Time to raise the bar.

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Last week I ordered a 7 foot backdrop from our local print shop to use as a background wall when we filmed clips for BD’s YouTube channel.

When I went to pick it up I rolled it out on the floor of my printer’s office and stared at it silently for a long time. I looked up at the owner of the print shop and asked him:

“Can I borrow a sharpie marker?”

For the next few minutes I got down on my hands and knees and began circling all the FLAWS in the logo that you would only notice when the logo was expanded to 7 foot proportions. It was a real mess. When I was done I stood up and looked at the Printer.

“This is a B minus logo, can your design person fix it? I’m tired of second best, I want a logo that’s A plus, with zero flaws, even if its expanded out to the size of a building.” 

Just like our logo on the print shop floor Balloon Distractions enlarged a bit when we went on national television, and there were little things in my business that I tolerated BEFORE because I thought those tiny details were not that important.

I was dead wrong. 

I was cutting corners on OUR own success.

No more, we’re done with AVERAGE.

We’re done with “just getting by”. Mediocre is DEAD.

We are the biggest in the country in our weird little niche, but right now we are NOT the best.

Not yet. 

This year, 2014, we are going to raise the PRICE we charge all new clients and raise the Training level of EVERYONE in our organization. We are going to DEMAND nothing LESS than A plus work from every single member of our team.

We have a handful of advanced level Entertainers in the company, by the end of this year we are going to RAISE THE BAR and get 95% of our people to that level. We are going to be so dangerously good at this that we can double and triple what we are currently charging.

Let’s raise the freakin’ bar, folks. Let’s make amazing stuff and MELT THE BRAINS of every restaurant GM who sees us in action!

If you are on our team right now and have no desire to GROW and get BETTER and be AWESOME please leave, right now, and go work for my competition.

For those of you who are still here?

B minus is NO LONGER going to fly at Balloon Distractions.

WE are the BIGGEST, it’s high time that we are the BEST.

-Ben Alexander

Jan 30th, 2014  

 

 

#SharkTank forced me to #Learn:

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When I filmed Balloon Distraction’s Shark Tank segment back in September of 2013 and FAILED in HORRIFIC fashion I came back to Florida and took an honest look in the mirror and realized that I was the problem.

I needed more work, more learning, more improvement as a business owner and also as a human being. I needed to improve MYSELF before I went out and found the team we needed to move forward.   

So I began to read, all the time, over the last 4 months.  

I’m currently reading ALL of the books in the picture during my downtime, at the same time.

Turn off the TV, stop looking at silly gossip on social media, and just READ A BOOK.

Garbage in, garbage out, GOOD stuff in? Positive results.

We all have flaws, we ALL have stuff we need to work on. For about $3 per book I bought a whole bevy of used paperbacks on Amazon, almost a mini library.

(I can not believe that it took me THIS LONG to finally read all of Dave Ramsey’s stuff, awesome!)

Amazon.com made this easy, for a few bucks you can buy used books and they arrive in a week.

Using the least expensive shipping each used paperback will set you back about 8 bucks.

Of course, you can also read this stuff off the internet, and reading actual BOOKS is kinda old school… but I love the feel of a book, and I write notes in the margins as well. Hard to do that on a Kindle or Ipad.

You can also Google all these writers and watch YouTube clips (except for the Bible).

So, if you are not happy with WHERE you are and WHO you are please start reading, learning, growing and then DOING!

-Ben Alexander

Jan 30, 2014.