A Dash of Curry Blog

It’s often said that if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life. I say, that if you really want to put yourself in the best situation to succeed, you should do what you’re built for, not necessarily what you love. I’m doing what I’m “built for,” or good at, because I have chosen a career path that plays to my ADD superpowers and avoids weaknesses. If you have ADD, you’re not very good at rules. I’m not meant to sit in an office and read a 50 page contract from an attorney. I love numbers and financials, but I’m not built to be an accountant who sits in a cubicle all day. Instead, my ADD allows me to excel in other areas. I’m good at interacting with and motivating teams, and I’m good at thinking about how to make things better, faster and more efficient. ADD makes for a great entrepreneur personality type; people with ADD are “built” to be entrepreneurs. Doing ... read more

My son has been into Pokemon since he was 6 or 7 years old. He’s 21 now and he’s having a ball with Pokemon Go, the augmented reality game that has taken over the digital world in the past few weeks. If you haven’t played the game, the basic premise is that it uses GPS to track your location, aligns the virtual world of the game with your real world surroundings, and then sends you to real places nearby in order to hunt and capture Pokemon. The goal is to travel around your local area and catch as many of these monsters as you can. When my son showed me how it works, and I started it playing some, it occurred to me that the game’s objective and structure is a perfect representation of what living with ADD is like. Similar to the game where the player moves from location to location quickly in order to catch more Pokemon, my ADD brain is always jumping from task to task like rapid fire. M ... read more

In last week’s blog post I mentioned that we are remodeling our 50-year-old weekend house in order to move there full time, and shared the customer service nightmare I experienced while renovating our kitchen. After attempting to install our appliances, we found out that all of the cabinet measurements were slightly off. When I called requesting that the contractor fix the problem, I was shocked by the berating and unprofessional way he handled it. Unfortunately my encounters with poor customer service did not stop with the kitchen. We needed flooring for two bedrooms in the house, so I headed to Lowe’s to pick out what we wanted and get it ordered. Within about 45 minutes I found this fabulous flooring that I really liked, it worked perfectly and looked great, so I went to purchase it. It ended up taking the guy at Lowe’s two hours to contact the manufacturer and get the order processe ... read more

We are remodeling our weekend house, getting ready to move there full time. It’s a 50-year-old house on the water that has had three additions over time, that were all kind of poorly constructed with the cheapest materials and not much forethought. We love the house though; we love our neighbors and it’s right on the water with an amazing view. It’s full of family memories of the kids water skiing, swimming, knee boarding and enjoying an array of other water sports activities. So as our kids are both in college, we decided we didn’t need our “McMansion” anymore and that we were going to move full time to the “Creek House”. To remodel, we completely gutted the house. We fixed major wood rot, replaced all the windows, doors, roof, siding, flooring, appliances, and put in a complete new kitchen...everything. It’s turned out to be quite the project, but it is simply amazing! When we had the kitchen done at a cost of over $22,000, we really liked the initial design and how it t ... read more

Therefore good sales is the art of good solutions, and as a salesperson your job is to influence your customer into agreeing that your solution is the best one. Selling is a dance, plain and simple, you just need to know how to lead. How do you do that? With the Five C’s! To guide my employees at Curry’s Auto Service through the sales dance, I came up with a list of steps I call the Five C’s of Selling, which I taught them in a series of training classes. The Five C’s – Commonality, Compliment, Connect, Collaborate, and Close – build upon one another and make it easier to convert more sales.I’ll dive in deep explaining each of the Five C’s in subsequent blog posts, but for now I want to give you an overview of what exactly I’m talking about, what I have trained my own employees in, and what is the cornerstone of my sales success. I. Commonality is the want ... read more

I was camping with my son and family in Yosemite recently and turned out my son needed a new pair of boots. He is difficult to fit because he is short like me, so we found ourselves at REI where the customer service was awesome, as usual. One of the biggest ways REI stands out as a company is using the art of compliments. After trying on a half dozen pairs (you know how boot shopping can be) my son decides on a pair of boots and we went to pay. The clerk at the register says, “Oh I have those boots too and I love them! Great pick!”ComplimentThat compliment made my son: Feel good! Feel smart! Feel confident, he made the right choice. All strong emotional triggers that supported his decision to give REI his money that day. (Well my money but you get the idea). And this was not the first time REI broug ... read more