Specifically, we want to talk about an asset that is particularly valuable now. Yet it doesn’t show up on your Balance Sheet. It’s your credit score.

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Target credit

This was highlighted in a recent post over at Mashable about Google ads targeting people with high credit scores. People with good credit are positioned to take advantage of these times. Not just with consumer goods, but also with investment opportunities. There are some great deals out there on real estate and businesses.

In addition, people with good credit will get better rates on the money they borrow. So if you have a good credit score, protect it like any other asset.

FICO

FICO was developed by the Fair Isaac Corporation. They have a great piece that explains how your FICO score is determined [PDF]. We’ll summarize it here, but we highly recommend you read their article if you want to know all the details.

Your FICO score can range from 300 to 850. Obviously, higher scores are better. Anything over 720 is considered SuperPrime according to the Mashable post. These are the people Google is targeting in their new ad program.

We’ll look at the five components of your FICO score (along with the weight given to each one for the general population).

Your payment history (35%)

Pay your bills on time. It’s probably no surprise that this is the single biggest factor in determining your score. If you’re not current, work hard to get current and stay there.

The amounts you owe (30%)

We found it interesting that, even if you pay your credit card balance in full every month, you may still show a balance on your credit report. It shows the balance posted on your most recent statement.

One myth they debunk is that you should close accounts so you don’t have too many credit cards. If you’re in good standing with no balance on an account, it doesn’t affect your FICO score.

However, you are better off having fewer cards with a balance. It’s also better to have a small amount outstanding compared to your available credit line.

Be careful not to have too much credit available. It can actually hurt your FICO score. So don’t get, or keep, credit cards you know you’ll never use.

Length of credit history (15%)

Here they look at the age of your accounts in general as well as how long it’s been since you used your account. One tidbit we found interesting:

If you just established credit for the first time, you’ll hurt your FICO score if you open too many accounts too quickly.

New credit (10%)

Here they look at what’s going on now. What credit have you applied for recently? How are you doing on those payments?

This is good news for people coming out of a period of late payments. Just remember, though, it gets a relatively small weighting.

The types of credit you use (10%)

You want a mix of both revolving credit lines and installment debt. For example, a credit card along with a car loan would include both types of credit.

Your credit rating is an important asset. It affects your credit capacity. Your credit capacity may help you fund your next bigg opportunity!

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Thanks for sharing some of your time with us today. Please join us next time when we talk about a higher level of problem-solving. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00431-070709.mp3

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(Image by Andres Rueda,CC 2.0)

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Amy, you told us this incredible story that we want you to share with our whole community. You recently ordered some pizza from Domino’s. But it took an hour to get the order to you and, when it arrived, it wasn’t right. What happened next?

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I called the store and they said they would send over another one. I’m also very active on Twitter – as a social media consultant it is one of my preferred methods of communicating. So I tweeted what had happened. I was just venting my frustration.

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And that's when Ramon De Leon, who is the owner of the local Dominos stepped in, right?

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Yes! He twittered me right away and asked which location I ordered the pizza from.

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Get in on the conversation

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This is a good thing for local business owners to understand. Since you are a social media consultant, Amy, how did Ramon know that you had tweeted about him?

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There are great tools out there that allow you to monitor the real time feed of what's being said on Twitter. Ramon probably had an alert set up for the word “Domino’s” or “Domino’s Chicago.” You can use any term that's relevant for you. In addition, you could also set up a Google Alert, which will alert you whenever your name, brand, or company is mentioned on the Internet. So Ramon said that he would remedy the situation and be back in touch when he had more information. I figured I was going to get a credit for free cinnamon sticks the next time I placed an order. Imagine my surprise when I woke up the next morning, logged onto Twitter, and saw a tweet from @DPZRAMON. It said, "Amy, we want to make it up to you, please click on this link." The link took me to a video apology from Ramon, who is the owner of six Domino’s franchises in Chicago. He was standing there with Junior, who is the General Manager of the store where I ordered my pizza. They were offering an apology for what had happened that previous night.

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The buzz begins

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Like a lot of people, we've watched that video. I really liked that the apology was very sincere!

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Yeah, what's so crazy is, just this morning, I actually got a tweet from Ramon. He said that video has been embedded on over 30,000 websites! And this is not just 30,000 watching the video; this is 30,000 people who think it's noteworthy enough to feature on their website.

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Wow!

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And in this video, not only did Ramon apologize to you – and promise to make it up to you – he said that they were going to wow you! Now that's more than cinnamon sticks. So what did they do to wow you?

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First of all, I was totally wowed by this video apology. I had never seen or heard of anything like it. Well as it turns out, I'm also involved in the Social Media Club of Chicago. We hosted an event on Thursday, April 30th – the kick-off to SOBCon. It was a great event where we had all kinds of Chicago social media minds in addition to friends from all over the country. Independently of this video apology, Domino’s was already secured as an event sponsor. So if that wasn’t enough, Domino’s showed up with over 100 pizzas for our club. They also brought a personal pizza for interactiveAmy, with my name all over the box. Ramon delivered it himself.

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So he didn't delegate this!

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No, he didn't! Not only was he there, he was really excited about it. He couldn't wait to meet everybody who had heard about him after the video apology. But he was most excited to come and meet me, which was really cool.

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And who can blame him, Amy? We know you!

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He also brought some members of his team including Junior. And it was his day off! In addition to the personalized interactiveAmy pizza, Junior also brought me a dozen roses in my favorite color, fuchsia. See video of interactiveAmy with DPZRAMON and Junior.

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How on earth did he know your favorite color? He must have visited your website where that color is so strong.

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That's true. I don't know if he did his back end research or if he just took a guess that women like bright pink.

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Well, I am just wowed by all of this. It’s just incredible!

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The conversation begins when a mistake is made

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I thought so too. Ramon and I are still in touch. He has become an example of what great customer service is and can be – how to take steps to forge relationships with your customers which is a huge opportunity. When somebody makes a mistake, it doesn't have to be the end of the conversation. It really should be the beginning.

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That's a great point, Amy. But you could have just said nothing and not gone back to Domino’s. Instead you said something – not even expecting a response – but he responded in such a magnificent way that you've talked about it ever since. Plus 30,000 bloggers have talked about it too!

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Exactly. As the owner of my own social media company, this is definitely something I try to advise business on, from small mom & pops all the way up the Fortune 500 ladder. Take any opportunity to engage in a conversation about your brand, product or service. And listen – especially when someone says something that might not be the most flattering. It’s a great way to get insight and take steps to remedy the problem. So first you have to listen. Then you can engage. You can become part of the conversation and take the necessary steps to forge your relationship going forward.

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Those are great points, Amy. Here’s what I’ve learned – if you need a case study for your social media consulting business, just be your own.

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I think that's a lesson to all of us … go out there and make things happen!

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Thanks Ramon for being a shining example of great customer service.

And thanks Amy for sharing your story with us.

And thank you for reading our post today.

Bigg Question

Have you been impressed with the response to a complaint? Share that with us by leaving a comment below, e-mailing us at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com or calling us at 888.455.BIGG (2444).

Please join us next time when we’ll continue on this thread. We’ll discuss bad and ugly apologies. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00392-051209.mp3

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(Image in today's post provided by interactiveAmy)

NetApp, a data storage and management company, knocked Google out of the top spot for the first time in three years.

You can find a great video about NetApp on the Fortune site. NetApp invests time and money to create a culture where people want to work. The video shows people playing volleyball and working out in the company gym. It sure doesn’t look like work!

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They do more than encourage play time at work

NetApp has a program that pays employees to take time off to volunteer for something they’re passionate about. They’ve found that employees sometimes come together to work on a cause. So this program has helped build teamwork among their people.

You may be thinking …

“Well, this is great but it sure wouldn’t work in my business.”

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I understand why someone might think that because it wouldn’t have worked in the businesses I was in before we started Bigg Success. Most of our people were in the field. We didn’t need a gym – the work was very physical so most of our employees got a great workout with their job. We were lucky to see most of our people for fifteen minutes a day. But the details of what NetApp does aren’t really important.

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Yeah, it’s the idea behind what they’re doing at NetApp that we think is most interesting. Bigg success is life on your own terms. The leaders of the company are certainly doing that. They set out to build a great company by creating a great place to work. The founder says that they took a leap of faith and spent time and money to create this incredible environment for their employees.

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That’s three of the five elements of bigg success right there – growth, time and money! But they hit all five because they have found ways to let their employees play at work.

Now isn’t that an interesting idea? Work doesn’t have to be … work.

Something magical happens

In the interview, NetApp’s founder talks about energizing people. They think when people feel good – when they feel motivated – something magical happens.

That’s why we’re talking about them today. They are a great example of something that’s critical to living our lives on our own terms. It’s the bigg idea behind bigg success:

You create synergy between the five elements of bigg success by understanding the relationship between them and discovering ways to get them all working in sync.

Our lives are fuller when we’re able to do that.

We work to make money so we can afford to play. But what if you can work and play all at the same time. Isn’t that so much better?

What if you loved your work so much that it seemed like play? What if that work paid you enough to buy everything you really wanted?

NetApp took a leap of faith that’s paying off for them. Sure, they’re being affected by current economic conditions. But their market share has gone up in spite of it.

It can happen to you too. In your life. In your business.

Look for ways to blend the five elements for your benefit. That leads to bigg success!

Have you found ways to blend work and play?

You can share that with us by leaving a comment below, calling us at 888.455.BIGG or sending us an e-mail at bigginfo@biggsuccess.com.

Thanks so much for stopping by our site today.

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Bigg success is life on your own terms. Please join us next time as we discuss ramping up your savings one term at a time.

Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00370-041009.mp3

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(Image in today's post by svilen001)

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Every business owner today is looking, more than ever, for ways to gain a competitive edge and stand out. Yet we’re reluctant to spend money. So if you can find a way to get publicity for your company, it’s like free advertising.

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Today, we specifically talked about getting on the radio as an expert. Barbara, you have some great strategies to become a regularly featured expert on a few high profile radio shows.

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It’s like anything else when you’re doing communications – you have to have a topic and someone to listen to it. What I’d like to cover is how to get a topic that will get a radio station interested. What is hot? Because when you’re contacting them, you need something that will grab them and their listeners. One way to do that is to diagnose the pain. What are people really having trouble with and how can you help them? I’ve found that there are three easy ways to find out what the hot topics are. Think of yourself as a newsmaker, a trend setter, and a talk tracker.

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I really like that – newsmaker, trend setter, and talk tracker – the three easy ways to get up to speed on your topic.

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Yes, and once you put yourself in the place of someone else, and give yourself some authority in your own mind, it’s easier to assume that position in front of people on the radio or even in your conversations with your clients on a day-to-day basis. Let’s talk about what it means to be a newsmaker. For me, the easiest way to be a newsmaker is to follow who’s making the news. One way to do that is with Google Alerts. Google has this service where you can sign up to track what’s going on with a specific keyword. So for any topic you want, you ask Google to track it for you. Then Google e-mails you a digest of sites and blogs where conversations are going on around your topic. It might be a survey, the results of a test, press releases and blog entries. There will be a summary, too. So you can look at those and collect each one of them so you have an idea of what’s going on right now.

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This is how you begin to be the expert who knows what’s going on. You can use Google to get all of these notes and have your finger on the pulse of whatever your specialty is.

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Exactly. That makes you really attractive to a radio show host or even media in general over time.

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So, Barbara, now that you’re a newsmaker, how do you find receptive radio stations?

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There is a site, Radio-Locator. If you go there, you can type in your zip code or your city and it will give you all the radio stations within the radius that you select. So that would be a good place to start.

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Visit Barbara’s web site, Wired PR Works where she has 500 articles on marketing and public relations. The articles are free and she’ll tell you more about getting free advertising!

In the Expert Session, Barbara shared so much more. She gives a tutorial on setting up Google Alerts, tips on alerts you might want to set up and an example of how to do it. Even better, she doesn’t use “techie talk!”

She also talks about:

• how to be a trend setter

• how to tap into the virtual water cooler to listen in on conversations about your industry

• what you need to promote yourself to radio stations

• the most important words to tell a radio host that guarantees you'll get more calls

• what you should have in your promotional package

• and much, much more in four tracks of about ten minutes each

The Expert Session is available as a digital download for purchase. Click here for The Bigg Success Show Expert Session with Barbara.

Thank you so much for reading our post today. We’ve all heard of “child’s play.” Check in next time when we discuss child’s work. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

Direct link to The Bigg Success Show audio file:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/biggsuccess/00269-112008.mp3

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The first thing we have to ask is … what the heck is a “toilet paper entrepreneur”?

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A toilet paper entrepreneur sheds insight on what entrepreneurialism is all about. What a lot of us read in Inc., Fortune Small Business, and Fast Company is what Google, Facebook, and YouTube did. They’re overnight successes. The dirty truth is that “overnight success” is ten to fifteen years of hard work for most entrepreneurs. Just like with entrepreneurship, there’s the stuff that happens in the bathroom that no one talks about. So the title came from an experience we’ve all had. We’re in the restroom and we’ve done what we came to do. We look over and, sure enough, there’s only three sheets dangling there. It’s in that moment where true entrepreneurialism kicks in. We do the incredible – we grab the toilet seat like a pommel horse, stretch the foot out, hook the garbage can, root through it and find three sheets and the torn up cardboard roll. With that, we’re able to complete the job!

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Maybe Sheryl Crow is the quintessential Toilet Paper Entrepreneur because she can get by with one sheet! Seriously, that’s a great analogy – entrepreneurs find a way to get the job done, no matter what.

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No matter what. A true entrepreneur will dig deep and use things no one would ever consider.

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Don’t you think that the Facebook guys and the Google guys did that at some point? We often hear that some of these overnight successes are created in a garage. They do the same thing too, don’t they?

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They do in the sense that that’s how they all started. The only difference is Google received funding within a year. That’s what I call the “full roll” of cash. Most entrepreneurs don’t ever receive funding. There’s a path when you don’t get that money; there’s other ways of doing it, sometimes just as quickly.

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In your book, you say that sometimes money is actually a detriment to entrepreneurs.

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I totally believe that money is a detriment. Money amplifies the habits we have. In my own life experience, I was 25 the first time I received a good chunk of change – a $250,000 investment. I bought nice furniture. I hired employees. I got a good car to impress people on sales calls. I wasted the money. When I didn’t have the money, I learned how to leverage it appropriately. Then as the business grew, and more money came in, I was able to use it as a vehicle for growth.

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Another thing that I found interesting is that you’re not a bigg believer in business plans.

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I’m the antithesis of it. I just received some hate mail from a university professor saying that he couldn’t believe I said that.

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Hey, today was my business plan lecture by the way! I’m kidding – we actually don’t talk about business plans in my class.

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In my experience, business plans are wonderful dust collectors. If someone can project their own financials four or five years out, they should invest in stocks because, if you could do that only ninety days out, you could become a millionaire overnight.

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I’m not an advocate of “ready, fire”; you do need to “ready, aim, fire”. But at the same time, it’s amazing how many times someone writes a full-fledged business plan and then, within a few months, they end up in a completely different business. And that business takes them to their success.

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Yes. So I think, in the early stages of a business, you have to be very cognizant of everything that’s going on, watch the consumers’ behavior, and then flow with the river and adjust the business, sometimes 180 degrees, to match what they want to buy.

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I thought you were going to say “flow with the toilet”!

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Since we’re back to toilet humor, tell us about one of the crappiest resources you used when you had nothing.

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Here’s one little trick I’ve used – the most expensive cost, besides rent and your employees, is professional services … your attorneys, accountants and so forth. I go to the local colleges. They have CPAs and attorneys working there that are now professors. They are more than willing to give free advice and work up the documents with you. Sometimes the exchange is simply being a case study for their class. It saves me thousands and thousands of dollars. I still use it today.

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You can get a free chapter of The Toilet Paper Entrepreneur on Mike’s site. It’s a great book that we highly recommend to you. You’ll find it to be great bathroom reading!

Thanks, Mike, for sharing your time and wisdom with us. We wish you bigg success with this wonderful book.

Next time, we’ll talk about lovin’, touchin, and squeezin’. Until then, here’s to your bigg success!

Subscribe to The Bigg Success Show in iTunes. 

Subscribe to the Bigg Success feed.

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