March 2012 – Page 3

Saying No

In Open Forum’s article
titled
5 Things Women Should Never Say
When Negotiating,
Victoria Pynchon,
co-founder of
She Negotiates Sales and Training,
advises to never give
the other party
an outright no.

Why?

Because saying no
stops negotiations dead.
There’s no wiggle room.
It is a signal
that the conversation is over.

Instead,
counter a disappointing offer
with a question.
“What would you pay more for?”
“Why is that your top offer?”
Delve into what points
the other party
WOULD be willing to move on.

Saying no outright
stops the conversation.
Don’t use it as a negotiation tactic.

Social Media And Free

“Social media is free.”

I hear this all the time
and it is,
of course,
bullshit.

We might not have to pay money
to post on Facebook
but we do spend time
and we spend brain power.

I’m very aware
that every word I write for clientk,
I’m not writing in
my romance novel.
I’ve made a conscious decision
to share my thoughts
and my time with you
and I know what that time is worth to me.

Do you know how much
your time is worth?
Do you know what the real costs
of using social media are?

Michael Hyatt has an awesome post
discussing the hidden costs
of social media
and the benefits that offset
these costs.

World Domination Plan Update

It has been a year
since my four writing buddies and I
started the world domination plan.
When we started,
we were below mid list
eBook exclusive writers.

Yesterday,
one of those buddies signed a deal
which will have her to-be-released print book
be one of the spotlighted books
at Barnes during the Christmas season
(which is high season
for print books).

This is a breakout opportunity,
a breakout opportunity
after only a year of concentrating
on her writing.

Another buddy is in negotiations
with Harlequin.

A third buddy is the featured author
for TWO of her large publishers.
She’s their rising star.

I’m writing full time
and selling every story I produce.

A year is long enough
to produce substantial results
AND change your life.

Make this year count.

Open Forum has an awesome article
on tipping points
at different start ups.

Be The One Person

Brian Leventhal,
co-founder and CEO of Brooklyn Winery,
shares

“If you look at 100 people,
50 are content with what they are doing,
49 talk about doing something else,
and one of those people is
actually doing what they want to do.
My advice is to move
from being in the 49
to being the one
that does something.
What’s the worst that could happen
if you fail?”

Notice he said
move from being in the 49
because the 50
don’t read Open Forum
or blogs like this one.

They don’t need to
and often, they shouldn’t.
They’re content.
If you’re content,
for shit’s sake,
do what you can
to maintain that coveted state.

If you’re in the 49,
the dreamers,
the talkers,
then yes, move to doing.

Meredith Vieira On Dreaming

I recently watched
journalist Meredith Vieira
on Ellen.
She talked about the Olympics
and how she always imagines herself
participating in and winning
the Olympics.
It is a dream she has
to this day.

She’s 58
yet she dreams and visualizes
something
that is unlikely to come true.

She hasn’t put this dream away.
Why would she?
Having this wild dream
isn’t stopping her
from reaching more realistic goals.
It might help with these goals.

I don’t think it a coincidence
that she’ll be covering the Olympics
in London.

Goals should be semi-realistic
but dreams don’t have to be doable,
not at all.

The Benefit Of Having Divorced Parents

We’ve all heard about how divorce
is bad for kids
and that’s challenging to hear
because
40% of all marriages
end in divorce.

But we rarely hear about
how divorce can benefit kids,
especially career-wise
later in their lives.

Susan Credle,
chief creative officer of Leo Burnett USA,
shares how having divorced parents
helped her in her career.

“Because I have a family
of stepbrothers and stepsisters
and a younger stepmom,
I now really look at people
in terms of more than
just what they do at the company.
They come with history.
They come with outside lives.
I think that trying to understand them
as human beings versus workers
has really helped,
and understanding that
different people fit in different ways.
I don’t know who I would have been
if I’d had the white-picket-fence upbringing.
As difficult as my childhood was at times,
I think that the texture it added
to my life was worth it.”

My parents are divorced
and I think I benefited from that challenge also.

You don’t need to have a perfect family
to be successful.

Just Do It

I once worked for a manager
who would assign me a task
and when I’d ask why the task was needed,
he’d reply with
“Just do it.”

Yes, sometimes in dire emergency situations,
it is necessary to tell staff
“Do it. I’ll explain later.”
but only in end-of-your-world type scenarios.
Otherwise, it is degrading
and smacks of condescension.

David Peck shares that
delegating without sufficient context
is a managing technique that increases distrust.

“Behaviors:
Making a request or command
to do something
without explaining why,
or where it fits in to the bigger picture.

Unintended message you send:
You don’t need to be
in the loop of the “why” of this.
I don’t care enough about your success
to actually increase the odds
you will succeed here.”

When giving a task,
explain why the task is necessary.

Increasing Productivity

Dan Bobinski
has some super ways
to increase productivity.

“One man said he gets more done
if he finds a place to work
that’s far away from his cubicle,
usually in a different department altogether.
He says this technique
keeps him away
from the never-ending chit-chat
and office politics that
“hum non-stop in the cubicle farm area”
and eat up valuable time.”

I used this technique all the time.
(I called it hiding)
I would find a quiet corner
in the cafeteria
or I’d find a spare desk
somewhere in the building
and focus on the task
I needed to get done.

People couldn’t find me
and when they DID find me,
they assumed
I was involved in a meeting,
that I was seated there
for a reason.

And I was.
The reason I sat there
was to get my work done.

If you are struggling
to get work done,
try sitting in a different seat.
Hide.

The Pressure To Say Yes

Many people won’t ask for help
because they’re afraid
the person they ask
will say no.

Highly unlikely.

“Francis Flynn and Vanessa Lake
of Columbia University
tested people’s estimates
of how likely others were to help.
They recruited people to ask others
to fill out questionnaires,
borrow cell phones and
even escort them to the gym.

The result:
people underestimated
how likely others were to help them
by as much as 100%”

Why?
Because there is a lot
of societal pressure to say yes.
People like to be seen
as nice.
Saying no is not nice.

So ask for help.
If you don’t want to pressure people,
make it easy
for them to say no
but
at least
ASK.

The Love Of Tinkering

Andrea Kates
shares that one of the talents
Steve Jobs had
was a love of tinkering.

“From a very young age,
Jobs sat at his dad’s side
at the car-fixing workbench.
He migrated to tinkering
in the world of electronics,
cutting his teeth on
assemble-it-yourself kits
for making ham radios
and “other electronic gear
that were beloved by the soldering set.”
Being situated in Silicon Valley
exposed him to neighbors
who worked in holographs, lasers,
and other new technologies
and a high school teacher who introduced Jobs
to transistors, coils, and circuit boards.”

This is one of the things
great writers do also.
They take an idea,
usually an existing idea,
and they tinker with it.
We have werewolves.
What about weregophers?
What would they be like?
What powers and personality traits
would they have?

Every great idea
builds on other ideas.
The product developer takes the idea
and tinkers with it.

Play what if.
Tinker.