The Opportunity In Being Let Go

It is a sound that I will always remember - the wheels of my big desk chair as it rolled noisily along the concrete floor of the big, open office space. The sound echoed off of the concrete walls and rows of glass desks. It was funny watching the little heads pop up from their desks and monitors, almost like gophers popping their heads up out of the ground for a look as everyone in the room sought to discover what was making that annoying sound.

It was just me, wheeling my big office chair out of the office for the last time. I’d boxed up the few things I kept at work and all that was left was to wheel my chair, my box and my printer to the car and drive away for the last time.

In American corporate culture, we’re supposed to walk out quietly, move on, and then never speak of these final walks out of a place of employment again, even pretend they never happened. We have all experienced them at some point, though, and if I accomplish one thing by continually writing about them, I hope it will be to assure each and every one of you that experiences something like this that the ending of a job truly offers amazing potential when it comes to taking your career and life to the next level.

One such opportunity that is presented to us when a job ends is the chance to expand our personal network. We meet a lot of amazing people at each job, so each time we leave one and start another, we stand the chance of meeting an entirely new set of amazing folks while still being able to stay in contact with the people from the job we have just left. Add in the fact that you will also secure  some valuable contacts while conducting your job search, and there’s some extra icing on that cake.

So, the next time you are walking out of a place of employment for the last time, just remember to hold your head high and smile, knowing that great things are about to happen for you. The potential to improve so many things you have wanted to improve is the greatest at that point in time. To be cliché, the world is yours to shape and mold as you wish on that day. Don’t forget to enjoy the feeling of freedom, then get right to work finding that next opportunity and ensuring it is your best opportunity yet.

As for me, one of the most amazing things about the day I wheeled that big office chair out of that echoing, big concrete and glass office and down to my car was the fact that I did not wheel that chair out alone. I was flanked by people who were now not only former co-workers, but life-long acquaintances that will always share the memories of our time there together, and the memory of that funny time William noisily wheeled his big office chair out of the place on his last day.

On that last day, when that window closes, just remember that the biggest door in the world has been opened for you – a door that leads to limitless potential.

Always Be Straightforward With Your Customers

We all make mistakes – nobody is perfect, right? Well, I recently read an article about a bit of a blunder from a startup I wanted to share with you, not to highlight the company’s mistake, but to share a great lesson for enterprises. This story really got me thinking about the importance of transparency and honestly when it comes to our customers.

As reported to Medium, the former customers of a cleaning service called Homejoy that had gone out of business received an email from a company called Fly Maids, stating they were Homejoy’s new “partner” service and inviting them to give their services a try. Seems harmless enough thus far, right?

Well, the invite took a turn for the worst when these former Homejoy customers visited the Fly Maids website and found their name, address and credit card information pre-loaded into the site. To make matters worse, many customers found the Fly Maids website so similar to a competing cleaning service’s site they began to think the entire thing was a huge scam and suspect their credit card information had been compromised.

Turns out that behind the scenes, one of the co-founders of Homejoy had acquired the company’s domain and customer data then founded Fly Maids to continue to service Homejoy’s customers. The problem? He decided not to tell these facts to the Homejoy customers he was prospecting as not to influence their decisions to engage Fly Maids for their cleaning services based on their previous experience with Homejoy. First off, I’m not really sure why you wouldn’t want to take advantage of a customer’s previous experience with you…unless, of course, it was a bad experience. And secondly, how could you not expect to freak someone out by pre-loading his or her credit card information to your website? And thirdly, which is a topic for another article, how scary is it that someone can purchase your credit card information from a company that has gone out of business?!

The backlash was so bad that Fly Maids has taken down their site and assured former Homejoy customers the company has deleted all of their credit card information. So, what is the lesson here? I believe this is a great lesson in transparency and honesty for enterprises.

When you are about to launch a campaign or are planning your sales and marketing strategy, be mindful if you are ever at a point where you are about to, maliciously or not, take a step in which you are going to try to keep your customers from finding out about something. If there is one thing that customers don’t want from you, it’s a surprise. If you are about to do something sneaky, think twice. As I always say, just be square with people, no matter what. Make sure that you are always the one who is above board, straightforward and never working behind the scenes. Your customers will always appreciate your honesty.