Someone asked Dr. Karl Menninger what he would recommend if someone told him they felt a nervous breakdown coming. He replied:
“Lock up your house, go across the railroad tracks, find someone in need, and do something to help that person.”
It’s a good reminder for me when I need to get out of my head.
But you can help the person in front of you.
We often get overwhelmed when we see a problem. “There are so many people suffering from this. I don’t even know where to start.”
That thinking paralyzes us from taking any action. Because we can’t understand how we can possibly solve the big issue, we do nothing.
The solution is simple: help the person in front of you. Right now. In this moment.
Then, when the opportunity presents itself again, repeat.
One thing, one person, one idea at a time.
It’s a lot better than nothing at all.
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It amazes me how one person can have such a tremendous effect on a business’s success or failure.
I’m talking, of course, about the experience someone has when they interact with any one individual employee of a business.
If the customer has a bad experience, the obvious thing that’ll happen is they’ll swear off the company completely.
“Well, I’m never going back to that place…”
And the funny thing is this: after a few months, or even a few years, that person who delivered the horrible experience is probably long gone…
Yet you STILL never go back.
They don’t just ruin things in the moment – they ruin them long-term… Possibly forever.
And let’s not forget the fact that if the employee threw a tantrum in front of lots of other customers, they probably won’t come back either.
But it goes even further than that.
Do you know what people love to talk about even more than a great experience?
The worst experience they’ve ever had!
That’s why all the reviews for every single business you’ll ever read are 90% one-stars.
Nobody ever writes about a decent, 3-star experience they had… And we rarely take the time to write about the great experiences – it’s too much work.
But when we’re angry, fuming, and vengeful, nothing gives us more satisfaction than to feel like we’re ruining a business.
So we tell the others. And word spreads. And those people who’ve never had a bad experience with the business decide not to patronize it… For fear of having a bad experience.
Here’s a simple idea for all of us in business: adopt the ideas of Victor Krulak, the former commandant of the US Marine Corps.
He wrote about the “strategic corporal” which insists that the entire outcome of a war rests solely on the lowest paid, most beaten-down, hardest working Marine on the frontline.
That Marine bears the brunt of the fighting. And if they do something terrible, they ruin the image of an entire nation… Especially now that everything is seen by everybody.
The solution is to treat your lowest paid, frontline employees as the most important part of your organization. Because they absolutely are!
Those who deal with customers on a daily basis are the strongest marketing force you have, aside from the customers themselves through word-of-mouth.
Treat them as the most important people in your company, compensate them well, and train them to represent the brand you want your business to embody.
Here’s one of my favorite quotes from Earl Nightingale:
“It’s foolish to sit in front of the fireplace and tell it ‘first give me some heat. Then I’ll give you some wood.’“
Of course, it’s a little foolish to talk to your fireplace at all. But that’s not the point.
Why would you expect the fire to warm you up with no wood? That’s as foolish as thinking people will buy from you before you’ve created value for them.
You have to help people before they’ll give you money…
You can’t get warm if you don’t put wood on the fire.
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Feeling unhappy? I can probably guess why…
You don’t have a project to work on.
“Prod any happy person, and you will find a project.“
—Richard Layard, economist
I don’t mean a project at work: one of those mindnumbing, agonizing, tedious, pointless tasks you’ve been given by your boss just to look busy.
I’m talking about something that matters: a project that makes you happy. A project that makes a difference. A project that changes someone else for the better.
Seth Godin would call that kind of project “art.” And it doesn’t have to be a painting, song, or movie. It just has to matter to you.
And it helps if it makes the world a better place.
A quick way to find real happiness? Start working on a project.
(If you want to learn more about this argument, check out Layard’s book Happiness: Lessons from a New Science)
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Here’s a simple definition from Donald Miller to help you understand what a business really is:
A business is a for-profit entity that solves problems for paying customers.
Let’s break this down:
Without profit, a business can’t survive. Yet we’ve tied some evil stigma to the idea of a business making a profit. If they don’t make a profit, they can’t do the thing for which they are created. And what’s that?
THIS is the purpose of a business: to solve problems for people. And is that really such a bad thing? Wouldn’t you be happy to pay someone to solve one (or several) of your problems? Of course you would.
Now, there are numerous businesses out there that don’t solve problems for their customers, yet they still make a profit. Those exist only to get as much money from people as possible without providing any real value. That’s theft, and it’s both unethical and immoral.
The good news is those businesses tend not to last very long. How often did you do business with a company that gave you no return on your investment?
Paying customers… This is the hard part for a lot of us. We’d all love to be non-profits, helping as many people we can without them paying us a dime. But you can’t fill someone else’s cup if yours is empty.
Customers need to pay for what you’re offering them. Here’s why:
That last point is important. When someone pays for something, they are more likely to follow through with it. Whether you offer education, a service, or sell a product, the thinking goes, “I paid for this, so I might as well get my money’s worth.”
This simple definition of business has a lot of meat in it. It definitely helped me overcome my own issues with making money, because in the end we’re helping people.
We’re just doing it in a way that lets us keep the lights on. And lets us grow so we can help even more people.
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Wouldn’t it be great if you got paid every time you sent an email? I dunno about you, but I’d love to live in that world.
I send hundreds each week. If I earned the price of a postage stamp on each one, I could make a pretty easy living.
I’m an up-and-coming copywriter. To make a living, I spend several hours each week reaching out to potential clients, offering them my services as a writer and marketer. I do this because I’m a salesperson. And if you’re trying to make a living in a similar way, so are you.
I recently came across a Twitter post telling me that I was devaluing my work by selling myself. To sum it up, the writer said I should either:
I understand the author’s point. My time is valuable, and it stinks when I feel I’ve “wasted” my time pitching to someone who doesn’t buy. But I 100% disagree.
How do professional salespeople get paid? They sell a product and get paid a commission. They don’t get paid when they prospect or send proposals to customers. The only way they make money is by closing a sale.
I sell a service, and I only get paid if I provide that service. And that service is not pitching ideas. If it was, I’d be a billionaire right now because I have a few thousand ideas each day, and most of them are awful.
Each time I pitch a client, I’m putting in a job application. Think about all the jobs you’ve applied for in your adult life. What if you got paid for every job application you ever completed? Wouldn’t that make for an awesome career?
Often we don’t have a lot of experience for the jobs we are applying for, especially if we are new to the workforce or a field. When asked what a beginner should do, the Tweeter said, “get paid to pitch.”
We’ve all gotten those phone calls from sleazy salespeople. Does this sound familiar?
“I’ve got this great new system that will keep you from paying any taxes this year. But I can only tell you what it is if you sign a non-disclosure agreement and pay me $2,000 upfront.”
You know you’re losing money and going to jail if you get in bed with that guy. You don’t want to have anything to do with an idea you can only hear after signing an NDA and paying upfront.
There are two parts to this tactic:
One of my favorite phrases comes from the marketing genius Seth Godin:
“You’ll pay a lot, but you’ll get more than you paid for.”
Tweet
That is the only way this guy’s Tweet works.
I get it. Creating proposals, pitching to customers, and facing possible rejection—it really stinks. It takes a lot of time and hard work. It’s frustrating.
But let me be clear: THAT DOESN’T MEAN ANYONE OWES YOU ANYTHING!
The world doesn’t work that way. We are all in sales, and much of that involves reaching out to others. It means facing the very real possibility of rejection coupled with no monetary gain.
So go ahead and pitch. And if you want to get paid for that, build the cost into your pricing structure.
But make sure you overdeliver on that promise to your customer.
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“You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you.”
—Ruth Smeltzer
Help someone today in whatever small or grand way you can.
Don’t do it as part of your job—do it because it (and you) are good and decent.
Give the gift of service—true service—where reciprocation is not possible.
A little old lady can never put a price on being helped across the street.
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“Service is the rent we pay for the privilege of living on this earth.”
–N. Eldon Tanner
Let us each pay our rent in full today.
Let us earn our keep by serving each other in meaningful ways.
Today and every day.
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We human beings like security – it encompasses the first two levels of Maslow’s “Hierarchy of Needs.” It’s fundamental.
To get that feeling of security, we work hourly wage jobs; we try to get hired at famous companies for regular, unchanging salaries with hopes for a 3% raise every year (which doesn’t outpace inflation).
Freelancing – being “a knight without a king” as Seth Godin likes to say – seemingly goes against that feeling of security. There is no guarantee; you don’t get paid simply for showing up somewhere for a specified amount of time.
But it’s better.
There is no security in hourly rates; there is no security in working for a famous company. As the COVID-19 pandemic has shown us, the moment something bad or unexpected happens, your security is at risk.
The security is an illusion. No longer can we work at the same company for 20 years, slowly moving up a corporate ladder, waiting for that day when we call it quits and HR hands us a gold watch and the envelope containing our pension information.
There is no security anymore. There is only you.
“Security lies in our ability to produce.”
–General Douglas MacArthur
What do you already know or do well?
Can you write? Create websites? Draw and paint? Build things with your hands? Sell?
Maybe you’re a whiz at smoothing customers’ ruffled feathers. Perhaps you have a knack for motivating and encouraging other people.
There is something you already do, or something you already know about, that other people are willing to pay for. You simply have to muster the courage to offer it to them.
Each of us must explicitly state to ourselves what we know how to do and do well. That knowledge and the willingness to execute on it are the only things that give us any sort of real security in the workplace.
If you can find someone and offer them something they are willing to pay for, and do that over and over again, you are a freelancer. You have no boss, no one telling you what to do next, but also no one telling you, “I’m sorry but we have to let you go.”
You have no guarantee of income – in either direction! You can make as little or as much as you want, as long as people are willing to pay for it. But I’ll bet you got stopped on the phrase “no guarantee” or “as little…as you want” while glossing over the rest of it.
As a freelancer, you determine your job, the work you do, your hours, the people you serve. Perhaps it’s not the loss of security you fear: it’s the fear of complete and total responsibility for your success or failure.
We aren’t used to that, but it’s the only way we’ll survive.
Secure your own future today. Don’t wait for someone else to do it for you.
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