Tag / service

by Nathan Coumbe

Are You Buying What You’re Selling?

Zig Ziglar, the great motivator and sales trainer, found a mantra in the word “enthusiasm.” To him, the last four letters stood for “I am sold myself.”

Zig was a master salesman. He knew if you didn’t believe in what you were selling, that lack of enthusiasm would come across to the prospect.

But what about when you’re not selling a product? What if the thing you’re selling is yourself, and your customer is a potential employer?

This same idea holds true in the job hunt. If you’re trying to persuade an employer to hire you, you have to believe in the product. 

If you’re a freelancer trying to convince a company to use your freelance services, you’re selling a product you must believe in. 

If you’re not enthusiastic about what you have to offer, they won’t be either.

If you don’t believe in yourself, they won’t want to buy your product. And make no mistake: you are the product. 

Grow your enthusiasm. Know what you have to offer; understand what you do best; determine how you can best serve others. And believe that it will benefit another person.

Sell yourself on you.

“You can have everything in life you want, if you just help enough people get what they want.”—Zig Ziglar

Get a daily dose of inspiration. Subscribe below!

by Nathan Coumbe

Did You Do Something Good Today?

“Never be entirely idle; but either be reading, or writing, or praying, or meditating, or endeavoring something for the public good.”

—Thomas à Kempis

What are you doing right now? Okay, you’re reading this blog post – bad question to ask.

What have you done today? What are you planning on doing today?

Have you written anything? Have you read a good book (or blog post?) 

Have you developed your self-awareness? Or your ability to empathize with people who are different from you? 

Have you done something for the good of another? 

Have you performed any selfless act of service?

Too many of us end each day with a resounding “no” to all these questions. Instead, our answer to the question, “What have you done today?” is usually something like this: “I went to work, came home, and binge-watched Netflix until I passed out.”

Change How You View Your Work

Perhaps you really did nothing other than work today. Perhaps it really had no other benefit than growing your checking account. 

Or perhaps you should reevaluate how you spend the time you are not at work, so that you do create something, learn something new, or serve another person. Or perhaps you should change the way you view your work – I’m betting you did something today that benefitted someone. Reflect on that. 

Too often, we use work, podcasts, and the always-available streaming services to block ourselves from creating our art. We chalk it up to a lack of time. 

But where is your time going? We all have the same 24 hours in a day, 168 hours in a week. Unless we are doing shift work or have a newborn at home, we have time to create good for the world. 

I challenge you to answer one question every night before you go to sleep: “Did I do something good today?”

Never miss a new post. Subscribe today!

by Nathan Coumbe

Should You Get Paid Every Time You Send an Email?

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.

Am I Devaluing Myself?

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:

  1. Have clients beating a path to my door willing to pay me, OR 
  2. I should get paid every time I send an email, proposal, or pitch to a potential client before any work is done. 

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.

Sales Professionals Don’t Get Paid to Prospect

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.

Selling Your Service Is Like Applying for a Job

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.

How to ACTUALLY Get Paid to Pitch 

There are two parts to this tactic:

  1. Charge higher prices to compensate for the inevitable rejections you’ll get.
  2. Overdeliver to your clients and customers so it’s worth paying you higher prices!

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.”

That is the only way this guy’s Tweet works. 

Selling Is Tough

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. 

Feeling inspired? Like, comment, and share so others can benefit! And subscribe below!

by Nathan Coumbe

Why Do We Say “You’re Welcome”?

When you think about it for any length of time at all, it’s utter nonsense.

“Thank you,” says your customer.

“You’re welcome,” you reply.

You’re welcome….to what? You’re welcome to ask for help again in the future? You’re welcome to more of the same?

Why aren’t people shouting, “What am I welcome to?!”

There are so many options available to us other than an automatic “You’re welcome.” The phrase is automatic and useless. I’ve always wondered why we use it.

We can say, “It was my pleasure,” implying that you genuinely enjoyed helping them. Chick-fil-A’s employees are getting it right. (And yes, I realize it’s engrained in them and automatic, much like “You’re welcome.” It may not actually be their pleasure to help me. That’s a subject for a different post.)

Or my favorite: “I’m happy to help.” When I say it, I genuinely mean it. And by saying it, I actually feel happy that I helped that person.

It’s time to do away with this nonsensical phrase and replace it with something genuine and meaningful.

Get more thought-provoking material in your inbox. Subscribe today!

by Nathan Coumbe

Don’t Let Them Repay You

“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.

Subscribe below for more insights on service.

by Nathan Coumbe

Pay rent

“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.

Want more encouragement to pursue your creativity? Subscribe below!

by Nathan Coumbe

If you build it, they (probably) won’t come.

The key in any endeavor from which you hope to profit, whether it’s creating a new product, learning a new skill, or starting a new service, is to first identify whether other people want what you are selling.

Contrary to the message in “Field of Dreams” (sorry, Kevin Costner), if you build or create something without first determining whether or not people want it, you probably won’t have anyone knocking down your door to get it.

Learning to be the best Fortran coding expert in the world is useless in today’s workplace because no one uses that coding language anymore. And don’t get upset if you spend 4 years learning puppetry only to find no one wants to pay you for it.

To make a living, you must serve other people. To serve other other people, you must find what people need.

You must determine what problems other people have and how you can solve them. Perhaps the need is to be entertained (in which case learning puppetry might actually be profitable for you, if you can find a way to market it). Perhaps the problem is a lack of clean water to drink.

Regardless of what you do, the key is to first identify what others want, then create something that serves that purpose. The customer must come first if you desire to profit.

Join 904 other subscribers
by Nathan Coumbe

Callous and indifferent

“A society that is callous and indifferent to the weak and the vulnerable destroys itself. A society that betrays its elders—even if those elders have been indifferent and callous themselves—betrays itself.”

–Ryan Holiday

Selfishness wins the day for the individual in the short run; it always comes back to haunt the individual in the long run.

Think of others, not yourself, your desires, or your wants, especially in times of danger or crisis.

The beaches can wait; you can cut your own hair; you can socialize with your church members online during the service.

It’s not about you.

Join 904 other subscribers

by Nathan Coumbe

Service to others, no matter the times.

Regardless of quarantines, social distancing, and other methods of protecting ourselves physically, we can still find ways to serve others.

Many of us will be mowing our lawns today. How difficult would it be to push the lawnmower over one yard and take care of your neighbor’s?

Perhaps you still have a job, but a friend of yours does not. Order groceries and have them delivered to her door (it’s even more fun if you keep it anonymous).

Cook a casserole for your mother, wrap it up, and leave it on the front porch.

Keep yourself and others safe, but still find ways to contribute to others.

Join 904 other subscribers
by Nathan Coumbe

Do good no matter what

We are here on earth to do good to others. What the others are here for, I don’t know.

–W. H. Auden

How you feel today doesn’t matter.

What someone else did to upset you doesn’t matter.

We have limited time to do something great and wonderful, and the best way is to serve other people with your unique talents and passion.

What you get out of it doesn’t matter. You are a servant of good. If you get paid for it, that’s a win for you and the other person. But don’t serve in the hopes of a reward: serve to bring out the best the world has to offer.

Do good in the hopes that others will pay it forward. And if they don’t, keep on anyway.

Join 904 other subscribers