You want all of your customers to remain close to you. You want the relationship you have with your customers to grow, and you obviously want more repeat business. In addition, every business owner wants their current customers to refer other customers to them.

Being in regular and frequent contact with your customers is known as “Building Your Fence.” Your fence is designed to keep your clients and customers in and the poachers out. A poacher is anyone who is trying to steal your customers. It could be a direct competitor, but it could also be another company that is targeting the same dollars that your customer uses to buy your product or service.

To remain strong and effective, a fence must be properly maintained. If you are not in regular and frequent contact with your customers and clients, your fence will begin to deteriorate, losing one slat or whole sections at a time. Either way, the result is the same. As your fence becomes weaker, you will lose customers and profits.

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You’ve heard of Murphy’s Law: Anything that can go wrong will go wrong, usually at the worst possible moment. Well, there’s another variation of that, and it goes like this: The product will cease working exactly one day after the warranty expires. Enough of us have had that exact experience that it lends credence to the veracity of the law. We all take those 30- or 60- or 90-day warranties with a grain of salt. It makes us skeptical consumers.

Your customers are no different. They’re wondering, “What if it doesn’t work? What happens when it fails? What if I don’t get the result I was expecting?” They may be on the fence about buying from you. You’ve done a lot to move them to consider buying from you, but they’re thinking, “Yeah, I kind of like it. It sounds like it will solve my problem. I think the price is fair, but what if . . . ?”

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Six. Have gratitude. Gratitude is not something I lack. I had cancer. Quite frankly, I’m grateful to be alive. Develop the mindset of gratitude, because sometimes you have the opportunity to stare the alternative in the eye.

My outlook is very different now. Few things even get me upset. I’m grateful, as you can imagine, for every day that I have to face down whatever challenges come. Gratitude enables you to have a positive mindset where you feel like you can take on anything because you’re grateful for it. You can even be grateful for the challenges. This mind shift is huge, and when you have an attitude of gratitude, good things are going to happen.

Seven. Follow up on promises. One of the biggest wealth attractants is simply saying what you will do and doing what you say. Ask yourself if there are any areas in your life or your business where you’re not following up on promises. One of the things that I do, both in my personal life and especially in my business life, is if I say I’m going to do something I do it. If I say I’m going to deliver something, I always work to over-deliver.

Under-promise and over-deliver is a good strategy as long as your under-promise meets your customers’ basic expectations. Then, when you over-deliver, you stand out from the competition. Do what you’re supposed to do. Do it when you say you will. No surprises. That’s a very simple way to seriously stand out.

I believe it is vitally important to continuously invest in your education. One way that I do that is I read three to five books per month. Among the books in my library you’ll find classics such as Think and Grow Rich and Psycho-Cybernetics, and a great book by Lee Milteer, Success is an Inside Job.

Several of the business building philosophies and strategies that I have learned and use regularly were recently featured all together in Lee’s “Smart Thinking” newsletter, and it inspired me to share them with you.

One. Focus on things that will help you to create wealth. Ask yourself, “What am I going to do to move my business forward? How am I going to add ten new clients this month?” Then continue on with your day and let your subconscious do its thing. When ideas hit, write them down. See which ones work for you, then run with them.

Two. This is on the flip side of the coin. You need to avoid negativity. There’s so much negativity out there that you need to focus on what you want to create. Don’t focus on what you don’t want to create, such as, “What happens if I lose this client?” Shift your mindset. Be proactive in exposing yourself to good information and to things that inspire and uplift.

As I said, I read a lot. I read countless books about the success of people such as Donald Trump, and I love Dan Kennedy books. As of this publication, I’m reading a book by Howard Schultz on how he built Starbucks. It’s inspiring. When I read things like that I feel inspired, and ideas start floating into my head about what I can do with my business.

Reading positive books and articles instead of reading all the lousy, negative stuff that you find in the newspapers and on various Web sites helps to create a place in your mind where beneficial ideas begin to spark.

The other part of that, which is sometimes not easy, is you need to eliminate negative people from your life. If you hang out with people who are doom and gloom, woe is me, this is horrible, what are we going to do? that is a drain on your positive mental attitude. You need to spend less time with folks like that.