When you are bitten by a bug, there is a certain amount of time that you just have to live through before the itching and swelling of that bite goes away. Rubbing and scratching the bite will only prolong the experience, the discomfort that comes with it and the time needed to heal. But eventually, the swelling will subside, the rash will fade, and the itching stops.
The same general thing happens when you are bitten by an ‘idea bug.’ Once a new idea come to mind, you’ve got a limited amount of time before you lose the adrenaline rush to put the idea in motion, and possibly lose the idea itself to the million of other thoughts that get processed through your mind on a daily basis.
And just like there are steps to take to help alleviate the suffering from an actual bug bite (don’t touch it, apply some medicated cream, take a pill, etc.), there are steps you can take to prolong the jolt of inspiration of your ‘idea bug’ bite:
1: Write It Down IMMEDIEATELY! - Never let an idea just dissipate from your memory. Just because the ideas are flowing now, doesn’t mean you’ll never go through an idea dry spell and need to look back on a few filed away ideas for inspiration. Write the details of your idea as simply or as detailed as they came to you, and place it somewhere you can routinely review it, lest you waist the effort of preserving it in the first place. Create an idea bank for storing randomly created ideas in a file folder, shoe box, computer file--whatever will work best for you. You can even carry a portable notebook to jot down ideas as they come if you are prone to attract idea bugs.
2: Order Your Steps – Make a quick determination on just how complicated your idea is and just how much work will be involved in your attempt to actually make it happen. Come up with a quick, easy to follow outline of all the steps involved that you can think of, and determine how long you think it will take to get the project started and completed.
3: Gauge Your Timing – Determine if this is the actual right time or place to attempt to work out the kinks in your idea. Let’s use the example of your idea being a ski stunt you would like to attempt and master. If you are nowhere near water or snow, chances are you won’t be working on the stunt by mid-morning. And if you have to lose ten pounds and get in shape before you can even attempt your stunt, that’s just more prep time needed before the attempt. If now is not the right time or you’re not in the right place, schedule a time in the future when you can assure all the conditions are acceptable to make an attempt at your idea. If your idea is not that involved or complicated, and you believe you can work on it now with minimum interruptions, and you are ready for the challenge, then jump on in.
4: Start At Your Earliest Convenience – The average person has about 48 hours or so from the initial formation of a new idea before they lose interest in it completely. And if they don’t take the time to write it down, they could lose the entire idea minutes after they came up with it. It is important to put your plan in motion for you idea as soon as possible, or schedule a time in the near future to get started, with plenty of incentive to get back to it.
How do you really know when you have stumbled upon great idea? When others of higher fame and stature come up with similar ideas, as seen in this blog post from a week back by Tim Ferriss, The Big Question: Are You Better Than Yesterday?
My seemingly great idea is a simple plan to follow that will almost ensure you have a good life. The idea was so good that I actually came up with it twice, in two similar variations to the same theme, within a week. And I luckily had the foresight to jott both down in my Running Notepad list before I lost the essence of the idea.
What makes the plan even better is that I truly wrote it to be very simple to follow, even for someone who has found themselves in a dire situation, and are currently looking straight into what seems like insurmountable odds.
First, you start your journey to a great life by having just one good moment. Then, you work on having another one, and then another one. You’ll quickly find that working toward having good moments becomes addicting, and as you continue stringing some of your good moments together, back to back, and you’ll soon find you’ll have worked your way into having a few good hours, and then a few good days.
From there, just keep working until you are string together more and more good days, and those will quickly become good weeks, then good months, and then good years...all the way up until you can declare with all your heart you have led a remarkable and good life.
This plan isn’t easy, and it may take more time than you expect to string all those good moments into a good life lived, but the workload is enjoyable and life sustaining. And the good moments are just waiting to be had.
So start right now by declaring this moment as a good moment. Work on having more good moments, and keep stringing them all together. You’ll get to that good life, I promise.
As I was doing some research on whether you really can see the Great Wall of China from Outer Space, I began to think about some of the decisions that I made in my life, and how I had to be in the right places at the right times to even see the opportunity I have had to make those decisions.
My biggest example would be why I am living in my current home city of Little Rock, AR and chasing a current career path of media and broadcasting. When I was leaving the Air Force, I was looking at going to school full time until I could figure out what I wanted to do in my next stage of life, after long giving up on my childhood dreams of being a DJ, and failing miserably to convince anyone that I was just a slacker meant to wander aimlessly through life.
Little Rock was nowhere near my radar. In fact, it was not being able to find an immediate job in Atlanta that lead me to move out of my town house in South Georgia and just drive home to my parents’ house in Louisiana without much of a plan. I was set to spend a few days at home and then go try my luck for a few weeks in Dallas, with the invitation to stay on a friend’s couch.
Intervention came from another friend who had come to visit me in Georgia about two years before. We had worked in radio together five years earlier in college, and she was currently working at a radio station, and she called me and caught me days before I was to shut off my home phone service and hit the road. She had the chance to sell me on the law school at University of Arkansas-Little Rock, and on the fact that I was actually pretty good in radio, and could do some side work until I got enrolled in classes. That diversion brought me to the city, which led to more decisions and diversions that kept me on my current path (and not path of signing up for grad school--I PROMISE it will happen this year Mom), that I basically had to be here to even get the chance to see and make them. Moving to anywhere other than Arkansas in 2002, for example, would probably not have led me to get married to wife who was living in Arkansas in 2004.
Trying not to get all Bless The Broken Road on you, but life only allows you the ability to make choices from the choices given. You can't catch a fly ball at a baseball game you didn't go to. You can't use a thunderstorm as an legitimate excuse to not mow my lawn on a clear and sunny day. You can't be in two different places at the same time, so you can't cash in on the opportunities available at two different places at the same time.
Do yourself a favor and stop being so hard on yourself for the opportunities you may have missed by not being in the right place at the right time in the past, and start a new focus and appreciation of the choices you were able to make and not make because of being who you were, right where you were. And if you're looking to make a future dream come true, and it takes being someplace else to make it happen, try working on getting to where you need to be.
The most effective development tool you’ll ever use is a simple one: a list.
Part one of this post gave you a basic strategy for multiple list building designed to help you get out of the ineffective list building habit. In this second part, I will show you the lists that I personally keep everyday. My lists four main lists keep me on track for my progress, and give me clues to when I’m not progressing like I should so, so that I can fix my focus. I have owned a PDA or smart phone since college, so I have become accustomed to keeping my lists with me for instant review or editing for almost 20 years.
My first list is what I call my Daily Journal. This list is literally a place to jot down everything that I do throughout my day from the moment I wake up to the time I turn out the lights to go to sleep. My Daily Journal allows me to figure out exactly what I have accomplished on days when I know I have worked hard, but end up tired and frustrated because there were no obvious returns from my efforts. It also helps me keep up with the progress of my personal and my professional goals, along with keeping a eye on my health with notes for checking my blood sugar, the meals and snacks I eat, and whatever exercise I can squeeze in. I even use my Daily Journal to help compile a weekly review document of myself I call my Weekly Wrap-Up Log (which is why I have found the electronic method of keeping a journal much easier that carrying and recording in a paper bound journal, despite my love for Moleskine notebooks).
My second list is a basic listing I create every night of things I need to work on the next day, which I call my Daily Dozens. I came up with the name as I was working on creating a product on making lists, and thought it sounded catchy, and that ten spots were never really enough on my personal list. In fact, twelve spots is often not enough, as I’ll find I have accomplished additional things that happened to spring up on me throughout the course of a work day that turn out to be fairly important. Because of this, I have the right to add to this list as many more tasks completed throughout the day as I choose (normally no more that 16). Throughout the day, I mark off the tasks I have worked on with significant progress (but not necessarily completed). This list shows me my task priorities as I say they are, and ultimately what I actually focused on completing.
My third list is my 30 Minutes A Day Log. I created a document that covers the Four P’s of Life Management, with the key to devote at least 30 minutes a day to each P: TO PLAN, TO PLAY, TO PONDER, and TO PAUSE. It is with this log that I keep track of how well I am accomplishing my progress in life management, where some days are much better than others.
My forth list is what I call my Running Notepad, and it doesn’t fall in line with the normal concepts of lists. My Running Notepad is just a file that I use to put down any random idea that pops into my head that I think I will be able to do something with later. I have been carrying little notebooks for ideas since middle school, and the process just got a little more organized (and easier to transcribe) when I started doing more note taking in my PDAs and smart phones. I also use a service called Jott that allows me to leave a verbal note that gets transcribed for me to move into my Running Notepad file if my hands are not available. I am also trying to get the hang of the new Google Voice for recording and transcribing important phone interviews.
The most effective development tool you’ll ever use is a simple one: a list.
While the concept and the proper use of a list are for most people fairly basic, there are some who have taken the art of list building and have turned themselves in the Mozarts and Picassos of productivity and effectiveness. But the majority of us just scribble down a bunch of things and then easily forgets the reason for the list, or the list completely.
In part one of this post, I will show you a basic strategy for multiple list building that should help you get out of the ineffective list building habit. Part two will go in depth into the personal lists that I keep everyday that help me monitor my progress, or can at least alert me when progress is not being made.
Step one is to have a place of prominence to place your list once you’ve created it. Your desk is a fine spot for putting your list…if you don’t allow stuff to pile up on your desk and cover your list. Your list needs to live in a place where you will constantly have access to it. If your kitchen is a high traffic area for you, place it on the refrigerator. If your bedroom is your personal haven, put up a cork board or dry erase board so that you can put your list there. If you carry a smart phone, you can have your list always at your fingertips by keeping up with it in note form on your phone.
Step two is to name your list. Title your list so that it has a purpose (grocery list, tasks for work, Christmas gifts, steps for global domination, etc.) and only put items on the list that fit into that category. If you have a need or a task that doesn’t fit on the list you are currently building, figure out what purpose that need or task has, and make a new list with a new title that fits that purpose.
Step three is to limit your list. While the things you need to do may seem limitless, your capacity to get them done is limited by time, energy, and whatever resources you actually have available to you. Force a number on yourself to stop listing, and if you have more items then slots, eliminate the least important items. When you clear off enough items to make space on a particular list, add the missing items to the list.
While there are as many detailed approaches to child raising as there are parents of children, here are two simple schools of thought that can adequately sum up the major approaches in teaching a child how to find their place among the world’s masses:
- Assurance Of No Limits: giving children expectations above their actual level of mastery with the hopes that having no limits will help them to surpass their expectations, and possibly even yours.
- Knowing Your Limits: knowing just how far along your children really are, and giving them expectation exactly on that level, to ensure they can reach their achievements with as little frustration from possible failure possible
While one would suspect ‘No Limits’ would be a more preferred philosophy than ‘Know Limits,’ there are pros and cons to using either approach, and the key lies in the individual child. Because eventually, they come to an age and level of maturity where their actual limits will play a greater role in the definition of their destiny, and their ability to overcome or circumvent these actual limits will make a difference.
Like say, in the work place, when they hit mid-twenties.
At that point, it will be their managers responsibility to make sure they are developing as well as possible in their career growth, or at least well enough to keep the manager from getting fired. This activity is a lot like raising an actual child, only the allowance and popularity contests that are now at stake are actually families, mortgages, career progression and possible lives, based on the nature of the occupation.
Here too, you can use the same basic approaches suited for raising children in hopes to lead your workers to fulfilled career growth.
The big difference here is that ‘No Limit’ is by far a more preferred philosophy over ‘Know Limits.’ But do keep in mind the exact dynamic you have to work with, and the abilities that actually exist in your company’s talent pool. You’ll probably not be lucky enough to have all-star talent to fill your entire work crew, and some employees will be adamant about how adequate (or not) they are in their performance.
There is a difference in those you have it and those who don’t.
Sometimes, you have to remind those who have it that everyone one doesn’t have it, as they become frustrated interacting with those who don’t. But you don’t have to tell those who have it what it is.
In fact, you might not even be able to tell those who have it what it is. But if you have it, you can see it in them. If they have it, they can see it in you.
You don’t even have to understand it, but you’ll find life a lot easier once you embrace having it, assuming you actually have it.
You will probably find yourself constantly having to explain what it is to people who don’t have it. Or at least wanting to explain it so that they can understand it.
The effort is worthless. If they don’t have it, they can’t understand it.
At least not until they have their own personal light bulb moment, and they then get it for themselves.
Let’s say you’re shipwrecked. Assuming you’re free from any immediate danger (you’ve got a life raft and some supplies, there are no sharks or pirates lurking, etc.) would right now be the best time to debate with yourself if your nephew would rather have the Wolverine action claws or the Batman cape and mask for his birthday present next week?
You might think there are better things to focus on in a time of crisis, mainly surviving to the next moment. But what good is surviving to the next moment and the next moment and the next moment if you lose the sense of why you should be surviving. Otherwise, the alternative will start to feel more appealing and a lot less of a hassle.
When I when through my 2 days of survival training in the Air Force, the instructors knew that 95% of the cadets that were standing in front of them in the woods were basically on a camping trip and would never need any real field survival tips, but they taught us some mental tricks that would actually roll over well as basic life skills. The most important is the faith that you will survive, and the ability to keep those around you convinced of the same, despite the conditions you are facing. The common scenario for doom would be a group of survivors marching toward what they hope would be safety, where eventually, someone will start muttering “We’re all going to die...” Those words will quickly become a chorus in perfect lock-step harmony if not addressed immediately.
Take a look at the various aspects of your life. Whether it is the fear of more cutbacks and layoffs at work, or the strain of a spousal or parental relationship at home, all the battle plans in the world you can devise to survive an onslaught will do you no good if you’ve got nothing to live for after the war has been won.
Assuming you are not currently in the act of dodging bullets or arrows, now is exactly the right time to be planning that moment you’ll be looking forward too once you step off the field of battle.
You know I have a lot of musician friends (meaning I've sat thur a lot of sound checks) Anyway, I've notice that as they are warming up for a show, they always tell the sound person what they need (ie more vocals,can't hear the bass player, there's to much sound or not enough sound) Eventually, everything is just right and my friends start to play.
The same thing can apply to whatever goal or task you're trying to accomplish. You work at something and tweek it (which comes from feedback) and tweek it some more till it's just the way you want it
This is not the first time on this blog that I have taken on the time honored tradition of the customer always being right, but I believe it is the first time I actually offered a solution that involved dealing with the customer and not just reassuring the employees who deal with them that the abuse they take is worth it.
Once again, I will admit that I am a horrible closer in sales, but once committed to a client and product, they get 100% effort, routinely overshooting their expectations. But in the cases when you are not meeting the needs of the customer to their satisfaction, despite delivering exactly what they asked for and more, I offer three solutions:
- Sell Them At A Lower Price: Times are tough right now for all of us, and your clients are no exception. They are feeling just as much pressure to cut costs or get more for the money they are spending, and they are driving you insane with worry for loss of revenue I you can’t meet their panicked demands. Now is the perfect time to take a small loss with a loyalty discount for those long time customers, especially big spending customers. A limited batch of discounted goods and services might be to ticket to keeping them at bay.
- Sell Them At A Higher Price: Custom orders, rush delivery, and last minute changes are enemies to your bottom line, especially if your customers are coming to you discounted and not premium prices. If your customers are making requests that mean increases to your normal cost of service, you are well within your right to share some of that cost increases with those customers. If your customers are just annoying, well, make sure you can both justify and prove the necessity of the cost increase
- Stop Selling To Them: If you were no longer serving the best interest of a client, you would expect them to stop using you. It is odd that the opposite is usually not an expected option. If a client becomes too much trouble or expense, and you can come to no workable discourse, you have to fire the client. You would do better using the time and energy to focus on your profitable customers or finding a new replacement customers.
I’ve been talking to a lot of my friends who are stagehands lately, and as the summer concerts are beginning to be planed, and my mind got caught up in thinking about goals and planning.
When a band sets up a stage for a performance, they have to scout out the venue, determine their basic wants and needs for a show, figure out if the venue can actually allow them to do some cool extra things (more lights, split level stages, pyro, whatever), and then determine what the end result should be. If the band is comfortable with themselves and who they will be performing with, they know how well they move together on stage, and can easily set up a performance and tear down for a quick getaway once they know how much room you have to work with.
Take this to your work team or even personal goal planning. Think about yourself and the teams you work with, and take a closer look at the current level of talent in contrast to the limitations that have placed on you (budgets, time, authority, priority). Your limits make up the size of your venue, and whether it is the equivalent of a small club or outdoor stadium. That sets you up to gage the size of stage you can manage in the space, how much equipment and what type of equipment you can allow on stage, and the size of a crowd you have to pull into the venue to make your performance pay off. Your bosses may see a lot of potential for crowded theater shows, or they might not think your ready to come out of the garage. You’ve got to figure out what venue they’re trying to book you in before you try to negotiate a bigger room and more of the door money.
And you have to be especially honest about the level of talent you are currently working with. You can argue about the Beatles being the greatest band of all time, but they didn’t begin the British Invasion a few months after they formed. They spent years learning themselves and their audiences, and they started with humble beginning of playing in some of the smaller and more seamier dives all over Europe. They had designs on sellout arena crowds early in their career...but they to build themselves up to reaching their superstar status. And they had to build smaller steps and occupy smaller stages along the way until they could demand the biggest and the best. Don’t get fooled by your potential. Let your potential be your booking agent to bigger gigs in a timely manner.
Your first challenge is to see the venue for what it is, and plan the biggest possible stage and grandest show setup you can imagine for it. That becomes your target goal, and their is nothing wrong with taking that goal to an insane extreme. You might not sell out Madison Square Garden, but you’ll never come close if you don’t keep a few open dates in case the opportunity just happens to pop up.
Your second challenge, and what is the real hard part, is to be consistent in building the steps to that bigger stage, and not hope that talent or luck will allow you to leap from a smaller stage without the proper support. Having a team that is willing to do what it takes to sell out the Garden is great. Having a team that has the talent to pull off the show is wonderful. Having the team that has worked its way up, step by step, to grow its talent and fan base to sell out the show is what you really want. That is something special.
I’ve worked with people who have looked at the big stage and shied away from it, despite great talent, and chosen to stay in the smaller venues or even get out of the business altogether because of the time and expectations of people who perform on the grand level. More frustrating are the people I’ve worked with who you have looked at the stage we are working on and the steps we had built so far, take a chainsaw to them, set them on fire, and then drive over the whole thing with a steamroller. Then, they would stand on top on the ashes and complain that were not building an even bigger stage than the one we had previously destroyed. I have worked with far too many of the latter types of people than I care to think about, because it drains my personal energy when I have to think about the time and energy wasted in the build up. But each experience is a learning experience that you have to take something good away from.
Replace ‘taking it slowly’ with ‘do it with patience’: you cannot expect instant results, but you keep pushing beyond the slower pace once you’ve mastered the moves.
Replace ‘find the right person to follow’ with ‘follow me’: take the lead and see who many people will line up behind you for both support and guidance.
Replace ‘doing it for me’ with ‘doing it for the greater good’: you get so much more when you are truly giving it away, both spiritually and economically, despite you actually religious orientation.
Replace ‘this great idea of mine’ with ‘just working within the parameters I was given’: you already know it is the solid truth that your grand idea is only possible based on the conditions that are faced.
Your News Releases Need Work: Emailing Bad News Releases
After receiving a tweet from a friend asking for news release help last week, followed by was seemed like an entire day of emptying my email inbox of bad news releases, I figure it was time I took another shot and explaining the art of getting your release at least looked at, and hopefully used.
I want to attack the problems I dealt with yesterday:
Assume We Don’t Have The Latest & Greatest: Last Friday, I learned that according to Forrester Research, 60 percent of companies use Internet Explorer 6 as their default browser. That was the day I stopped whining to my IT folks about why we were using the old & busted browser of the past. Today I plead to all the PR folks to sent thinks out in the future. Web pages with lots of flash widget and browser optimized settings can not trump a simple webpage with a clean overall look and images set to just enough that it means something. My 5 year old office desktop running Windows 2000 would appreciate it.
Assume We Don’t Have The Latest & Greatest Part 2: As with the case in an office where I am running Windows 2000 for heavy audio editing, we’re also short on licenses for MS Office. ANY version of MS Office, let alone the latest and greatest. Assume that the person on the computer on the other end may be in the same boat, and don’t send them word docs typed on your brand new, shiny Vista computer with converting them down from .docx to .doc. Even better, try .rtf or a .pdf, both which are universal, and for the latter, you don’t have to worry about a change in font shifting the entire press release.
Images Can Ruin Everything: Our web based corporate email system allows every user in the corporation 20MB or storage space, unless you’ve been with the company over 8 years, whet they may be stuck with the old cap of 10MB. Not a serious problem for those who have machines with the MS Office suite and MS Outlook. I don’t have that luxury, and had to dump my email twice yesterday, after receiving an attached .mp3 from a new artist (5MB) and a two press releases from the same person because he forgot to attach a picture to the document (2MB for first email with large corporate logo, 8MB for email with large corporate logo and 7MB hi-res headshot in .docx press release). Sending news releases with links to download media, scaling down large images to travel reasonably through email, or just sending a .pdf would have made life much easier for me, the one you are trying to influence to cover your people and events.
How many times have you passed up a great personal opportunity, with the only reasoning being you figure you could live with the good thing you already had going? How did it make you feel in the short and long run, as you watched greatness continue and you flounder?
How many times have you watched as your bosses balked at the chance to go after a potentially great employee hire, get in on the bottom floor of a potentially great business opportunity, or expand on a potential great internal program?
There might be good reason (no sustainable capital, not enough physical resources or manpower, possible conflicts in our business model, contractual loopholes to battle out of, etc). Then again, there might not be any reason other than being able to live with the ‘good’ thing we got right now, even if that thing is more along the lines of ‘serviceable,’ or ‘adequate.’
How does that make you feel in the short and long run, as you watch greatness continue for other job sites and yours continue to flounder?
And in some cases, you will find not only opposition to the change that can take your good to great status, you will find much more effort and energy to keeping things status quo that taking your new initiative to greatest, especially if the current state of affairs is closer to the sub par than the par .range
Anytime you take a risks, despite how minimal you can make it, if there is no risk, there is no reward. Even getting out of bed has some risk involved, even if the much more pleasing alternative offers enough consequences to make the decision not to particularly silly.
If you get the opportunity to reach out and touch great, you need to take that opportunity.
In what is essentially another variation of asking "What Would Jesus Do," I have come up with a not exactly original concept called ‘The Next Effects.’
The Next Effects is a system that will help you think ahead to any action you might deem risky (good or bad risk is not important) and determine the potential consequences that may come from making that choose.
All you do is when you are faced with the choice to make an action, ask yourself:
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few minutes?
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few hours?
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few days?
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few months?
-How will this action effect me or those around me in the next few years?
For those who want to swap out the verb ‘affect’ meaning "to influence" for the noun ‘effect’ meaning "result," feel free. I prefer effect, but spell check suggested otherwise. Not wanting to miss the point or lose the moment of creativity, I offer you the creative license to pick a favorite or ridicule me for not grasping 8th grade grammar.
For a more detailed and well thought out model of this line of thinking, pick up the new book 10-10-10 : A Life-Transforming Idea by Suzy Welch. Or, you can follow the model I just laid out for free. Its no Bubble Friday, but The Next Effects is one of my favorite current creations.
UPDATE: I'm going to count it as a fine example of great minds thinking alike, and then dare to compare my feeble brain to Michael Wade's over at Execupundit.com, who put my rambling thesis in perfect business perspective with his post The Next 30 Minutes.
While you might already know that your customer is always right, and make steps to ensure that they know this too, did you realize that your customer can also be your best advertisement? It's easy to forget that customers interact with our businesses more personally than we ever will. And while we think we know our business inside and out, it's actually the customer that sees whether or not our business is doing the job it says it can do. Here are three reasons why your customer is your best advertisement ' and why you need to make sure they're always satisfied.
They Will Share Their Good Experiences
Nearly everyone has a story about a good customer service experience they've had with a business. Whether there was a problem that got quickly addressed or perhaps the business simply went above and beyond what was expected, nearly everyone has had one moment in which they wanted to sing the praises of their business transaction. So, if you had this experience, you told people and then they went to the business you did and then they told others of their experiences, etc. When something good happens, people are going to talk about it, letting you get more positive advertising than you could ever get on your own.
But at the same time, you need to remember that if there is a bad experience; customers are more than likely going to share that too. When things go wrong and you don't take the time to fix them, you are going to start a conversation between your customer and their friends ' one that ends up in you getting less business. Each experience that your customer has with your website or with your business should be as positive as possible. While you don't have to go out of your way each and every time, it's better to be more than they need than to be less than they deserve.
They are More Believable Than You Are
So, what makes these customer experiences so important to your advertising? Customers who talk to their friends and to their family are more believable than you will be. This isn't to say that you're not trustworthy, but people tend to believe things they hear from their friends more than they will trust things that come from a business that wants to make money.
Again, this is why treating the customer well is so important. Because whatever they share with their friends is going to be taken as the absolute truth, you aren't going to get a second chance to change their minds.
They Can Give Testimonials
When a customer does have a good experience with you, you might want to talk to them about writing a testimonial. This is simply a summary of the compliments they have about your business that can be posted on your marketing literature or on your website. In exchange, you might want to offer them a discount on future purchases, but many people will simply be excited to see their name and their picture on your business site. These testimonials should be verbatim of what your customer says, along with a release that says you can use the statement for your business. If you receive a testimonial that isn't written as well as you might like, as the customer if you can edit it and then show them the changes you made. If they agree to the final copy, then you have another marketing tool at your disposal.
Your customers are the best advertisements for your business and you need to make sure they are advertising well.
About the Author:
Scott Oliver offers free video coaching to help you build a profitable home business FAST. Get an hour of "Website Traffic Secrets" and "Minisite Creation Tactics" for FREE -- immediate access here: http://www.InstantWebsiteBusiness.com
In the anticipation of the arrival of a new tax deduction baby to our family, my wife and I have been doing some writing to present to the our child, who sex has not been determined but we have already settled on the first name Kendall (although the wife is starting to waver on the name with about seven months to go). She is keeping a diary of things that happened in the year of his/her arrival, I am writing some of the life lessons I have absorbed to eventually but into book form and hopefully guilt some of you out there into buying to help pay for baby supplies (I am an entrepreneur after all). As I work on pieces I will post them here, looking for as much honest feedback of its usefulness, and a little conversation on just how hard it was for y’all to learn these lessons yourself. Assuming you have actually learned these lessons.
Please leave comments as they come.
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Book Of Kendall Rule #4: Most Of Your Life Will Be Tied Up In Doing Things You Don't Want To Do
For most of my life I wanted to find a way to make a very good living off of my words. While you can debate my level of talent, you can not debate my love of words, both written and spoken. But as I got older, the problem wasn’t necessarily the increasing amount of talented wordsmiths in the world, it was the decreasing value of the words themselves. So while I did my best to eek out an article here and fill-in on radio talk shows there, I slugged through a long list other things that my employers had put on my job description to bring home a paycheck to take care of the family.
Any thing worth doing in your life will take time, and that time will be worth it. But that time will be precious compared to the myriad of things that you will find yourself having to do that take away from what you really want to do, many of which you will truly hate to do.
So as you grow up to ask your mother and I if it is really necessary to make your bed every morning, learn Algebra II, or not detour when we send you to the store, you will quickly pick up on the mundane life necessities that allow for you live, grow, and survive in this world, even if they are not particularly amusing to you personal.
There are also plenty of things that you will have to do that you won’t be very thrilled about that have a direct effect on the things you actually want to accomplish in life. My want for a professional sports career was severely limited by my desire to not practice. On the flip side, I haven’t fully embrace the need for criticism as I continue my quest to make more money by producing more words, it is a necessary evil that I tolerate in hopes that It makes my work that much better.
Make sure you cherish the pain and toil of the things you must do, as they will lead you down a path that will hopefully allow you to get to do more things you want to do.
In the anticipation of the arrival of a new tax deduction baby to our family, my wife and I have been doing some writing to present to the our child, who sex has not been determined but we have already settled on the first name Kendall (although the wife is starting to waver on the name with about seven months to go). She is keeping a diary of things that happened in the year of his/her arrival, I am writing some of the life lessons I have absorbed to eventually but into book form and hopefully guilt some of you out there into buying to help pay for baby supplies (I am an entrepreneur after all). As I work on pieces I will post them here, looking for as much honest feedback of its usefulness, and a little conversation on just how hard it was for y’all to learn these lessons yourself. Assuming you have actually learned these lessons.
Please leave comments as they come.
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Book Of Kendall Rule #3: If There Is A Problem, First Make Sure It Is Not You
You will come across plenty of trouble times in your life, many will oddly enough be of your own making. The way you handle yourself in these situations are going to determine your next steps in you life, and ultimately, the limits to which you will actually progress for your entire lifetime.
You use a troubling time in your life as way to gain experience and grow. But you don’t have to create your own trouble. There are plenty of people in the world will gain extreme pleasure in creating more trouble for you than you can ever imagine.
You’ll be able to handle it. But not if you are spending too much energy creating you own problems. There is no fun or profit in creating trouble for yourself. Stepping up to a challenge is one thing. Stepping into a burning building after soaking yourself in gasoline and stuffing your pockets with dynamite is asking for problems with consequences to major to overcome. If you find you have a problem, and the problem happens to be you, fix it immediately.
Want to get more butts into your seminar seats? Let prospective attendees sample the content before they decide whether or not to register.
This powerful sales trick is not new. After all, when you visit a bookstore, you get to flip through books before deciding to buy. When you visit a car dealer, you get to test drive a car before deciding to buy. Heck, when you go an ice cream shop, you can even sample the goods before deciding which flavor you want to buy that day.
So why not offer the same courtesy to your attendees?
Here are 4 ways you can let prospects take your event for a test drive:
* Offer a free preview event, ranging anywhere from 90 minutes to a full day
* Give them a free CD with 45 to 70 minutes of free content
* Post a 10- to 20- minute video clip of your material on your website
* And my personal favorite…offer a free or low-cost preview teleseminar
You know your seminar is chock full of valuable content, so pique the palate of your prospective seminar attendees with a taste of what they'd be missing out on.
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Jenny Hamby is a Certified Guerrilla Marketer and direct-response copywriter who helps speakers, coaches and consultants fill seminar seats and make more money from their own seminars and workshops. Her on-and-offline direct marketing campaigns have netted response rates as high as 84 percent -- on budgets as small as $125. For more free seminar marketing secrets, visit http://www.SeminarPromotionTips.com
Welcome to my new blog. This is where I will chronicle the next phase of mis-adventures of my life. Thank you for staying on the ride, and for you newcomers to the inside of my mental mania, I will do my best to make sure the trip is both entertaining and educational.
Life In Fast Forward: The Blog is still a bit of a work in progress. Keep checking in for new posts and site updates.
About Blog
This blog supports some of the thoughts and interjections from the folks at Fast Forward Business Properties. Our ideas, things we test, and a few random thoughts will show up here.
Name: J. Cleveland Payne
Home: Little Rock, Arkansas, United States
About Me: News is my profession, so it only fits that I am a news junkie. I'm a radio show/segment producer for a news/talk radio station in Little Rock, Arkansas.
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