Steve Martin’s first huge comedy album was called, “Let’s Get Small.” That title is great advice for a business, particularly a big company. Unfortunately, I tend to find that the bigger they are, the worse they are at the small but really important things that make it easier to do a deal with them. And I was reminded of that fact recently.

I’ve been putting together “The Ultimate Business Celebrity Mastermind” – an elite Mastermind group for some of my top clients, where we travel around the country and experience things that only entertainment celebrities usually get to experience while working with each other to build everyone’s businesses using an array of strategies that are working right now across multiple industries. As part of the package, I’m also including some really special Celebrity Events, two of which have been locked down for a while — the Grammys and the Kentucky Derby. Pretty cool, right?

The problem is that these events are so cool that when it came to putting together the third and final Celebrity Event for the year, I wanted to make sure it could hold its own and didn’t look like a weak excuse for a celebrity event!

Since I live in Orlando, and since I have a family I like to see occasionally, I thought it would be nice to set up one of the events here. And there is a bunch of cool stuff to do in Orlando that is a great mix of business and entertainment, so I contacted a venue that I thought might work for this new Mastermind group.

Again, since the Grammy night has bumped everything up a few levels, I wanted to make sure this place could deliver something special. So I called my usual contact, who transferred my call to a really knowledgeable colleague. I was very upfront and said I needed something with the “wow” factor to really make this work – and that she was, in effect, competing with Las Vegas, which was my other choice for a Celebrity Event site.

She was very helpful and indicated she would work with me on making the event happen and at a magnitude I’d be happy with. She said she’d email me contact details, and we could go from there. Awesome.

Except this is where the problem started. She never sent the email. Instead, a week or so later, she called and left a voicemail with another colleague on the line – again, it sounded like these folks were all over this and ready to make it happen. She ended the message by saying I should call her back at a phone number with a very long extension, which in corporate America is not very unusual. What I usually do is just call back the number on caller ID and ask for the person I’d like to speak with instead of using the extension, mostly because I’m often driving or traveling when I return calls and I don’t have the best circumstances to stop and take notes! I looked at my iPhone for the caller ID – because, normally, I just hit the button that instantly calls back the person who left a message – and the number pops up on my screen as “Not Disclosed.”

A private number. In the words of many a comic book character, “What th-!”

I thought about the business associate I have in New Zealand. I can even push the callback button to get him on the line! And, at that moment, I didn’t have time to listen to her message again, write down a of string numbers that probably would have taken two or three tries to get right and call her back.
So I kept the message, and kept meaning to find a time to call them back when I could write down the number.

In the meantime, I continued to explore the Vegas option, which looked better and better as time went on. If she called back or sent me the email with her contact info, I would still give the Orlando venue a fair shake, but my time was wearing thin! As I worked on the logistics of a Vegas trip that would be both educational and entertaining, I hit the mother load! I was able to connect through a friend with Tony Hsieh, the billionaire CEO of Zappo’s, the online shoe-selling phenomenon, and he agreed to host our Mastermind group at the Zappo’s facility in Vegas and do an in-depth brainstorm and Q&A, revealing some of the secrets that made him the mogul he is today. That’s Grammy-caliber to business people and exactly the kind of event I was looking for. Orlando, sadly, was left on the outside looking in.
Don’t get me wrong – the Orlando venue is not about to go under because it didn’t host our Mastermind group. But it did miss out on tens of thousands of dollars worth of business because it didn’t make it easy for me to get back in touch.

Which is surprising – on almost all counts, because the staff at this venue excels at customer service, they’ve always been great in the past. But the private phone number mistake is the kind of little mistake a big company might not ever notice and correct.

When it comes to our own businesses, I think the mantra needs to be, as I said at the beginning of this piece, “Let’s Get Small.” We all think our own customer service is top quality, but are all our systems really seamless? Are we really making it as easy as possible for our clients and customers to connect and do business with us? Are sales phone calls being handled correctly by the people answering them? Or, worst of all, are calls from interested prospects just getting lost or unanswered?

Yes, the Orlando venue made a mistake. Let’s not make the same one with our own operations. Otherwise, after we’ve lost a big client, we might end up wondering why the phone isn’t ringing!

Nick Nanton, Esq. has been named “Best of the Bar” and has been referred to as “One of Orlando’s Top 10 Young and Powerful,” but prior to becoming an Attorney, Nick spent more than a decade immersing himself in the entertainment industry, as an award winning songwriter and television producer, and surrounding himself with celebrities. He has worked on projects and negotiated deals, from large scale events to reality television shows, involving celebrities from many genres including: President George H.W. Bush, Comedian Bill Cosby, Coach Don Shula (The Miami Dolphins), Bobby Knight (Legendary College Basketball Coach), Roy Firestone (Emmy Award Winning Host of ESPN’s “Up Close” and “Up Close Prime Time”), Stan Lynch (Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famer, Multi-Platinum Recording Artist, #1 Hit Songwriter and Drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), and many, many more. Nick has taken his years of experience with Celebrities and has “Cracked the Celebrity Code” and now teaches business owners to become celebrities in their business niche to lock out their competition.

An energetic speaker and author of the books Celebrity Branding You™, and the Dicks & Nanton Business Law Library as well as the educational courses “7 Secrets to Making Real Money With Your Music” (co-authored with Bob Baker, author of the Guerilla Music Guide to Music & Marketing), “Celebrity Franchising You™” and “Blueprint to Millions,” Nick is known as a taste-maker and has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur®’s Start Up Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun Times, The Arizona Republic, The Dallas Morning News and many other national publications on subjects ranging from branding, marketing and law to American Idol.

Nick is a Managing Director at the Law Firm of Dicks & Nanton P.A., is a member of the Florida Bar and holds a JD from the University of Florida Levin College of Law as well as a BSBA in Finance from the University of Florida’s prestigious Warrington College of Business. Prior to founding Dicks & Nanton P.A., Nick served as CEO of Cinemark Music Group LLC a subsidiary of Cinemark USA, Inc., one of the largest motion picture exhibitors in North America with 3,288 screens in 33 States and Internationally, as well as CEO of Loud Entertainment LLC and Director of Business Development and Assistant Corporate Counsel for PremiereTrade LLC.

Nick is a currently a member of The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (Also Known as NARAS, Home to The GRAMMYs) and casts a vote on the annual GRAMMY® Awards, is the past Chairman of the Orange County Bar Association’s Entertainment Law Committee, serves on the Executive Council of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section of the Florida Bar, the Board of the Florida Hospital Foundation and is a member of Florida Blue Key – “Florida’s Oldest and Most Prestigious Leadership Honorary.” Nick spends his spare time rooting for the Florida Gators with his wife, Kristina, and their two sons, Brock and Bowen.

Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh is focused on Zappos’ ultimate goal of being “a customer service company that just happens to sell shoes.” Although he focuses on customer service, he isn’t half bad at selling shoes either — taking Zappos to a new height of more than $1 billion in sales in 2008. But Tony is no rookie to big numbers or success. The Harvard grad sold his first company to Microsoft in 1998 for $265 million. I have connected with Tony several times and love his insight and the style his uses to direct his rapidly growing empire at Zappos, so I asked if I could interview him to show you a deeper look inside the belly of a billion dollar CEO’s mind. I hope you enjoy what he had to say as much as I did and that you’ll see how his strategies can be put to use in any business, big or small.

Nick: I’ve kind of heard the story about how you heard about Zappos, but I’d love to hear it directly from you, if you don’t mind, just because I think there’s a lot of good lessons we can pull out of it. Do you mind telling us how you found out about Zappos, and how you got involved?

Tony: Sure. Alfred, who’s now our CFO and COO, he and I got together and formed an investment fund, and we invested in about 20 or so different Internet companies and Zappos just happened to be one of them. The founder called us up, left a voicemail, and said he had this idea about selling shoes online. At first we had the same reaction as everyone else, which was, “That’ll never work.” It sounded like the poster child for bad Internet ideas.

And actually we weren’t planning on following-up, but then he quoted one figure, which was that, at the time, five percent of all footwear sales in the U.S., about two billion dollars a year, was being done by mail-order paper catalogs. So, we thought at the very least that two billion was going to move online and possibly there was the opportunity of it expanding beyond that as well.

Nick: I’ve heard a quote from you about Zappos being a service company that just happens to sell shoes. Obviously, you’re going way beyond that now. I’d love you to talk about that for a second because most people get caught up and think, “If I’m a widget maker, I make widgets, and that’s what I do.”

Tony: Well, my advice for any business or entrepreneur is whatever you’re doing, just think bigger. There is always a bigger vision than whatever it is that you’re doing. So take the railroads, for example, they were a great business at one point, and then cars came along, airplanes came along and now they’re not such a great business.

Part of the problem was they thought of themselves as being in the train business, whereas if they thought of themselves as being in the transportation business then they would probably be much better off and would’ve thought beyond just railroad tracks. Similarly for us, we actually started out just thinking we were in the shoes business, online shoe retail, and then we sat around one day and we thought, okay, the bigger vision would be customer service. If we build the Zappos brand around the very best customer service, then we’re not limiting ourselves to just shoes.

Today, we have a huge selection of clothing online and we’re making a big push into that. But 10, 20, 30 years from now it doesn’t even have to be online. There could be a Zappos airlines, that’s just about the very best customer service. So, I encourage all entrepreneurs and businesses to really think about how you expand the vision without necessarily giving up what you’re good at. If you’re a widget maker, and you make the best of whatever widget out there, I’m not saying walk away from that, but just think bigger and beyond just what your original idea was. And the cool thing is there’s always room to expand.

Nick: Absolutely. And can you talk for a minute about some of the customer service things you’ve done? Because everybody likes to say, “We have great customer service,” but it’s not usually well executed.

Tony: I think most businesses probably just don’t care about customer service period. But then, even for the ones that do, they go about it in a very process-and-procedure way. What I mean is that they make sure, for example, to say the person’s name three times or when you greet them say, “Sir” or whatever. And basically it comes down to basically developing a series of scripts, which is okay, but it’s like talking to a machine.

Nick: Yeah, you’re creating robots.

Tony: Yeah and then the person, the customer service rep, is basically just reading lines. And so they’re not very engaged or passionate about actually giving service. Our approach is no scripts and not to measure efficiency in terms of the call times, which is how most call centers are run. Instead, we focus on the culture and make sure everyone in the company understands our long-term vision about building a Zappos brand to be about the very best customer service. We make sure to give them the proper training to use all the tools and so on. But then leave it up to them to just be real and genuine and passionate when they’re actually talking to customers. They know the goal when a customer hangs up is for the customer to walk away thinking, “Wow, that was the best customer service I’ve ever had.” It’s really about creating that environment and culture and making sure you get people who are inherently passionate about customer service and actually want to deliver great service as opposed to people who are just there for a paycheck.

Nick: I know I’ve been very impressed when I’ve ordered stuff. It’s awesome because of the whole concept of free overnight shipping to my door and back if I don’t like it. I can test out anything I want. You guys just take it back, no questions asked, free shipping — you even give me the return label. That’s customer service. Because I feel well served as a customer so much so that it’s easier for me to go online and buy a few pairs of shoes, and I usually end up keeping more than I think I’m going to, which I’m sure is a common occurrence.

Tony: We actually take most of the money that we would’ve spent on paid marketing or paid advertising and put it into the customer experience. So whether it’s the things you talked about, like the shipping back and forth, running our warehouse 24/7, or running our call center 24/7 — all of those things are very expensive. But we really think of those as our marketing dollars and let our customers basically do the marketing for us through word of mouth and their loyalty.

On any given day about 75 percent of our orders are from repeat customers, and I think a lot of businesses focus too much on thinking about, “How do I market to get new customers?” If there’s already existing customers, and if you just treat them really well and make sure that you’re doing something that’s unique and memorable and makes them happy, then they’ll come back and do your marketing for you.

Nick: I absolutely agree, and we talked with our clients all the time that there are really only three main ways to grow your business. One is to get more new customers. Two is to get your existing customers to spend more per transaction, and three is to get them to spend more frequently. Of all the things, getting new customers is absolutely the hardest, but the one that’s focused on the most.

Tony: Yeah, and I think there’s something maybe exciting or sexier about trying to get new customers. But the money’s in the repeat customers.

Nick: Well said. I’ve read a few things about your hiring process, how long the training is and that you actually pay people to quit. Can you tell us about that?

Tony: Yeah, so we actually do two sets of interviews for everyone we hire to work at our headquarters here in Las Vegas. The hiring manager and his/her team interview for the standard experience, technical ability and so on. But then our HR department does a separate set of interviews purely for a cultural fit, and they have to pass both in order to be hired. So we’ve actually passed on a lot of really smart, talented people that we know can make an immediate impact on our top or bottom line, but if they’re not a culture fit we won’t hire them.

And the reverse is true as well. We’ll fire people if they’re bad for the culture, even if they’re doing their specific job function perfectly fine. And as far as the training goes, everyone hired goes through the same training that our call center reps go through. It is four weeks long, and we go over company history, our philosophy about customer service and points of company culture. And then they are actually on the phone for two weeks taking calls from customers. After that you start the job that you’re actually hired to do.

During that training process, at the end of the first week, we make an offer. The offer is that we’ll pay you $2,000 to leave the company. And that’s a standing offer until the end of the training. The reason for that is because we don’t people who are here just for a paycheck.

Nick: I understand you actually publish a “culture book” about the culture of working at Zappos. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Tony: Yeah it’s a book we put out once a year. We ask all of our employees to write a few paragraphs about what the Zappos culture means to them, and, except for typos, it’s unedited. So you get to read both the good and bad. It’s organized by department, so you can tell the difference between the different subcultures of different departments. And I guess the way to think about it is — you know how on websites there are customer reviews? These are basically kind of like employee reviews of the company. And we give it to prospective job candidates and even customers, vendors and business partners, just so people can get a pretty good sense of what our culture is like.

Nick: What I love is that you’ve created this culture internally and externally. You share a bunch things with your suppliers and clients. It’s really a very transparent way of operating, which makes a lot of sense because with the Internet these days, you really can’t hide from anything anyway. Talk about that a little bit if you don’t mind.

Tony: Well one of our core values is about being as open and honest and as transparent as possible. So we do that with our employees. We share lots of data with our vendors and we have tours that come through everyday. They spend a full day or sometimes two days with us and they’re listening on calls and see how we score them or spend a few hours with our recruiting team and we share the actual interview questions we ask and so on.

So were very open with everything, and, in fact, we’ve actually even developed a subscription service out of it for $40 a month at ZapposInsights.com. We share everything by video. You can download the answers to questions that have already been asked or ask any question you have. Then we get the best person at Zappos to answer it. So if it’s a recruiting question, we’ll get the head of recruiting to answer it, put it on video, transcribe it and then not only are we answering your question but it’s made available to everyone else. So over time we’re building up a library and a collection of videos that share anything that people want to learn about how we do things.

Nick: One thing I thought was cool about this whole culture thing is that you made a comment that the telephone is one of the best branding devices, and I love that statement. As I often tell clients, they’ll email something back and forth, but people can’t read tone. They’ll spend five hours emailing something that could’ve taken three minutes on a phone if they would just pick up the phone and call somebody.

Tony: Ultimately, I think it comes down to the fact that people want to do business with people they feel connected to. And that’s why most people, all other things being equal, if they’re friendly with the neighborhood butcher then they’d rather buy from him or the guy that owns the convenience store down the street if he’s your friend versus going to some big chain.

Now the problem is that usually the bigger chains offer lower prices and so on. So the small town merchant doesn’t always win, but what people want is that personal, emotional connection to whomever they’re doing business with. That’s why we value the telephone so much, because it is personal.

Nick: That’s another reason you don’t use scripts, right?

Tony: Right. You might call once and get a rep who’s really chatty and loves to tell jokes, and then you might call another time and it’s a different rep who says he hears your dog barking in the background, and he tells you he is a dog lover and then you guys bond over that. And so, that’s really our approach — just trying to humanize our brand and the company as much as possible, because that’s ultimately who we are.

Nick: Somewhere in your big stack of mail there, I actually sent you a copy of our book called Celebrity Branding You, and the first line in the book is “People buy people.” And that’s the concept we base all of our consulting and coaching on. We help build, as we call it, celebrity-branded businesses as we turn business people into celebrities. Utilizing personality-driven marketing, we are able to build loyal fan bases that spend more money on the products and services our clients offer, because ultimately there’s only one choice in their mind — the person they have the relationship with. And we use a lot of technology, to build a personal relationship, which leads to my next question.

From what I understand, you encourage your employees to be on Twitter. Can you talk a little bit about your thoughts on social media and maybe how you utilize it in order to build business?

Tony: Yeah. I personally dislike the term “social media” because people, most businesses or marketers, try to think of it like, “How do I use this as a marketing vehicle? How do I have it translate directly into sales?” And that’s not really our approach. Our approach really is that if there’s a tool out there that enables us to build more personal, emotional connections with people and potential customers, then we should use it. The telephone falls into that category; Twitter falls into that category. We actually have a fan page on Facebook, and we have blogs if you go to Blogs.Zappos.com.

But whether it’s Twitter, Facebook, our blogs or the videos, it’s not about how we leverage these for sales. It is how we use them to connect on a more personal level with our customers. I guess the way I think about it is, the pay off is going to be at least two or three years down the line. The same way the pay off with customer service is going to be two or three years time down the line. We’re not trying to drive immediate sales.

Nick: Very cool. Well, I appreciate your time.

Tony: Oh, actually one more thing, if any of your readers want a copy of our culture book we’re happy to send that out for free. It’s a physical book, so just send an email with your physical mailing address to CEO@Zappos.com.

Nick: Wow – that’s great. Thanks so much Tony.

Tony: Take care.

Nick: You, too.

Nick Nanton, Esq. has been named “Best of the Bar” and has been referred to as “One of Orlando’s Top 10 Young and Powerful,” but prior to becoming an Attorney, Nick spent more than a decade immersing himself in the entertainment industry, as an award winning songwriter and television producer, and surrounding himself with celebrities. He has worked on projects and negotiated deals, from large scale events to reality television shows, involving celebrities from many genres including: President George H.W. Bush, Comedian Bill Cosby, Coach Don Shula (The Miami Dolphins), Bobby Knight (Legendary College Basketball Coach), Roy Firestone (Emmy Award Winning Host of ESPN’s “Up Close” and “Up Close Prime Time”), Stan Lynch (Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famer, Multi-Platinum Recording Artist, #1 Hit Songwriter and Drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), and many, many more. Nick has taken his years of experience with Celebrities and has “Cracked the Celebrity Code” and now teaches business owners to become celebrities in their business niche to lock out their competition.

An energetic speaker and author of the books Celebrity Branding You™, and the Dicks & Nanton Business Law Library as well as the educational courses “7 Secrets to Making Real Money With Your Music” (co-authored with Bob Baker, author of the Guerilla Music Guide to Music & Marketing), “Celebrity Franchising You™” and “Blueprint to Millions,” Nick is known as a taste-maker and has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur®’s Start Up Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun Times, The Arizona Republic, The Dallas Morning News and many other national publications on subjects ranging from branding, marketing and law to American Idol.

Nick is a Managing Director at the Law Firm of Dicks & Nanton P.A., is a member of the Florida Bar and holds a JD from the University of Florida Levin College of Law as well as a BSBA in Finance from the University of Florida’s prestigious Warrington College of Business. Prior to founding Dicks & Nanton P.A., Nick served as CEO of Cinemark Music Group LLC a subsidiary of Cinemark USA, Inc., one of the largest motion picture exhibitors in North America with 3,288 screens in 33 States and Internationally, as well as CEO of Loud Entertainment LLC and Director of Business Development and Assistant Corporate Counsel for PremiereTrade LLC.

Nick is a currently a member of The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (Also Known as NARAS, Home to The GRAMMYs) and casts a vote on the annual GRAMMY® Awards, is the past Chairman of the Orange County Bar Association’s Entertainment Law Committee, serves on the Executive Council of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section of the Florida Bar, the Board of the Florida Hospital Foundation and is a member of Florida Blue Key – “Florida’s Oldest and Most Prestigious Leadership Honorary.” Nick spends his spare time rooting for the Florida Gators with his wife, Kristina, and their two sons, Brock and Bowen.

I just got back from an amazing trip to Los Angeles with my wife, Kristina, and my business partners, JW Dicks and Lindsay Glass, where we attended the 51st annual GRAMMY® Awards Ceremony. I’ve been involved in music for most of my life, and one of my crowning achievements was in 2006 when I was awarded a vote on the GRAMMY® Awards.

The show was incredible, as you already know if you watched it on TV. We had the honor of walking the red carpet, and I can tell you we saw basically every big star in the music business today. We were in row 16, in the first section of seating just beyond the nominees and performers, and we were actually seated in front of Rev. Run’s daughters (you may have seen these famous Hip-Hop princesses on the reality show Run’s House or on their new VH1 reality show Daddy’s Girls). We were merely rows away from Paul McCartney, the Jonas Brothers, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, ColdPlay, U2, Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Robert Plant… the list goes on and on and on! Afterword, we went to a private party hosted by multi-GRAMMY® winner Ne-Yo. It was a media circus.

As you may know, I can’t help but analyze every situation I’m put into, compare it to business, and to learn how I might improve our business by utilizing some of the strategies other successful businesses use. The GRAMMY® Awards were no different. So, here are a few great takeaways from the GRAMMYs:

1. Create Scarcity to Thrive in Any Economy

Tickets for the GRAMMY® Awards ceremony are extremely hard to come by (not to mention expensive). You have to be a member of the Recording Academy, and you cannot sell or even give away tickets. You can only get two of the Platinum- or Gold-level tickets (the best seats money can buy) and two of the Bronze-level tickets (the rest of the seats), and you must be physically present to pick up your tickets.

I don’t know about you, but just knowing that perks my interest. I start thinking about the challenge of getting great tickets, not to mention the fact that this will obviously be a very exclusive event, and I get the urge to take on the challenge. Don’t you? Even if music isn’t your thing, can you see how your clients would want a similarly exclusive offer from you and would be willing to pay more for it if it were hard to come by? The good news is you can use this strategy in your business. Let’s take a look at how:

We’ve all heard that in terms of the economy, “the sky is falling.” While I’m not discounting the fact that, unfortunately, many businesses and families are struggling during the current economic shift, you can increase your chances of survival, as well as profitability, by using every tool in your bailiwick. One tool that you should utilize is this concept of scarcity. If someone can get your product or service anytime, anyhow, anywhere and there is never a limit to how much of it you sell, you’re setting yourself up as a common commodity, which can lead to the market knocking your prices down when supply exceeds demand.

For example, if I know I can hire you for the same price today as I can tomorrow, I’ll likely wait until tomorrow. But, if you only can take three more clients, and you just sent out 4,000 prospecting letters, or if you are only going to honor the “2008 pricing” for the next three clients who engage your services… that’s a different story!

It’s human nature that when something “limited” or “scarce” is put in front of us, we decide quickly if we want it or not. And in most cases, since it is in scarce supply, we also make the inference that since others desire it, we probably should too because we don’t want to miss out.

So, I challenge you to think about how you can create scarcity in your profits. It WILL increase your margins of profitability, so give it a try.

2. Continuity is King!

In order to be a member of the Recording Academy (the Academy that produces the GRAMMY® Awards and picks the winners, etc.) you have to pay yearly dues. While that may be expected in an “association” setting, such as this, consider how you can get your clients to continue paying you on a regular basis instead of paying once and going away. If you don’t do this, you are forced to remind them you are in existence and they should come back sometime to spend money with you again. This is a hamster wheel; it’s a miserable existence. On the other hand, recurring income, like the Recording Academy’s yearly dues (in this case it’s yearly, but you can utilize a monthly strategy or even weekly) is what we call “continuity income.”

I haven’t found a business yet that couldn’t utilize continuity in their business. I know of some pretty unique businesses that have created continuity income that even surprised me! Businesses like funeral homes, cosmetic surgeons and the list goes on.

The point is you should look for a way to continue to keep your clients connected to you by giving them consistent value, not merely letting them come and pay you once, and then hoping they will come back again… someday. A lack of continuity income makes the first of the month for most businesses a very nerve-wracking experience, and rightly so! Without continuity income, you open your doors on the first of every month and all you can do is hope you will get enough business to stay open another month. To that I say, no thanks!

I can assure you there is a better way, and that way is through the creation of a continuous stream of income. Take a look at your monthly credit card statement and you’ll get some great ideas on how to create continuity income by seeing who you pay monthly.

3. Great Service, Support and Hospitality

I’m not going to spend a lot of time on this because it’s self explanatory, but I can tell you from the moment I stepped onto the red carpet, to the moment I picked up my gift bag and left the official GRAMMY® after party, I felt like a king. The staff was always aiming to please, answered questions intelligently and made sure everything was in place for me to have a great time. They were even proactive about looking for people who looked lost and directing them to the right area. It was almost like Disney!

It seems like every business should do this, but we all know execution is the tough part. We can all dream about how great our businesses are at customer support and service, however the reality is that if you were to mystery shop your own business, there is a good chance you would find a lot of holes in the customer service and support process that cause clients and prospects to have a less than perfect experience, which ultimately leads to lost profits.

So, there you have it, some business lessons from the GRAMMY® red carpet. Take a look around the next time you’re having a great time and try to turn it into a profitable experience as well! And when you do, be sure to share those nuggets of wisdom with me!

Nick Nanton, Esq. has been named “Best of the Bar” and has been referred to as “One of Orlando’s Top 10 Young and Powerful,” but prior to becoming an Attorney, Nick spent more than a decade immersing himself in the entertainment industry, as an award winning songwriter and television producer, and surrounding himself with celebrities. He has worked on projects and negotiated deals, from large scale events to reality television shows, involving celebrities from many genres including: President George H.W. Bush, Comedian Bill Cosby, Coach Don Shula (The Miami Dolphins), Bobby Knight (Legendary College Basketball Coach), Roy Firestone (Emmy Award Winning Host of ESPN’s “Up Close” and “Up Close Prime Time”), Stan Lynch (Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famer, Multi-Platinum Recording Artist, #1 Hit Songwriter and Drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), and many, many more. Nick has taken his years of experience with Celebrities and has “Cracked the Celebrity Code” and now teaches business owners to become celebrities in their business niche to lock out their competition.

An energetic speaker and author of the books Celebrity Branding You™, and the Dicks & Nanton Business Law Library as well as the educational courses “7 Secrets to Making Real Money With Your Music” (co-authored with Bob Baker, author of the Guerilla Music Guide to Music & Marketing), “Celebrity Franchising You™” and “Blueprint to Millions,” Nick is known as a taste-maker and has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur®’s Start Up Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun Times, The Arizona Republic, The Dallas Morning News and many other national publications on subjects ranging from branding, marketing and law to American Idol.

Nick is a Managing Director at the Law Firm of Dicks & Nanton P.A., is a member of the Florida Bar and holds a JD from the University of Florida Levin College of Law as well as a BSBA in Finance from the University of Florida’s prestigious Warrington College of Business. Prior to founding Dicks & Nanton P.A., Nick served as CEO of Cinemark Music Group LLC a subsidiary of Cinemark USA, Inc., one of the largest motion picture exhibitors in North America with 3,288 screens in 33 States and Internationally, as well as CEO of Loud Entertainment LLC and Director of Business Development and Assistant Corporate Counsel for PremiereTrade LLC.

Nick is a currently a member of The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (Also Known as NARAS, Home to The GRAMMYs) and casts a vote on the annual GRAMMY® Awards, is the past Chairman of the Orange County Bar Association’s Entertainment Law Committee, serves on the Executive Council of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section of the Florida Bar, the Board of the Florida Hospital Foundation and is a member of Florida Blue Key – “Florida’s Oldest and Most Prestigious Leadership Honorary.” Nick spends his spare time rooting for the Florida Gators with his wife, Kristina, and their two sons, Brock and Bowen.

You’ve probably heard the buzz-terms “social media” and “social networking” more times than you care to count, but if you’re like most people, you still haven’t figured out what it means or how you can use it to increase your celebrity status and, most importantly, your profits. You’ve also probably seen kids wandering around aimlessly with their cell phones, tapping away at their keys as they wander through the world — clueless about what is going on around them because they are so entrenched in their own little world of text messages.

Well, the good news is it’s not that hard. The entire concept of Celebrity Branding™ revolves around creating a relationship with your fan base and continuing the conversation you want to have with them via multiple forms of media that allow you to control your message. The old standard method of doing this is with a hard copy newsletter sent to your prospects and clients; which is still one of my favorite methods. I challenge you to find a better form of media, but we’ll debate that another day.

Social media allows you to take that same concept you can capitalize on with a newsletter, the concept of building a relationship and continuing your conversation with your fan base, but it takes out the constraints of physically publishing your thoughts. (This can be a double-edged sword, as it sometimes allows you to be a bit more sloppy about crafting your message. There is a mental barrier we have when writing something that is going to be put in print; we often spend more time crafting this type of message than we do when we draft an email or other communication that we perceive as having less value than printed material).

Wikipedia.com defines Social Media as:
…the use of electronic and Internet tools for the purpose of sharing and discussing information and experiences with other human beings. The term most often refers to activities that integrate technology, social interaction, and the construction of words, pictures, videos and audio. This interaction, and the manner in which information is presented, depends on the varied perspectives and “building” of shared meaning among communities, as people share their stories and experiences.

It’s really not that scary, I promise. You’ve probably even seen a MySpace, Facebook or YouTube page in the past. These are great, but I want to take you a little further down the path to one of my favorite tools that hasn’t been around quite as long, and that makes use of some newer technology.

Twitter.com – Twitter is a “micro blog,” which means that it is intended for publishing short messages, not longer messages like you might see in a traditional blog, and was created to answer the question “What are you doing?”

Twitter allows its users to send and read other users’ messages that are up to 140 characters in length (otherwise known as “tweets”). Users “follow” each other and can opt to receive updates from other users on their cell phones or can just check in online to see what those in their network are doing. Users can also “tweet” by texting messages to a phone number, or they can update their messages online at Twitter.com. While it sounds narcissistic and shallow, and it certainly is for some users, savvy marketers have started using Twitter to expand and further entrench their fan bases in their way of thinking.

Tweets can contain something as simple as what you had for lunch or that you’re heading to the gym. Or you can opt to tweet a link to a great article you read, announce some great news or even announce a contest you are holding. It sounds like it would be pretty silly, but give it a try and you’ll find out pretty quickly how addictive and productive it can be.

Twitter allows you to connect with your audience in short bursts. Here are some people who are worth following (I’m going to give you their usernames so you can find them on Twitter):

craigballantyne – Craig is a health and fitness expert based out of Toronto, Canada and is the founder of the Turbulence Training™ fitness system. Craig shows individuals how to get and stay in shape without having to go to the gym. He tweets about every meal he eats to give you some insight into how you can eat to stay healthy and posts links to some of his workouts to you can follow along at home.

barefoot_exec – Carrie Wilkerson, The Barefoot Executive, offers tips and resources for working at home. Carrie shows you why working at home can be much more fulfilling than holding a regular job and shows you how to be as productive and profitable as possible.

skydiver – Peter Shankman is a PR guru and founder of HelpAReporterOut.com, which is a resource to help you get cited as a source in major media outlets. He is one of the few people I know who can be funny in text, and he has some pretty amusing things happening in his life. He’s fun to watch and he sends out urgent queries from journalists via Twitter as well.

zappos – Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, an Internet-based shoe retailer who has built an online shoe store into a billion-dollar franchise, based on his savvy marketing and his ability to give online shoppers what they want. Tony is always on the move and posts some pretty unique stuff. Recently Venus Williams was coming in for a tour of the Zappos headquarters, and he let everyone tweet in messages to her that he read to her aloud.

nicknanton – I couldn’t help including just a touch of self promotion! I keep you up to date with the latest and greatest articles I’ve read, tips and tricks on Celebrity Branding™, and I also give you glimpses into my hectic everyday life. Sometimes I’m hanging out with rock stars other times I’m trying to bathe my two kids and keep my iPhone out of the bathtub… you just never know, but that’s what makes it interesting!

There you have it — a few great resources to get you started using Twitter. As I said before, it sounds a bit strange, but once you start using it you’ll see how others are using it to continue the conversation with their fan base, breed loyalty, increase profits and meet new prospects.

So what are you waiting for? Go sign up right now at www.Twitter.com and send me a message so I can start following you too!

Nick Nanton, Esq. has been named “Best of the Bar” and has been referred to as “One of Orlando’s Top 10 Young and Powerful,” but prior to becoming an Attorney, Nick spent more than a decade immersing himself in the entertainment industry, as an award winning songwriter and television producer, and surrounding himself with celebrities. He has worked on projects and negotiated deals, from large scale events to reality television shows, involving celebrities from many genres including: President George H.W. Bush, Comedian Bill Cosby, Coach Don Shula (The Miami Dolphins), Bobby Knight (Legendary College Basketball Coach), Roy Firestone (Emmy Award Winning Host of ESPN’s “Up Close” and “Up Close Prime Time”), Stan Lynch (Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Famer, Multi-Platinum Recording Artist, #1 Hit Songwriter and Drummer for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), and many, many more. Nick has taken his years of experience with Celebrities and has “Cracked the Celebrity Code” and now teaches business owners to become celebrities in their business niche to lock out their competition.

An energetic speaker and author of the books Celebrity Branding You™, and the Dicks & Nanton Business Law Library as well as the educational courses “7 Secrets to Making Real Money With Your Music” (co-authored with Bob Baker, author of the Guerilla Music Guide to Music & Marketing), “Celebrity Franchising You™” and “Blueprint to Millions,” Nick is known as a taste-maker and has been featured in The New York Times, Entrepreneur®’s Start Up Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, The Chicago Sun Times, The Arizona Republic, The Dallas Morning News and many other national publications on subjects ranging from branding, marketing and law to American Idol.

Nick is a Managing Director at the Law Firm of Dicks & Nanton P.A., is a member of the Florida Bar and holds a JD from the University of Florida Levin College of Law as well as a BSBA in Finance from the University of Florida’s prestigious Warrington College of Business. Prior to founding Dicks & Nanton P.A., Nick served as CEO of Cinemark Music Group LLC a subsidiary of Cinemark USA, Inc., one of the largest motion picture exhibitors in North America with 3,288 screens in 33 States and Internationally, as well as CEO of Loud Entertainment LLC and Director of Business Development and Assistant Corporate Counsel for PremiereTrade LLC.

Nick is a currently a member of The National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences (Also Known as NARAS, Home to The GRAMMYs) and casts a vote on the annual GRAMMY® Awards, is the past Chairman of the Orange County Bar Association’s Entertainment Law Committee, serves on the Executive Council of the Entertainment, Arts and Sports Law Section of the Florida Bar, the Board of the Florida Hospital Foundation and is a member of Florida Blue Key – “Florida’s Oldest and Most Prestigious Leadership Honorary.” Nick spends his spare time rooting for the Florida Gators with his wife, Kristina, and their two sons, Brock and Bowen.