Philosophy #5: The Creation Of Happiness

When I was a waitress, I used to follow up with people after they got their food.  “Are you happy?” I’d ask.  “Yes,” they would always say, “thank you”.

It’s a small victory, but one nonetheless.  I was in a position to lead people to admit that they were happy. 

Sometimes I could sense a little hesitancy.  It was in these moments that I’d have to add a little positive force to my bearing, urging them over the edge into saying “yes, I am happy”.  And these were the real victories.  

When someone who’s taken aback by the question, because the honest answer would be “no, I’m miserable and chronically expecting the worst in life, actually…” are forced implicitly into admitting that they are being gently taken care of and are fed and safe and warm; that’s a victory. 

Of course, these are all luxuries for many of the people in the world, both presently and throughout history.  And yet, people can walk into a restaurant (just think about the incredible forethought and preparation that’s been afforded to them in this simple act!) and entertain cynical misery.  I came to feel it was my duty to urge them toward admitting happiness over an act of service so well-staged that they could take it for granted.  They could take it for granted so naturally that it no longer engendered any real gratitude that would pierce the hard rind of their selfishness. 

I could sense that their happiness was inextricably linked to their gratitude, and gratitude is a learned behavior.  One that comes with nurturing.  Just like with moms and dads, anyone in the position of serving someone else is also in the position of nurturing them.  That comes with some responsibility to nurture them thoughtfully; nurturing is tantamount to setting someone up for success when they leave your presence. 

I still feel the same way.  People need to be led.  They forget their perspective in the crush and bustle of daily living.  They forget that bus drivers and shoeshiners and window washers are people, too.  They forget that it’s a great gift of civilization to be served.  And they forget that the act of driving a bus is the culmination of millenia of human sweat and effort in creating such technology and systems as to provide them with mass transit.

Being able to serve, being in or creating a service position, and taking advantage of that service, is the crowning achievement of human interaction.  But people forget.  So they need a little positive force added to the bearing of the service person, to bring their lives back into perspective.  And that amounts to a victory, too.

Philosophy #4: On Service Artists

The bottom line of any service provider lies at the feet of their clientelle. Therefore: who I am is in direct correlation to who you need me to be.

The character basics of good service are self-evident: reliable, timely production, excellent communication, clearly determined and impeccably executed agreements, and quality-upon-delivery being paramount. These almost go without saying, as does a genuine concern for maintaining long-term business partnerships.

It’s the relational factor of business you should keep a close eye on if you’re going to go investing money in an independent (read: unknown) element.  Ever work with someone and discover that they drive you mad?  Does it make you want to work with them ever again?  Of course not. 

Confidence without arrogance, motivation without anxiety, and a drive for excellence coupled with sensitivity to the client’s point of view are more subtle, but no less vital aspects of great service. Then there is, of course, the humility to admit not-knowing before it makes a trainwreck out of a contract. The skill of asking sensible questions, along with the ability to listen well and assimilate input, springs from this type of intellectual honesty.

These do well to be coupled with an insatiable determination to find answers while maintaining a confidential, unobnoxious, team-friendly persona. When put alongside the qualities of enthusiastically agreeing and respectfully disagreeing when either is apropos, you have a service artist capable of maintaining good working relationships.

Philosophy #3: Think Before You Act

As a business owner, you have a certain skill set. You went into business to provide that service or product to the world. And then – you discover all sorts of peripheral needs that you have to get done. But that doesn’t mean you’re good at them… or even that you know what to go asking for help about!

Perhaps you find yourself in a situation where you could be doing so much more with your business, but you’re held back simply because you lack the time and skill to develop a single key area. It’s an understandable and normal predicament. As a leader, it’s imperative that you find other people to get done what you, yourself, don’t have the time or expertise to do. Many a business has gone under because its leader didn’t know how to get help with accounting, or legal questions, or marketing, or structural development.

Now, you’ll find yourself at any given time in the midst of a particular stage of your business: start-up, growth, or maintenance. At each of these stages, you will always find the need for excellent writing in the areas of: 

• research & development

• marketing

• management

It’s vital to your success that you take a little time to consider what it is you really need and want before diving into the details of any project.

A good business artist will help you discover and decide what it is you need and the best way to go about getting it done, by lending their expertise to ensuring your success.  Don’t be deceived!  The extra front-end effort and collaboration that a good business artist demands will be well repaid.  You ultimately save yourself from costly mistakes, miscommunication, and missteps in finding the right person to do the job. You’ll be able to articulate clearly, making the process that much more efficient – and that much more cost-effective.

Anecdote: Stupid Spending

There are some things we do that are stupid.

Accidentally.

Of course, nobody plans on wasting $18,000 to purchase a relatively useless and very definitely embarrassing website.  One of those websites of which you have to say, apologetically, “Please don’t visit my website.  It’s not the best representative of our business.”

But it happens all the time.  It’s the story of one of my clients. He managed to purchase an embarrassing website for the aforementioned ridiculous sum. This was one of the first indicators that he needed to deal with his business’s written material, post-haste. 

How does it happen?  Well, perhaps you can imagine the story.  He thought to himself one day, “I need a website.”  He then thought, “I should find a website designer to make me a website!”  (Here, my friend, is the precise moment of tactical misjudgment that turned the project south). 

You know what comes next.  He found a designer. (It’s amazing what abundance of website designers and programmers you can find out there!  Especially online!  Their ubiquitous presence makes you almost feel as if they were the beginning and end of all internet activities.  But where are the copywriters?  Hmm…)  This designer, after nailing down a contract for work, promptly asked him, “So, what do you want to say?” to which he replied, “I have no idea what I want to say!  Just make my business look good!”

(At this point I imagine the designer, deep in his heart, simultaneously rolling his eyes, shaking his head, rubbing his hands and licking his lips.  He sees this all the time, and makes a killing off of people not knowing what they want to say when they walk into his office.  Professional frustrations aside, designers know that people will dither away huge amounts time and money on this simple breakdown.  What do you get when you force a designer to create your content?  A labor invoice at $100+ an hour.)

What my client got, $18,000 later, was an ugly template barely glossed-over to accommodate for his brand colors, chock-full of cold, emptyhearted stock photography, trying desperately to make up for the lack of interest generated by the information presented.

What, my client wonders, went so terribly wrong?  What went wrong, when I gave the designer some brochures, and hours of consultation time, trying to help him figure out exactly what my business does?

What went wrong is that my client got the order of operations backwards.  Accidentally, of course…  It’s the equivalent of wrapping a box up real pretty and giving it to your boss for his birthday.  Only you somehow thought it was unimportant to find a gift to put inside the impressively-wrapped box.  Or, more likely, you ran out of money and creativity after shopping around for the best box out there…  

Imagine:  the boss walks away trying to decide whether you’re a nitwit, or you’re trying to tell him something about his leadership style, or you’ve been duped by mall culture into buying empty air.

You’ve seen it before: websites that are clearly expensive, but have absolutely nothing to say. 

Learn wisdom from my poor client.  I promise, the wrapping you choose can be both attractive and enhance the appeal of your content…  But first go shopping for something useful that deserves a pretty package.  In the end, you’ll be remembered for the consideration you poured into your gift.  Every time.

Accomplishment: Be Friendly

I made a new friend today. Because of this blog, as a matter of fact. I was sitting with another friend working on our respective businesses, chatting about some difficulty I was having with a particular link I was trying to create.

A man adjacent to us overheard our conversation. He asks what’s going on. He promptly gets on the phone to a techie friend of his and asks him about the problem. Meanwhile, I solve it accidentally. We celebrate together for a moment. He wants to know, so I teach him how to do what I just did.

An hour later, he and I are still talking about our respective businesses, how he’s worked in investment trading and we’re both trying to automate our processes, etc. He’s telling me about being a people-person and where he’s lived and we get to chatting about education and how most of what we know comes from just getting out there and building things.

And the conversation comes around to this: all the college in the world doesn’t give you the confidence to go out and create something new. It doesn’t give you a golden ticket to carving out a career. And it certainly doesn’t teach you how to be a people person.

I asked him about his friends who own independent businesses, the ones who have done well for themselves over this last year through the rough times economically, and the ones who have gone under.

“I’ve thought about this a lot,” he says, smiling. “The ones who have been successful are the ones who work well with people,” he says decisively. “They’ve been wildly successful, even more so this past year than ever before.”

Hm. Another point scored for the most human of all qualities, connecting. It’s a quality that’s baseline to a business’s success.

Philosophy #2

Time is finite.  At least that’s what our senses perceive.  We can only do so much within the time we have.  Resources have a beginning and an end; there is a limit to “what is mine” and “what I can afford”.

And attention is limited.  It’s limited to: “What’s really important to me?”

There’s all sorts of “business psychology” out there that simply reduces people to their basic drives: hunger, attraction, fear, security…

But I think that these are just tricks - gimmicks - that are simplified versions of the human psyche.  They capitalize in a rather base, sinister way on reducing people to their animal instincts.   Great.  But there’s something bigger than all those traits.

It’s called relationship.  A mother will overcome her fear if her child is threatened.  A child will overcome hunger and cold to play with her friends.  A man will pass over random sexual attraction for the sake of being married.  A student will choose not to feel secure, and instead take on a larger view of the world by taking the opportunity to travel.  A consumer will choose to buy from a store that his friend works at.

People, if given the choice, will gravitate toward relationships.  As the consumer world becomes increasingly saturated with a barrage of marketing messages, does it not seem natural that people will turn to the places and products with which they feel they have a good relationship?

What relationship are you building with your clients?  With your staff?  With your shareholders?  Do they have a strong sense of what your business is and how you want them to respond to you?  Do you make them feel like they can trust you, because you offer them a singleminded vision and a sense of integrity?  Do you take the time and make the effort to personally connect with them?

Because that’s what’s important to your clients.

Philosophy #1

Writing carves out a place in the mind of the audience.  It takes from all the infinite possibilities of the world and crafts one solid, cohesive option.  Well-crafted, it makes a space into which a person might pour their belief, their understanding, their sympathy.  And in the act of that pouring is an investment. 

Business writing simply focuses the mind on one discipline; the discipline of creating a space in which to transact business.  Its primary goal is this: that a person would come into the space you’ve created and, at the end of all things, say: “Yes, I will invest into this”.

Sidling up to the work

I recall a compilation of writers’ advice on writing.  Here’s a little scrap of wisdom that seems to have found its way into the clutter of my mental spare room:

One author discussed writing on a daily basis.  She was asked: How do you get the work done every day?  How do you find inspiration, discipline, and the motivation to stay focused?

“I sort of sidle up to the work”, she said. 

It’s a great image, that I hold in my mind at times when I have content to accomplish.  Sidle up to it.  Like breaking a wild horse: go slowly, with an awareness of how skittish the beast can be.  You have to approach it nonchalantly at times.  Bring a cup of coffee and let it get used to your smell for awhile.  It’s stronger than you.  It’s wildness is strong in every fiber.  But you’re smarter, you know it can be done, you’ve done it before…

After the brainstorming has run its bucking, tumultuous show, and all the pretenses are gone, the real work of breaking the wild thing can begin.  But let’s not push it arrogantly.  Let’s spend some time on the periphery.  It’s enough just being in its presence for awhile.  Just admiring its potential.  Just respecting its power.

Time Manage -ment, -er, -ing…

So, I’m hanging out with a business friend of mine today, and we’re chatting about time management. 

(This is one of the moments in life where I have to realize that all the books in the world only amount to giving me a marginally functional language with which to diagnose my daily-(mal?)functioning characterological ills.  And that whatever language I diagnose won’t do me a bit of good unless I’m able to wrangle this particular ill into the submission that comes with superior tenacity.  Good thinkin’, frontal lobe.  Way to go.)

And we’re talking about the trap that we fall into in terms of feeling emotional about how much time we need for the tasks that we do, rather than being able to rationally recognize how much time something actually takes, in reality.  Hence, we end up spending as much time sidling up to, preparing for, recovering from, and transitioning between needlessly gargantuan-feeling tasks.

It goes like this:  That newsletter.  Ugh.  Yep, the one we’ve been putting off for days.  (It’s not your newsletter.  Don’t worry.)  In reality, it will take us 2 hours to get done.  We both know we can do it.  We could do it today.  But in our minds, we struggle with this time-demon who sits with arms and legs crossed smugly, leaning back casually at the corner of our planner.  “You know you’ll never get this done today” it sneers.  “You hate this job.  You’re not getting paid nearly enough for it, anyway”

The tirade goes on, after a fairly predictable script.  “Why don’t you get some lunch with that friend you’ve been putting off?  You know you want to catch up on your material for this other project that’s due next week…” 

The problem is, we listen.  Every stinkin time.  And that’s where the battle is lost.  Every task feels like it will take days.  Weeks.  And sometimes, they do, and we find ourselves up between a rocky deadline and that task-place that’s become very, very hard before we force ourselves out of a cold-sweatted ridiculous temporal contortion to get it done.  The worst is when, at the end of the day, we realize that we’ve only worked a portion of the billable hours that we should have.  Where did the time go?  The Demon ate it up in debate…

So we talked through a strategy to start thinking about how long something will actually take, as opposed to how long it feels like it will take.

It occurred to me, while we were talking, that this is the reason why geniuses write books and make livings out of teaching people time management.  Because it’s gotta be a pretty endemic problem throughout the working world. 

Yet another reason to love being an independent contractor: because I have to actually write down the amount of real hours I got things done.  I can’t hide behind a salary or a job description and still get paid.  I have to grow past this character ill, and grow past it quickly.