I say, "Follow your passion!"

A co-worker visited my store and handed me an envelope with a copy of my recent book,'Who's Minding the Store?' He said he visited a store he handles in Lake Forest, CA where Melinda works. Turns out Melinda bought a copy of my book and asked him to bring it to me in San Diego for me to autograph.

Any author will tell you we love personally…

I often hear from customers, “What’s the best price you can give me?”

I usually refer to the sales price seeing as how we already offer the lowest price. I verify this by doing competitor shops.

Then the customer usually asks, “So what’s the best price you can give me?”

Like anyone else, I too need to save a buck, but at what cost?

When I ask questions about the type of project the customer is working on…

When he got to the store, Derrick took his time walking the sales floor, doing his best to remain unnoticed. He wanted to see how the associates behaved in the absence of the store manager.

The first group of associates he saw were less than impressive.

Florence and Tiffany were cashiers, standing at their registers texting on their cell phones, instead of focusing on the customers waiting to make a purchase.

There was a company SOP, forbidding the use of personal cell…

Miguel Martinez was a practical man, or so he said several times, as he repeated his story to Derrick. His only flaw was failing to play by the rules.

“We value your business, Mr. Martinez,” said Derrick. But the law doesn’t give us any leeway on this. Any cash purchase over ten thousand dollars must be report to the IRS.”

Derrick was certain that Miguel had heard all of…