This Thanksgiving, here are two unrelated stories for you.

First Story: last night I finished reading 1491, by Charles C. Mann and what America was really like before Columbus “discovered” it.

Fascinating read about the real history and how well developed, populated and civilized the American Continents were.  One of the coolest things was Mann’s well researched theory that the US Constitution has two major concepts from Native American culture.

Freedom and equality.

Keep in mind these two concepts were foreign to the rest of the world at that time.  The more “civilized” cultures, mainly from Europe and Asia, were primarily centered around war, oppression, and greed.

Mann posits that the founders of the Constitution, namely Ben Franklin and John Adams, had spent a lot of time and were friends with some of the Native Americans from their home towns.  They learned these Native Americans’ philosophies, later integrating them into the Constitution.

Second Story: in 2005 Steve Jobs made a well-documented commencement speech at Stanford University, Stay Young, Stay Foolish.  You may be familiar with it, as I’ve written about it before as being an incredible oratory.

At one point in the speech, Jobs speaks about dropping out of Stanford U. because he wasn’t ready for college and his parents could not afford it.

But he ended up taking a class at a local community college:  calligraphy.  This becomes important a few years later when he starts Apple computer.  One of the key distinctions he creates in the Apple operating system that stood out from the Microsoft-based operating system was the cool array of fonts.  Fonts he learned from his calligraphy course.

How are these two stories related?

This Thanksgiving appreciate the little details of your life’s experiences.  Even the ones you cannot fathom being grateful for.  Because you never know how they will serve you in the future.

And in the end, there is not much else beyond your personal experiences that you can claim as truly yours.  Harvest them to the best of your ability.  Apply them in your business.  Find ways to create far beyond what others are creating.  In ways you never would have thought possible or logical.  Link them to what you are doing in your business now.

Just make sure you use them in ways that serve the planet and humanity.

Some examples:

• One person went bankrupt being a shop-aholic. Now he uses this experience as a service to help people downsize their over-filled life of stuff?
• A single immigrant mom first moved to the United States with no financial support and yet built a solid career in a medium-sized company.  Now she helps others do the same.
• While at a rest stop on the highway, someone noticed a bathroom sign saying, “Proudly cleaned with Lysol”.  He used that as the impetus for creating a non-toxic and environmentally-sound cleaning products company to compete.

Today all of these people are doing well in their businesses.  And yes, you too can start a business, launch a new program, develop a kick-butt marketing strategy, or even reinvent yourself using this.

Just remember to appreciate the little things first.

Action Steps for the Week

Looking to restructure or reinvent your business?  Maybe you need to create your next promotion?

Take a look at your personal life.  Look at some of your biggest challenges you went through.  What were they?  What was going on at the time?  How did you break through?  What were your lessons learned?

How can you use this (or these) experiences to serve others?  What product or service can you build around it?  What is the message your marketing should have because of it?  How can you leverage them to make a profit / income?

Write down five ideas and then bounce them off at least three people whom you respect in small business.  Which one(s) do they like best and then refine based on their feedback.

Lastly, don’t look back.  Move forward and to a “soft launch” testing out the concept as soon as you possible can.

I was nervous yesterday as I called one of the major credit card companies I use for business.  I was expecting a very overworked and underpaid representative telling me there was absolutely nothing they could do for me.

Two years ago I took advantage of a two-year interest-free credit card balance transfer, that had just ended and my new interest rate was a whopping 19.99%.

I was expecting zero help from them because of the bank credit card meltdown going on.  To finance all the bad credit card debt these banks have accumulated, banks have been milking their best customers to try and recover from their earlier mistakes, before the consumer credit card protection laws take effect in February, 2010.

In the past year or so, credit card-issuing banks have:

• reduced the number of accounts in the US by 11.5% or 72 million,
• lowered credit limits 26%, taking $1.2 trillion in credit off the market,
• charged additional fees 40% more often, and
• increased interest rates on average by 1.53%.

All this to offset the record-breaking losses banks have received in “uncollectible” balances, which in the past two years have sky-rocketed to one out of every ten credit card account.

This means those of us who are responsible with our debt are paying for the banks’ credit lending mistakes.

At first glance, this seems unfair. Yet, it is simply the market correcting itself.  Those who got credit and shouldn’t have, can’t anymore.  And those who can manage debt, are paying a higher price for it.

Is that a bad thing for entrepreneurs?  Yes, and no.

“Yes”, in that for some businesses the coming months will be slow.  All the more reason to innovate and be super creative (see below).

And “no” it isn’t because consumers will be much more cautious in their spending, and simplifying their lives.  Generally going back to living within their means.  The era of opulence is abated… for now.  And hopefully for good.

Five ways to help your customers’ credit crunch:

1. Issue Terms—Net 30 or 60 days.  In some cases you can stretch this out a bit more.  Try and get a first payment upon close of sale.
2. Provide a Payment Plan—just like a credit card, with interest lower than banks would charge.
3. Offer a Discount—when they pay their balance early.  For example, if they are past due on $1,000, offer to settle in two payments of $375 each (for a total of $750) if they pay by the end of the year.
4. Set Up Sliding-Scale Pricing—price “X” if they pay within 30 days, and price “Y” after 30 days.  To ensure they choose the price “X”, make price “Y” much higher.
5. Exchange Services—still can’t get them to pay up?  Perhaps they can do something for your business instead.  If they’ve already received your goods or service, perhaps they can “work off” the debt towards something you need.

There are many ways to help your clients.  It takes being creative and having a conversation with them.

Just be careful, as this will impact your cash flow.  And as you know, most businesses go out of business because their flow of cash is not properly managed.

As to my call yesterday to my credit card company, I ended up being completely surprised when my representative, Dahleen, first thanked me for being such a great customer for many years and then immediately cut my interest rate by more than half.

by Stefan Doering, Founder, BEST Coaches, Inc.