There are always two ways of looking at every situation.  And your success depends on which way you look.

What do you do when adversity stares you down?  There are some people who are SO negative, that it’s a wonder they even get up in the morning.  You know the type - always sounding the alarm.  Oh, it’s too cold to go skiing; I can’t possibly go to the office on a weekend - they’ll just have to wait until Monday for me to take the application; darn, I just won the lottery - now I’ll have to pay more in taxes!

Affiliate Training Center Goes Down

I had a real “bump” in the road this week.  As many of you know, one of my new web platforms, the CCU Affiliate Training Center, went down for several hours this week.  Not only did it go down, but it brought several of my sites down along with it!

Needless to say, when websites go down - I start losing money.  Not fun.  But an amazing thing happened….  Many people from around the world quickly pitched in to track down the problem, came up with a resolution within hours, and developed a plan to avoid similar problems in the future - all without ONE negative word, thought or action.

Now THAT’s a team.  The failure was due to an overload of traffic, thanks to the successful roll-out of the new affiliate marketing platform.  Good reason for it to go down .  Our affiliates wrote, called, and posted their support - and understanding.  We QUICKLY got an e-mail out to the thousands of people who were unable to access our sites, and the e-mail responses proved my point -

99% of the people were impressed with the level of customer support (and our response), even though they were inconvenienced by the event.  Some didn’t get orders in, some had service issues, and many couldn’t register for events or the new affiliate marketing center.  Nonetheless, they came back.

So what do you do when disaster strikes?  Does your team instantly come together to solve the problem - or spend hours thrying to assign blame?  Do your customers “feel good” - even though they were inconvenienced?  I’m fortunate enough to be able to answer YES on both accounts.

As you get ready for 2007, spend some time working on a disaster recovery plan.  Hopefully you’ll never have to use it, but if you need it - it helps to have the support of as many as possible.  I feel blessed by the number and QUALITY of my customers (friends), team members, affiliate partners and associates that I have the privilege of working with.

May you and your family be safe and happy during this holiday season, and I look forward to spending some quality time with you in 2007!

- Chip Cummings

P.S. - I DID buy myself several new web servers for Christmas to make sure 2007 is smooth!