88% of Americans on a 2,002 person survey said accents frustrate them on service calls. - Frustrated by accent issues: 88% - Familiar accent lowers stress: 35% - Prefer a matching accent: 23% Frustrated is not confused. And annoyed is not “couldn’t understand.” Here is what the research says about understanding. Munro and Derwing had native English speakers listen to accented speech and write down what they heard. Nearly two thirds of the samples scored 91 to 100% correct. They heard the accent. They understood the words. A study of Filipino call center agents found the same split. Clarity and fluency predicted how COMPETENT an agent sounded. While accent mostly predicted whether the caller wanted a longer chat. (COMFORTABLE) Source: Answering Service Care, U.S. Accent Study 2025 (Censuswide, 2,002 adults). When you hire support agents, do you test for clarity or for accent? I test for 2 things. Clarity. Fluency. Train for those. But there is comfort. Which has nothing to do with understanding. My experience in less cosmopolitan areas, where your service caters to an older age group, is that accent really does matter. So clarity first. Then match the accent to your market. And always know what your audience wants! Thank you for your time and consideration!

All I see on the internet is doom. Doom. Negativity. These things are great at diverting your focus. They prevent you from advancing because they put you in a state of fear. Putting energy into things that do not matter. Before you react to a headline, ask what the line looks like over 10 years. Understand the secular trends. (long-term directional movements) Don't let anybody sell you panic as if it were information. This felt timely in the wake of rising rates. The world, although contrary to headlines, actually is progressing over time. Access to goods and services continues to grow. * Life expectancy: 64.9 years in 1995. 73.3 years in 2024. * Extreme poverty: 2.3 billion people in 1990. 831 million in 2025. * Electricity access: 92% of the world today. * Access to finance: 51% of adults had an account in 2011. 79% in 2024. These are all things that continue to improve. Thank you for your time and consideration!

2020: 0.2% vs 0.5% 2021: 4.9% vs 1.9% 2022: 4.7% vs 1.8% 2023: 2.1% (solo only) Source: US Census Bureau, nonemployer growth analysis, July 2025 2012-2023: average 2.7% vs 1.1% To be clear, "solo" counts any business with no paid employees and $1,000 or more in receipts. Why it's interesting? The story is that people flee to solo work during downturns. Gig economy & solo businesses are UP and I don't see this going away. Traditional employment is fading in the younger generations. YouTube, streaming, Uber, Upwork, Fiverr… It's truly amazing what one person can do in today's day and age with a laptop and good mindset. You shouldn't aspire for a huge staff. That's some ego BS you don't want to get into. Aim for a small team of special forces. Thank you for your time and consideration!

Price to income per person, Case-Shiller and BEA data: * 2006 to 2012: down 34% * 2012 to 2022: up 41% * 2022 to 2025: down 5% Income per person rose 16% since 2022, before inflation. Home prices rose 10%. Mortgage rate, 30-year fixed: * A year ago: 6.34% * Oct 1: 7.28% On the same loan, that is about 10% more per month. Twice the 5% easing. Prices are easing against income. Monthly payments are not. Both are true. Personally, I don't trust a housing chart that leaves out the cost of the loan. Price tells you what a home costs. The payment tells you who can afford it. Thank you for your time and consideration!

Here is why. 1. Whatever works today will not work in 6 months. Your competitors are sharpening theirs right now. You don't want to be Blockbuster selling DVDs when there's Netflix. 2. Getting good makes you lazy. You got good by following the script to the letter. By following the principles. Then you start closing a few deals, start thinking you know it all, and start skipping steps. You don't realize it but you naturally start getting sloppy, less thorough than when you had nothing. 3. Wins don't change the odds. Red 10 times in a row doesn't make black any more likely on the next spin. A good week doesn't mean that the underlying difficulty has changed. I recently had this experience in my emails. I saw positive replies dropping. Instead of sitting there thinking it was just a blip, I got to work. Redid ALL my copy. Refined ALL my prompts. A few days later and I am back on track. So what do you take from this? Never get complacent. Never think that what's working now will always work. Everything ends at some point. So always be sharpening your tools. Always be testing new strategies. It's a principle for life. Thank you for your time and consideration!