Issue #2596
- WEALTHY: 3 ways to convince someone of your skill (Brendan Florez)
- HEALTHY: 5 reasons to go organic (Jon Benson)
- WISE: Michael Masterson on e-mail
ALSO IN THIS ISSUE:
- Your 3-step e-mail elimination plan (Alex Mandossian)
- 2 new advancements on the ETR site (Suzanne Richardson)
- It’s Fun to Know… about detecting counterfeit wine
- Add “sententious” to your vocabulary
== Highly Recommended ==
Important Message If You’ve Lost Money From Your IRA or 401(K)
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Read on to discover how this “Off-Wall Street Cash Recovery Plan” could recoup 100% of your recession losses by September 30, 2009.
The Most Effective Form of Self-Promotion
By Brendan Florez
Let’s say you’re trying to convince a potential customer/employer/investor to begin a relationship with you. There are only three ways to do it, and they are not equally effective. From worst to best, here they are:
1. Tell them how great you are.
This is the least effective method, but it’s better than nothing. The key here is to be honest and not come across as trying too hard to impress. When an older gentleman asked Bono what he did for a living, the rock star said, “I’m a musician.” Don’t be shy about your accomplishments, but don’t oversell yourself either.
2. Have others tell them how great you are.
Marketers have a name for this – social proof. If you and your customer have a mutual friend, ask that friend to put in a good word for you. If not, think about who else your customer might consider asking about you, and seek to make a good impression.
3. Show them how great you are.
Nothing’s more powerful than a customer witnessing your expertise first hand. If you’re a marketer, offer some quick marketing advice for a problem they have. If you’re a property manager, give them a tour of your places and show them the financials. Find a way to directly demonstrate your skill, and your chances go way up.
The real power of these techniques comes when you do them together. Spend the majority of your time focused on #2 and #3, and #1 will take care of itself.
[Ed. Note: Brendan Florez is founder and CEO of Social Charm, LLC (www.SocialCharm.net), a company that uses analytical methods to understand and train people in the science of human interaction. Prior to this, he was an Executive Team Consultant at Rosetta, working closely on HR and operations issues. Brendan graduated from Princeton University with a degree in electrical engineering, focusing on integrating engineering, neuroscience, and psychology.]
“E-mail has become a way of life for most of us – especially in business – but it doesn’t have to take a huge bite out of your work life.”
Michael Masterson
Does Your E-Mail Inbox Need a 60-Second Cleansing?
It was a warm Friday morning in Kona, Hawaii… and there I was eating my breakfast with five of my friends, all members of the Transformation Leadership Council.
Suddenly, that all-important topic of distractions came up. So I seized the opportunity to ask all five thought leaders the single most important entrepreneurial productivity question that I routinely ask my students, friends, colleagues, and even my mentors:
“What’s the number one distraction you inevitably face each day in your personal and professional life?”
All five gave the same answer – the same answer I hear from my students, my friends, my colleagues, and my mentors.
E-mail!
Imagine that. The number one distraction faced by just about everyone today didn’t even exist for them a decade ago.
Most successful businesspeople have come up with ways to reduce the negative impact e-mail has on productivity. For example, Michael Masterson recommends checking e-mail once, maybe twice, a day. But no matter how efficiently they manage their inboxes, it’s surprising to me how many ultra-successful entrepreneurs experience feelings of guilt, shame, and even contempt for the number of e-mails that go unopened and unresponded to.
Guilt? Shame? Contempt? Wow! How can an innocent form of communication originally designed for convenience create so much tension, stress, and worry for so many people?
I have no idea how to answer that question, but I do have a simple three-step process to do something about it.
Your 3-Step E-Mail Elimination Plan
If you have the courage to give this proven method a fair try, you can eliminate those unopened and undeleted e-mails (and the negative feelings attached to them) in less than 60 seconds.
I do this every month, and I encourage you to do it too. It will liberate you and free your mind so you can get it back where it belongs – on revenue generation.
Step 1:Categorize your e-mail messages in reverse chronological order (most recent at the top to the least recent at the bottom).
Step 2: Quickly scan all of your messages and make certain there aren’t any critical ones that you’ve opened but haven’t yet responded to. (You’ll take care of those as soon as you finish this 60-second elimination procedure.) Then highlight all e-mail messages – opened and unopened – that are over 72 hours (three days) old.
It’s as simple as breathing so far, right? Well, Step #3 isn’t as easy for most people
Step 3: After all those old e-mail messages are highlighted, take a 10-second deep breath… and then take five seconds to put your index finger on the DELETE key and press it down firmly.
Uh, yeah… that’s it.
MaryEllen Tribby does something similar. When she returns from vacation or a business trip, she deletes the hundreds of e-mails that have accumulated. (Before she leaves, she sets up an autoresponder message to let people know she’s away and ask them to re-send their e-mails if they still require her attention.)
Any e-mail that’s over three days old is a dinosaur by 2009 standards. People who e-mail you want responses and want them fast. If you can’t satisfy their need for urgency, delete their e-mails so you can remove the guilt, shame, or contempt they make you feel.
Look, if their message is really that important to them, they’ll e-mail you again, right?
As MaryEllen has found, most of them won’t. Urgent problems and “issues” somehow get taken care of. And for those few that still need your attention, you’ll get a second chance to do something about them within 72 hours… and you’ll do it stress-free!
I know this sounds a little harsh if you’re used to being responsive to everyone who e-mails you. But keep in mind that the more successful you become, the more e-mails you’re likely to get… and the less likely it will be that you’ll have time to respond to all of them.
Bottom Line: This simple three-step method puts you in control of your time. And that’s what it is – YOUR TIME.
I even take it a step further. Not only do I do this 60-second cleansing every 30 days or so, I actually change my private e-mail address every year.
Working from a “zero base” e-mail inbox means no leftover e-mails that cause me stress and worry. I typically read and respond, read and ignore, or read and delete.
Try it.
[Ed. Note: Alex Mandossian knows a thing or two about marketing. He has generated over $233 million in sales for his clients. And in the past three years, he increased his own revenues from $1.5 million to $5 million. You can get Alex's advice and practical marketing tips for info-publishers, small-business owners, and entrepreneurs for free at AlexMandossianToday.com.
Permanently regain control of your time by following our step-by-step goal-setting system. It will help you de-stress your life and accomplish far more than you ever thought possible. Learn more here.]
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ETR Insider Report: 2 Easy Ways to Get More of What You Want
Have you noticed the new “advancements” on ETR’s website?
If you haven’t, you’re missing out. They give you a chance to get more of the high-quality ETR content you want to see.
Simply visit our site, skim through the new articles we post there every day, and tell us what you think. You can do this in two ways:
1. Leave a comment.
It’s easy. After reading any article on www.EarlytoRise.com, scroll to the bottom. Type out your thoughts about the article in the box you’ll see, then hit “Submit Comment.” You can leave your real name or a pseudonym – it’s up to you.
We read each and every comment ETR readers leave on the site. If there’s a question, we do our best to answer it. (Note: If you have a customer service question, please leave it here.)
Commenting on articles is a great way to congratulate an author on a great article… to point out any objections you have… to interact with other ETR readers… and to let us know which articles are most useful to you.
2. Assign a rating.
You can also rate the articles on our site. Right above the comment box at the bottom of every article, you’ll see the following:
Rate this article:
All you have to do is award the number of stars you believe the article deserves.
These two easy-to-use tools will ensure that you get more of what YOU want. We keep a close eye on those ratings and comments to help plan future content for ETR.
How to Eat Better
By Jon Benson
How would you like to feel better… look better… stop struggling with excess body fat… and help support your community? No joke.
Simply choose to eat fresh veggies and meats instead of mass-produced foods.
Filmmaker Chris Taylor – creator of the documentary Food Fight – points out some of the many benefits of organic foods:
1. You will eat less when you eat organically grown foods. Your body’s
natural appetite mechanisms kick in when they are not suppressed by the chemicals found in grocery store foods.
2. Long term, you will save big bucks on doctors’ bills and other medical costs.
3. You will taste food, perhaps for the first time. Once you taste what “real” carrots taste like (or real broccoli… or real beef), you will never want to settle for less. Food should taste fantastic!
4. By supporting local farmers, you will be helping to build a stronger bond-based community.
What about cost? Well, it’s a bit more expensive to eat this way… but not much. And because you eat less – and save on medical bills – it balances out.
Don’t think you have to make every meal nothing but organic veggies and grass-fed farm protein. No way. But changing just ONE meal a day… or two… will make a world of difference.
[Ed. Note: Start eating better today with help from ETR's natural health newsletter. You'll find dozens of healthy eating strategies plus delicious recipes for meals that can help you feel better and live longer. And that's not all... (read on here)
If you want to lose weight while enjoying your favorite foods, get your copy of nutrition and fitness counselor Jon Benson's Every Other Day Diet system. Try it for 60 days and prove to yourself that it works.]
It’s Fun to Know: Detecting Counterfeit Wine
Wine enthusiasts with deep pockets pay tens of thousands of dollars for the best vintages. But are they getting what they pay for?
Well-known wine merchant Harry Rodenstock was sued by billionaire Bill Koch after experts determined that the four bottles of 1787 Chateau Lafite he purchased from Rodenstock (supposedly owned by Thomas Jefferson) were fake. Oh yes, the price tag? $500,000.
Less-notable vintages – usually from the French Bordeaux region – are faked all the time. Old bottles and counterfeit labels are used to deceive consumers, who often can’t taste the difference. (But that’s another story.) Even sommeliers can be fooled.
Enter the “electronic tongue” created by Spanish researchers. It analyzes a drop of wine and checks its unique chemical signature against a database of certified vintage wines. No more guesswork. Either it’s the real thing or it isn’t.
(Source: Popular Science)
== Highly Recommended ==
Transform Your Life In Only 15 Minutes A Day!
Would you be willing to set aside 15 minutes a day if it meant you could…
- Pay off your credit card bills?
- Rebuild your financial portfolio?
- Buy or sell a house?
- Grow or start a business?
- Lose weight?
- Prepare for early retirement?
I thought so.
I’d like to show you exactly how you can dramatically increase your chances of achieving these (or other) goals in 2009.
Click here to continue…
Word to the Wise: Sententious
“Sententious” (sen-TEN-shus) – from the Latin for “opinion” – is another way of saying “self-righteous.”
Example (as used by Gregory Maguire in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West): “‘I do not listen when anyone uses the word immoral,’ said the Wizard. ‘In the young it is ridiculous, in the old it is sententious and reactionary and an early warning sign of apoplexy. In the middle-aged, who love and fear the idea of moral life the most, it is hypocritical.’”
[Ed. Note: Become a more persuasive writer and speaker ... build your self-confidence and intellect ... increase your attractiveness to others ... just by spending 10 VERY enjoyable minutes a day with ETR's new Words to the Wise CD Library.]
Copyright ETR, LLC, 2009
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Oh ETR, you still trumpet the same tune on email without giving any consideration to the fact that this might work for you but is not applicable to all of your readers.
Lawyers, auditors, government regulators and others who followed this 3 step plan could rightly be sued for deleting those emails. Indeed, you could be found negligent in your duties as a director of your company and could be breaching company laws on the maintenance of documents for tax and compliance purposes.
I’m not saying that you need to preface every article with a ton of caveats but you definitely need to recognise that a lot of businesses, and a lot of positions within those businesses, do not permit such a cavalier attitude to email correspondence.
Lastly, you should warn those of your readers that are a little further down the food chain than they aspire to be that deleting emails that they simply haven’t got around to reading and acting on could get them fired.
Gordon.
A comment on emails. I received a lot of forwards from friends and family. To eliminate them filling my inbox, I programmend all email programs to move any email with FW: to a special box:future forwards. I scan them for email strings that are important, otherwise I mark them as read and get on with life. If someone comments on one of the forwarded emails, I still have them to reference for the conversation.
Praise for Jon Benson’s article ” How to Eat Better”
We personally have been eating Organic products whenever possible. It really does make a difference. And a difference you can truly taste.
We suggest eating Organic foods in our newsletter we email from our site at http://emperorsherbologist.com called Live Healthy!
In past newsletters we suggested a few great places to get Organic products at very good prices:
Target Super center,
Costco, and
Wal-Mart Super center
Also it pays to go to the local farmers markets. A lot of time you can find Organic produce and Wild Caught fish there.
Additionally regarding meats, you may want to try Buffalo. While it may not be certified Organic it is not yet popular enough to get fed all the antibiotics and growth hormones in standard farm raised meats.
And to expand on one point Jon said “Well, it’s a bit more expensive to eat this way… but not much. And because you eat less – and save on medical bills”
I believe as do many others, that disease comes from what you eat. If you eat foods laced with chemical names we can’t even come close to pronouncing, and mysterious substances created in some lab; and genetically modified foods, and foods sprayed with all sorts of chemical fertilizers and bug killers that seep into the animals and plants, you get sick easier, you become more disease prone, and your health, quality of life, and even life span get cut short.
But if you eat healthy pure foods, you can build your body’s natural defenses. You build your body’s health. You increase your quality of life and life span. So while Organic vegetables may not look as pretty as chemically grown and chemically treated and/or GMO. The Organic will be far, far, far healthier… in spite of what the “experts” paid for by the fertilizer producers, bug killers, and GMO seed producers tell you.
Good Eating.
And Remember to Live Healthy!
Allen
About those emails, Alex has the right attitude. We need to stop worrying about getting through all of the emails sent. I use the flags built into Outlook to keep track of important items. But, employees of public companies need to follow the email retention guidelines set up by their companies. Sarbanes-Oxley requires all public companies to retain emails for a period of time. Intentional destruction of important emails carries heavy criminal penalties as another commenter indicated. It might be interesting to see the results of a poll of ETR readers. Where do we work? And do we have a side business too?
TAME THE EMAIL BEAST! Good luck with that. When I got my first personal email account, in 1997, I knew I would be able to keep up with everyone everywhere.
Right.
I love ETR, but all the *other* emails I get are overwhelming. I must get 100 a day of just stuff to get rid of.
Changing every year? MMmmmmm. . . .
I loved Alex’s article on how to eliminate e-mail clutter. I save everything thinking I will find it useful later. I never have time to go back to it. If there isn’t time now there won’t be time in the future. I am starting a group- “clutterer’s anonymous” for other like me and I think his advice will become one of the 12 steps.