Training yourself to maintain the attitude and actions to consistently do a little extra will advance you in your life and business. By Gary Shotton #000175

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A Little Extra

By Gary Shotton

Hello, my name is Gary Shotton and I’m a critical part of this movement, we hope to be called Inspiring Better Business. We have websites with video and audio and then text we hope this helps you today.  I’m going to talk about the subject called “A Little Extra”. What do I mean by that?  Well, we all have different philosophies in life, and we can have a philosophy that differs from other people, a lot of it comes from our upbringing sometimes our friends and sometimes our family but you know it’s up to us.  As adults to create our philosophy on how we approach work, how we approach business, how we approach things that are related to finances. And you know I just must believe that there’s a philosophy that if you consistently think about giving just a little bit extra a little more than was expected. Then both in life and in business you will go farther than you ever thought you would with that if you have the philosophy of just the very bare minimum or just only getting by the least.

I need to do to get done then that sets you on a different course of life that I don’t think is quite as beneficial in the long run. Now let me give you some examples here so when I was owning a moving and storage company you know we had sold boxes we sold lots of boxes. When somebody’s going to move, they have to pack up or we would pack up their goods and, in these boxes, because you can’t move glassware. Like a piece at a time, you got to put it in a box, and we sold boxes it was a big revenue item but there’s nothing wrong on alarm large order just to flop down a couple rolls of tape. And say I’m just throwing these as extra thanks for being my customer we did that on occasion we did that we didn’t worry about every little thing that was very minor. it wasn’t a big expense to us when we have here at this at this machine shop you know we always try to look to do a little extra sometimes. it’s not quite as easily a connected as when we’re dealing on a customer or a business to a consumer.

Like we’re dealing with the actual end user like in my Moving & Storage business but here in this machine shop we do extra things all the time we don’t try to charge for every little thing that needs to be done. We’ve absorbed other expenses like when somebody comes in for just a minor little repair on something that’s one of our regular customers. We just let’s just fix that up no charge it’s more it’s not worth the paperwork it’s not worth the invoicing .It’s just like we’re talking about thousands and thousands of dollars on a typical order what does $50 make I have a have a pretty well understood here that if it’s under a couple hundred dollars all of my people can throw it in free or no charge or discount you know it’s just not going to make a difference in the finances and it’s going to go a long ways in goodwill. I’ll talk about a restaurant, so I go out to eat I go to pay my bill you know some restaurants give you a little mint they’ll give it a little of it it’s good stuff it’s not like terrible day old or old hard drive.

It’s some little flavor thing when you walk out the door it’s a mint it’s a packaged individual thing that’s extra you didn’t pay for that well you did one way or another. Because it’s inside all the expenses but it wasn’t itemized, they didn’t have to do that I have waiters that when I’m ordering something and it’s ready to leave and they knew that I had it either an iced tea or coke. They always come up and say would you like one to go. I would like one to go in other words I had an iced tea is what I normally drink and when. I’m done I’m ready to leave they give me a carry-out cup and they suggest them or even bring it to me. Here’s one to go that’s probably could bit pretty good business for the company and for their tip the that’s a little bit extra now.

If you’re on the employee realm I always like to tell my family when they were working and my friends that are younger starting to work. I said you know don’t just look at the clock and demand every single step every single second everything that you get paid for of course you’re getting paid by the hour and there’s nothing wrong with thought for sure showing up 15 minutes early and staying 15 minutes late. Not every day but regularly that would be good ten minutes five minutes you know it gives you a little cushion that. If there’s a blockage in the road and somebody has a flat tire, and you couldn’t get there and get help somebody get it fixed or fix your own tire then you have a chance to fix that and still to get to work on time. So that’s one reason to be a little early but the other is a habit of giving a little extra, there’s another one. I’m a business owner so I have people that do services for me, and they present an invoice, and I can get an invoice that’s just like one line it says contracting services or plumbing services or construction services. And then it’s like two thousand dollars okay that really wasn’t enough information for me to feel comfortable.

I trust that person, but they ought to give me a little extra information, I have one person that is a regular and he itemizes down more than maybe necessary. It helps them also it’s to do with our computers and he gives a detailed list down to the 15 minutes every 15 minutes are three hours in 15 minutes on this day doing this four hours and 10 minutes on our 15 minutes on this day doing something else. Two hours doing something else he discharges his 15 minutes sometimes to check our backups that’s a blessing to me. But I see that on the invoice I said man it isn’t that I didn’t trust him before but he gave me way more extra information that I could then feel comfortable about this, you know other people look at the invoices and they’re thinking man to do that carpentry work why did it cost $2,000 well it’s not itemized it’s not telling me the things in general by the way. if you’re presenting an invoice and you want it to be accepted through big corporations you really want to elaborate on that kind of not fluff it.

Don’t lie I’m not telling that but really point out all the things you did in that inside that invoice in a very concise, but thorough way it’ll go a long way give a little extra. Now the last maybe not there’s a hundred of more examples as though somebody that’s even going to school, you know if you go to school as a youngster or have a child that’s in school or a relative or a friend you know you ought to encourage them to give a little extra in other words. if there’s an assignment to do you know a certain number of jobs and maybe questions on a test or mathematical part problems in a math problem or maybe writing a small paragraph. You know well I would just encourage that youngster all right up front so goes ahead and do what’s assigned and just get in a habit of doing just a little extra, so we were assigned to pick ten of these problems out of fifteen. But I picked a couple others just to make sure I understood this, and I did them as extra oh my goodness nobody does that that’s right nobody does that.

You’re going to stand out you’re going to be the one that they said man there they’re on their somebody I can get behind. Because they already as a youngster as a young person has the attitude of giving a little extra don’t give away the farm I’m not saying create scenario that’s going to financially hurt you or devastate you just a little extra an extra smile an extra handshake a little extra that’s what you want hope this helps it is in life and business there they go together thanks for being a part of Inspiring Better Business.