All posts by Dan Gordon

Don Draper and the Dark Corridor

If you’re in business and you’re not a fan of the show Mad Men you really should be. I suggest a good ol’ Netflix binge watch. Anyway, for the purpose of the following it doesn’t matter if you watched the show or not.

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Having worked with a whole lot of people going through a whole lot of crises (both business and personal), there were some key elements of the last Mad Men episode that hit a perfect note of the struggles that bold men face. Don finally came to his “moment” sitting on a rickety wooden stool at a payphone, trapped at a personal development retreat. By the way, and as an aside, having been a facilitator in the personal development world for many years, they did a great job of subtly lampooning the entire movement with full-of-themselves facilitators asking the do-nothing question “how does that make you feel” over and over again. Classic.

Don’s “moment” gave him the exact thing he needed and yet the exact thing he had been avoiding, seemingly, all of his life. Don needed to get lost and he had been needing to get lost for the entire run of the show however, like with all great men, the act of getting lost is far too terrifying a thing to do willingly. In my work, I refer to it as stepping into the “Dark Corridor.” The Dark Corridor exists in the place between where people are in their lives and where they want to be. The truth is that we all want a little more than what we have. That’s not a bad thing, it’s the human condition to grow and develop. We want to be happier, more fulfilled, feel more loved, and achieve greater success. How do we get there? Well, that’s the bad news. Between us and all that is the Dark Corridor; a place of monumental fear and uncertainty. When we have a desire to pursue greatness in our lives, we do things like go into business for ourselves, we get married, we move to a new city or country, etc. The idea of it all seems terrific. We are filled with the burst of excitement and adrenaline that makes us feel like we’re in a 1980’s dance movie. You know it, it’s the part where the kids have just one day to practice for the big show and they all yell, “We can do it!” This leads to a montage of them gleefully practicing their cool dance moves, which takes place over a period of several hours but is compressed into just a minute or two with a snappy pop song behind it. (Don’t worry, I’ll be getting back to Don in just a second and this will all fit together when I do.) Unfortunately for us, there are no montages in life. We can’t skip the drudgery or the fear part of the experience with quick cuts, low camera angles and snappy music. Instead, we have to experience all the crap and drudgery that shows up right after our orgasmic “We can do it!” moment. Instead of the montage, we are left with the very empty feeling of, “Wait a second now. CAN I do it?”

It is in that moment that we take a step into the Dark Corridor. Here, we reach out into the darkness, fumbling, trying to find a wall to guide us through. Seemingly there are none. It’s terrifying. Nothing we have done before in our lives before has prepared us for what we are experiencing right now. There are no points of reference. We feel ill equipped to deal with the new feelings all this brings up. We stand completely alone. Everything in our being tells us to go back the way we came. We want to back out of it because this lost and empty feeling seems too hard to bear. We had no idea that doing this big thing would be so unbelievably soul crushing. So we create a mountain of reasons why we can’t continue, all very good reasons by the way, and summarily step back out the way we came. Back to the same job, the same unsatisfying (or no) relationship, the same address, the same everything. But at least we feel safe and safety becomes more important than doing that great thing we were going to do. Many people stay here, choosing to live a rather small life.

Unless we don’t do that. Unless we continue walking deeper into our Dark Corridor. Unless we make friends with unparalleled fear and uncertainty and suffer all the pain that Don Draper felt when (see, I told you we’d be back to Don) he confessed his sins to Peggy. Because in the middle of the Dark Corridor is the thing we want to see the very least. It’s a mirror. It shows us every doubt and every insecurity that we have ever had about ourselves. More than that, it shows us the one doubt that we have been hiding the most from us and everyone else. It’s the one thing from which we have been running away all of our lives. For Don, he had been using booze, women, sex, work and a total immersion into the world of advertising to avoid that one thing that he feared the most. This is what made the last episode such a perfect conclusion to the Don Draper character study. What Don saw in his mirror is the very thing that all men of greatness fear the most. “I am a fraud.”

For Don it was especially perfect because, in truth, he was a fraud. He took another man’s name, he invented a back-story for himself, he denied his past and the squalor from which he came. Don was a made up person and the last person he wanted to tell that to was himself. Yet he did. By telling Peggy Olsen, Mad Men’s moral compass, he was in fact outing himself to himself. Standing naked in the middle of the Dark Corridor, facing his mirror of truth, Don looked into the abyss of his soul. It’s a terrifying place (trust me on this one) where few men are willing to go.

Yet, without realizing it, Don set the stage for himself so beautifully to go into that dark place. He was sure that he was setting off on his cross-country journey in pursuit of some waitress. In fact, Don was stepping backwards into the corridor. Along the way he just got more and more lost, again exactly what he needed. Don got beaten up, swindled and falsely accused. He barred his soul to men  too wrapped up in their own traumas to really hear him. He got more lost when he gave away his car and reduced his life to a small bag of stuff and an ever-dwindling envelope of money. By the time he ended up at the hippy retreat, Don was fully in it. He just didn’t know it yet.

Don’s fraud declaration to Peggy was perhaps his most courageous act in the entire run of the series. While it was excessively painful for him, it was also his ultimate act of self-heeling. Looking look into that mirror, seeing the dark truth of himself and experiencing the emptiness within, there began a quieting of his soul. Don, lost and afraid, went staggering into yet another “and how does that make you feel” seminar. There he confronted his mirrored self. A nothing-man, weak and small, who thought of himself as unimportant and bereft of value in the world. Don stepped forward and embraced the man, but really he was embracing the part of himself that he had been running away from, seemingly his entire life.

Yes, Don, was a fraud in many, many places in his life. However, the one respect in which he was not a fraud was in his genius of the human condition. Don understood how to reach into people’s hearts. Ironic, but true. Don, so lost and disconnected from his own loving self, was able to reach out to the loving selves of the whole world and sell them all canned corn and hairspray. Don’s heart was, in fact, so big that selling stuff to people was the only way he could reach out emotionally and yet still be safe from forming the entanglements that cause heartbreak.

All that came crashing down for him, and thankfully so. Don’s breakdown became Don’s breakthrough. Having traversed his Dark Corridor, Don stepped tepidly out into the light of a new place. Here, he was able hold himself as a fraud and a genius in equal measures; being attached to neither one. Don experienced the freedom that all great men who have made this journey have experience. Certainly Gandhi, Dr. King, Mandela, and all the other leaders and visionaries we admire, at one point on their path, must have had the Don Draper moment. They must have all looked into their mirror and declared themselves as frauds. It is what great people do in order to get past themselves, their own wounds and buried trauma, to move forward toward the business of serving the world.

Don was now able to close his eyes in meditation and look deep within, no longer afraid of what he might find there. What did he find? Apparently, he found a desire to teach the world to sing…in perfect harmony.

Please, take advantage of me.

Remember that having a sale is sort of like saying come and take advantage of me.  The people who are attracted to work with you because of sales are not doing so based on loyalty.  They are not doing so because they really, really want to use your product because they believe in you.  They are doing it because you’ve enticed them.  It’s sort of like the kid in elementary school who handed out candy bars so people would be his friend. And they really, really like him until the bag of snickers is click this site.

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Generating sales based on dropping your price is not attracting your best customers.  Attracting your best customers takes more time, takes patience and it takes commitment and faith, it doesn’t show up immediately. Visit lovetopivot.com.  Apple computers sold more expensive computers than anybody else because they were determined to create customer loyalty not just to push boxes with wires out the door. How do you generate customer loyalty?  That’s what I do.

Moments of Inspiration

In the past, moments of inspiration have been lost in time. Moments of inspiration probably happened to Leonardo Da Vinci before he could get to some papyrus and write it down. Moments of inspiration probably happened to John Lennon and they were lost before he could write them down – ahh, imagine all the songs. Moments of inspiration I’m sure happened to Gandhi and Martin Luther King and Einstein, were lost because they didn’t have the opportunity in the moment that it hit to write it down, to get it out.

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But we’re in a world of technology now and just about everybody’s telephone has a voice recorder on it, I know mine does. When I have a moment of inspiration, I stop, I pull over, I grab my phone, I hit the recorder and I start talking.

At every moment of every day you need to be thinking about your business and ways of  innovating and growing your business. Ask yourself:

  • What can I do?
  • What can I add to it?
  • What are partnerships I can create?
  • What are new processes I can design?
  • What new thing can I bring to what I’m doing?

Now when you sit down at your computer to create these, it’s unlikely they’re going to come out, because inspiration doesn’t work that way. You can’t say, “Now I will be brilliant!” Moments of inspiration come at the craziest weirdest times. You always have your phone with you, turn it on, start recording, talk and talk and talk. Now the problem is you can generate a tremendous amount of recordings and then what do you do with them? Just sit and listen to them, write them out? It takes too much time. I hire people who do transcription. Check the bankruptcy lawyers.

I give entire presentations that happened in one moment of inspiration. I just spoke into my phone for 90 minutes! In 90 minutes I created a complete workshop for people that probably –  if I tried to sit down and bang it out  – would have taken me days because it happened at a moment of inspiration. So my suggestion, my strong suggestion, is to start using your moments of inspiration to evolve your business experts at happycleans.com.

But Mom, EVERYONE is doing it!

Remember when we were kids and we did something that our mother didn’t like us doing; we were getting in trouble, felt backed into a corner, and came up with the only excuse we could muster “Well, the other guys were doing it.” And what was her response? “If the other guys all jumped off the bridge, would you jump off the bridge too?” We were stuck. Mom dropped her logic bomb. We couldn’t escape it and we were grounded. Later that day, Mom went to the store and bought a fashionable dress. Why that dress? Because the pretty women in the magazine were wearing it. If all the pretty women in the magazine were jumped off the bridge wearing that dress, would Mom jump too?

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Now as kids, we didn’t have the courage to point out the inconsistency in what our mothers would say and how they would behave. But it really wasn’t her fault because mom was only responding to a very ingrained human behavior. The same behavior that got us to do the thing that we’re not grounded for. And that is, if everyone else is doing it, it seems normal and therefore, we should do it too.

This is often referred to as ‘groupthink’,  ‘social pressure’ or the ‘normity of the masses.’ Social scientists refer to this as social proof.

Again, the fact that everyone else is doing something gives us a cue that it’s okay for us to do. In recent years, there’s been a mountain of evidence to show that fast food is not only fattening but could be as detrimental to our health. Yet drive-by a McDonald’s around lunchtime and the drive-thru lanes are full. Why? Because there’s a McDonalds on every other block. And each of those McDonald’s is bursting at the seams with customers . The food can’t be that bad for you if so many people are there. Conversely, what happens when you walk into a restaurant at lunchtime and there’s only you and one or two other patrons. It could be the best restaurant in the city and yet the laws of social proof tell us we should’ve eaten at McDonalds. Social proof is the brain’s way of making a shortcut rather than having to spend the processing energy coming to its own determination. It uses the cues of other people’s behavior. It says, “If everyone else is doing it, or not doing it, that must be the correct choice.”

This is why marketers often slip into their pitches, phrases like “thousands of happy customers are already using our product” or “read our online reviews” or “join the hundreds of people that already have this product in their home.” They offer no proof, no evidence that their claims are accurate. They simply say that other people are doing something that they should be doing. You can spend unforgettable moments if you visit In His Mind in Belgrade. This wholly effective technique operates or stimulates the shortcut our brains want to take and guides us to make those choices at testosteronbrist tabletter.

So, if everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? Well, go on to YouTube and do a search for bungee jumping. You’ll see bridges with a line of people waiting to jump off of them. If they’re doing it, it must be a good idea.

The 30,000 decisions of your customers.

Let’s say you’re selling some new software for lawyers that makes being a lawyer easier than any other law software out there. You can’t wait to show all the lawyers who, once they see it, you’re sure, will buy it. You can almost feel the fine leather seats of your impending Maserati as you walk into the first law office ready to make your first sale.

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Before you can even fire it up on the laptop the head of the firm asks you one simple question, “Are any other lawyers using this software?” You go blank for a moment and try to tell him how it’s new and that…sigh. A few moments later, you’re in the parking garage staring at your Camry wondering what happened.

So why did that lawyer want to know if the software was being used by other lawyers? Wouldn’t it be better if NO other lawyers were using it so he could have a leg up on the competition? Yes it would be but that’s not how humans make decisions.

The average gainfully employed person over 35 makes about 30,000 decisions every day. From the moment he wakes up until he sets his alarm clock before going to bed, he is making choice after choice after choice. Just like a muscle, the brain gets fatigued making all those individual choices so it looks for an easier way to do so. Think of it this way, if you had a pencil factory and you needed to move 30,000 pencils from one room of your warehouse to the other how would you do it? Would you pick up one pencil, walk it over to the other  room and then go back and get another one? Absolutely not. You’d put them in boxes, stack the boxes on a forklift and drive them over en masse.

Your brain is looking to do the same thing. You drive to work five times a week by pulling out of your subdivision and making a left. On Saturday morning you head out to the gym by pulling out of your subdivision and making a left. Unfortunately, your gym is in the opposite direction so why did you make the wrong turn? You did so because your brain stuck that decision in a box with a lot of other decisions that almost always get made in the same way. It’s playing the averages to reduce its workload. If your brain had to qualify every decision individually you’d be exhausted before noon.

So, let’s get back to the lawyer and why you’re staring at a Camry instead of a Maserati. A hard working lawyer, while still making the same number of decisions a day as you, probably makes more individual decisions that can’t go into a box.  If you go on decision autopilot and pull out of your subdivision the wrong way it’s no big imposition. If a lawyer goes on decision autopilot, his innocent client might end up in jail for 20 years.

So the lawyer employs a “tribal” kind of decision shortcut. She wants to know if the other folks in her tribe have done the work of vetting this product for her. If other lawyers are using it, and especially if big expensive lawyers are using it, then she doesn’t have to go through the trouble of making all the decisions that are required to evaluate it. We all rely on our tribespeople to shortcut our decision-making. We ask our neighbor who cuts his grass. We ask our brother-in-law who built his website. We ask our best friend who delivered her baby. The more important the decision, the higher we go up on the tribe scale to seek advice. We may ask the owner of our neighborhood gas station to suggest a good place to buy tires but we wouldn’t ask him for a suggestion of a good brain surgeon to remove a tumor. For those kinds of very complicated and difficult choices, we turn to our most trusted tribespeople to help us with the heavy lifting of such an important decision.

So now you’re at another mymarvelousmaids office and you get the same question. This time you lie. “YES,” you say, “we’ve sold this software to some of the largest firms around the country!” This brings up a rather complicated issue regarding the truth and how best to use it to serve everyone. Is it a good idea to lie just to sell a product? On average, the answer is no. The answer is especially no if the software you’re trying to sell top the lawyer is really just an old copy of Pac Man. However, if you have a product that you know conclusively is top notch, will do amazing things in serving your customers and just needs a little push to get it into their hands then you have to look at the conversation very differently.

When the lawyer asks, “Are any other law firms using this software?” What she is really saying is, “I’m concerned that I might make a bad choice in purchasing this.” When you respond, “Yes, a lot of law firms are using this,” what you’re really saying is, “I know that you’re concerned but I know for a fact that this will be a very good decision.”

So while, yes, you lied to make the sale, the fact is that this law firm will be better off and more profitable with your software than without it.

Another way to get around this tribespeople decision shortcut is to let her know that, while her direct tribe has not signed off on this software, that similar tribes have. An accounting firm uses it. A product research company uses it. Other companies who have professional people making important decisions use this software. You are now letting her know that even though her people haven’t bought in, her kind of people have. Now you’ve expanded the circumference of her tribe. It’s no longer just a lawyer tribe, it’s a professional business people tribe.

Your best bet is to do research before you go on a sales call. Use LinkedIn and Facebook. Determine all the different tribes your customer is a part of and how they connect back to your product. Perhaps she’s an avid cyclist. She plays tennis. She’s a mountain climber. She’s a sharpshooter. Draw a circle around her and the other people indicating that her tribe has already accepted what you’re selling as valid. You want to go on a meeting armed with a lot of information.

If you don’t know who you’re meeting and you can’t do research, take a look around their office. Do they have trophies, plaques and citations that indicate the tribes in which they participate? Add credibility to yourself by announcing that you are a part of her tribe. You’re an avid cyclist too. You play tennis. You don’t rock climb but you do ski.

Clearly, being a part of your customer’s tribe doesn’t guarantee a sale but it does move the needle forward. The more connections you can make between you and your customer, the less decisions they feel they need to make and the further down the path to closing a deal you go.

Attractiveness and Likeability

So let’s look at some bottom line truths about selling.

Bottom line: People prefer to say ‘yes’ to individuals they feel like they know and they like. How do you get people to say ‘yes’? Increase your overall attractiveness and likeability. People tend to say ‘yes’ to those who have a certain level of physical attractiveness, they feel have a level of familiarity with, and, simply, they like. So to increase the ‘yes’, you need to increase those three factors: attractiveness, similarity/familiarity, and likeability.

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How do you become more attractive, likeable, and familiar? Simple. Let me say this about physical attractiveness. Physical attractiveness has, what we call a ‘halo effect’, that extends out to a believability about other traits. In other words, people who were judged as attractive are also judged as smarter, more compelling, and thought to be more trustworthy. Find hvac servicing service near me .

Now in terms of familiarity or similarity, we simply like people who are more like us. And we are more willing to subconsciously agree and say ‘yes’ to people that we judge are like us. You always want to look at points in which there is similarity between you and the person that you’re selling .

To increase your likeability, find common elements which you share. Do your research. What are they like? Look on LinkedIn, look on Facebook. What are they into? What do they enjoy doing? What’s their heritage? Are they hard-working? Do they take a lot of vacations? Are they travelers? Are they health enthusiasts? Which of the myriad of things that they participate in life do you also participate in at vapejuicedepot kilo e liquid sale . Bring up and accentuate those factors during the sales process to increase likeability, visit themoxiemaids.com to know more.

We have all felt at times that we aren’t are best selves. That’s okay, dust yourself off. You are shinier than you think.

Apple and the FBI

With Apple, everything begins and ends with the brand. It’s the most important thing to Apple. Just so we’re clear what BRAND means, you want to think of a brand as the personality of the business. My 10 second primer on branding is that as humans we are relationship building machines. We not only build relationships with people but with everything. Little girls feel love for their dollies and big girls feel love for their shoes. Boys have security blankets. Men have midlife crisis sports cars. All these decisions are based on the emotional relationship we build with the things we want. It’s not about the technical details of products. It’s all about the emotional connection.
The best sports cars come in all shapes, sizes, and prices. No matter your particular tastes, we’re sure you can find something on this list of the best sports cars of 2021 that will fulfill your craving for speed and performance visit pariuri casino baccarat.

Those who are interested in the best sports cars from 2020 can refer to last year’s list.

Mazda MX-5 Miata
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MAZDA
Calling the Mazda MX-5 Miata an automotive icon is no overstatement, as its heritage stretches back more than 30 years and its cheerful driving demeanor has always been its strongest character attribute. The Miata’s four-cylinder engine delivers just enough power to make it feel spunky and its chassis is delightfully balanced—perfect for zipping through curvy sections of road. Both a soft-top convertible model and a power-folding hard-top called the RF are offered, so with either one buyers are treated to fun in the sun. The Miata’s cabin is tight for two and cargo space is limited, but it wasn’t made for road trips; it’s designed for spirited sunny-drenched drives and track days. The fact that it remains one of the cheapest ways to get into a convertible sports car only adds to its appeal.

REVIEW, PRICING, AND SPECS

Toyota Supra
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MARC URBANOCAR AND DRIVER
Pay no mind to the fact that the 2021 Toyota Supra shares much of its chassis and powertrains with the BMW Z4—it offers its own distinct personality and is an utter blast to drive. Two different turbocharged powertrains—an inline-four and an inline-six—are on offer, both of which drive the rear wheels through an eight-speed automatic transmission. We know, we know: a six-speed manual would be preferable. To be honest, this automatic does an excellent job, changing gears crisply and responding quickly to the Supra’s paddle shifters. So impressed are we with the Supra, we’ve named it to our annual 10Best list two years in a row. Its snug cabin, while not the right size for every driver, is nicely finished.Want a convertible? Then you’ll have to get the Z4; the Supra is available only as a coupe.
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As a technology company Apple relies on their brand heavily. They have gone through product launches where the things they have made simply don’t work. The reason that people keep coming back is the same reason that Harley riders tattoo the Harley logo other bodies. Apple customers feel a relationship with Apple. Apple is their friend. Sometimes our friends disappoint us but we don’t stop being their friend.

Now a good brand is a filtering device for your business. It pushes away people who aren’t best suited to be your customers while drawing in – like a magnet – those who do. Apple, more than anything, wants to serve its core and loyal customers. So if we want to consider why Apple is making the choices they are making around this issue, the question we need to ask ourselves first is who are Apple’s customers? Who are the people they are trying to stay connected to the most?

Now we know who they are because Apple has told us. In 1997 they launched their new iMac with the Think Different TV commercial. That commercial starts with pictures of Einstein, Ghandi, and Bob Dylan, and the dialogue narrated by Richard Dreyfus says, “Here’s to the crazy ones. The rebels. The trouble makers.” Now that was pretty bold because at the time Apple was failing as a company and what they essentially said is that if you’re mainstream, we don’t want you as a customers at learnacademy.org. Apple sort of planted their flag in the ground and said, “We’re going for the people that want to think of themselves as free thinking individuals. The rest of you. We don’t care. Go buy a PC.”

Flash forward to today and now it makes a lot more sense as to why they are making the decisions they are making. Free thinking individuals don’t look at the world as a place where there is death and danger everywhere. They leave that to, you know, people who love Donald Trump. Free thinkers don’t believe that Apple is going to be the go-to technology for terrorists. What free thinkers are MOST concerned about is that the government is going to use this as opportunity, like Bush did with the patriot act, to further invade their privacy and take away their rights. In a way, Apple’s customers are more afraid of their own government than they are about terrorists.

The free thinkers are looking for Apple to protect them. This makes Apple’s choice around not complying with the government  perfectly aligned with their brand.

Apple opening their phone to the FBI would be like Southwest Airlines suddenly offering first class seating or Harley Davidson selling Japanese motorcycles or Disneyland having convicted sex-offenders day at their parks. Mega brands like Apple protect the interests of their core customers because that relationship is the thin little line that keep people coming back. This is what makes people LOVE Apple. It makes them feel safe and protected and like Apple is their friend. It doesn’t bother us that we have to pay Apple to be our friend, we think they are just that good of a friend to us.

Could this backfire? Absolutely. If the iPhone suddenly does become the technology of choice for terrorists Apple with definitely have some ‘splainin’ to do. But for now they are making the 100% right choice.

What is the humility of Alex Trebek?

I heard an interview with Alex Trebek recently and he said, “Early in my career I told the announcers on my program, on the shows that I hosted, never say ‘here’s the star’ or ‘here’s the host.’ Just say ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Alex Trebek’, because I never wanted to be thought of as the star. I wanted the contestants to be the star.” He said, “People are more likely to watch the show if they see me as the friendly guy who just wants the contestants to do well.” 

I apply the same philosophy in my business and I urge you to do the same. I always make sure that my clients know and feel that I’m on their side. I want them to know that the success of their business is always in the forefront of my mind. I work to be the big brain in their game – that means coming up with new ideas for their business or new ways to promote themselves through aggressive representation. I teach them to reach out to the public in ways that makes them feel like they’re not trying to sell something. They are perceived by their customers as a trusted advisor who wants to add value to their life.

I sometimes have to tell my clients things they don’t want to hear, but I always let them know why I’m suggesting the things I’m suggesting, urge them to give new ideas a try; but at the end of the day, I know they know their business better than me and they have to feel confident in what they’re doing regardless of what I think about it. 

Failing Big and Publicly

Steve Harvey as emcee for the 2016 Miss Universe pageant inadvertently announced the wrong winner right there live on television. Miss Columbia received the crown, the flowers, the hugs and the tears that come along with being the big winner. Honestly, I don’t really get what these pageants are all about but they seem important to the people involved so, okay. It’s their thing. Anyway, after the commercial break they come back and Steve announces that he made a mistake. He says that, in fact, it is Miss Philippines (or is it Miss The Philippines?) who is the winner. Apparently, he read the wrong name off the cue card. The crown was unceremoniously taken from the Columbian lady and given to The Philippines lady. More flowers and tears and hugs did ensue.

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Regardless of what you think of the validity of the pageant itself, the gaff was by all accounts, a 10 on the Oops Scale. He failed big and publicly and the internet is having a field day with this one as you can probably guess. Lots of memes and tweets and posts followed. However, like most things we poke fun at and parody, a big part of the reaction to his mistake is the mirror into which we do not want to look.

It has been said that most people fear public speaking more than they fear death. Jerry Seinfeld jokes that, at a funeral, people would rather be the guy in the box than the guy giving the eulogy. Funny but almost true. The thing that frightens us about public speaking isn’t really the act of speaking in front of a bunch of people, it’s our deep seated fear of feeling rejected by them and, to go a little deeper, it’s actually the deeper seated fear of the rejection we’d hurl upon ourselves. And there we have it, as Frank Zappa says, the crux of the biscuit.

We don’t like feeling rejected. It is, at the core, a separation from love. So if we don’t like it when one person rejects us we really don’t like it when a crowd of people reject us. So why should we care what other people think? Well, in point of fact, we shouldn’t but we do anyway. It’s one of our human frailties. We seek the approval of others. Yet, we do so largely because we often fail to provide ourselves with the approval we are seeking. We tend to not like those people who act like they are better than us because, deep inside our dark psyche we’re a little afraid that they might be right. Failing publicly puts us in the bullseye of our own self judgment. In other words, our thinking goes this way, “If all those people out there think that I suck then maybe I really do suck.” That’s a lot to process and, generally we would rather not do so and thereby we try to avoid the whole thing by not subjecting ourselves to public speaking.

Do we really want to imagine the self-loathing and humiliating thoughts running through the mind of Steve Harvey, lying in bed that night replaying the incident over and over again in his head? No way! We’d much rather make a joke about it, point the finger away from us and therefore not have to imagine ourselves in a similar situation. We don’t want to imagine looking over Facebook, watching CNN or the endless loop of late night comedians joking about our one tiny little mistake. It would, for a time, be just a little slice of sheer torture.

From a business perspective, the fear of failing big and publicly also happens to be the very same mental/emotional component that prevents most business owners from growing their company. They will say that they need to be cautious in their decision making so as not to create an environment that results in a great loss of profits. On the surface this is absolutely true. No one wants to make a choice that adversely affects their business. But the bigger truth is that owners are actually less fearful of the simple loss of income as they are of the feelings of self judgment and loathing they would hurl upon themselves after making such a mistake. Losing our businesses would indeed suck, yet what would suck more would be our self-flagellation following such a mistake. Most of us simply aren’t that resilient that we could pull a 10 on our own Oops Scale and walk away unscathed. We would want to bury it, avoiding the conversation with our friends and family and putting off looking over the financial statements. We wouldn’t want to suffer that day when we close the door for the last time, turn the key and walk away from the shop with the big OUT OF BUSINESS banner across the front. We dread, even more, all the people who would casually ask us how business is going or, at a dinner party, those asking us what we do for a living and having to talk about what we used to do before we screwed it all up. The self torture we would  undergo wouldn’t come close to the actual real life difficulties of finding employment or handling our business debt. We don’t even want to contemplate the notion of it, visit www.flycarpethawaii.com.

Yet, we all know that the growth of our business requires us to take risks. What few of us understand however are all the demons that are at play when we go to take those risks. Making the right business choice, most times isn’t actually about the right choice at all. It’s about the fear and the dread of making the wrong choice. We tend to focus away from all the potential business growth and learning we would encounter by making one choice and instead spin stories in our head of everything that could possibly go wrong by making any number of other choices. Yes, it’s true that if we don’t choose wisely that  things could go horribly wrong for us. While all that is very real in nature, our hesitations and consternations ultimately all find their way back to our central fear of feeling rejected. In other words, failing big and publicly.

The truth is, ultimately any decision we make will result in a series of consequences that will put us on the path towards one journey or another. We will deal with those things as they happen. Some of the experiences will be joyful and some won’t. It’s a little bit of a crap shoot either way.

I’d like to say that in the bigger picture there really are no “wrong” choices but even while taking the deepest optimistic breath, I can’t really muster that belief without at least something of a caveat. Certainly, if I chose to hire they guy who brought the hockey mask and chainsaw to the interview, I think that would have to count as the “wrong choice.” However, when faced with more equitable choices in business that may either work out or not work out, I’d like to say in that scenario there isn’t much of a wrong choice.

In making my choices and taking my risks in business (and in life) I have found that the greatest tool for effective choosing comes when after all the technical evaluation has been done. With the options in front of me I choose with the understanding that I will treat myself kindly and with deep respect regardless of the outcome. Child psychologists have concluded that spanking children ultimately does not produce the long term positive behavior parents are seeking. It actually just makes kids less confident. The same is true in how we punish ourselves for our adult “bad” behavior. Instead, when we stay kind to ourselves, regardless of our big and public mistakes, we are more encouraged to learn valuable lessons and make better choices the next time around.

Last night, following the pageant, when Steve Harvey went to bed, I’d like to think that he closed his eyes and slept soundly. Today I’d like to think that he was able to look in the mirror and see a good, whole-hearted man standing there looking back it him. I’d like to think that in the days to follow he’ll shrug it all off. I’d like to think all those things happened and will happen in that way because the next time I fail big and publicly I’d like to think I’m going to do all those things too.

The 5 Principles of Sales

On a November evening in Los Angeles I found myself sitting in a restaurant with Matthew, a man I had never met, didn’t know much about and wasn’t sure if our mutual friend had told him what I do for a living. This could have been a disaster of a sales meeting! Instead I walked out with a check for $10,000 by simply using the sales principles I teach.

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Principle 1- Invitation: Be genuinely interested and learn all you can about the client.
I simply said, “Tell me your story.” He began listing off his resume and job discretion so I jumped in and used…

Principle 2- Surprise: Gently interrupt, politely say they’re wrong, and tactfully disagree.
I stopped him and said, “That’s not what I want. I don’t really want to hear your resume. I’m interested in you. Tell me the story about you that no one gets to hear.” I then sat silently while he talked while I used…

Principle 3- Investigation: Ask personal questions. Listen for the client’s passion, goals and how your business is aligned with them.
He talked for about 25 minutes straight, providing all the raw material I needed to help him. Find here Dust and Mop, Charlotte, NC. When he finished, I leaned forward and said, “I’m going to tell you where you’re struggling and what I think you should do about it.” I gave him a full assessment of what I had learned and what I wanted to do to help him. Then on to…

Principle 4- Shut Up!: Silence, is the greatest motivator. Let it work for you.
I let the table go quiet to add in some “uncomfortable silence.” In absence of anything else to discuss, Matt said, “So, how would we start?

Principle 5 Boldness: The BIGGER your “ask” the more credibility you portray.
I said, “Write me a check for ten thousand dollars and we will begin.” More silence. Then he simply said, “Okay.”

By following these principles I walked out with a check for ten thousand dollars and Matt was EXCITED to start working with me.