Two quotes which I won’t belabor with explanations:

Frank Kern, on asking for the sale:

Yeah, and the worst thing that’s gonna happen is they’re going to say, “No, thanks, I’m not interested.” It’s not like they’re going to attack you with a framing hammer.

Seth Godin, on actually doing something:

I learned that being laughed at wouldn’t kill me.

Your business lesson for today is to go read Carrie’s 4 questions.

Your business lesson for the rest of your life is to follow her advice and answer them, honestly, in writing, every single day.

I just got a call on my Skype number from Trevor.

“So what?” Yes, I heard you think that. We get phone calls all the time. But let me describe this in a little detail and see if you feel the same wonder I do.

I’m sitting at my computer. No phone rang; instead, a message popped up on my screen, glowing transparent over other work so as to be less intrusive, telling me not only that I had a call, but the name of the caller.

I am in northern California, just outside Sacramento. The caller, Trevor Gay, is in England. He was using a cell phone, and wanted to make a test call to a Skype number. He saw I was online, and decided to give me a quick ring. To test Skype’s conferencing feature, I added my wife Sue, sitting across the office from me, to the call; she and Trevor had a quick chat.

All this took 8 minutes. And here’s what happened in that 8 minutes.

Someone in England, using a cell phone, called my computer, not a telephone. Both our voices were converted to digital bits, sent over the internet like an email, converted to sound, all that stuff.

We had a conference call. Remember when that was a big deal, requiring special equipment? Nah. Just click a couple buttons and connect people.

I had a free conversation, a quick chat, with someone halfway around the world. I remember a time when long distance was saved for really important stuff, and international calls were virtually unheard of except for the most extreme circumstances.

Are you using technology to cut through the noise, and be more human? Or are you letting technology shape you to its own ends, becoming more ‘connected’, but less connected?

I’d like to keep the newsletter as relevant as possible. If you’d consider spending 90 seconds on an anonymous 2-question survey it would be most helpful.

And if you’re not signed up for the newsletter, but you’d like to be (and, really, who wouldn’t?) you can do so just to the left there, where it says Sign Up.

We had a great launch today; I think the radio show is going to be even more fun than I expected.

We talked about how to avoid getting sucked into fruitless and pointless arguments with people who don’t seem to grasp the fundamental rules of engagement in logical debate. Tom’s excellent point was that we need to, as early as possible, assess two things: content and agenda.

Hear Tom’s explanation in this 2-minute clip from today’s show.

So, that fear thing.

Shining a light on it usually works. If you remember to do it, that is. But, usually, we cower in the corner because, well, that’s how we’ve always addressed that particular subject. Like our penchant for making the same mistakes time after time in life, we also tend to suffer the same kinds of fears about the same kinds of things. We teach ourselves the bad habit of behaving the way we’ve always behaved.

Have you ever watched someone else do something that was second nature to you, and wondered what on earth they thought they were doing? Here’s a simple example: when people see me tie my shoes, every single person is stunned into silence. Why?

Because I don’t know how to tie my shoes.

No, I’m not kidding. That thing you probably do when you tie your shoes-my dad taught me when I was, like, four, and I forgot. Too embarassed to ask him to show me again (I had no idea you got a do-over; the phrase didn’t exist in 1964) I just figured it out myself.

It works, but so far, I’ve never yet met a person who ties their shoes like I do.

If I’d gotten help earlier in life, maybe I could have been saved. But don’t despair; there’s still hope for you.

I’ll bet if I were to watch you formatting a Word document, I’d absolutely twitch and hop, wanting to show you eleven easier ways to do things. If Kristi saw your books, she could teach you three times as much as you know about accounting in about three minutes. If Jerry watched your sales presentation, he could double your conversion rate in five minutes.

Why?

Y’know how MacGyver holds the flashlight in his mouth while he’s making a rocket sled from a trash can? In real life, we can’t do that so well. (Either part.)

Get someone else to hold the flashlight.

Having a team of trusted associates monitor what you’re doing will give you the incredible returns on investment I mentioned above. Three, four, even five lights shining on your Big Scary Fear will often remove it entirely, but will, I promise, at least make it easier to see and resolve.

So, who are these people? Where do you find them? How will you know their flashlight is working?

Listening to the live version of Jesse Cook’s astonishing “Mario Takes a Walk” gives a powerful lesson in anticipation.

Cook’s audiences are not sedate. This is not flamenco; it’s flamenco pop, which means the crowd can get as rowdy as it wants. And they do. During most of this live album, you can hear the fans during all the but loudest moments.

But, toward the end of the show, toward the end of the last song (his first single and one of my favorite pieces of music anytime, anywhere) something amazing happens.

We’ve already been through the bulk of ‘Mario’ including a wild percussion interlude, and Jesse starts the final phrase of the song . . . and between the individual notes, it’s quiet. Finally, as he holds the pause before the last note for, like, ever, I almost think I can hear someone breathing, because, they know, they know, that last note of the song, of the evening, is coming.

When it does, the explosion dwarfs every previous response.

Imagine if your business had fans so devotedly anticipating your next move that they’d stand, breathless, waiting for the last note, then explode in a frenzy of delight.

Sure, it would help to be an artist of Jesse Cook’s caliber, but I honestly believe there’s such a need for emotional connection, authenticity, and honest value in business that with a little work, we could each pull it off.

I intend to.

Fear makes us do strange things. It makes us do things we’re not even aware we’re doing.

Your unconscious mind has powerful control over your life. In any conflict between conscious and unconscious, your unconscious wins every time.

I’ve taken steps to get my health under control. I need to have a healthier lifestyle if I’m going to survive ’til the Little One is grown up. But, powerful a reason as that is, it has yet to override my unconscious challenges with my eating and exercise behaviours.

When I connected with Nicole and Alex Ramirez I knew they could help me progress toward my health goals.

What I didn’t know was how badly my unconscious wants me to stay in this comfort zone. (Mental comfort; physically, I’m uncomfortable all the time.)

Nicole has been trying to work with me for over two weeks, and I’ve managed to sabotage my own efforts in ways I can’t even begin to understand. Fortunately, Nicole’s an old hand at pushing mules up big hills and she’s been patient with me while I sort out what’s happening.

And that, dear readers, is one of the secrets: an accountability mentor.

Next week, we’ll talk about how the circle of mentors we surround ourselves with can help shine a light on the fears that are holding us back.

Just a few weeks ago, I met Caitlyn James in the comments section of Jonathan Fields’ blog. It’s not quite the same as discovering someone at the malt shop, but it works for me. Today’s post is the first time we’ve had a guest post at Business Heretics; Caitlyn is an educator (I use that word because ‘teacher’ is easily dismissed as simply a profession, but ‘educator’ hopefully makes it clear that she is on a mission in which she intends to accomplish more than surviving long enough to collect a pay packet.)

Caitlyn writes today about young people and small business finding each other.

Caitlyn James

The age old cry of the adolescent: “you’re not my boss!” Is there a generation gap — or perhaps a failure of respect? Are “kids these days” slackers in ways we weren’t? Are expectations — on either side of the “gap” unreasonable?

I thought we, the “olders”, figured out that no one was in charge of us. Now, we have taken that to its most logical conclusion and become masters of our own domains (not in the Seinfeld way) and we own businesses that put us in charge of others. Except that those for whom we are, now, boss know that no one is in charge of them. Hmm.

Pesky kids . . . and 30-somethings. (No pesky 40-somethings, though! )

There is information everywhere about business. Kids know early that financial success is often preceded by a financial crisis or two; that working for yourself is the way (at least one way) to riches. For many young employees, they know they have options.

If you’ve hired well – but it isn’t going well, I have some thoughts. Undoubtedly, the ideas will apply regardless of employee age, but the focus is on the young employee.

After meeting our basic survival needs: food, shelter, etc., we all need to have fun, freedom, belonging, and power. Need.

Not so that we have a good life, but so we stay alive.

These needs are basic, and monkey studies have shown that deprivation of something like belonging to a group, which might be considered “icing on the cake” can lead to death. In less extreme research, links to disease, immunity problems, and mental illness are well-documented results of stress and lack of:

• fun, defined as something to engage in, be interested in;
• lack of freedom to make choices for oneself in at least some areas;
• lack of belonging or connection to culture, family, social group, or with a pet, and;
• lack of personal power –  the sense that you are competent at something.

If you create a workplace that helps employees meet those needs, you will have a happy and productive workplace.

For a kid who has aspirations (of grandeur?) freedom and power may be big motivators. Put that person in a situation where they make no decisions, or where competence doesn’t matter (button-pushing), or it matters so much that the standard feels impossible to achieve, and the kid will be miserable. And, quite likely, make you miserable, too.

Sometimes, you can structure small, incremental steps to more power, but school systems & parents are empowering children well and early. Small steps may be perceived as condescending more than as rites of passage. So, what to do?

Put your young & ambitious employee in charge of something. A project, a recurring task (like month end something or other), a section of the office. Let them know they are not on their own, but that the responsibility for the final outcome is theirs. If it is not going well, they are to report to you immediately. If they delay & the outcome is unsatisfactory, they should know, in advance, that this project/task/section will no longer be theirs to manage. Should you have to take away that particular job, take the time to debrief. If there is no sense of responsibility, i.e., it is someone else’s fault, and no spark of an idea about how to do better next time, discuss this. Document it. It is likely you will be asking this person to leave your employ, but not until they have had 2 more chances in a couple of different capacities to prove that they can either step up to that level of responsibility, or are willing to toil at the more mundane parts of the job, for now.

Mentoring the next generation is our job. It might take them a few months of part-time work, or a couple months of more regular hours to go through an entire process but providing opportunities for young employees to meet some of their basic needs at work is more than an economic exchange. It is a chance to give back to the community a more productive & realistic employee, and in the happiest of circumstances you have created a chance to begin a process of grooming your next manager!

After you’ve left a comment below, head on over to Caitlyn’s blog and see what else she has to teach you. Thanks, Caitlyn.

It’s probably just me.

I have in my inbox not just one, not just two, but three emails outlining product launches that have happened recently. In them, they glibly refer to “making five figures in XX number of days or hours”

Five figures. That’s, minimum, $10,000 (unless they’re counting pennies, in which case it’s $100.00 which I sorta doubt.)

Really? Folks I’ve never heard of are making what I would consider two solid months’ income in a couple days? Does anyone else ever feel like maybe, when their ship came in, they were at the airport waiting for a train?

It’s probably just me.