If you’ve been in the internet marketing or direct marketing game for long enough, you’ll be very familiar with the name Ted Ciuba. He’s been around for quite some time, in fact he was probably one of the first big names in web marketing.
You’ll know him for his book Mail & grow rich, the new think and grow rich , Auto Pilot Riches , and any number of his other successful projects.
Teds story is what is often classed as “Rags To Riches”, however anyone ever classed as such, often will laugh at this, as only they & their close & family & friends will be aware of the years of effort & keeping on keeping on that is back of what many people see as an overnight success story.
Personally I have been studying the secret of success for probably 12 years, since I first picked up a copy of think & grow rich by Napoleon Hill – and then the cassette series – and various other books & programmes since then including the science of getting rich by Wallace D Wattles, many other books & audio programs including Brian Tracy, Dr Wayne Dyer, Mark Joyner, Anthony Robbins – and more authors than I possibly have time to list…..
I’m still studying, and anyone who’s only just starting off on this path to achievement of their definite major purpose, just be warned that it’s not all roses ahead – from personal experience & the experience of most other people I know who’ve achieved anything noteworthy, there are many tough learning experiences that usually need to be experienced first. I’m only just out of the thick of very steep learning curves, and if you have read Napoleon hill’s life work, you’ll remember what he said about being ready – I thought I was ready when I first picked up the book, but I realise now that I wasn’t – I had a lot of things to go through to make me ready.
Anyway – one of the things I’ve been very aware of recently is the importance of putting everything into everything we do, and doing everything regardless of how seemingly unimportant or trivial to the best of our ability – and “going the extra mile”.
Some of the most fundamental aspects of becoming successful in any calling, be it in a job, or a business, or just in general – are so simple & often so commonly discussed, that we can ignore them, to our own peril. Recently as I’ve been re-visiting various chapters of books I’ve ready numerous times, including the works of Napoleon Hill & Wallace D Wattles, I’ve “co-incidentally” happened to continually be re-introduced to lessons in the importance of going the extra mile, and carrying out every action in an efficient manner.
Wallace D Wattles puts it very simply, when he describes that success in anything is about doing more things in an efficient manner & less things in an inefficient manner. He notes that many people put little effort into everything they do, especially the seemingly unimportant things – whereas successful people may actually do less things, but they do more of them efficiently.
Napoleon Hill tends to teach with stories, and in his many stories are examples of successful people being those who have put real effort into doing everything, regardless of how seemingly unimportant, with a lot of effort & great level of attention to detail. In many cases in the stories he discusses, there’s actually very little extra actual effort involved, it’s more about the thought behind it. For example he discusses the story of how someone rose to success by refusing to leave the office until the boss left – he wanted to show the boss that he was serious about putting as much time & effort in as his boss was. One day, his boss buzzed him & asked him to please bring him a pencil – he didn’t take him one – he took 2 pencils, and sharpened them both and took them in to his boss. It impressed the boss that while most employees do less than they’re asked, here was an employee with the initiative to go the extra mile, and do things to a better & more efficient standard than requested – and this one act, which took him virtually no extra physical effort, to stay behind a bit later each day, and the sharpening of just one extra pencil, was the starting point which got this man on the path which eventually lead to him achieving his goals.
Today – I’ve seen an example of this very same principle in action, and I’ve no doubt whatsoever that what I have witnessed, is part of the secret to Ted Ciuba’s success.
I’ve used Ted Ciuba’s Auto Pilot Riches (not an affiliate link) for a number of years, to manage the sale of my SEO Ebook , to manage my affiliate programs & my mailing lists, and I’ve always found APR to be a fantastic service, I’ve literally never had a problem.
Recently however – I did something silly…. I accidentally snapped my Visa debit card, when taking it out of my wallet!! Oops! So they gave me a new card – but it has a new number, and I failed to let APR know.
For some weird reason, I didn’t get the emails from APR to tell me that I needed to enter my new card number – I know now that they were sent – but for whatever reason I didn’t get them – and when I tried to go into APR recently to send out an email to my database, I got a message telling me there was a problem….
So I sent a bit of a snotty email, letting them know I wasn’t happy about this, I had figured out what I’d done wrong but I was annoyed that they’d not informed me – and, literally minutes later, I receive a direct email from Ted Ciuba, ensuring me that this will have been some kind of a misunderstanding, that he sincerely does want to keep my business – and he’s onto it, and will get back to me.
This in & of itself is unusual, most leaders of successful businesses do not get their hands dirty like this by responding to support or complaint emails – they just let their staff handle it, but the fact I got a reply so quickly, from Ted himself, really showed me straight away that there was something different about the way Ted works.
If we all scan our previous experiences with suppliers of products and services, and in particular any times where there have been problems, many of us will report that it wasn’t the fact that there was a problem which upset us, and caused us to take our business elsewhere, but it was the way that the problem was handled – and the fact that we had to do all the chasing to get the problem sorted out, and that the company really didn’t seem to care. Sound familiar?
Well this was completely different, Ted followed the problem up himself, he then followed up with me to tell me what was happening, and to let me know that his support staff were trying to get hold of me – he sent me the details of when they’d tried to call me, and I checked my missed call records & realised that actually the minute he got on to them, they were trying to get hold of me to fix the problem, not only this but he was now chasing up with me, to explain what was happening, and to let me know that his support team were trying to reach me, and would continue to do so, and he also gave me various different contact details for the support team so that I could also get a hold of them directly.
His contact with me was impeccable, professional, courteous, friendly – and with the attitude of “The client is always right,” which is something I have very rarely encountered.
Every act he carried out in this case, was an efficient one, very much in the spirit of going the extra mile, and this reminded me of everything I had learned about acting in this way – and I can now see how Ted has achieved the things that he has.
Lets be honest, most of us see problems – especially problems with customers / clients – as a pain in the rear, and if we can delegate someone else to deal with this crap, most of us will take that option & not get our hands dirty with it. Most of us see issues like this as a waste of our time, and the majority of us do not quickly jump into providing as high level help & support as possible in the spirit of going the extra mile & making the customer / client feel that they are not in the wrong, and that we very much appreciate their business….
Most of us don’t act in “The Certain Way” as Wallace D Wattles puts it, which is the reason that many of us struggle to “fill our present place” – which makes it very difficult for us to rise to bigger & better things.
Ted, clearly does. It’s quite obvious from my dealings with Ted Ciuba, that he is living & breathing proof that this philosophy is correct – and that success isn’t about lucky breaks, or stumbling upon a gold mine, but instead it’s about conducting ourselves in the way that people like Napoleon Hill & Wallace DÂ Wattles were so adamant were the secrets to success.
Don’t get me wrong – I believe strongly in the power of the law of attraction, and I don’t think for a minute that our physical action is the only important factor to achievement – but I also believe that although we attract things into being by thinking in a certain way, the bringing of these things into reality is only achieved when our actions meet our thoughts, and we actually start to ACT in a certain way which matches our thinking.
So – the point of all this? Take a lesson from Ted Ciuba, put everything into everything you do. Go the extra mile. Treat everyone in business twice as well as they expect to be treated, give people in use value twice as much as they give you in cash value, focus on doing everything you do in an efficient manner. It’s not about how many things we do, but it’s about how many things we do well.
If you do this – you can’t fail to be successful in the long-run.
I’m learning from this by reviewing the way I do everything, the way I treat my clients, and how much value I deliver to every person I do business with, and I am now committed to doing everything as efficiently as humanly possible.
Thanks for the lesson Ted!
