No one can make you serve customers well. That’s because great service is a choice. Years ago, my friend, Harvey Mackay, told me a wonderful story about a cab driver that proved this pOint. He was waiting in line for a ride at the airport.

When a cab pulled up, the first thing Harvey noticed was that the taxi was polished to a bright shine. Smartly dressed in a white shirt, black tie, and freshly pressed black slacks, the cab driver jumped out and rounded the car to open the back passenger door for Harvey.

He handed my friend a laminated card and said:

“I’m Wally, your driver. While I’m loading your bags in the trunk I’d like you to read my mission statement.”

“To get my customers to their destination in the quickest, safest and cheapest way pOSSIble in a friendly environment”

This blew Harvey away. Especially when he noticed that the inside of the cab matched the outside. Spotlessly clean!

As he slid behind the wheel, Wally said, “Would you like a cup of coffee? I have a thermos of regular and one of decaf.” .

Wally smiled and said, “No problem. I have a cooler up front with regular and Diet Coke, water and orange juice.”

Handing him his drink, Wally said, “If you’d like something to read, I have The Wall Street Journal, Time, Sports Illustrated and USA Today.”

As they were pulling away, Wally handed my friend another laminated card. “These are the stations I get and the music they play, if you’d like to listen to the radio.”

And as if that weren’t enough, Wally told Harvey that he had the air conditioning on and asked if the temperature was comfortable for him. Then he advised Harvey of the best route to his destination for that time of day.

He also let him know that he’d be happy to chat and tell him about some of the sights or, if Harvey preferred, to leave him with his own thoughts.

Wally smiled into the rearview mirror.

“No, not always. In fact, it’s only been in the last two years. My first five years driving, I spent most of my time complaining like all the rest of the cabbies do.

Then I heard the personal growth guru, Wayne Dyer, on the radio one day. He had just written a book called You’ll See It When You Believe It. Dyer said that if you get up in the morning expecting to have a bad day, you’ll rarely disappoint yourself. He said, ‘Stop complaining’ Differentiate yourself from your competition. Don’t be a duck. Be an eagle. Ducks quack and complain. Eagles soar above the crowd …•

“That hit me right between the eyes,” said Wally. “Dyer was really talking about me. I was always quacking and complaining, so I decided to change my attitude and become an eagle. I looked around at the other cabs and their drivers. The cabs were dirty, the drivers were unfriendly, and the customers were unhappy. So I decided to make some changes. I put in a few at a time. When my customers responded well, I did more.”

“It sure has,” Wally replied. “My first year as an eagle, I doubled my income from the previous year. This year I’ll probably quadruple it. You were lucky to get me today. I don’t sit at cabstands anymore. My customers call me for appointments on my cell phone or leave a message on my answering machine. If I can’t pick them up myself, I get a reliable cabbie friend to do it and I take a piece of the action.”

Wally was phenomenal. He was running a limo service out of a Yellow Cab. I’ve probably told that story to more than fifty cab drivers over the years, and only two took the idea and ran with it. Whenever I go to their cities, I give them a call. The rest of the drivers quacked like ducks and told me all the reasons they couldn’t do any of what I was suggesting.

Wally the Cab Driver made a different choice. They decided to stop quacking like ducks and start soaring like eagles. How about you?

Please Note : This story, i got in e-mail.But dont know from where it was taken.If you read the above story and also know from where it was taken, please inform me.I am happy to credit

Below is a simple BuddyPress Guide.

1. What is BuddyPress ?

BuddyPress is built to bring people together. It works well to enable people with similar interests to connect and communicate. Some of the fantastic uses might be:

• A campus wide social network for your university, school or college.
• An internal communication tool for your company.
• A niche social network for your interest topic.
• A focused social network for your new product.

2. How can I Contribute to BuddyPress ?

Please consider register and becoming part of the BuddyPress community. By doing this you’ll be able to contribute to the documentation, ask questions in the forum as well as build your BuddyPress profile so other BuddyPress developers and contributors can keep in touch with you.

3. Who are the Lead Developers ?

Andy Peatling – Code Prettyfier
John James Jacoby – Ticket Crusher  { Even the BuddyPress About Page shows JJJ’s Name WRONG }

4. Where I can Test Drive BuddyPress Online ?

http://testbp.org/

5. Official BuddyPress Blog ?

http://buddypress.org/blog/

6. Where can I ask for help ?

http://buddypress.org/forums/

7. Where else I can talk about Buddypress ?

Join channel #buddypress-dev on Freenode.

8. How to Report a Bug ?

Open a ticket if you find a bug in BuddyPress (use your BuddyPress.org login credentials).

9. Where i can find BuddyPress Plugins ?

a)  WordPress Repository

10. Where can i find BuddyPress Themes ?

a)  WordPress.Org Themes Repository ( just select “BuddyPress” and click find themes )

b) Free BP Themes

11. Where can find the Official Documentation ?

In BuddyPress Codex

12. Will BuddyPress Work on Normal WordPress other than WPMU ?

YES, But only If you use the latest version of Both WordPress and Buddypress.

13. what is all about the Forum (bbPress) and Buddypress ? ( or ) Can i have the forum like Buddypress.org ?

a) If you are installing for the first time, the BuddyPress plugin itself has the BBPress forum files.so you don’t have to download or install BBPress separately.

By default, the Buddypress can create a lot of groups and each group has its own forum.got it ? so if you want to participate in any forum, you must be an member of that particular group which is having that forum.

b) you don’t like the above default method ? ie.. you want everybody to post and participate in any forum they want, without having to be a member of any group ?

Actually that’s how the Buddypress.org Works ( atleast until now ) wonder how to do it ?

just install the Bbpress and Buddypress (disable forum creation) separately and join them by means of  WP integration( while installing BBPress)

14. Can I have “BuddyPress” in my Domain Name ?

No.But you can have three excuses/cases to use it

a) you can use, when you’re going to start a site about BuddyPress or related to it.But you should also create a  “bp” equivalent, or another variation and forward the “BuddyPress” named domain to the Bp equivalent.

for example,

if you are a Buddypress developer , want to create a domain called buddypressdeveloper.com, you can’t use it.if you want to use it, you can also create a bpdeveloper.com , and forward the above domain to the bp equivalent and you should use the bp equivalent domain.ie.. bpdeveloper.com

b) “BuddyPress” in the sub-domains is fine, like buddypress.example.com, they are just concerned about top-level domains.

c) As long as your website forwarded to any page of buddypress.org .like you can create buddypressplugins.com and redirect it to http://buddypress.org/extend/plugins and so on…

This Post will be Updated Frequently

As for as the Default Buddypress theme is concerned, when activated the theme only shows the navigation to its main components such as Home, Activity, Members and Groups.It will not show you, other than that four pages.

But we always create many pages such as About and contact, which we believe very important enough to show them in the main navigation along with the default four links.

To show the Top level pages to the Main navigation,

1. Go to Appearance -> Editor in WordPress Administration Panel.

2. Select the Buddypress theme.

3. Open Functions.php in that theme.

4. Add the Following Code at the bottom.

/* Adding Top Level Pages to Default Buddypress Navigation */
function bp_sparun_add_nav(){
do_action(‘bp_sparun_add_nav’);
wp_list_pages(array(‘depth’=>1,’title_li’=>”));
}
add_action(‘bp_nav_items’,'bp_sparun_add_nav’);

5. Save Changes.

Now the top level pages can be seen in the navigation.In the above code, you can change all occurances of “sparun“.But it should be unique.