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Casual Friday for Home Based Businesses
My youngest grandson came to visit last week. He brought his parents and I think a good time was had by all. But that’s not the point of this story. We declared Friday as “Casual Friday,” for our home based business. As you can tell from the picture, Hawaiian shirts were normal dress.The realization that I had is that seldom do home based businesses schedule anything frivolous. Most of the people I work with are home based and they each approach their work week in a manner that will help them be effective. They generally don’t see many people unless they are going out; mode of dress is usually more about comfort and time than anything else; and you should never ask unless you are looking for TMI about their habits. The two extremes are what you would expect:
- One end is those who work in their jammies and only dress when they get ready to go out.
- The other end is those who perform their daily absolutions and dress as if they are going to an office.
Regardless of the work dress choices, seldom is anything done to break the mold. Why do you think the cubicle culture started Casual Friday? It was a chance to break out of the weekly doldrums and get one more day of productivity from the windowless workers.
Ask yourself this: Why not? You have an opportunity to:
- Allow yourself an extra big smile.
- Push your creative envelope by doing something painless AND different.
- Mention it to someone on the phone and help them smile.
- Get a picture taken with the most beautiful grandson in the country.
What are your thoughts? Maybe you don’t own a Hawaiian shirt, but I’ll bet that you can do something to break your work mold. Friday’s coming quickly. What are you going to do?
More Important Than Money
On a weekly basis, The Ethics Newsline raises some intriguing questions and includes some fascinating statistics. Recently they included the chart shown on the left with the caption, “Free Time Is More Important Than Money.”
People familiar with direct sales would have no difficulty agreeing with the obvious conclusion that people work for something other than money. I don’t think it is quite that simple.Very few people start in direct sales for reasons that don’t include money. If you were to ask, you would hear descriptions that sound like:
- “I could work part time and make the same money as . . .”
- “I didn’t have to pack my baby off to a sitter every day and so the income matched my regular job.”
- “I needed a part time job to pay some credit card debt and had to work around my regular job.”
Filter through all of these rationales, and the conclusion becomes a little more complicated. They wouldn’t have signed up for a sales job if the money wasn’t there.
Think of it this way:They don’t join the direct sales profession for the money, but they wouldn’t do it without the money. John Stuart Mill would call money a necessary but insufficient cause. As a parallel, oxygen is necessary for fire, but the presence of heat and a combustible material provide the sufficiency for a fire.
Let’s face it. Engaging in sales activities is pretty scary for most people and money, in and of itself, is not enough of an incentive to get people to sell. On the other hand, the money to be found in sales can attract beginners, and the other benefits—the free time, success, family time, and so on—can keep them there.
What do you think? Money may light the sales fire, but can it keep the fire burning?
Important Nuggets from the DSWA Education Celebration
About a week ago the DSWA closed its doors on the 2008 Education Celebration. This was the first one that I have had the chance to attend and mind boggling clumps of gold could be found everywhere. Here are the ones that caught my eye:
Abundance thinking was made manifest. The common attitude was one of “ask and you shall receive.” We were all there to learn from each other.
- If you can give me an idea that makes my business better, than I can do the same for someone else.
- You can be my fresh eyes and I can be yours.
- If I can help you get better, than I get better in the process.
- There’s enough business to go around.
The direct sales profession is rife with scarcity thinking. Not that it’s deliberate. Direct sales people are highly competitive and one “edge” in the competition comes from secrecy. Information is money and if I have it and you don’t, then I win. Scarcity thinking like that was turned on its head.
Glass ceilings disappeared. I watched novices sit and raptly listen to million dollar mavens talking about the ups and downs of their life before they took control. When you hear somebody talk about how out of control they felt when they were feeding their children on gas station hotdogs, you realize how far “out of my control” can reach. You also get to experience their first steps to taking control and know that the mental step you took listening to them was the life changing one for you.
Three hours from Jack Canfield is not enough. Watching Jack Canfield in action is seeing a man living his principles. It’s easy to get caught up in positive thinking and goal visualization. While those are cornerstones to success, productive action is just as important.
Marcia Weider is America’s Dream Coach. She wears her heart where it’s seen. Always. Genuine is not and adequate word to describe her. I wanted to follow her around just to see who she would hug next.
Direct Sellers are creating community on-line. The social web for direct sellers is growing into the virtual community that it can be. Direct Selling Live is just getting off the ground as a gathering place for ideas. MLMBlackWoman.com is another. Dana and I did a training session on prospecting and lead generation and included a brief look at several of the new on-line approaches. The consistent feedback was that we needed to get into more details. There is a hunger for technical knowledge among a group of people that haven’t tapped into electronic channels.
Were you there? What was your take-away from the event?
When Eyewitnesses Agree
I read (or at least skim) through hundreds of blog posts every day. Sometimes the posts are on the same topic and it creates an interesting juxtaposition of events. Such was the case recently.
One blog I have mentioned before comes from Alexander Kjerulf, Chief Happiness Officer. He was writing about Stephen Hopson’s new blog titled, Adversity University. As a pilot and professional speaker who has been deaf since birth, Stephen’s blog about turning adversity into success makes great reading. Interestingly enough, Darren Rouse at Problogger used Hopson as an example of how to make your videos accessible to the deaf and reach out to virtually untapped market.
I am curious about how people frame the world; what words, pictures, and emotional bombs they use to make meaning out of their data stream. Once in a great while I get to triangulate on an event. With one valued source claiming “A” and another claiming “B,” I am given the opportunity to go from my point “C” and am allowed to find understanding. It’s like that fascinating game of gossip we all played as children where a story is passed from person to person and the last one tells a story that the first person can’t recognize. It’s like hearing eye witnesses to an event tell different versions of what they witness. I get curious about what causes the differences and realize just how data-rich my environment is. In this case, you would almost swear the bloggers were standing side by side. They both wanted to say the same things. I just had to go visit Adversity University and see what it was like. It’s a wonderful educational institution. Find out more about Stephen Hopson here.
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3 Comments »
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Neil:
What a fascinating, if not puzzling post you have here. First of all, thank you for “triangularing” the three of us together. I appreciate your wonderful compliments about my blog, Adversity University. I’m grateful that you find it a good source of inspiration for that is my intention and I hope I will continue to provide such information.
Can you help me understand what you were trying to postulate here?
Let me see if I understand you correctly. Tell me if I’m off the mark, okay? This makes for a fascinating case study and I’m your eager student.
You’re saying that the Chief Happiness Officer was trying to say the same thing Darren was saying in terms of making video posts more accessible? Is that accurate?
What happened was Darren gave me the opportunity to write a guest post at his blog about the subject matter so it wasn’t him who said anything about it - he just gave me space to make a case in the form of a guest post.
On the other hand, the Chief Happiness Officer merely posted a video of me talking about a most life changing moment, which was not subtitled because it came directly off YouTube. (My subtitled videos actually are made through Overstream, another site but somehow uses streaming YouTube videos - I have no idea how it works).
So help me here, my friend, what were you trying to say? I’m curious.
I look forward to hearing from you Neil.
Comment by Stephen Hopson — February 27, 2008 @ 10:22 pm
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Thank you for raising the question. I’m never sure if I make sense and feedback is always helpful. You did understand my point, which is that I seldom see such agreement among people about an event and yet, when you are involved, they both see the same thing.
While the bulk of the work posted was yours, they used very similar adjectives and adverbs to describe you and your work. The Chief Happiness Officer uses “great little video” and “excellent blog.” Problogger asks for people to “help and support Stephen” and provides high accolades about your blog. They may not have said much, but they both described the same wonderful person.
By the way, I have subscribed to your blog and look forward to your posts.
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[…] at TeamConnections wrote a curious and somewhat perplexing and fascinating article, called “When EyeWitnesses Agree.” While Neil lavishly heaped praised and accolades on Adversity University, it seemed like […]
Pingback by End of the Week Gratitude Theme #17 - Video Post #3 — March 19, 2008 @ 7:06 am
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What? Me Worry?
In the name of being pro-active, a lot of my coaching clients are starting to worry about the economy, unemployment, recession, etc. I want to reach through the telephone, grab them by the ears, stare into their eyes and ask the real question: “Do you know what you get when you worry about money?”
The answer is that you get what you think about—money worries. If you are thinking about money, then you are not thinking about the passion that drives you to work. You are not thinking about excellence in all things. You are not thinking about better customer service. You are thinking about squeezing one more dime out of a customer. You are thinking about selling your services so that you can line your pockets from a one-off deal.
You are thinking about the wrong things. If you think about your passion, you will be passionate. Do anything else and you make your worries come true. I read this post last December in Customers are Always called Focus, The Two P’s and How to Achieve Success. I added it to my favorites and go back and read it weekly to remind me of my own advice.
Leaders Learn
One project I have been working on lately has involved a large number of working leaders in direct sales. I’m talking about people who are the top performers in the top companies. “Humbling” is a good word to describe the experience. I find fascinating the common threads that are woven throughout their careers and are contained in the cloth that they are passing forward.
One universal is the requirement of all leaders (and aspiring leaders) to want to learn; to be open to new experiences and incorporation of new thoughts in their life and business. Hoping to someday be listed in this group, I try to read everything I can lay eyes on. I was truly excited to see a MYSTERY BOX offer from 800-CEO-READ. Three top ranked business books from 2007 can be yours for $20.00. You may not know which books they are, but they will all be good reads, and if you already own it, give it away and make a friend.
For the sceptics, there is even a Free Prize Inside. Shipping is included in your purchase price and all of the proceeds are being donated to Room to Read.
Web Coaches for Direct Sales Mavens?
About a month ago I was reading Seth Godin’s blog about a shortage of digital coaches. I couldn’t help but laugh at the image of corporate executives trying to deal with social web ware from a traditional sales and marketing perspective. I thought back to conversations with executives asking, “will this internet ordering ever catch on?” Direct sales leaders have even less interest. Their mantra chant is some personal variation of face-to-face-is-the-only-way. I even discovered a phrase for my thoughts (also courtesy of Godin): Meatball Sundae. I have no disagreement with Godin’s lament for the lack of digital teachers. I even applaud it. I just didn’t see it happening.
Then I had a phone conversation with someone I coached about six months ago. She thanked me for working through Citizen Marketers with her and talked about the redesign of her website as a result. Like most people in direct sales, she was using her website as a forum for her personal story of product effectiveness and income potential. As a result
of the coaching, she redesigned the site to showcase customer stories and link to snippets from them about effectiveness and livelihood. The best part is what it meant to her business. “When I can get someone to go from a convention showcase to my website, I have an eighty percent chance of getting a sale or involving them in the business. It’s a huge shift.”
Her changed attitude had little to do with knowledge of the technology. What changed was her attitude about the role of the web. Before, she would have had a sundae. Now, she has a unified basis for communication.
Encouraging Dialogue
Much of what sit out on the web is really what we can call “push out communication.” I write; you read. We often don’t see much reaction to it. If marketers could figure out how to evaluate it correctly, we would probably have much more of this stuff because we could put a dollar sign on it.I’ve been very interested in the efforts at “reciprocal” communication. We dialogue; we are changed by the interaction and create a memory. The blog explosion is indicative of the interest in this. Posts become bait for comments and search engines and then we do what we can to encourage a dialogue. If we post more, we get found more and get to claim our just rewards. Brilliant!
The Harvard Business School Press has taken a different idea. They are called discussions. Brilliant! By the way, they are all great reads. One I especially enjoy is Marshall Goldsmith’s Ask the Coach. His posts are answers to questions rather than comments to provoke a reply. If you read carefully, you see that he also makes contact with the questioners outside of the blog posts. Now that is truly BRILLIANT!
Merry Christmas
If you haven’t taken the time to slow down and enjoy the seasonal opportunities, then I hope you will click on this video and spend the next 3 minutes and 29 seconds enjoying a very Merry Christmas.
Thanksgiving Gratitude
As I sat down today to relax, I came to the realization that it had been quite some time since I have added anything to this blog. Given today’s celebration, I decided it would be a perfect opportunity to offer an explanation.Realize that this is in no way a complaint. I wouldn’t have my life any other way. I have just been too tired for the last month. After our move in September, I got very busy with work. At the present time, Team Connections is working with three different companies developing training manuals. On top of that, the past 6 weeks has been spent going through the final edits to the book that Lyn Christian and I have been writing (due out early in 2008). Frankly, by the end of the day, I had no inspiration or energy to put any more words on paper, let alone see if any of it made sense. I love it.
I am thankful for my life. I guess the best way to describe it is to say that I am grateful for the absence of needs and the presence of wants. Since leaving AdvoCare last March, we have cut our expense by more than half and still don’t really have any needs that we can’t meet. We could probably cut it even more and still not really miss anything essential in our lives. This doesn’t mean that I have stopped wanting earthly goods, luxury, or just plain “more of everything” in my life.
So what do I want? I want the challenges. I want to be tired at the end of the day because I know I will sleep well and wake up excited by the challenges of the next day. Bring it on. I just hope I’m up for it.
I definitely don’t think it can just be about the money. We all need more. Even the supposed “money-hungry” sales guy is really doing it more for the thrill of the hunt, the satisfaction of the close.
It’s not so much about the money, but the possibilities that having more money allows that I think ultimately drives us (especially in direct sales).
Comment by Brett — June 2, 2008 @ 7:20 pm