3 Olympic Business Lessons For Every Business Owner

I don't know about you, but I've been obsessing over the Olympics in Rio. I've had them playing in the background while I do client work all day. I've re-arranged my schedule to watch some events. I've stayed up every single night just to watch swimming!

While watching the events this year, I realized there are some major Olympic business lessons we can learn as freelancers and small business owners. In this post, I'm going to detail the ones I've noticed so far.

You can overcome an upper limit problem.

I've discussed upper limit problems before, but watching Michael Phelps make a comeback after a few rough years in his personal life has made me interested in it again.

An upper limit problem is what Gay Hendricks, author of The Big Leap, describes as the moment we sabotage ourselves when things are going well. We think there's a limit to our success and, as a result, we unconsciously do something to screw it up.

Just look at Michael Phelps a few short years ago. The greatest Olympian of all time was suddenly having one challenge after another in his personal life which was resulting in problems for his professional life. It's textbook upper limit problem.

Michael Phelps overcame it all. Not only did he overcome it to make an appearance in Rio, he's killed it in every single one of his races!

This is one of the most important Olympic business lessons of all: Be mindful of when you're sabotaging your success and immediately start to course correct.

Don't worry about the competition.

One of the greatest Olympic business lessons you can always learn by watching these events is how to handle competition. The Rio Olympics are no exception.

There's an image that has surfaced on the internet of Michael Phelps' rival Chad Le Clos looking right at him in the water as they were racing. While Le Clos was busy wondering where Phelps was, Phelps was keeping his eyes straight in front.

Phelps refused to get distracted by what was going on around him. He simply focused on the race. Phelps took home the gold and Le Clos, who narrowly took the gold from Phelps four years ago in the same event, didn't even medal.

In this world, we're told to worry about our competitors. This creates a lot of distraction and a lot of noise for freelancers who are just trying to make a living doing something creative. The reality is, we need to stay focused on our own lane, not anyone else's.

Give it your best shot.

The U.S. Women's Beach Volleyball team was given a run for their money by the Swiss. It was a thrilling three sets to watch, and you could tell every player was giving it their all. As one of the announcers said, "They have no quit." The U.S. Women's Beach Volleyball team didn't give up, and they beat the Swiss at the end.

This stuck out to me as a freelancer and as a coach who teaches other freelancers. I've seen many freelancers quit when things get uncomfortable. I've seen many bloggers quit when they don't see the rewards coming in right away. I've seen a lot of people just shrug their shoulders and give up.

That's why another one of the Olympic business lessons for business owners is to always give it your best shot.

3 Olympic Business Lessons for Every Business Owner was originally published on Duecom blog by Amanda Abella.

Why Starting a Conversation is a Cold Email Strategy That Works

By Justin McGill

Over the last couple of years, I have had the privilege of overseeing more than 3 million cold email messages. Unfortunately, most of them fail miserably.

Why Most Cold Emails Fail

If your cold emails look like this, you are doing it wrong:

"Hi Justin, hope you're doing well! Can we schedule a short meeting to discuss our company services at your convenience?"

There are several reasons why cold emails fail: these can include anything from bad subject lines, to emailing the wrong contact, to not personalizing your message enough. Unfortunately, it is pretty easy to create bad cold emails.

A Simple Cold Email Framework

Because quality cold emails are so rare these days, I came up with a simple formula I call "QVC" to help people increase their responses.

Q is for Question. This should be one sentence.

V is for Value Proposition. This should be one to three sentences maximum.

C is for Closing. This should be one sentence.

You don't want to worry about introducing yourself in the very first sentence; this immediately tells the recipient that they don't know you. Aside from the subject line, this is the single most important element of your entire email, because it's what shows up in preview panes in their email client and on their phones.

You can introduce yourself and your offering in the next section. However, you want to focus on your benefit here. This means you should replace the "I" and "we" with a "you" in this portion of the email.

Lastly, you want to close the email with another question. Ideally, a question that is easy to respond to while helping the conversation advance to the next stage.

Using the QVC framework, I've been able to generate a 45 percent open rate on my cold emails. Even better is the combined 14 percent response rate (31 percent combined between the first two emails).

Nail the Subject Line

Two things need to happen with your cold email subject lines. One, you want to capture their interest, and two, you want to avoid being flagged as spam. Believe it or not, 69 percent of email recipients flag an email as spam solely based on the subject line.

Emails that have "Re:" perform higher than any other subject line. This is especially important for follow-up emails: include your previous email correspondence in your follow-up for easy reference, while using "Re:" at the beginning of your subject line.

If you are having a hard time coming up with a great subject line, don't stress. Studies show an 8 percent improvement in open rates with no subject line at all!

Send at Least Four More Follow-ups

Unfortunately, 44 percent of salespeople stop following up after two attempts. Meanwhile, 80 percent of sales occur after five attempts. Don't just quit after one or even two emails.

You also want to avoid the typical "checking in" or "I haven't heard back" follow-ups. Instead, try to bring value. Use a case study for one follow-up, ask a question for another follow-up, link to a relevant blog post for another, or focus on a different benefit than what you did in your previous emails.

Getting a Response

By writing cold emails with the intention of getting a response, you are helping your future email deliverability. This is because you are showing engagement. Any response is a good response (even when they request to never be emailed again).

In addition, by having a more naturally flowing email, you help reduce your risk of being flagged as spam.

Lastly, you won't have to burn through so many of your ideal prospects, because you'll be converting a higher percentage of them into actual conversations that move the sales process forward.

If they do respond and are interested in what you offer, I recommend sending them a link to your calendar to book a time to chat further. Don't try to simply close the deal via email.

Justin McGill is CEO & co-founder of LeadFuze, a B2B lead-generation platform that automates prospect discovery and personalized outreach at scale.

Sorry, But The Private Prison Industry Isn't Going Anywhere

The stock prices of the two biggest private prison companies in the United States nosedived on Thursday after the Department of Justice vowed to stop housing inmates at their facilities.

It’s a significant blow to an industry that has spent millions lobbying for itself, but don’t expect this to put anyone out of business any time soon.

The Department of Justice announcement, following a report that found private prisons are less safe than federally run alternatives, only applies to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, which accounts for just a fraction of the private prison industry’s business.

Over the past decade, immigration detention has become the industry’s cash cow. State contracts remain a lucrative revenue stream, too. Plus, as talk of prison reform gained steam over the past two years, the only three companies ― two public, one private ― under contract from the Federal Bureau of Prisons began diversifying their services to include halfway houses and electronic GPS monitoring.  

Center for American Progress

For-profit prisons saw enormous growth in their immigrant detention businesses over the past decade. 

Still, the two publicly traded private prison giants took a beating on Wall Street on Thursday.

Shares of Corrections Corporation of America, the country’s largest private prison firm, fell by more than 38 percent. About 11 percent of the company’s revenue last year came from the Federal Bureau of Prisons, down from 13 percent the previous year. But the company has diversified.

In 2013, CCA spent $36 million to buy Correctional Alternatives, a provider of housing and rehab services, such as work furloughs and home confinement. Then, in October 2015, the company acquired Avalon Correctional Services for about $157.5 million, beefing up its network of halfway houses. 

In 2014, the Obama administration awarded the company a four-year, $1 billion deal to detain asylum seekers from Central America ― many of them families with children and infants. And last year, the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency nearly doubled the amount of revenue it was sending to CCA.

“Locking up immigrants, including families and children fleeing extreme violence in Central America, should not be a source of profit for huge corporations, particularly given private contractors’ terrible record providing inadequate medical and mental health care to dying immigrants,” the nonprofit Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement on Thursday. 

CCA

“We value our partners, and we will continue to work with them, both through the types of management solutions we’ve provided for more than three decades, as well as new, innovative opportunities we’ve been exploring in recent years in a proactive effort to meet their evolving needs,” Jonathan Burns, a spokesman for CCA, said in a statement. “It’s important to note that today’s announcement relates only to BOP correctional facilities, which make up seven percent of our business.”

GEO Group, the industry’s second largest company, saw its stock price plunge nearly 39 percent on Thursday. The company relied on the Bureau of Prisons more heavily than its bigger rival, pulling in 15 percent of its income from the agency, according to its annual report for investors. But immigration detention represented 18 percent of GEO’s revenue.

Plus, the company has diversified aggressively over the last few years. In 2011, it purchased Behavioral Interventions, the world’s largest producer of electronic monitoring equipment for people awaiting trial or serving probation or parole sentences.

GEO Group

It’s unclear how much the Justice Department’s decision will hurt Management & Training Corporation, the only privately held prison company with a contract from the Bureau of Prisons.

In a statement, MTC said it was “disappointed” and argued that any decision to curtail its services based on “cost, safety and security, and programming is wrong.” Two of the company’s 26 facilities hold federal prison inmates, spokesman Issa Arnita told The Huffington Post. Arnita declined to share any information on how the decision will affect the company’s bottom line. (Privately held companies are not required to publicly report their earnings.)

“This is not an immediate death blow to the industry, but it is quite significant,” Carl Takei, staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, told HuffPost on Thursday. “The Justice Department’s announcement today makes clear that the Bureau of Prison’s two-decade experiment with private prisons is finally coming to an end.” 

When it does finally end, it won’t be a moment too soon, he said.

“In general,” Takei said, “handing control of prisons to for-profit companies is a recipe for abuse, neglect and misconduct.”

UPDATE: 5:30 p.m. ― A spokesman for GEO Group offered a statement Thursday about the Justice Department’s decision.

“While our company was disappointed by today’s DOJ announcement, the impact of this decision on GEO is not imminent,” Pablo Paez, a company spokesman, wrote in the emailed statement. “Notwithstanding today’s announcement, we will continue to work with the BOP, as well as all of our government partners, in order to ensure safe and secure operations at all of our facilities.”

Amazon Is Less Great for Customers and Indie Authors

Amazon. Wow! It was the internet phenomenon that revolutionized retail selling through its ease of use and customer service.* Amazon's web site was secure and intuitive for users.

Yes, there were problems with pirates selling fake brand name merchandise, but customer reviews and refunds helped identify and solve problems. The items customers liked best became easy-to-find bestsellers.

Best Seller: Try to Find It!

In May of 2015, things changed. Perhaps Amazon was hard up for revenues and wanted to charge sellers to feature their products. That seemed like a good idea for Amazon as a business, but it turned into a bad idea when it eliminated "Best Sellers" from its familiar drop-down sort menu. You can sort items by "Relevance," "Price: low to high," Price: high to low," "Avg. Customer Review," and "Newest Arrivals." Moreover, when you independently search on categories of products, Best Sellers do not automatically appear; "Featured products appear."

You can still sort by Best Sellers, but you have to look along the left-hand rail to find the Best Seller link.

Another feature customers loved was the ability to search "New and Popular." The current "Avg. Customer Review" search filter will give a product with one five-star rating priority over a product that has 1,000 ratings with an average rating of 4.9 stars. Which one would you rather see first?

Amazon got rid of the customer search features that made Amazon unbeatable. It is as if Amazon decided it no longer wants to be number one with customers and is opening the door to competitors willing to fill the gap.

Indie Authors Are Rethinking Kindle Exclusivity

Yesterday, I exchanged emails with my friend, award winning crime thriller author Libby Hellmann, about eBook promotions. Authors used to be able to buy ad space from book newsletter publishers like Book Bub, Ereader News Today, and Free Kindle Books & Tips, rise up the ranks, and have it mean something in terms of long-term and "halo" sales. But about a year ago, after Amazon made its changes, authors found that even though they might reach the number one slot in various categories, their Kindle books were not visible to customers who used organic search tools.

Here are two examples why. I ran a promotion for the Kindle edition of my nonfiction memoir, Unveiled Threat: A Personal Experience of Fundamentalist Islam and the Roots of Terrorism. Libby ran a broader promotion for her award-winning thriller Nobody's Child. She rose up the ranks in the much more competitive genre of mysteries. Unveiled Threat, after achieving an overall Amazon rank of 1,900 was #1 in the Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks> Religion & Spirituality > Islam. Nobody's Child, after achieving an overall Amazon rank of 100 or so was #5 in the Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Private Investigators.

When I cleared my browser and searched these categories on Amazon, I couldn't find either Kindle book. Again, that's because Amazon serves up "Featured" Kindle books, not the "Best Sellers." Most customers do not realize that in order to see the true Best Sellers in these categories, they have to specifically ask for them. For example, to find Nobody's Child sorted by Best Seller, a Customer must click: Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks, then find and click the link for "Bestsellers," and then click through to > Mystery, Thriller & Suspense > Mystery > Private Investigators.

What does this mean for indie authors who provided so much original inexpensive content with broad customer followings and helped make Kindle a success? For most of them--other than the very top sellers--it means the way to promote their books has changed. The old methods are less effective; Amazon customers cannot organically find them. Indie authors have less incentive to stay exclusively with Amazon and may explore going wide by listing their eBooks with Amazon's competitors, as Libby Fischer Hellmann has already done.


* It also helped that Amazon initially collected zero sales tax from customers in states that levy sales tax; it was up to customers to report and pay taxes owed, where applicable. Only Oregon, New Hampshire, Delaware, Montanan, and Alaska do not levy a sales tax. Today, Amazon collects sales tax from customers in every state in which it has a physical presence.

Kara Ross: The Visionary Creating the Global Symbol for Women's Empowerment

Paradigm Shifters is a series of interviews with a select group of women and men from eclectic walks of life. It will highlight unspoken, real-life insights on how they have been able to turn weakness into strength. A naked soul point of view of how their breakdowns were really a preparation for breakthroughs. They are your quintessential paradigm shifters; internal shifts converted into genuine change.

Everything I have ever done has been focused on this underlying theme of shifting the paradigm because, "What we think determines what we feel and what we feel determines what we do." Hence, why Empowered by You takes lingerie, which has traditionally been seen merely as a tool of seduction and redirected that energy as a tool of empowerment.

I hope from these stories you will look at your own situations, struggles and accomplishments through a different lens. At the very least you will be more equipped with real life tools to change your own paradigm. At the end of the day, we are our own Alchemist turning the silver we were born with into the gold we are destined to become.

Founder & CEO of Diamonds Unleashed by Kara Ross

Tell me about your family.

I grew up on the Mainline outside of Philadelphia. I am the oldest of five. We are all within 7 years and very, very close. My father is a surgeon and my mother is a stay at home mom, but she went back to get her Masters of Library Sciences. In my family, we're all about education. My brother and I went to Georgetown, two of my siblings went to Harvard, and my other sibling went to the University of Pennsylvania. We all did really well in school; there wasn't really an option to do poorly. My parents set this standard of excellence, which I also enforce in my own household. Some people view it as harsh, but I see it as an affirmation. It confirms that they're smart enough to get the grades I expect because they should expect them as well.

Important message someone has taught you?

I must have been twelve. I was with my mother getting groceries at the A&P. There was some promotion going on where if you got a specific amount of receipts you would get a watch. I really wanted the watch and we didn't have enough receipts. The women purchasing groceries in front of us had many receipts from her groceries. My mom told me to go ask her and I was so hesitant and uncomfortable with it. My mother turned to me and said, "the word 'no' doesn't hurt." That one line from my mother, has served me well my whole life. You hear the word "no" a lot, and so what? Regardless, you just have to keep going.

How did you start in the jewelry business?

I always loved fashion and loved fashion magazines. Growing up I always thought I wanted to get into magazine publishing. After college, I worked at Harpers Bazaar. I did that for a year then left to work at Ms. Magazine. I went to Model magazine after that. I spent some time thinking about what was I going to do; I contemplated getting another job at a magazine. It would've been easy, but I decided to go for my dreams because if not now, when? So I left and I went to GIA, the most renowned gem laboratory in the world. Frankly, I thought it was going to be easy but it was very challenging. However, I soaked it in and I really loved it.. After, I went to work at one of the largest pearl companies. We sold to Tiffany, Harry Winston--I got the best education on pearls and began to really love them, especially the Tahitian pearl and the South Sea pearl. I did that for a year and then I began meeting and forming relationships with diamond cutters and dealers. After that I began designing engagement rings, I did so many I can't even count. You just have to be open to every experience.

How did you start your company?

I started my company as a single mom, supporting my two daughters. I had no employees for five or six years. I sold to Neiman Marcus under my maiden name. I was selling to five Neiman Marcus', I was doing my own designs, and I was doing everything (sourcing, marketing, design, invoices, trunk shows etc). It just came to the point where I couldn't maintain what I was doing with such large volume for department stores. I then focused on exclusive private clients and began making custom, incredibly expensive pieces. This is where I really learned about the model making and the stone setting. It was all about quality and precision--the aesthetics had to be perfect. I did that for a while before putting together another collection. Eventually, that collection was launched at Bergdorf Goodman. I have designed more engagement rings than I can count.

Tell me about diamonds as a symbol for love and marriage to empowerment for women and having profits with a purpose...How did you redefine a business model in every way possible?

I've been in the jewelry world, as well as the handbag world, for quite some time. I understand design and distribution. Fine jewelry is usually "sold" in department stores or fine jewelry stores on memo or consignment. It didn't used to be that way, the product used to be purchased. Basically in the model thats happening today, fine jewelry designers are financing someone else's inventory. Someone takes it from you and if it sells that's when you receive payment. If you can have your designs at a store like Neiman's or Harrods it's worth it, because it provides great exposure for the brand.

I believe the model direct to consumer is the best way to go and it is what I follow. Redefining the business model just kind of organically happened. I had decided to reset my engagement ring and I wanted to do something very cool. Diamonds and engagement rings are locked into this formulaic aesthetic. When I was working with the model maker he made something small and pretty. I made him re-do it two times; I wanted it to be in your face and aggressive. I purposefully wore it on my right hand, because it just looked better, and I started getting all these compliments. People thought it was so cool, and wanted to know why there aren't more unusual diamond rings on the market. I also got a lot of questions about why I was wearing it on my right hand.

This feedback got me thinking and I began doing research on diamonds and how people perceive them. I found that the diamond business has really pigeon-holed itself. For the most part diamonds are currently bought by men for women in the association of love, marriage, and engagement... and there is nothing wrong with that, but we are saying it symbolizes strength. It kept coming back to this old, antiquated notion. I knew this was something that could be turned on its head.

I began thinking about the words that describe a diamond: unbreakable, multifaceted, beautiful. That's a woman. I wanted to come up with something that shed light on that. Our goal was to transform the diamond from a passive gift one receives to this authoritative possession. For example, Serena Williams' example of "my diamond is a trophy I gave to myself." I wanted to create a symbol for this authority and possession and that is where this came from. This idea could be seen, pulled, and stretched in so many directions. There is nothing wrong with a diamond symbolizing love and marriage, but we're saying, lets extend that so diamonds can symbolize women's strength. It was just this very organic paradigm shift that resulted from questioning the status quo. Why can't we think about something like diamonds in a much bigger way? How do we create a global symbol like a peace sign? How do you translate that model into something that is a luxury?

I decided to create a business where all NET profits go back to non profit partners & microfinance opportunities focusing on women's education. This is where I found my passion. I wanted to focusing my energy solely on Diamonds Unleashed, and had such a wonderful ground swell of support from high profile women (ambassadors), various well known retail partners, and more. The opportunity seemed HUGE and warranted 100% of my attention. I had to restructure my business and start fresh. In doing this, I created this very clear vision and am able to focus completely on this business.

Why education?

There are so many issues surrounding women: sexual violence, abuse, homelessness, the list goes on and on. Education was very natural to me because it traced back to how I grew up and it is so incredibly powerful. You can grow up impoverished, but if you get an education you can change your life. Once we finally found the right non profit partners and micro-finance opportunities, we continued on this trajectory. I'm really excited to follow my passion and make a difference doing something I love.

Difficulties?

I only have one voice but when you put your collective voices together it's much more powerful, especially when those voices include high profile women. I'm on the board of CFDA, Georgetown, Women Moving Millions, and the Harvard Kennedy School of Women in Public Policy. This enables me to reach out to all these different women in all these different sectors. This takes so much time though and was only one of the platforms that needed to be lined up before I could really start. The most difficult aspect of launching Diamonds Unleashed was lining up meaning partnerships and platforms such as: retail partnerships, manufacturing partnerships, marketing/pr/social media and the most exciting partnership CANADAMARK, Dominion Diamond Corp. When you have a company called Diamonds Unleashed, it's very important to know that these are conflict free diamonds. We are not telling women to go out and buy diamonds. We are telling them to think about themselves as diamonds, and the characteristics that a diamond has; beautiful, strong, unbreakable, multi-faceted and brilliant. To that extent, we have done partnerships with other brands and translated the symbol on to ready to wear, accessories, and beauty.

One of the things that I am most excited about right now is a children's wear micro-finance capsule collection we did with women from two townships based in Capetown, South Africa. We custom printed the Diamonds Unleashed symbol on traditional South African fabric called Shwe Shwe, which was then made into the most beautiful baby clothing available today. We are bringing beautiful, desirable product to market, and at the same time we are keeping women in South Africa employed and spreading the symbol for women's empowerment. Everyday is a beautiful challenge, it's exciting and I enjoy putting all of the pieces together of this large puzzle.

What was most rewarding?

The whole thing. I enjoy getting up everyday and thinking about what I need to do. I really feel like I have a purpose. I've always worked in my life; I've been working since I was fifteen years old. But now, I feel so good. I feel like I'm on a mission with this great purpose and I'm very excited about it.

Breakdown to breakthrough?

In my life I've had quite a few. You always hit a roadblock and that is a breakdown. Then it's just about figuring out how to get through it. A big breakdown was earlier in my life when I was a single mom, going through a divorce, with two kids and remaining the sole provider. But I made sure they had a roof over their heads, I sent them to private school, and I got a babysitter--because I had to. Yeah, maybe you can be depressed for a day or two but then you have to get over it. You've got to suck it up and carry on.

Legacy?

Having the Diamonds Unleashed symbol be the worldwide symbol for women's empowerment. As that becomes the case, we'll be driving more and more funds for education and microfinance, which will help other women. It's a huge aspiration, but I feel like with the right partners it can happen. It's not about me, it's about we. As of now, there is no uniting symbol like the peace sign or the pink ribbon. And it's not just about the symbol, it's about women being united to work toward a better world.

A definition of a social entrepreneur is, " someone who has committed their life to changing the direction of their field. A person with innovative solutions to society's most pressing social problems." Kara is not only a social entrepreneur, but someone who is reinventing how we experience jewelry and every product with the Diamonds Unleashed symbol. As someone who has interviewed some of the most powerful women in fashion, I have to say that I am awestruck by Kara's humility and relentless drive. There is a fabric that leaders are made of and Kara's thread is nothing short of legendary.

What To Do During The Next Airline Computer Meltdown

Catastrophic computer outages that paralyze an entire airline are few and far between. Except this summer.

Last month, Southwest Airlines canceled 2,300 flights after a router in one of its data centers failed, delaying hundreds of thousands of passengers. And last week, Delta Air Lines suffered a massive computer outage, which triggered the cancellation of 451 flights in a single morning.

A rare look behind the curtain at Southwest’s meltdown offers several important customer-service lessons for passengers who experience similar delays in the future. And in an industry that depends on finicky information systems, these incidents are bound to repeat themselves. They’ve left customers wondering how to avoid getting stuck in another IT collapse, and what, if anything, an airline can do to make up for such an event.

Related: Frequently asked questions about air travel.

Jack Russell, who was scheduled to fly from St. Louis to Las Vegas last month, had a front-row seat for Southwest’s IT issues, which an employee euphemistically blamed on a “software problem.” The airline’s proposed fix: Fly him to Vegas four days later.

As the executive vice president of a software company in St. Louis, Russell knows a thing or two about computers that go on the blink. But he’s less understanding about Southwest’s IT implosion, which he says left him with little choice but to pay an extra $1,800 to reach his destination.

“I spent twice as much money as I thought I would to get to Las Vegas,” Russell says. “If my customers had an outage created by my company and I said, ‘Sorry, it was a freak occurrence,’ they would be waiting at my doorstep with their lawyer.”

The Southwest systems problem suggests how fragile even the best-run airlines can be. It started in the early afternoon of July 20, when one of its small Cisco routers, out of about 2,000 such pieces of hardware that direct the airline’s network traffic, failed.

This router broke in an unusual way. Instead of registering the error, which would have allowed network administrators in Southwest’s Dallas data center to take it offline immediately and replace it with a working router, it behaved as if it was still operating normally. Only, it wasn’t directing any traffic.

Although network administrators spotted the error within half an hour, enough traffic had backed up that critical systems needed to be rebooted — a process that took a full 12 hours and affected critical functions, including the airline’s website, its smartphone app and several internal systems used by Southwest employees to handle reservations. It was as if someone had turned off the lights for half a day.

When the systems flickered back to life, the problems continued. The airline still didn’t have enough information to restart all flights. Because its systems had been down for so long, it couldn’t be sure whether some of its crews had taken enough rest, as required by the Federal Aviation Administration. That forced Southwest to cancel more flights on July 21 and 22.

Brandwatch, a social-tracking service, charted a corresponding tsunami of anger on Southwest’s social media channels. The airline drew 36,905 mentions in a single day on July 21, an almost 20-fold increase from normal levels.

“The spike in incoming volume that this received was incredible,” says Joshua March, the chief executive of Conversocial, which offers customer-service software to travel companies. “But the really significant piece in this instance was the inability to effectively scale the response.”

Southwest had no script for handling an event of this magnitude.

“It was really rough,” says Robert Jordan, the airline’s executive vice president and chief commercial officer, who describes the IT catastrophe as a “thousand-year flood.” The airline sent 50-percent-off vouchers to passengers affected by the outage, and in some cases paid for them to fly to their destinations on other airlines. All told, he says Southwest spent “tens of millions of dollars” trying to make amends.

“We know we messed up,” he adds. “We know we have to work really hard to regain our passengers’ trust.”

Southwest is still cleaning up. Russell’s delayed flight to Las Vegas is among the thousands of cases still being processed. Under most circumstances, a full refund for a replacement flight would be a tall order, but these are not normal circumstances.

IT disasters of this scale are unusual. Back in 2012, United Airlines experienced several days of delayed flights and sluggish customer service as it struggled to integrate the IT systems of United and Continental Airlines. Last July, United also suffered an outage that made it cancel hundreds of flights after a network router stopped working.

Asked if passengers could have done anything to get to their destinations faster during such a systems collapse, Jordan paused. So many things went wrong during the event that the normal tricks didn’t work. You couldn’t fall back on calling the airline because even the call-center employees didn’t have access to their IT systems.

“There just isn’t a good answer,” he says.

That’s the consensus of the customer service experts, too.

Elaine Allison, a former flight attendant and on-board service manager who now offers training courses in customer service, says passengers are powerless to negotiate their way around a total systems failure. She happened to be in Las Vegas during the week of Southwest’s outage, but was lucky enough to be flying on another airline.

“Pack at least one day of clothing and small amenities, plus all medications, in a carry-on, in the event luggage is checked and immediately not retrievable,” she says. Russell handled the situation correctly by re-booking his flight on another airline, she says. Southwest must refund a ticket when it cancels a flight.

The trick, says customer service expert Teri Yanovitch, is to look forward and not back. Southwest needs to figure out how to say it’s sorry without losing its shirt, and customers need a game plan should they get caught in a future systems failure.

“Southwest needs to explain the situation and how Southwest will prevent it from happening again,” she says. “As a customer, the best you can do when all critical IT systems are down is to keep calm, don’t take it out on the employee — it is not their fault — and consider your options for alternate transportation based on the situation.”

Research suggests that Southwest can make a full recovery, Yanovitch says. When a recovery is handled correctly, 96 percent of the customers will return. And when it’s not? In 2012, when United Airlines suffered its first meltdown, it was the world’s largest airline. Today, it’s No. 3.

After you’ve left a comment here, let’s continue the discussion on my consumer advocacy site or on Twitter, Facebook and Google. I also have a newsletter and you’ll definitely want to order my new, amazingly helpful and subversive book called How to Be the World’s Smartest Traveler (and Save Time, Money, and Hassle).

Robot Lover

Matt Webb, Global Chief Technology Officer, Mirum

How Work is Changing for the Better in the Age of AI, Automation, and Autonomous Robots

If you look at the power of blurring advanced automation and robotics with AI, you start to picture a world where the once protected elements of a job (the computers can’t do this and neither can robots argument), are fewer and fewer.

You start to realize that a lot of your day, could in reality, be handled by an AI lead, droid version of a Swiss army knife or CleverDroids, as I like to call them.

My issue with this, is that it is easy to slip into the negative view of an AI takeover, where fully automated factories replace ones where humans are brewing cups of tea and whole departments shrink to the size of a server room ultimately leading to cities full of unemployed robot haters and social unrest.  (In the movie world this would all be set amongst a backdrop of litter and shot in washed out grey). 

The trouble is, I don't buy it.  I know this is naive, but I feel that there are areas of the world that could really do with more input.  Imagine a hospital - currently understaffed, given advanced robotics to administer medicine, deliver food, and move patients around - all overseen by the same wonderful doctors and nurses, but with less time spent doing the things that waste their time.  Or how about firefighters that can operate large life saving machines by using their minds alone?  Then there are the corporations that can afford to give people more training, because they are dealing with their employees’ time more effectively by augmenting their abilities with AI.

I know it has been quoted before, but I do subscribe to the notion that CleverDroids and AI will take parts of people's jobs, but not all of people's jobs.

The people on the other side of this, always quote the call centers, burger flippers and box packers - but think of every crappy job you have ever done, think of how many times you were doing that job and could have been doing something more worthwhile with your time.

Alternatively, think of the first person you hired, who had a degree - and all they had been doing up until you hired them was packing boxes.  Now, imagine if they had stayed an additional year in higher education being taught by an AI, CleverBot or even just online for that year - based on the preference you set.  Bingo, cheap, repeatable and customizable training. 

You might question, how would they pay to eat and where would they live?  Well, how about if that same college that was part funded by your firm, also had the license to print temporary smart homes and grow and distribute food more efficiently, and that all the students had to do was volunteer so many hours a week towards helping train others and feed the homeless…

You see where I am going!

I know my prediction isn’t flawless - but we ARE changing our work life, so while we are at it, why don’t we try and do some good with it.

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