© 2013 Charles Marshall. Excerpt from The Seven Powers of Success

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© 2013 Charles Marshall. Excerpt from The Seven Powers of Success

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To me, good customer service isn’t really about any of those things. To me, providing good customer service is about the person that I want to be.

Think about the last time you were provided extraordinary customer service. A few years ago, the kids at my house woke up with IHOP on the brain, and you know how it is, when you get something on your mind you’ve got to have it.

To be honest, I was on the fence about the whole thing. But then my wife closes the deal by mentioning that she has a buy-one-get-one-free coupon, and quicker than you can say “chocolate chip pancakes,” we were all piled in the car and headed to the blue-roof restaurant.

Shortly after we were seated, we were greeted by an upbeat, friendly server who introduced herself and took our drink order. Right about that time, my wife pipes up and tells the waitress that she has a coupon. I start to object but my wife tells me this is the proper thing to do—that you’re supposed to tell the wait staff you have a coupon before, not after, the meal. I decided not to argue the point for three reasons:

1] My wife is probably right.

2] It doesn’t matter if she’s right or not. I’ve been married long enough to know to choose my battles carefully, and this is not the hill I want to die on.

3] She’s going to do it anyway, whether I want her to or not.

So, while she’s triumphantly displaying her coupon to the waitress, the server does a remarkable thing. She notices another coupon in my wife’s hand and tells us we can use BOTH coupons at the same time.

What?! This is unheard of. A waitress taking the time and trouble to save me money? I’ve had waiters by the scores try to upsell me. I’ve had waitresses by the dozens ignore me. But I honestly can’t remember any waitstaff ever making any effort to watch out for my interests.

As a direct result of this young lady’s behavior, we did several things.  We gave her a great tip and then we returned to IHOP a couple weeks later. We remembered that waitress and looked for her the next time we went.

To me, all other things being equal, this particular IHOP experience was enjoyable because of our interaction with that waitress. We felt she was truly taking care of us, and you know what? We really like that feeling. Who doesn’t?

But you’ll notice that IHOP is just the setting for my story. The real hero in my tale is the server. It was the person that made the difference.

That’s the kind of person that I want to be in my business dealings—the kind of person that people can trust to take care of them, that customers seek out because they know they’ll be treated right. The sort of person that people remember long afterward. In short, the hero of the story.

Isn’t that what we all want? Do you aspire to be an “extra” in somebody else’s life or do you want to be considered a “star”? Will you be one more face in someone else’s life, or the “somebody” that they look up to, respect, and talk about because you came to the rescue?

What if you start thinking about the act of providing exceptional customer service less as something somebody else wants you to do, and more as the type of person that you want to be? How do you think that would impact your life? How do you think it would affect the respect that your coworkers give you? Your income? Your career?

I believe you can choose to be whatever type of person you would like to be. I believe that if you choose to be a top-notch customer service type of person, then all the rest—the business growth, the money, the respect, the success—will soon follow.

©  2026  Charles  Marshall.  Charles  Marshall  is  a  nationally  known  humorous  motivational  speaker  and  author.  Visit  his  website charlesmarshall.net or  contact  him  via  email  at Charles@CharlesMarshallSpeaker.com

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Every kid knows that an acceptable Halloween costume must either be scary or cool, and Mom’s costumes fell short on both counts. I was that kid walking around the neighborhood wearing the nasty old worn-out sheet. It’s hard to look like a ghost if your sheet has three years of slobber stains on it.

After a while, Mom just quit trying. She would send me out the door on Halloween night in my normal clothes and say, “Tell the neighbors you’re dressed up like a kid who can’t afford a costume.”

Even worse than Mom’s costumes, though, were the hand-me-down costumes from my older siblings. This wouldn’t have been so bad if my older siblings hadn’t all been girls. It was humiliating and there was no talking my way out of it either. I tried convincing my friends that I was wearing Superman’s summer costume but they knew a Wonder Woman costume when they were looking at it.

So, thus outfitted, we kids would forage for goodies in our neighborhood. When we got home with the spoils of our evening, my parents made us dump our candy on the table for inspection. One solid rule of inspection was that we kids could not eat anything that was not professionally wrapped for fear that someone might have poisoned it, which was just fine with me. What kind of nut gives a kid an apple or popcorn ball for Halloween anyway?

All I wanted was chocolate. That’s it. Just chocolate. Sure, I was willing to wade through a few Smarties and Sweet Tarts, but making me trudge around the neighborhood dressed up like Wonder Woman for an apple just seemed wrong. How tough is it to stock up on a few bags of Snickers or Milky Ways anyway, for crying out loud?

The candy my parents were offering wasn’t much better though. The kids visiting my house got a handful of that peanut butter taffy wrapped in the black and orange wrappers. This was (and I believe still is) the nastiest and cheapest candy known to Man. Back then, you could go out and buy a dump-truck load of the stuff for about a buck seventy-nine, and it’s even cheaper today. They still use this candy in hospitals in some parts the country to induce vomiting if a patient has swallowed a poisonous popcorn ball.

So once again, here comes Halloween. But don’t look for me to ever don the Wonder Woman costume again. Not that I don’t still have the legs for it, though.

© 2026 Charles Marshall. Charles Marshall is a nationally known humorous motivational speaker and author. Visit his website www.CharlesMarshallSpeaker.com or contact him via email at Charles@CharlesMarshallSpeaker.com

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© 2026 Charles Marshall. Charles Marshall is a nationally known humorous motivational speaker and author. Visit his website www.CharlesMarshallSpeaker.com  or contact him via email at Charles@CharlesMarshallSpeaker.com

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© 2013 Charles Marshall. Excerpt from The Seven Powers of Success

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Remember, success is not a destination or a one-time event. It is an evolution and development.
As you begin the process of writing down your desires, you will find you have different desires for different areas of your life—some spiritual, some financial, some family-oriented, and some physical. You will want to make different lists for each of these categories and refer to them often. They will serve as great motivation to you as you work toward them.

Don’t let the fact that you don’t know how to achieve these desires prohibit you from writing them down. The purpose of this task is not to create the means to get you there, but to help you decide where “there” is.

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© 2013 Charles Marshall. Excerpt from The Seven Powers of Success

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Charles Marshall funny motivational keynote speaker

It is of utmost importance that you make it your goal to constantly, consistently feed your mind. The only difference between someone who is successful and someone who is not is the way each of them thinks. If you are to fulfill your goals and dreams, you must be strengthening your mind. You must focus on keeping your mind in top condition.

How ridiculous would it be for an athlete to expect to win a race if he never conditioned his body, if he never gave his body the right foods, if he never exercised? Not only would he certainly not win, he could seriously injure himself by living a life of leisure and then subjecting his body to sudden exertion.

Your mind must also be trained because your intellect will atrophy if left unexercised. How ridiculous would it be for anyone to expect to succeed if he never conditioned his mind?
Much financial and emotional injury is incurred by uninformed and uneducated individuals who launch into endeavors they are not sufficiently prepared to undertake.

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© 2013 Charles Marshall. Excerpt from The Seven Powers of Success

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