Who Is Your Boss?
Who Is Your Boss?
Everyone!
While I was going to college, I worked a part-time job at a Chicken Delight franchise location in Westbury, New York on Long Island. I’ve often said that that the education I received while working for that franchise owner was more valuable than the education I received at Nassau Community College. That’s because the lessons I learned from the entrepreneur who owned the franchise taught me about real life business and how to treat customers.
I still remember one of the first lessons Vincent Madonna taught me when I was naïve and very ignorant as to the responsibilities of owning your own business. In a private moment, I asked Vincent, “How does it feel not to have a boss?” I’ll never forget his priceless response. He said, “The dirtiest, smelliest wino who stumbles in here with $0.50 in his pocket and asks to buy a bag of French fries is my boss.”
As a teenager, this was an enlightening moment that clearly helped me to understand that everyone is accountable to someone. Ever since then, I’ve tried to instill that same message into my coaching clients and attendees of my customer service seminars.
As an entrepreneur, you must make sure that you never forget how important it is to treat every customer you serve like your boss. It doesn’t matter how big your organization becomes. Even if you rise to the level of CEO, that doesn’t mean that you stop reporting to anyone to whom you have the privilege of serving. Moving that high up in the ranks doesn’t mean that you are exempt from caring about your customers. It simply means that you have a greater responsibility to more of them than you did when you first started out in business. As the saying goes, “No man stands so tall as when he stoops to help a child.” Don’t forget that leadership is not a perk, but, rather, a privilege and an opportunity to serve others.
“Sometimes one can become lost in a big company and lose sight of how what one does truly helps or impacts the end customer. If you are one of those, think of a fire brigade, a line of people passing buckets of water from one to the other from a source of water to the site of the fire. An individual in the brigade may not be able to see the end result, i.e., the work being thrown on the fire to put it out, but the contribution of the individual is indispensable to the final outcome.” – Grant Bright
(This excerpt is taken from my seminar entitled Survive and Thrive in Your Own Business.) I encourage you to click here to watch my Survive and Thrive in Your Own Business seminar video available at Romeo Network Online Learning.
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