On the other hand, the dell customer rep, called me every morning for next 3 days to help me with this situation. She refunded some money related to warranty and even called Lojackforlaptops on my behalf to see if they would help. But it was all about the fine print. Lojackforlaptops’ “theft protection” is actually “after-theft monitoring”.

I was impressed that dell has a policy to reach out to its customers and do whatever they can to help them out. This was my first ever purchase from Dell. This experience with dell has been wonderful and I look forward to do business with them for many years to come and would even recommend them to my friends and colleagues. On the other hand, whenever, I’ll hear “theft protection by lojackforlaptops”, I’d be VERY skeptical and would rather look for another vendor for actual “theft protection”.

Very often companies spend lot of time and money on the product, marketing and creating deals with suppliers (like lowjackforlaptops did with dell) but pay very little attention to training their customer service reps. Customer Service mostly gets call if (a) a potential customer wants to inquire about a product / service or (b) if the existing customer has a “problem” (forgot password, something is not working, theft etc.). Inadequate training for prior case means losing a potential customer and loss of potential income, whereas inadequate training to address grievances could mean loss of established income stream and loss of customer loyalty.

Overall what I gather from his  speech is that : You cannot create a profit driven corporation that is in the business of just easing the world’s inequalities. But a profit driven corporation can become a socially responsible corporation by generating ideas and processes within their realm of expertise to solve world’s problems. For example:

• A drug company can become creative to provide affordable medicine for most common ailments like malaria, cholera etc. in poorest nations like Sudan, Somalia etc.
• A software/hardware company generate ideas to provide affordable laptops to kids in poor nation ($100 laptop)
• Soft-drink company generate ideas to provide technology to supply drinkable water to remote areas.
• A bank generate ideas to provide loans to people who can’t provide collateral (poorest of the poor) and give them an opportunity to succeed.

A perfect example of a business where the line between the purpose of the business (to make profit) and social responsibility of the business is very narrow, is: Grameen Bank. Muhammad Yunus - a Bangladeshi banker, economist and founder of Grameen Bank, jointly won (with Grameen Bank) the Nobel Peace Prize, “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below. Lasting peace can not be achieved unless large population groups find ways in which to break out of poverty. “[Ref. 1] Now thats some serious “creative capitalism”!!

As kid, I use to bring home caterpillars all the time, feed ‘em and turn ‘em into butterflies. I could never imagine that this fun-filled activity could be turned into a business. But a California based company called Insect Lore has been running a successful business doing that since past 30 years. Their product - Live Butterfly Pavilion - sells for $30. It comes with a see-through mesh, 6-10 Painted Lady butterfly larvae with special food and complete instructions to raise the larvae. They have made the product inviting to look at, fun and educational to use and leaves lasting memories. They are not in the business of selling insects, they are in the business of selling experience to the right age group. Now that’s entrepreneurship.

I was under a tight grip of this excusitis for past couple of months. Every time, I would come up with an idea to write a blog article, my laziness would jump in and my mind would say “You are too tired to write that…. you haven’t slept well… you are sick… nobody is gonna read it anyways so whats the hurry…” and I would give in. Sometimes I mustered enough strength to write an outline but could never overcome the power of excusitis to finisih off what I started and I have about 7-9 posts in “outline” state. So what changed?

I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I have always believed in power of company and so I figured that I must be doing something wrong. I discovered that I was not reading good books anymore (especially before going to bed) , I was not listening to good audio CDs anymore, infact I was spending enormous time listening or reading the news. All though it was broadening my mental experiences (I usu. listen to NPR) but I was not feeding my “positive thought process”. So I went searching my stash of CDs and books that have always helped me to put me back on road to success. Voila!! I found the audio book for “MAGIC OF THINKING BIG”. Although I have read this book thrice from cover to cover and have listened this audio CD once, but when I listened to it this time, it seemed that I was listening to it for the first time and that the author was saying everything that I needed to listen.

The 2nd chapter of that book is titled: “Cure yourself of excusitis, the failure disease”. Listening to that chapter, I diagnosed the my symptoms were that of excusitis. And that chapter also described the cure for it. I listened to that CD everyday for a week and TOOK ACTION. That was it - I was cured. I am very happy to have such good company of great books.

I highly recommend this book to EVERYONE. This is one of the most simple and yet most powerful book written on self-improvement.

Here is the summary of this chapter:
Basically, there are four most common forms of excusitis:
1) Health Excusitis : “…but my health isn’t good.”
2) Intelligence Excusitis : “… but you’ve got to have brains to succeed.”
3) Age Excusitis : “… it’s no use. I’m too Old (or too young)”
4) Luck Excusitis : “… but my case is different; I attract bad luck”

Here is the list of a few vaccines against:
1) Health Excusitis :
a) Refuse to talk about your health. The more you talk about an ailment, the worse it seems to get.
b) Refuse to worry about your health. Exercise some self control.
c) Be genuinely grateful that your health is as good as it is. Think of that old saying: “I felf sorry for myself because I didn’t have any shoes until I met a man who had no feet.”
d) Remind yourself often, “Its better to weat out that rust out.” Life is yours to enjoy; don’t waste it worrying.

2) Intelligence Excusitis :
a) Never underestimate your own intelligence and never overestimate the intelligence of others. Don’t sell youself short. Concentrate on your assets. Oh my GOD, I can’t tell you true this is.
b) Remind yourself often: “My attitudes are more important than my intelligence.”
c) Remember that the ability to think is of much greater value than the ability to memorize facts. Use it to create and develope ideas, to find new and better ways to do things.

3) Age Excusitis :
a) Think “I am still young,” not “I’m already old”. OR “I am young, but I have energy of youth to compensate for inexperience”. Practice looking forward to new horizons.
b) Don’t concentrate on lost time: “I should have started years ago”. Rather, invest future time in doing what you really want to do.

4) Luck Excusitis :
a) Accept the law of cause and effect. Take a second look at what appears to be someone’s “good luck”. You’ll find not luck but preparation, planning, hardwork and success-producing thinking preceded his good fortune. I have always liked this quote from Michael Jordan when someone asked him: “Do you think you have been lucky in life”. His reply was: “The harder I worked, the luckier I got”.
b) Don’t be a wishful thinker. Don’t waster your mental muscles dreaming of an effortless way to win success.

I like to see excusitis as common cold. There is no onetime cure for it. Excusitis will strike back in some other form. Have your chest of vaccine in mind and on detecting the first symptom of it, inoculate yourself with these simple steps. The tricky part is to detect the symptoms soon enough.

Act upon some of these simple steps and cure yourself from excusitis today. If you use some other kool techniques to fight any kind of excusitis, I will be happy to learn it from you. Please feel free to share.

I too contributed my share to $10.3 billion over “Black Friday“. My wife and I spent over two grand, guilt free. Statically, an average American spends about $800 on “Black Friday” weekend. And we spent about three times that. “How did you manage to pull that off and that too with out any guilt?” you may ask. Well, the simple answer is - planning and delayed gratification. In this post and next few posts, I will share some of the basics that I have learned about personal finance and its management. These ideas are so simple that I am gonna call ‘em “Duh Rules“. [”Duh” is an exclamation that is used to express disdain for someone missing the obviousness of something]

But first the meat behind my Thanksgiving weekend shopping spree:

The average family carries credit card balance of $8,000.00 month to month. And I have been carrying more than double the amount, i.e. $20000 as credit card debt. But all that credit card debt is in fact making money for me instead of taking money from me and helped me in my Black Friday shopping spree. How? Again, its all about planning. Its pretty simple if you know what you are doing.

1) First, I paid all my debts - credit cards, student loans, car loans etc except for my mortgage.

2) I believe in “giving” & so I take out some money for charity/donation every year and this year was no exception.

3) I almost maxed out my 401K for this year. My wife is at 75%.

4) I started saving at least a decided-minimum amount of money each month to build up my “rainy day saving”.

5) Then, when I got a credit card offer that would give me 0%APR for 12 months and 7.9% after that, I accepted it. At first my credit limit was $20,000. I took half (50%) of that money and deposited in my high interest savings account (5.05% APY). Reason for not transferring 100% (i.e. $20,000) of amount in savings account was not to affect my credit score drastically. I didn’t want to be perceived as high-risk consumer, totally dependent on the credit card. After couple of months, I called the credit card company to double my limit to $40,000 and again transferred $10,000 into my savings account. At end of this promotional period, I would have paid off the debt and still left with about $800 from interest and a credit cart with relatively lower APR (7.9%) and $40,000 of available credit.

I took care of the DOs first, i.e. paying off my debt and build some savings. Prioritization helped me to utilize the money to take care of important needs and then with the left over money I took care of my wants. Other part of this whole process was delayed gratification - I waited for over year and a half to get what I wanted even though I could have gotten it earlier. While I was getting rid of all the debt, I kept accumulating all the gift cards and money (given as gift on various occasions) over the past year and a half. And on this “Black Friday”, I bought a 50″ Plasma TV and a nice Home Theater System for our home besides Christmas gifts for relatives and friends. All in all, my out of pocket expenditure was $1000 but then that $800 that I earned as interest would offset most of it and at the end of it I would have shelled out only $200 of my own money.

Securing your financial future and living a satisfied, non-penny-pinching life can go hand in hand, if planned well. But first step to planning is education. I’ll talk more about it in my next post.