Miscellaneous Essays

Criticism is the Price of Success

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One of the most surprising and disappointing things about reaching an important goal is that many people won’t share your happiness when they hear about it. Some will even criticize your achievement.

This has happened to me a lot in my success-driven life. The criticism always hurts – but it hurts less now than it did when I was younger. Moreover, I’ve learned to profit from it. You can too.

What’s important, I’ve found, is not the criticism itself but how I react to it. Praise motivates me to do more of what I’m doing. Criticism – which used to make me want to quit – spurs me to examine what I’m doing and see if I can do it better.

This happened just recently after I published an article in my Ready, Fire, Aim newsletter about the economy. Two of my most esteemed colleagues read it, didn’t like it, and chastised me for bad writing. That set me aback. I consider myself to be a pretty good writer, but they made me wonder if I was really just a shallow-minded pundit of mediocrity.

After doubting myself for a few days, I set to the task of profiting from their comments. I reread what they said and made notes on those points I thought were valid. I circulated my notes to Jason, Suzanne, and Judith, my editors. That began an ongoing discussion about how we could improve Ready, Fire, Aim. And we came up with a few good ideas.

I then wrote to my two friends who were nice enough to honestly critique my article. I thanked them for helping me make the newsletter better. And I meant it.

In What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful, Marshall Goldsmith talks about how important feedback is to success:

Feedback is very useful for telling us “where we are.” Without feedback… we couldn’t have results. We couldn’t keep score. We wouldn’t know if we were getting better or worse. Just as salespeople need feedback on what’s selling and leaders need feedback on how they are perceived by their subordinates, we all need feedback to see where we are, where we need to go, and to measure our progress.

Goldsmith acknowledges that negative feedback “can be employed by others to reinforce our feelings of failure, or at least remind us of them – and our reaction is rarely positive.” Worst of all, negative feedback can sometimes shut us down. “We close ranks, turn into our shell, and shut the world out.”

When Goldsmith was a child, his mother told him he had no mechanical skills. He went through high school believing that, and, when he was 18, scored at the bottom of the entire nation in a test given by the U.S. Army.

A few years later, a professor persuaded him to take another look at his mechanical abilities. That’s when he realized his mother was wrong, and he was “just living out the expectations [he] had chosen to believe.”

So that might be the first thing to say about profiting from criticism. Recognize that a negative comment about you or your abilities cannot damage you unless you let it.

Goldsmith says that he wasted years, convinced that he was mechanically inept. But he didn’t blame his mother. He blamed himself. “I was the one who kept telling myself, ‘You can’t do this!’ I realized that as long as I kept saying that, it was going to be true.”

Here are some useful techniques for profiting from criticism.

1. Remember that criticism is the price of success.

As writer Elbert Hubbard said, “Criticism is something we can avoid easily by saying nothing, doing nothing, and being nothing.” So if you do something, you’re going to be subject to criticism. President Obama gets criticized. Clint Eastwood gets criticized. Even Mother Theresa was criticized. The more success you have, the more criticism you will engender. Some of it will be helpful. Most of it will be useless. But don’t be afraid of it. It won’t kill you. It will only make you stronger.

2. Dump your failure-support group.

This group includes jealous friends, professional enemies, and habitual critics. These people get their kicks from kicking you when you are up. They want you to be down where they are. Don’t go there. Just ignore them.

3. If you can’t ignore your critics, frame your responses strategically.

Sometimes, you won’t be able to ignore your critics – if, for example the criticism is coming from your boss or your family. That’s when you need to stay calm and respond strategically.

In Self-Esteem, Matthew McKay and Patrick Fanning recommend a technique they call “clouding.” “Clouding involves a token agreement with a critic. It is used when criticism is neither constructive nor accurate. When you use clouding to deal with criticism, you are saying to the critic, ‘Yes, some of what is on your screen is on my screen.’ But to yourself you add, ‘And some isn’t.’ You ‘cloud’ by agreeing in part, probability, or principle.”

Agreeing in part – finding one part of your critic’s comments to agree with or acknowledge.

The Criticism: You’re not reliable. You forget to pick up the kids, you let the bills pile up until we could lose the roof over our heads, and I can’t ever count on you to be there when I need you.

Your Response: You’re certainly right that I did forget to pick up the kids last week after their swimming lesson.

Agreeing in probability – acknowledging that there’s a possibility your critic could be right. The chances may be a million to one against it, but you can truthfully say, “It’s possible you’re right.”

The Criticism: Starting a business now is a terrible idea. The economy is in the crapper, and you’re just wasting time and money.

Your Response: Yes, it’s possible that my business won’t work out.

Agreeing in principle – acknowledging the logic of your critic’s argument, but not necessarily agreeing with his assumptions. This clouding technique uses the conditional “if/then” format.

The Criticism: You’re really taking a chance by claiming all these deductions you don’t have receipts for. The IRS is cracking down. You’re just asking for an audit. It’s stupid to try to save a few bucks and bring them down on you like a pack of bloodhounds.

Your Response: You’re right. If I take the deductions, I’ll be attracting more attention to myself. And if I get audited, it will be a real hassle.

4. Take helpful criticism seriously.

Helpful criticism is sometimes harsh but it’s always well intended. It’s not hard to identify it. The hard thing is to accept that it is helpful and use it to improve yourself.

In Succeed for Yourself: Unlock Your Potential for Success and Happiness, Richard Denny says, “Constructive criticism is not negative, so be enthusiastic about it. Remember, you are very fortunate if you receive it. Encourage others to offer constructive criticism.”

5. Thank your critics.

I make it a habit to send a personal “thank you” to anyone whose criticism has helped me do better work.

6. Solicit criticism – from people you respect – while there is plenty of time to make changes.

One of the most successful publishers I know does this regularly. When considering the launch of a new product, he sends a memo to a small group of more experienced publishers explaining his concept and asking them to poke holes in it.

By getting their criticism early, he doesn’t feel its sting. After all, it’s not his baby that is being criticized. It’s just an idea. And ideas, as we all know, are not worth anything until they are put into action.

Another benefit – and this is a big one – is that it saves him time and frustration. By getting input on an idea before he’s done a lot of work on it, it is much easier for him to make changes.

Miscellaneous Essays

The Best Way to Get Funding For Your Business

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Last week, I suggested that it takes more than an idea – even if it’s a really fantastic idea – to attract potential investors. You need to prove that your idea has legs by turning it into a working model.

But then what? Once you’ve got a working model, where do you go for the money you need to turn it into a business?

In general, there are four sources of capital: venture capital firms, government agencies, commercial banks, and private investors or partners.

If you think your idea might be of interest to venture capitalists, check out the National Venture Capital Association (nvca.org). But for the average entrepreneur, venture capital isn’t a possibility.

As Paul Lawrence explained in his article “Raising Capital for Small Business Ventures”:

Yes, some venture capital firms will invest in new businesses, but such businesses are usually involved in technology or some other high-growth area. Frankly, for most small businesses, venture capital isn’t even an option. It’s rare for a small-business concept to have the kind of mammoth payoff venture capitalists look for.”

Plus, the cost of doing business with these companies is high. It’s basic economics. Their risk is high, so their reward must also be high. Even if you were to interest a venture capital company in your business, you’d be aghast at what they’d want in terms of their ownership position.

What about government grants? Tim Berry, author of Hurdle: The Book on Business Planning, points out that government funding agencies usually have “social” agendas. Grants and loans are available to minorities – especially minority businesses engaged in education, antidiscrimination projects, community services, fine arts, and other politically popular objectives.You can find out if your business idea might be a candidate for government money by checking into any of the government agencies whose purpose is to stimulate entrepreneurship. The best known is the Small Business Administration.

I wouldn’t advise taking this route, though. It requires too much bending to bureaucracy. Too much artificiality. Too much red tape. Getting these loans and grants takes months (or years) of filling out forms. And there are all sorts of reporting and regulatory requirements – enough to slow down even the most patient person. Plus, government-funded business projects have an extremely high failure rate once the funding is withdrawn. That’s because they begin with an idea, not a working model. And the idea isn’t good to begin with because it is based on social policy instead of being connected to profits – which is, after all, what fuels a business.

As for getting money from a commercial bank, I can make this short: Forget about it. The only way a bank will lend you money these days is if (a) you have excellent credit and (b) you can collateralize your loan with assets. If you have good credit and tons of money, you don’t need a bank loan. You can loan yourself the money.

This brings us to the fourth and final option…

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Miscellaneous Essays

The First Step to Getting Funding for Your Business

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One of the most commonly asked questions I get from would-be entrepreneurs is: “How do I get money for my business idea?”

I’ve answered it before, but it’s worth answering again because the question keeps coming up. Let’s start with a bit of harsh truth: It isn’t easy.

You may have heard the expression that if you build a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door. That implies that there is always lots of money looking around for good ideas.

On the contrary, money rarely chases after ideas. Most of the time, money chases money.

Take the business I am in: information publishing. Not a week goes by when I don’t hear a proposition from someone who has a “brilliant” idea for a publication. It might be a new investment newsletter or a magazine about retirement or a website on health and fitness. “I can’t tell you what the idea is,” they usually say, “but when you hear it you will realize how special it is and you’ll be happy to fund it.”

Sometimes people want me to sign non-disclosure agreements. Apparently they fear that I will “steal their idea” and not pay them for it.

In my 25+ years of listening to publishing ideas, I have signed only two or three such agreements. And they were done years ago, before I really understood what I was doing. Nowadays, I don’t sign them. Not because I want to steal the idea, but because I know there is a 99.9 percent chance that (a) I won’t like it or (b) I will already be working on something similar.

That second situation is quite common. When one person comes up with a clever idea, it’s very likely that other people – often people employed by companies I consult with – have come up with it too.

The reason for these “coincidences” is easy to understand if you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. Brand-new ideas seldom come to the market sprung from the thigh of Zeus. Usually, they have been percolating around the market’s periphery for years. Gradually, they reform themselves until one particular application of the idea catches fire.

Since the economy began to collapse in the middle of 2008, for example, every smart person in the investment advisory business had been busy thinking about new ways to make money in 2009. These individual thinkers talked to one another and made comments in e-letters and blogs. One specific idea spurred another. And, eventually, there was an outpouring of similar ideas. I saw a half-dozen new products related to income-oriented investment advisories. And another half-dozen for products that focused on short selling.

The people that came up with these ideas were not stealing from one another. They were individually mulling over the same problems. It’s a sort of collective consciousness that results in so many similar ideas, only a handful of which will go on to make money.

And that gets us to the main reason why I don’t sign non-disclosure agreements. Because I know that ideas themselves are not so important. What matters is the way they are articulated.

In How to Get Rich, Felix Dennis puts it like this:

It really does not matter who gives birth to any particular idea. This is borne out by the law relating to patents and inventions. You cannot patent an idea. You can only patent your own method for implementing an idea. …Ray Kroc did not invent the idea of fast food. …There were thousands of ‘fast food’ outlets in the USA at the time. …His genius was merely to recognize this fact and implement a simple five-point plan: Standardize the food and prices, franchise the outlets, produce the food swiftly in clean surroundings, offer value for money, and market the whole shebang relentlessly.

Yes, you need more than an idea to attract money. You need some unique selling proposition and, if possible, proof that the idea will work. You can have both things if – before looking for money – you build yourself a working model.

Let’s look at a few examples that define the difference between an idea and a working model.

Idea: a newsletter on short selling

Working Model: an e-letter that has been published for six months and has 100 paid subscribers

Idea: a retail jewelry store

Working Model: an operating business that has sold jewelry at flea markets profitably for a year

Idea: a musical comedy about Enron

Working Model: a script that has been performed to rave reviews at local theaters

The difference between an idea and a working model is significant – especially to a potential investor. The difference is two-fold:

  • Ideas tend to be generalized, whereas working models are specific.
  • Ideas are unproven, but working models show the potential for profits.

So that is the first and most important thing to do once you’ve come up with a “great” business idea. Turn it into a working model.

You don’t need to spend much money doing that if you are clever. By taking advantage of the Internet and using direct-marketing techniques, almost any business can be tested without a huge investment.

Almost any. Not every. You can’t create an inexpensive working model of a three-wheeled car, for example. Nor can you test out a new kind of luxury hotel idea on the cheap. But capital-intensive business ideas like those are best left to the larger businesses that occupy already dominant industries. For ordinary entrepreneurs, the good ideas are those that can be modeled cheaply.

Once you have a working model, you have a much better chance of getting the money you want. But where do you look?

Miscellaneous Essays

How Much Are You Worth?

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A French woman, upon seeing Picasso in a Parisian restaurant, approached the great master and insisted that he put down his coffee and make a quick sketch of her. Graciously, Picasso obliged. When he was done, she took the drawing, put it in her handbag, and then pulled out her billfold.

“How much do I owe you?” she asked.

“$5,000,” was Picasso’s reply.

“$5,000? But it took you only three minutes!” she exclaimed.

“No,” Picasso answered. “It took me all my life.”

That’s how I feel about the work I do. My skills – as a marketer and small-business builder – are very valuable. If you want me to help you sell your products or grow your business, you can expect to pay me at least $2,000 an hour.

And that’s only if I have the time… the work time… left in my schedule. If you want me to work during my personal time – evenings or weekends or during my vacation – how much would it cost you? You don’t want to ask.

A wealthy businessman, who had been following my writing at ETR for years, had been trying to persuade me to help him grow his business. At one point he offered to pay me $50,000 to spend a weekend with him – plus “plenty more” if I agreed to provide ongoing support.

I graciously turned down his offer, and he had a hard time understanding why. “I’m offering to pay you $3,000 an hour,” he said.

That’s true. For 16 hours (two days’ work), $50,000 amounts to just a bit more than $3,000 an hour. But I didn’t want to do it, because he was asking me to give up my personal time – the time I spend with my family and friends and the time I spend on my hobbies. And that time is worth at least twice as much as my working time.

How to Calculate Your Hourly Worth

Now, let’s talk about you. Let’s talk about how to calculate what your time is worth.

Here’s the formula I use: Take the amount of money you earn per year. Then divide that by 50 weeks and then by 40 hours.

For example, my friend Walt has a growing real estate business. To convince him that he shouldn’t be doing so much of the grunt work himself, I helped him apply my formula to his situation.

Walt makes about $150,000 a year. $150,000 divided by 50 weeks equals $3,000 (his weekly income). $3,000 divided by 40 hours comes to $75.

“That’s how much your work time is worth,” I told him. “So never do anything yourself that you can have done for less than $75 a hour.”

Now you do it. Divide your yearly income by 50 weeks. Then divide that by 40 hours.

If the number you come up with is less than $50, it tells me you are not practicing a financially valuable skill – one that contributes to your company’s bottom line. That means being involved in product creation, marketing, sales, or profit management. If that’s the case, go back and reread past ETR messages on how to get yourself into one of those jobs… because that’s where the big salaries are.

At the same time, make yourself as valuable as you can be at your present job. And start focusing on the really important work that will propel your career – and your income – forward.

Before long, your hourly rate will be double or even triple what it is today.

And your personal time will be worth even more.

It might be three times as valuable as the time you spend at work… five times as valuable… or 10 times as valuable. Only you will know just how much it’s worth to you. But at the very least, your personal time should be worth double what your work time is.

Once you know what that number is, you can make sure that every personal task you engage in is “worth” that amount of money to you.

Let’s say, for example, that, by applying my formula, you have calculated your work time to be worth $25 per hour. And you figure your personal time is worth twice that: $50 per hour. Let’s also say that you spend three hours every weekend in the summer doing yard work (mowing the lawn, trimming hedges, fertilizing, and so on). Ask yourself if you think it’s worth $150 ($50 times 3 hours of your personal time). If you feel it is, keep doing it. If it’s not, hire someone else to do it – which you can certainly do for a lot less than $150 a week – and free up your time for activities you really enjoy.

Same goes for any household job that you can hire out – cleaning, painting, washing the car.

We all have the same number of hours in the day. How much you get paid for the hours you work – and how much pleasure you get from the hours you don’t – are both up to you.

Miscellaneous Essays

IF YOU’RE TRYING TO IMPRESS ME, DON’T DO THIS

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He had been strongly recommended for the job. And so, when I got on the phone with him, I was expecting a sharp, take-charge guy. Instead, I got this:

“I’ve been involved in strategically important roles with communications companies for 25 years. Throughout, I’ve focused on my core competencies, building brand recognition and interfaces with key personnel.”

To which I responded: “Huh?”

He went on…

“It’s been a personal paradigm of mine that quality control and dynamic leadership are essentials in today’s globalized business environment, and that’s what I feel I can bring to any company I work for.”

I had already made an initial assessment: This guy was a fraud. But to give him a chance to redeem himself, I tried to keep the conversation going.

“So,” I said, “what, exactly, have you been doing all these years?”

I could almost hear him thinking, “What kind of dummy am I dealing with?” But this is what he said:

“Bringing in a bottom line and achieving optimal results have always been goals that resonated with me.”

“That’s enough,” I thought. “I can’t take any more.”

“I’m sorry to do this,” I said. “But I have to jump off the phone now to handle an emergency. I enjoyed talking to you. I’ll be sure to look at your resume and get back to you if something comes up that meets your qualifications.”

And with that, I bid farewell to this young man and any chance he had of ever working for me.

In their book Why Business People Speak Like Idiots, authors Fugere, Hardaway, and Warshawsky say there are three reasons executives – and people applying for management positions – sometimes speak like this.

  1. Their focus is on themselves, rather than on the person they’re speaking to. “When obscurity pollutes someone’s communications it’s often because the… goal is to impress and not to inform.”
  2. They fear using concrete language, because saying exactly what they mean can make it hard to wiggle out of commitments. “Liability scares [some people], so they add endless phrases to qualify [their] views, acknowledging everything from prevailing weather conditions to the 12 reasons we can’t make a decision now.”
  3. They want to elevate and even romanticize their thoughts and deeds, because they are afraid they aren’t impressive. They do so by using lofty language that disguises the mundane truth.

They are afraid to appear ordinary. Their solution is to attempt to bamboozle everyone they speak with – and particularly those with power.

This is a very bad strategy.

In a job interview, it makes the interviewee look pompous and vacuous – two traits any sensible employer wants to avoid.

When applying for a job, only two things really matter: what you know (your skill set) and who you are (your integrity). Pretending to know things you don’t is a waste of your time, because you will soon be found out. Getting tossed into the street after only a few weeks on the job is both embarrassing and an ugly blemish on your work history.

You can demonstrate your good character by being honest from the outset. Be candid about what you know and what you have done. But make it clear that you are confident you can quickly learn to do anything that is required of you.

In granting you an interview, your future employer is trying to find out if you can help him solve his problems and grow his business.

He isn’t looking to be impressed. He’s looking for someone who can make his life easier by doing a great job. Your job during the interview is to sell yourself as being that person.

And the first rule of successfully selling yourself is to make sure you’ve got the basics down pat:

  • You must be good at something – really good.
  • That something must be useful to the success of the business you are attempting to work for. If you’ve been reading my blog – even for a short time – you already know what I mean by that: It must be some financially valued skill. Generally speaking, that’s one of four things: marketing, selling, creating profitable products, or managing profits.
  • You must prove that you are good.

And then you must deliver.

 

Miscellaneous Essays

Faking It, Making It: The Changing World of Fakery

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Cuban cigars are expensive. A Cohiba robusto will set you back more than $25 in London or Madrid. You can buy them in Florida for $5 to $10 apiece. And lots of people do. Trouble is, they are fake.

People who have been smoking Cohibas for 20 years say it’s easy to tell the difference between a genuine and a counterfeit. The printing on the label may be a bit off – the wrong size or the wrong shade of yellow. Sometimes the size of the label is irregular. Or the quality of the paper is inferior. If you can’t spot a fake by examining the external evidence, you should notice the difference when you light up. The fakes don’t have the flavor – not nearly.

It used to be easy to spot fake Rolexes. Like Cohiba wrappers, their faces bore minor typographical irregularities. They weighed less than the genuine watches. And they stopped working within a year.

But that’s changing now. The use of sophisticated computer technology by modern counterfeiters is resulting in a new class of fake watches. Ones that are so close to the original that watchmakers can’t tell the difference unless they put them under a microscope. And even then, some of them “pass.”

“The counterfeit world has traditionally been a world of the shabby and shoddy,” says Frederick W. Mostert, an intellectual property lawyer who has made a career of spotting bogus luxury merchandise and prosecuting those who make them. Writing in a recent issue of Cigar Aficionado, he says:

“In the last 18 months I have witnessed a paradigm shift in the manufacturing of fakes. It is still only a ripple – but it is set to become a tsunami. The next wave will change the face of manufacturing and retailing and it is fueled by a quantum leap in technological engineering.”

Mostert tells of a car manufacturing facility in central Thailand that is producing near-perfect replicas of Ferraris, Lamborghinis, and Lotuses. And of Chinese plants that are making fake watches that look identical to the real ones, both inside and out:

“I was so fascinated by this ingenious use of technology,” he says, “that I visited Minolta’s laser scanner labs after my return home. I will never forget the moment I was invited to remove my watch from my wrist and place it on the laser scanner turnstile. Within five minutes – eerily – a picture perfect 3-D digital version of the outside contours of my watch was produced: the ultimate, undetectable copy.”

The digital technology used by Chinese counterfeiters reverse-engineers highly complicated watch parts. And this information can be stored in discs and sold to other counterfeiters around the world.

Digital technology is helping counterfeiters replicate all sorts of valuable merchandise, from vintage wines to expensive Italian suits to first-edition books to fine art. “Gone,” Mostert says, “are the mom and pop operations of yesterday in which impoverished families constructed fakes in their garages.”

And it’s not just luxury goods. “Every product known to mankind can be, and is being, perfectly copied. This is sure to have profound implications for the future of global retail.”

During a recent trip to New York, Irene and I were walking down Fifth Avenue on our way to meet K and Evan (Irene’s husband). We passed some Nigerians selling knockoff designer leather goods. Irene stopped to look.

“Boy, look at the quality of this stuff,” she said to me.

I examined the Gucci bag. The leather was supple. The stitching was neat. Everything looked perfect.

“Looks good,” I said.

“In the old days, the fakes were so inferior,” she said. “It was easy to tell the difference. But now…” She was silent for a moment.

“I hate it,” she said.

We continued to walk. She seemed vexed.

“What do you hate?” I wanted to know.

“I hate that you can’t tell the difference anymore.”

“And why does that bother you?”

She stopped walking and turned to me. “Why?” She lifted her Prada bag to my face and said, “Do you know how much money I spent on this? And those guys are selling these bags for 50 bucks apiece.”

“Yeah,” I said, pretending not to understand her. “I guess you wish you had bought a knockoff.”

“I would never be happy with a fake,” she said.

“Oh, really?”

“It would make me feel terrible. Like I myself was a fake.”

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Miscellaneous Essays

Are You Setting Goals… or Still Dreaming?

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We all have dreams. We all carry movies in our minds about how life could be for us in a better world. Sally dreams of a big house with a built-in pool. Harry dreams of an eight-car garage filled with vintage Porsches. Jill fantasizes about painting pictures at the seashore. Jack wants that corner office with the view.

Chances are, Sally and Harry and Jill and Jack will never get what they dream about. They will go on playing those mental movies for themselves or talking about them to friends and family members.

Failing to live your dreams is not necessarily a bad thing. Lots of people are perfectly happy dreaming of one life but living another. The problem arises when the gap between fantasy and reality results in unhappiness or even depression. When this happens, it’s time to master plan a new life. And the first step is to establish goals.

Goals are different from dreams in four ways. They are specific, actionable, time-oriented, and realistic.

Specific : Being rich is a dream. Developing a $4 million net worth is a goal.
Actionable : Winning the lottery is a dream. Winning a foot race is a goal.
Time-Oriented: Developing a $4 million net worth is a goal. But developing a $4 million net worth in five years is a better goal.
Realistic : Developing a $4 million net worth in five years is probably reasonable. Developing a $4 million net worth in four months is not.

Goals are also different than objectives – more long-term and broader in scope.

Your master plan should be broken down into seven-year and one-year goals, monthly and weekly objectives, and, finally, daily tasks that will make it possible to achieve your medium-term objectives and long-term goals. For example:

Seven-Year Goal: Develop a $4 million net worth in five years.
First-Year Goal: Eliminate $36,000 worth of debt.
Monthly Objective : Land a part-time job netting $36,000 annually by year-end.
First Week’s Objective : Get my first job interview.
First Day’s Task: Write personal letters to CEOs of my top 10 “dream job” companies.

Okay, that’s the plan. Starting today, you are going to be performing tasks every day that support weekly objectives that, in turn, support monthly objectives that, in turn, support yearly goals that, in turn, support seven-year goals. All of this will be done formally. All of it will be done in writing.

At this point, you may be wondering: “Does it really matter whether my goals are specific? Does it make any difference if I write them down?”

Glad you asked.

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Miscellaneous Essays

How to Become What You Want to Be

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“If you want to be a writer, you have to write.”

I was 16 years old when my father said those kind-and-cruel words to me. I never forgot them.

The first time I can remember wanting to be a writer, I was 11 or 12 years old. I’d written a poem for Sister Mary Something at school. My rhyming quatrain (AABB) was titled, pretentiously, “How Do I Know the World Is Real?”

I was at the kitchen table when my father started reading it over my shoulder. I felt anxious. My father was a credentialed writer, an award-winning playwright, a Shakespearean scholar, and a teacher of literature, including poetry. I’d seen him, on Saturday mornings, hunched over student essays, muttering and occasionally reading out loud passages to my mother that sounded perfectly good to me but elicited derisive laughter from them.

My father understood the secret-to-me clues of good writing. I didn’t feel at all comfortable having my fragile young poem exposed to the awesome danger of his critical mind. So there I sat, hoping he would go away. But he didn’t. I felt his hand on my shoulder, gentle and warm. “You may have a talent for writing,” he said.

I wrote lots of poetry in the months that followed, and began to think of myself as a writer. I liked that feeling. But soon other interests – touch football, the Junior Police Club, girls – crowded themselves into my life. Gradually, I wrote less and less. I still yearned to be a writer and so I began to feel guilty about not writing.

To assuage my guilt, I promised myself that my other activities were “life experience,” and that I needed life experience to become the good writer I wanted to be. In developing this excuse for not writing, I was building a structure of self-deception that many people live inside when they abandon their dreams. From the outside, it looks like you are doing nothing. But from the inside, you know that you are in the process of becoming, which, you convince yourself, is the next best thing to being.
That was the shape of my delusion when my father said, “If you want to be a writer, you have to write. A writer is someone who writes.”

So many people live their lives failing to become what they want to be because they can’t find the time to get started. How many times have you heard someone say that, one day, they will do what they always wanted to do – travel the world or paint paintings or write a book? And when you hear sentiments like those, what do you feel? Happy because you are confident that one day they will accomplish their long-held goal? Or sort of sad for them because you are pretty sure they never will?

And what about you? What is it that you want to be but haven’t become? What goal or project or task do you keep talking about accomplishing yet never do?

When my father told me that “writers write,” he was saying two things:

  • I had lost the right to call myself a writer when I stopped writing.
  • I could regain the title the moment I started writing again.

If you spend a while ruminating on this, you may find it both disturbing and liberating.

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Miscellaneous Essays

Stop Selling When You Are Ahead

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“I saw the most amazing movie last night. You’ve got to see it,” Jane says.

“Tell me more,” says Mary.

“Well, Ryan Gosling stars in it. And also Jennifer Lawrence.”

“My favorite actors,” says Mary.

“They have a hot romance going on in the movie…”

“Sounds great…”

“And there’s this scene where Ryan has his shirt off and…”

“Say no more,” says Mary. “I’m going!”

“And he takes his shirt off and all of a sudden this horrible thing pops out of his chest and…”

“What?”

“This creature from another dimension pops out…”

“What kind of movie is this?”

“Sort of science fiction/horror…”

“Ugh. Forget it. I hate horror movies.”

What’s wrong with this conversation?

In an attempt to persuade her friend Mary to see the movie, Jane made a big mistake – a mistake that is very common in the world of business: She continued to sell the product after the customer was already sold.

In their textbook Hospitality Sales: Selling Smarter,
 Judy A. Siguaw and David C. Bojanic said:

If you have made a good presentation and the prospects are satisfied that the benefits offered will improve their situation, and are believable, any further presentation is overselling. Overselling can create, in the mind of the prospects, a feeling of disbelief as to the validity of the owner benefits. It can also result in the loss of favorable attention because excessive repetition of benefits and use of other motivational tools can lead to boredom or confusion, which, in turn, causes an unfavorable emotional reaction.

In other words, “overselling” will kill your sale.

You can prevent this from happening by learning how to recognize the moment your customer is ready to buy. If you continue to sell beyond this point, her enthusiasm for the product is going to wane. Not only that, but you risk saying something – like Jane’s description of the creature bursting from Ryan Gosling’s chest – that will quash her interest in an instant.

In this regard, people who do their selling face to face have an advantage over those who do their selling via direct mail or the Internet. By paying close attention to the effect their words are having on their customers, they can custom tailor each sales presentation. If the customer looks doubtful, they can pile on proof of their claims. If the customer looks confused, they can clarify the point they’re trying to make by restating it – over and over again, if need be.

And when a customer begins giving signals that he is ready to buy, astute salespeople know the time is right to swoop in and close the sale.

These are the clues they look for in the customer:

  • A relaxed position – arms open, facing the salesperson
  • Excitement in the eyes
  • Nodding the head
  • Oral affirmations – saying “yes,” “right,” “uh huh”

When you are writing direct-mail or online sales copy, you don’t have signals like these to guide you. So you have to find another way to keep your sales message on track. To my knowledge, there isn’t any generally accepted way to do this. But I’ve experimented with a few techniques, and have hit upon one that works pretty well.

I’m talking about putting your copy through a peer review.

The process I recommend is the same one that many of my best clients use. Basically, here’s how it works:

You put together a group of five or six people – ideally, experienced marketers and copywriters. You ask them to rate the various parts of your copy – the headline, lead, body, and close – and give specific suggestions for improving them. You also ask your reviewers to indicate any sections that are boring, unbelievable, or confusing. And you ask them to highlight the point in the copy where they feel ready to buy.

That point should be about two-thirds to three-quarters of the way through the copy. If it comes much earlier, you know you have to delete some of the “overselling” you do after that point and move directly to the close. (If it doesn’t happen at all, you know you have to completely revamp the sales copy and make it stronger.)

Don’t make the mistake Jane made and “talk” yourself out of a sale. You’ll be blowing a perfectly good opportunity… and you’ll never know why.

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