in charge to solve the problem. And put him or her in charge until the problem is solved and I have my unlimited internet access at certain speed back OR until I’m satisfied with whatever solution is offered or found.
Solve the technical problem, just install some other technology or figure out what’s causing the deterioration of the signal. My location is a bit remote and it seems that for whatever reason the device that is installed does not fit its purpose anymore.
Get rid of the Fair Usage Policy the way it is phrased and stated. Just make it a real Fair Usage Policy like users sharing available bandwidth. Nobody will have any problem with that as long as Smart keeps their network capacity.

And while I was on my way to the city I was pondering what Mr. Napoleon L. Nazareno, the CEO of Smart Communications, Inc., who I wrote this letter to, would think or would want to happen if he knew the whole story. Would he really want me to apply for disconnection as his support staff suggested to me this morning? I doubt, unless he and the whole industry in 2014 are only about greed and not about serving customers, not about serving humans.

So I am still thinking of what to do next, as I don’t want to lose my Smart internet and I guess in the end Smart would not want to lose me as a customer.

And no, I don’t know what it is to be the CEO of a big company like Smart or Globe. And I’m quite sure he has many challenges and is certainly not interested, and should not be, in a specific technical problem with a specific simple standard connection for just one customer only paying PHP 999.00 a month. But yes, somehow he is responsible and somehow he should find ways to solve this problem, presuming I’m not the only one in this kind of situation. But again, if I were the only one, the problem would be easily solved: just install something that makes my internet connection work again and you’ll never ever hear any complaint from me again. On the contrary.

And that’s part of what annoys me very much, as I have always been very happy with the SmartBro solution. So I have always recommended Smart to my friends and other people who needed internet or had complaints about their current internet provider. And now Smart let’s me down, one of their biggest fans, always telling people the Smart network is or was better than the Globe network, at least related to internet.

And yes, I am very annoyed and tired as it’s not easy to serve my customers without proper internet, running an internet business partly from an internet cafe. But I’m trying to see the opportunity or opportunities who are certainly there, as e.g. this whole thing brought me into contact with the CEO’s of Smart and Globe and it’s also a very good example of my concerns related to big companies and humanity, treating humans as humans and not as customers of service representatives.

So looking forward to your help of making those large organizations human again. And I mean things like serving customers as human beings and not as profit centers or complaints to handle. And giving employees more freedom and authority to solve problems and talk to customers as human to human and not just passing on company policies and procedures.

Looking forward to your help and support!

Bread and circuses

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One of my biggest questions is still what people really want, especially what younger people want, what youth wants. And as I have visited quite some internet cafes recently it seems that young people, students just want to play games, computer games, internet games, as most of the people around me in this internet cafe seem to play computer games or internet games.

And I have thought about that quite a lot recenlty, as I remember that when I was a student there was I time that I was also addicted to a computer game. And that in later periods in my life I also played games quite a lot, although in the end, mostly after months, I will get bored with it, so right now, recently, I didn’t really play that much.

But looking at my goals, my desires, in the end I also just want to ‘play’, want to relax. And recently also realized that many things people do business wise is to entertain people, serve people in their spare time. And that indeed virtually anything that is being produced or sold is mainly focused on entertainment, of course next to things for daily needs like food and household items.

And this brought me back to the old Roman quote “Bread and circuses” (or “bread and games”). And I just read in Wikipedia that that is mainly related to politics, like keep the people happy in a simple way.

But going back to the subject of what people want I am indeed really wondering what people really want. And maybe I should just see if I can find some statistics about that as for now I basically have my own reference and some feedback I got from some of my friends. But that feedback is often very limited and confirms what Napoleon Hill states, that most people don’t have a definite purpose or a goal in life. Mostly I hear people say if I ask them what they want, what they want in life very simple common things like ‘a family’ or ‘enough money to support me and my family’ or ‘a happy life’. So indeed hardly any of the people I asked have clear definite goals they want to achieve, let alone dates and plans related to them.

And also looking at myself I am slowly starting to realize why most people are where they are. They are where they are because they are not very specific about what they want, where they want to be. So they are indeed where they intend to be: nowhere.

And that makes me often think about the quote from Alice in Wonderland who is at a crossroad and asks someone whether she should go left or right. And the other person or creature asks where she wants to go. And she says something like “I don’t know” and then (of course) the answer is “then it doesn’t matter whether you go, left or right”. And the more I think about it, this is so true. And this is where most of us I guess end up, including me at the moment, although I think I am a little bit further than the majority of people.

But all that I know about goals and timing and plans makes life much easier for me, as right now I don’t have any clear short term timescale or plans. So often I don’t really move so much, don’t take much action. And before I would mostly kind of blame myself for not doing anything. But right now, when I am in a place where I think I don’t want to be, I often realize how I got there. Just by doing the things I did, making the choices I made. And indeed, I am starting to believe that uninspired action, action without a specific goal, is quite useless, maybe indeed harmful to get us where we want to go, where we want to be. As uninspired action may indeed just get us further away from our goals than we think.

so yes, be happy where you are right now. Because you are where you are because of the things you did and the choices you made. And you may have quite some hidden desires that stop you from reaching goals that you think you have. Like in my case one of my implicit goals is to stay in The Malasag House in Cagayan de Oro City. And that limits my options and defines my choices. But it’s a very important, even though quite hidden and unspecified goal. As The Malasag House is my home and I don’t want to leave my home anymore as I did before, and realized I lost my home only afterwards.

So what are your goals? And what are your hidden goals? You may be closer to where you want to be or may just be where you want to be if you look at all of this closely.

So be happy where you are and start from there if you want more or something else.

Empty screen

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Still not easy what I am trying to do here, with Inspiration for Success. I want to inspire people, but don’t feel inspiration myself. And I want to change the world, but don’t know how to get the audience.

So right now I’m not sure what to do with Inspiration for Success, with this website. Somehow I’m still committed to my goals, creating a website to inspire people who need inspiration and create a big change in the world so people can enjoy more of what humanity has to offer in goods and services. But I have no clue how to continue and I’m just tired doing it alone. And I tried to build a team to create leverage, but somehow they were and are too busy to contribute to the project with real content, with real action. And yes, somehow they wanted money, wanted return straight away, which as of the moment I don’t know how to realize. And they didn’t believe in my million dollar type of goals. So somehow they also didn’t get the point of aiming big, as in my opinion there is enough small and mediocre.

So yes, time for evaluation and planning. But the last apparently is not my strength. And that’s also what I needed my team, my Master Mind for. And that appears to be maybe my biggest weakness, inspire other people or motivate them to do things.

So what now?

And yes, still looking forward to your comments, any comments. As that would inspire me and would also give me some more idea of what direction to go, even though the direction is already clear to me.

Persistence or being stubborn

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It is two o’clock in the morning and I was asking myself if I am just being stubborn or stupid doing my daily Inspiration for Success thing or if this could translate into persistence related to achieving success. And there are several related questions in my mind also, as I’m not sure if I would ask from anyone else to spend this one hour or so at the end of the day doing something that’s not that important. Or is it important. Or would I ask it from someone else or would I suggest it to someone else who wants to achieve success, who wants to be really successful, really rich like I want.

But somehow I have been doing this kind of thing all my life and it didn’t work out. Pushing through, keeping doing things. But somehow I also have the feeling that if I just keep going, just keep writing, just keep insisting I want Active Discovery this web development company in Cagayan de Oro City with its own building and with around two hundred people, qualified people, happy people and people making a decent living and enjoying their work and enjoying supporting their customers. And of course a company that serves its customers well and delivers quality services and products that make customers satisfied and happy.

And no, I have no plan for that, at least not anymore. And it seems that’s the main thing missing, but I’m too tired of it all, of trying to build this company, trying, yes, to help myself and trying to help The Philippines, help Filipino people to have decent local jobs so they don’t have to go abroad, away from their family. And I still believe my intention was good. But somehow it all fell apart and I have no clue how to get where I want to get with that.

And yes, that was one of the reasons I felt very down today. As it felt I was coming back to, came back to a place where there is nothing left and a place where I don’t see any future, not anymore. As I tried so hard and it didn’t work out (until now?). With Active Discovery and with The Malasag House. And yes, somewhere deep down I still want all of that, still want the things that I had in mind when we started Active Discovery and when we moved to The Malasag House. But I have no clue how as I can’t find any Master Mind or something and I have no clue about any plan.

And yes, now there is also Inspiration for Success and even Philippine Insurances and an idea for a Philippine Real Estate website.

And yes, somehow I lost the focus, or don’t have focus or should have more focus. But if you try to find people to cooperate with and you can’t find them for one project then you might want to try something else, wouldn’t you? And yes, you might also want to try to do it alone, but that’s not easy as sometimes it’s just too much work and sometimes it’s just too lonely. And today I wrote in my Dutch post that I have the feeling I do so much, often more than the average person. Like I try to fulfill my promises to other people and even though I sometimes fail, I often feel so much left alone by other people who made promises to me and didn’t fulfill their promise, people who gave me hope and then just didn’t perform, didn’t do what they promised.

So I often wonder if I am that bad, if I also leave other people alone with the things I promised. But somewhere deep inside I feel like I’m doing more, trying more than the people that made promises to me.But it makes me insecure, because of course you never know those things.

So yes, I still want everything, still want success, still want to build this company and still want to rebuild The Malasag House and let it come alive again, but this time for the good, this time better, this time for real. But I have no clue how and I somehow also can hardly find that feeling place as so many things went wrong, so many things didn’t work out and so many things take so much effort to make them work or turn them around.

So yes, maybe this whole blog, this whole site is just me crying for help, crying for people to help me make all these things come true, crying for people who can see that leadership of ideas and hard work in me and are willing to go with me, for me.

You wanna help, wanna be part of those dreams? So much good can come out of all that, out of my dreams. So please let me know if you want to help, so I can also help you and help The Philippines and the Filipino people.

Achieving goals

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Tonight I told my sister in law about the six steps Napoleon Hill describes to achieve success, to achieve goals, or maybe just to achieve financial goals, although I believe the six steps basically apply to any goal, although the more I think about it, Think and Grow Rich is very much focused on reaching financial, capitalistic goals.

And one of my favorite ‘exercises’ to show to people how easy it is to achieve a goal is to put an object a few meters away from me, define that as the goal and then just walk slowly but determined towards it and just pick up the object, which indeed also makes me feel how easy it is to achieve a goal, any goal. But part of the exercise is also to start roaming around, looking at all kinds of other things and walking towards them, showing how NOT to achieve goals. Because if you let yourself distract from the goal by other things, which I guess we all do, it is much more difficult, even virtually impossible, to reach the goal. But if you just walk towards the goal it is very easy to achieve. You don’t even have to walk fast or do a lot of effort. And even if there are smaller or larger hurdles in between you and your goal the goal is still very easy to reach, by just walking around the obstacles or climbing over them or something like that. As long as you just walk slowly but determined to your goal it is very easy to reach, at least in this exercise, but I think the exercise represent real life goals very well.

And the above sounds very much like what Abraham HIcks says about NOT doing effort, at least NOT when you don’t feel like it, meaning something like NOT doing action if you’re not sure it’s the right action, if it’s the right direction. And indeed, behind that I feel something like how easy it is to achieve a goal, how easy it is to move, when you know what you want and just get it, similar to the story of buying something in the supermarket: you just go and get it and don’t worry about not getting it, as you know it is there and if you brought the money you just get it. And even the last may not be required, I am thinking while writing it. You just ‘go and get it’, indeed similar to breathing or your heart beating all your life.

And tonight, this conversation, this act made me realize how for I have left my goals behind, how little effort I recently do do achieve my goals, how they somehow seem to have disappeared in my daily worries. And how little effort and attention I have recently given to my desire document, the document I made a bit more than a year ago describing my definite purpose. And the same feeling I had yesterday related to the project, this project, the project Inspiration for Success. Similar to the team members I have just let it go, have just left it behind, basically doing what the team members have been doing and for which I kind of detested them.

So yes, this is a good time to review my goals and get back on track. No, not by ‘push and shove’, but just with some more determination and yes, finding inspiration again.