Fair Trade

I made the mistake at looking at my paycheck the other day.  I usually don’t pay much attention to it because I already know the amount, as it has been directly deposited into my account the night before I get it.  But for some reason, I decided to give it a look just to see what I had been missing.

As I was following the lines and numbers across the page, I noticed a column that said Year-to-Date Earnings and a number beneath it that was just that, the amount of money (pre-tax and deductions) that my company has issued to me since January 1st. 

And here is how my brain works:  I thought, that is not enough money to trade for my happiness.

And then I thought:  But, it is a lot of money.

And then I thought:   There must not be any amount of money that is worth being unhappy for.

And then I got depressed because I always thought if I could just make “X” amount of money, then it would make me happy.  I always thought, this job isn’t worth what they are paying me, but if they paid me $20,000 more, I might have to reconsider. 

At some point I adopted the notion, wrongly so, that no one really likes their job, so you might as well get paid well to do it.  As a former boss of mine once said, “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it makes being miserable a whole helluva lot easier.”

The bottom line, I guess, is that there will be no amount of payment that will be an even trade for hating my job.  So maybe I should just do what I love, and let the money part work itself out.  This sounds suspiciously simple...

When I was about 8 years old, like most boys, I wanted to be like my dad.  I wanted to look like him, dress like him, and act like him - basically, I wanted to be him.

One day when we were driving to the lake in his jeep, he asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I told him I wanted to be an eye doctor (my father is an optometrist).  He looked at me with disbelief and said, “No, you don’t want to do that.”

When I asked him why, he said, “Because you wouldn’t like it.  The patients are a real hassle and you don’t make much money.”

As the years went by, occasionally the subject would come up again, and all of the things I was interested in were subsequently shot down.

“A therapist,” I would say.

“You wouldn’t want to sit and listen to people’s problems all day.  That would be depressing,” my father would reply.

“A filmmaker,” I would say.  

“That would be kind of hard to do from Oklahoma,” he said.  “You know, we are a long way from Hollywood where all of that stuff happens.”  I guess it never occurred to either of us that I could move to California.

“A writer,” I once said.  “You can do that from anywhere.”

“You could,” he said, “but it is extremely difficult to get paid to write.  You might as well say that you wanted to be a professional athlete.  There are probably as many of those as there are paid writers.”  I had already been told that I wouldn’t be able to be a professional athlete.

And so it went on, with me suggesting ideas and him picking them off, like some kind of occupational skeet-shooting exercise.  He had no shortage of negative points to make relative to my vocational aspirations. 

To be fair, I hadn’t shown much promise in school.  I tested exceptionally well, but my grades were just average.  Perhaps he just didn’t think that I possessed the aptitude to perform any of these tasks.  I know now, he didn’t believe in me enough to encourage me.

Maybe my father wasn’t the best person to go to on the subject of career placement.  After all, he never liked his job - and I am certain that he still doesn’t.

When you are a kid, you don’t know any better than to ask your father for, and subsequently, take his advice.  He is the best reference that you have access to, and you trust him completely.  I was disappointed when my dad told me that all of the things that I wanted to be would be impossible, but I didn’t question him.  He was all-knowing to me, and he would remain that way for quite some time.

Now, I am about to have a son.  And I guess I am writing this as a reminder to myself of the awesome amount of influence I will soon wield.  I must try to be mindful of how my words can quickly tear down, or inspire a thought.  I must remember the ridiculous amount of trust that will be bestowed upon me without question.

While I don’t want to be the type of parent who sets my child up for disappointment by being completely unrealistic, I also have to be open to the fact that my son will be like me, but he will not be me.  And while being a scientist in a lab might sound like punishment to me, it might be just the fit for him.

One thing is for sure:  I owe it to my son to be open and accepting to everything that sparks his interest or makes him happy.  I also owe it to him to get a job where I am not trading my paycheck for happiness.

Great Expectations

October 5, 2009

Today,  I got my first rejection letter as a writer.  Actually, it wasn’t even a letter.  It was a rejection e-mail.  It was from McSweeney’s.  A lot of people I talk to don’t know what McSweeney’s is, and I suppose that given the state of reading today, that is normal.  I don’t even know what it is, really.  As near as I can tell, it is a website that is full of contributed materials from all kinds of writers, although there seems to be some favoritism towards certain ones.  Perhaps, because they are good.  They also have a division that publishes and sells books from people who contribute to their site.  

It seems like most of the material is humor based, although that is certainly not a prerequisite.  I like that about the site, though.  I enjoy reading the humor and much of it is quite good.  I also fancy myself a humor writer which seems to be a subject that is very much open for debate at present.  I have written a few things over the last couple of years based on the formats that McSweeney’s seems to endorse on their website.  They have categories for writing in Lists (kind of like a top ten list of funny items), Open Letters to People or Entities Who are Unlikely to Respond (these are particularly hilarious to me), and the rest are just kind of parodies of everyday events or common practices in business, or what have you.

Almost everything that they publish is hilarious.  Only on occasion do I think something is dull or not particularly witty.  Sometimes, I totally miss the humor in a piece because the subject material is above my head.  The people who get published seem to be extremely well educated.  That is another component of the website that I like.  I am not very well educated, so when I am able to comprehend the material in an essay on the website, it makes me feel really smart. 

The piece that I selected for submission was an open letter to my neighbor that I had written about a year and a half ago.  It is a terribly fictional account of an occurrence in the Spring of 2008.  It was written very quickly and has what I think are some truly funny elements.  Although it may not be the most groundbreaking piece ever to be submitted to McSweeney’s, I did judge it to be slightly funnier than some of the things that have been published.  This was my criteria for submitting the piece.

About a week after sending it in, I got an e-mail response from “Kelly”, an intern at McSweeney’s.  She said, “I appreciate the look, but I’m afraid I am going to pass on this one.”  I don’t really know what that means.  What does it mean when you turn something in that is not visual in nature and someone says that they appreciate “the look”?  I chalked it up to industry-speak.  You don’t want to ask “Kelly” what she meant when she said,“the look”, and make a fool of yourself to an intern.  So, I sent her an e-mail response thanking her for reading it and promising that I would try again.

When I got the rejection e-mail, I was kind of crushed.  Most people would say that this is a fairly normal reaction.  Maybe so, but I was kind of expecting this to be the start of something glorious.  Not that it warranted glory, but just kind of because that’s how my brain works.  When I finally got up my nerve to tell my wife, Cari, about the rejection she said, “What did they say?  What was the reason for rejecting it?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “they didn’t really give one.  They said, ‘They appreciate the look’.”

“Appreciate the look?” she asked, “What does that mean?”

I told her I didn’t know what it meant.  She felt badly for me, but ultimately I felt that she was not really that surprised.  I mean, it’s pretty normal to get rejected on the first thing that you have ever offered up for publication.  It is probably pretty normal to get rejected a lot of times.  I read about people that have way more talent than I have that have worked for years and been rejected repeatedly.  Obviously, though, this is not what I thought would happen to me. 

 Cari could tell that I was taking this a little harder than perhaps I should be.  She said, “It’s okay, you just have to keep trying.  This was your first try.  What did you expect them to say?”

I told her that I kind of expected them to say something like, “Tell me you have more!”

And with this, Cari erupted into laughter as loud and hard as I have ever heard her laugh, and I started to laugh with her, too.  It was ridiculous.  I am not making this up.  In my head, I thought that once they got a taste of my particular brand of humor, my biggest problem would be producing enough material to keep up with demand.  I actually had daydreams of telling my boss how I was going to have to quit my job immediately and how I knew that it was going to be difficult to replace me, but this was of terrible importance that I free myself up to start producing the amount of fiction necessary to satiate my new found audience.  I also had nightmares that I would not be able to keep up with the workload, or that I would run out of witty things to say about the state of the world these days.  Well, I guess I can save that concern for another day.

I don’t know what this says about my character.  In all actuality, I am kind of afraid to know.  If you didn’t like me, you would probably say that I have delusions of grandeur or that I am really full of myself.  Maybe so.  I don’t think so, but someone with that affliction probably wouldn’t think that about himself.

I hope what it says about me is that I am an optimist, and maybe a little bit of a dreamer.  I can live with that.  I’ve been called worse.

Salesgestions!® by Beau M. Adams

To:  All Salespersons

Re:  Differentiating Yourself

In today’s competitive sales market we must find new and interesting ways to set ourselves apart from our competition.  When price and service are not your allies, you must find new and inventive ways to differentiate yourself and add value to your prospective customers.  Here are a few tips, or Salegestions!®, to help you along the way:

Greeting

It is true what they say:  “Unless you are really pretty, or have tons of power and influence, you never get a second chance to make a first impression.”  With that in mind, let’s examine how we make initial contact with our customers.

Telephone

Typical Greeting:

“Hello, my name is [your name here] from [name of your company here].  The reason for my call was to see if I could speak to someone regarding your [sales specific need].  Could you connect me with the person who makes those type of purchasing decisions for your company?

Boooooorrriiinng.  That is how a loser speaks to someone on the phone. Now, let’s see how a creative salesperson approaches this task.

Differentiated Greeting:

“Hello, my name is [your name here] and I am in possession of a large cash prize for the person at your company who handles [products you are trying to sell].  Could you please patch me through immediately to [him or her], as I am tempted to spend this money on an Italian Villa and several priceless antique bicycles (the kind with the big wheel in front) for my pet kangaroo’s 23rd birthday.”

Now, which one would you pay more attention to?  Obviously, our job is to get the attention of the customer and produce results.  If you were a receptionist, wouldn’t you rather interrupt the shareholder's meeting with the promise of a financial windfall (and a tale about a supposed marsupial)?  I thought so.

Sometimes getting someone’s attention with a positive statement like this can be difficult.  Either they do not believe you to be in possession of said prizes, or they start asking too many questions.  In this instance, you can immediately deflect their arguments by shifting into negative reward mode.

Negative Attention Getter:

“Your [Family/loved ones] have been kidnapped and are currently being fed a steady diet of grub worms and corn tortillas with nothing but flat Diet Slice® to wash them down.  They are being held in an undisclosed location and will be set free as soon as I am able to speak with [contact name].  If you deny me this opportunity, they will be made to participate in focus groups assigned with the task of determining the residual chemical effects of household pesticides.  Please patch me through to [decision maker] immediately!  Obviously, by asking too many questions, you have also forfeited the aforementioned cash prize.  Providing that you transfer my call immediately, I will have the decency not to mention what a disgrace you are to your company.  Thank you.”

Wow!  Now that should get their attention!  Congratulations, you are well on your way to making a sale!

Notice, how a slight shift in the way you approach telephone sales calls can make a big difference?  Now that we have mastered the phones, let’s look at the ways we can bring some individuality to in-person calls.

In-person Sales Calls

In-person calls come with their own special brand of obstacles and can at times seem as though we are walking through a minefield (minus those pesky explosions).  For instance, you may not be very physically attractive.  Unfortunately, this will almost certainly ensure that no one will want to give you their precious time.  But with my proven attention-getting techniques, even a homely person can get through to the decision maker.

The first step to a successful in-person sales call is to get past the “gatekeeper”.  This is a simple process and one that quite frankly, too many salespersons use as an excuse for a lack of creative thinking.  In order to get past the “gatekeeper,” you must first identify him/her.  Easy, it’s the first person that talks to you!

In order to get past the “gatekeeper”, casually mention that as you were coming into the office you noticed that their car was on fire.  If they say that they don’t drive a car, then simply respond, “Car?  Did I say your car was on fire?  I meant to say your personal home is on fire.”  That should distract them.  And just like that, you are into the office.

At this point, using what you have compiled through extensive online research, track down the decision maker’s office.  He/She will more than likely be extremely surprised to see you.  Don’t get panicked.  Before they get a chance to speak, always say this, “You haven’t aged a day.”  Decision makers tend to love flattery.  The fact that you have never seen them before in your life will not matter, trust me.  Next, calmly walk over to them with a big grin, and grasping both of their hands, look them dead in the eye and proceed to give them a kiss on either cheek like a person of European descent. Now the sales call can begin!

Would your competitor ever even think of behaving in such a manner?  They most certainly would not.  And that my friends, is the definition of differentiation.  

Salegestions!® are a registered trademark of Beau M. Adams and Kickball Enterprises, LLC.  They are a creative if somewhat misleading way to make it through the work week without losing your mind.  Also, if they are printed out and folded correctly, they make spectacular paper airplanes.*

*Beau M. Adams and Kickball Enterprises, LLC not responsible for eye, arm, or any other physical or emotional injury connected to the fashioning of Salesgestions!® into paper airplanes.