Ducks Quack, Eagles Soar

Ducks quack, Eagles soar

No one can make you serve customers well. That's because great service is a choice.

My friend Harvey Mackay, tells a wonderful story about a cab driver that proved this

point.

He was waiting in line for a ride at the airport. When a cab pulled up, the first thing

Harvey noticed was that the taxi was polished to a bright shine. Smartly dressed in a

white shirt, black tie, and freshly pressed black slacks, the cab driver jumped out

and rounded the car to open the back passenger door for Harvey.

He handed my friend a laminated card and said: 'I'm Wally, your driver. While I'm

loading your bags in the trunk I'd like you to read my mission statement.'

Taken aback, Harvey read the card.

It said:

Wally's Mission Statement:

To get my customers to their destination in the quickest, safest and cheapest way

possible in a friendly environment.

This blew Harvey away. Especially when he noticed that the inside of the cab

matched the outside. Spotlessly clean!

As he slid behind the wheel, Wally said, 'Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a

thermos of regular and one of decaf.'

My friend said jokingly, 'No, I'd prefer a soft drink.'

Wally smiled and said, 'No problem. I have a cooler up front with regular and Diet

Coke, water and orange juice.'

Almost stuttering, Harvey said, 'I'll take a Diet Coke.'

Handing him his drink, Wally said, 'If you'd like something to read, I have The Wall

Street Journal, Time, Sports Illustrated and USA Today.'

As they were pulling away, Wally handed my friend another laminated card, 'These

are the stations I get and the music they play, if you'd like to listen to the radio.'

And as if that weren't enough, Wally told Harvey that he had the air conditioning on

and asked if the temperature was comfortable for him.

Then he advised Harvey of the best route to his destination for that time of day. He

also let him know that he'd be happy to chat and tell him about some of the sights or,

if Harvey preferred, to leave him with his own thoughts.

'Tell me, Wally,' my amazed friend asked the driver, 'have you always served

customers like this?'

Wally smiled into the rear view mirror. 'No, not always. In fact, it's only been in the

last two years. My first five years driving, I spent most of my time complaining like

all the rest of the cabbies do. Then I heard the personal growth guru, Wayne Dyer,

on the radio one day. He had just written a book called You'll See It When You

Believe It. Dyer said that if you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day,

you'll rarely disappoint yourself. He said, 'Stop complaining!

Differentiate yourself from your competition.

Don't be a duck. Be an eagle.

Ducks quack and complain.

Eagles soar above the crowd.''

'That hit me right between the eyes,' said Wally. 'Dyer was really talking about me. I

was always quacking and complaining, so I decided to change my attitude and become

an eagle. I looked around at the other cabs and their drivers. The cabs were dirty,

the drivers were unfriendly, and the customers were unhappy. So I decided to make

some changes. I put in a few at a time. When my customers responded well, I did

more.'

'I take it that has paid off for you,' Harvey said.

'It sure has,' Wally replied. 'My first year as an eagle, I doubled my income from the

previous year. This year I'll probably quadruple it. You were lucky to get me today. I

don't sit at cabstands anymore. My customers call me for appointments on my cell

phone or leave a message on my answering machine. If I can't pick them up myself, I

get a reliable cabbie friend to do it and I take a piece of the action.'

Wally was phenomenal. He was running a limo service out of a Yellow Cab. I've

probably told that story to more than fifty cab drivers over the years, and only two

took the idea and ran with it.

Whenever I go to their cities, I give them a call. The rest of the drivers quacked like

ducks and told me all the reasons they couldn't do any of what I was suggesting.

Wally the Cab Driver made a different choice. He decided to stop quacking like a

duck and start soaring like an eagle. How about us?

A man reaps what he sows. Let us not become weary of doing good, for at the proper

time we will reap the deserved harvest, if we do not give up!

Ducks Quack, Eagles Soar

A cowboy's story

A cowboy named Bud was overseeing his herd in a remote mountainous pasture in the North when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward him out of a cloud of dust.

The driver, a young man in a Brioni® suit, Gucci® shoes, RayBan® sunglasses and YSL® tie, leaned out the window and asked the cowboy, "If I tell you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you give me a calf?"

Bud looks at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully grazing herd and calmly answers, "Sure, Why not?"

The yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell® notebook computer, connects it to his Cingular RAZR V3® cell phone, and surfs to a NASA page on

the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.

The young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop® and exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg, Germany .

Within seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot® that the image has been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL® database through an ODBC connected Excel® spreadsheet with email on his Blackberry® and, after a few minutes, and receives a response.

Finally, he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech, miniaturized HP LaserJet® printer, turns to the cowboy and says, "You have exactly 1,586 cows and calves."

"That's right. Well, I guess you can take one of my calves," says Bud.

He watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with amusement as the young man stuffs it into the trunk of his car.

Then Bud says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my calf?"

The young man thinks about it for a second and then says, “Okay, why not?"

"You work for the Government", says Bud.

" Wow! That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"

"No guessing required." answered the cowboy. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked. You used millions of Rands worth of equipment trying to show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that matter.

This is a herd of sheep.

Now give me back my dog."