I loved the wood floors in our kitchen when we put them in seven years ago. But now they are in gross need of refinishing (have been for a few years), and I just don't feel like going through the hassle of moving out of the house for a week (to avoid the fumes) and (worse!) having to pack up the cupboard, television cabinet and bookshelves (the kitchen adjoins a small family room) and move all of the furniture somewhere else.

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Do you want to know the secret to getting deep inside someone's mind and heart and having them open up to you? Ask them. More than almost anything, humans want to feel heard and cared for. I was reminded of this by attention guru Alice March (www.theattentionfactor.com) when we recently lunched together. As Alice explains it, “some of our life work is to discover exactly what special kinds of attention our loved ones need, our employees need, our friends and our world citizens need.

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Customer service expert John Goodman (founder of TARP Worldwide, the world's premier customer experience agency, www.tarp.com; his new book is called Strategic Customer Service) recently shared with some of my colleagues that the cutting edge of customer service is "Psychic Pizza". This simply means that companies anticipate what customers will want (or want to know) next and offer it to them before they ask.

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Marketing maven Joe Polish (www.joepolish.com/) is planning to test a new business model -- what he calls "pay me whatever you think it's worth" for on-line information. Hearing about this got me thinking... what if everything we purchased was priced on this same "pay what it's worth to me" basis

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Always trying to save time while taking great care of myself, I recently asked memory expert Cynthia Green (www.memoryarts.com) "If I could do just one thing to keep my brain strong, what would it be?" Any guesses on what she said?  Doing crossword puzzles? Learning a new language or how to play an instrument? Taking certain supplements?

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