It’s no secret that I’m a Delta mileage fiend. I’ll fly an extra segment here and there to accumulate the miles, I’ll fly into Dallas and drive 3 hours to Abilene rather than take American Airlines. It’s a game to me.
This year, Delta is starting Rollover Miles. Anything over a tier that you accumulate is “credited” to your status for the following year. And it’s working out quite well for me.
Here are Delta’s tiers:
- Silver – 25,000 miles
- Gold – 50,000 miles
- Platinum – 75,000 miles
- Diamond – 125,000 miles (*New in 2010!*)
I reallllllllllly wanted to hit Diamond last year, and could have, but I decided to play around a little. I stopped at 115,000 miles on Delta, leaving me 10K short of Diamond BUT 40,000 ahead of Platinum.
My current Platinum status is good through February 28, 2011. So I’ve got many free upgrades in my future. Rather than go to Diamond and then risk having nothing beyond ( I did 5 international trips in 2009, and don’t think I’ll do as many in the coming years), I decided to pull up short and use rollover miles to extend my elite status days.
So here’s the math: 115,158 – 75,000 = 40,158 “rollover miles” credited towards my 2010 accumulation. I’ve flown 1,632 miles this year on 3 segments, putting me at 41,790 qualification miles YTD.
After next week, I’ll have flown 10,000 miles in January. So I’ll be Gold Status already (50K), which would cover me from March 1, 2011 – Feb 28, 2012. Then after my international trip in February, I’ll accumulate 25,000 miles and be to Platinum status by the middle of the month, giving me my current Platinum status through Feb 28, 2012.
So to reach Diamond Status (which begins as soon as you hit the tier and carries through Feb 28, 2012), I’ll just need to fly 50K more miles in 2010. No problem.
So there are 2 scenarios:
- Fly 10,000 extra miles in 2009, get to 125,000 and have Diamond status until Feb 2011. Start from 0 miles and hopefully fly 75,000 miles to get Platinum through Feb 2012.
- Stop at 115K, take the rollover miles, use it as a bounce to headstart for 2010. Potentially have Diamond starting by June 2010 and through Feb 2012. Use Rollover miles over 125K towards 2013.
I chose #2. 
I read a great Seth Godin book called The Dip over my holiday break. It’s a very short book, but was full of great information about startups/work/life/business in general. Here are my key takeaways, I hope you find some inspiration in here!
- If you’re not going to put in the effort to be my best possible choice, why bother?
- People settle. They settle for less than they are capable of. Organizations settle too.
- Are you hoping to become a success because you’re the only one being considered?
- A woodpecker can tap twenty times on a thousand trees and get nowhere, but stay busy. Or he can tap twenty-thousand times on one tree and get dinner!
- Before you enter a new market, consider what would happen if you managed to get through the Dip and win in the market you’re already in.
- Being better than 98% of the competition used to be fine. In the world of Google, though, it’s useless. It’s useless because all of your competition is one click away, whatever it is that you do. The only position you can count on now is best in the world.
Seven Reasons you might fail to become the best in the world
1) You run out of time (and quit).
2) You run out of money (and quit).
3) You get scared (and quit).
4) You’re not serious about it (and quit).
5) You lose interest or enthusiasm or settle for being mediocre (and quit).
6) You focus on the short term instead of the long (and quit when the short term gets too hard).
7) You pick the wrong thing at which to be the best in the word (because you don’t have the talent).
- Don’t play the game if you realize you can’t be the best in the world.
- The next time you catch yourself being average when you feel like quitting, realize that you have only two good choices: Quit or be exceptional. Average is for losers.
- Isn’t your time and your effort and your career and your reputation too valuable to squander on just being average?
- The typical salesperson gives up after the fifth contact with a prospect. Studies report that 80% of these customers buy on the seventh attempt to close the sale.
- Selling is about a transference of emotion, not a presentation of facts. If it were just a presentation of facts, then a PDF flyer or a website would be sufficient to make the phone ring.
- If you’re not going to get to #1, you might as well quit now.
- One person or organization will behave differently than a market of people will One person has a particular agenda and a single worldview. One person will make up his mind and if you’re going to succeed, you’ll have to change it.
- If you’re trying to influence a market, though, the rules are different. Sure, some of the people in a market have considered you (and even rejected you). But most of the people in the market have never even heard of you. The market doesn’t have just one mind. Different people in the market are seeking different things.
- Influencing one person is like scaling a wall. If you get over the wall in the first few tries, you’re in. If you don’t, often you’ll find the wall gets higher with each attempt. Influencing a market, on the other hand, is more of a hill than a wall. You can make progress, one step at a time, and as you get higher it actually gets EASIER. People in the market talk to each other. They are influenced by each other. So every step of progress you make actually gets amplified.
- You and your organization have the power to change everything. To create remarkable products and services. To over deliver. To be the best in the world. How dare you squander that resource by spreading it too thin. How dare you settle for mediocre just because you’re too busy coping with too many things on your agenda, racing against the clock to get it all done.
- It’s almost impossible to overinvest in becoming the market leader.
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