There is only one success: to be able to spend your life in your own way. ~ Christopher Morley

The principle of the life list is simple. You list all the things you want to do in life, and cross them off as you do them. Try to do them all before you die.

It’s easy and fun to make one, but to create a list of dreams that will actually come true is not quite as simple as merely writing down what you want.

You may have made a life list before. Where is it now? Probably in a landfill, like most life lists. It’s too easy to let life get in the way. You get busy, tied up with more immediate concerns, and your dreams become less and less relevant to your actual life.

But not everyone’s list gets abandoned. John Goddard is known best for living out the ambitious life list he made at age fifteen.

Even though it includes many difficult and humongous items (for example, number 113 is “Become proficient in the use of a plane, motorcycle, tractor, surfboard, rifle, pistol, canoe, microscope, football, basketball, bow and arrow, lariat and boomerang,”) as of today he’s checked off 111 of his 127 goals, and some are partially complete.

Why did that 15 year-old boy’s list go on to define a lifetime of achievement and adventure, while most life lists are eventually forsaken?

Because he really meant it.  

The Two Keys: Intention and Integrity

Everyone has a purpose in life. Perhaps yours is watching television. ~ David Letterman

The most important rule:

Make this a list of intentions, not wishes. Most life lists are wish lists. They’re a joy to make, but most are only good for an afternoon of giddy daydreaming. This is because the authors have no real intention to do the things they dream about. For the few hours it takes to draft a list it almost seems like these goals really are going to materialize out of thin air. It’s like you’re at a grand buffet of experiences, taking whatever you want for free. I’ll take a Harley Davidson here, a Tuscan getaway there…

Making the list is easy. But ten years later, the hike in the Pyrenees, the Boston Marathon, and the million-dollar business never happened, because they were only what you wanted to happen, not what you wanted to do. A person can accomplish an incredible amount in one lifetime, but only what they actually intend.

Make sure the list has integrity to you. A list with integrity is one you take seriously. This is essential. You have to revere this list, working from it for years to come, rather than just drawing it up and slowly forgetting about it. So don’t add items on a whim. Think about what they entail. Do you actually want to go through the ins and outs of learning Italian, or were you just daydreaming after watching The Godfather?

Make sure each item has real, personal significance, and isn’t just “This would be kinda neat.” Anyone could add “see Mount Fuji” or “learn karate” to their list but if you aren’t prepared to pay for a trip to Japan at some point, or spend months in karate class, then these experiences aren’t personally significant enough for you to make them happen. Let them go. Pick something better.

Filling your list with frivolous, “hey why not” fantasies is the perfect way to make sure you don’t follow through. If there are too many items that don’t inspire you to act on them, you’ll stop working on the items that do, and the list will be doomed.

Keep the list pure: important items only.

Here’s the litmus test for potential list items: imagine yourself actually going through with it, including all the legwork. Imagine as many physical details of the experience as possible. If the thought doesn’t fill you with enthusiasm, if it doesn’t make your soul grin, it doesn’t belong on the list. Would you honestly enjoy reading the entire works of Shakespeare? In reality, few would, and few do.

Be audacious, but not unrealistic. Dream big, but know that at the end of the day consideration must be given to the amount of time and money each goal will require. “Own an NFL team” requires eight or nine figures of capital to make a reality, so unless you intend to spend years of your life striving to reach that astronomical level of income, leave it off. It won’t happen.

If you want to read Modern Library’s 100 best novels of all time, be aware that you are committing to thousands of hours of reading books that you may not like at all. Maybe tone it down and make a short list of classics that really do interest you. It’s far better to check off a big accomplishment than give up on a humongous one that you don’t really want.

Remember, every item you add to the list is going to make the rest more difficult to some degree. You can accomplish a lot in one lifetime, but there is only so much time and money (and patience) to go around. The smaller your list, the more likely you will honor it. After all, unless you want relatively little, you can’t do everything you want to do. If you aren’t sure you want to do it, leave it off until you are.

Whittle it down to the truly important, and try to picture what kind of lifestyle is going to be required support it. Cost-versus-benefit really is a factor here: it would be cool to stand at the North Pole, but the thrill of it probably isn’t worth the time or effort for the vast majority of people.

How to Keep the List From Stagnating

A list can be doomed from the start if the intention and integrity aren’t there. So before we get to the fun part, here are some crucial points to make sure you end up with a list you have faith in.

Forget trying to come up with exactly 100 items. Or any other specific number. The act of paring (or inflating) your list to such a clean number betrays a lack of intention to actually make these things happen. Notice Goddard’s list has 127 items.

Make all the items clear, check-off-able things. There must be a specific moment when you can say “YES! I did it!” without question.

Most of the lists you will see are full of vague desires like “eat healthier,” rather than doable goals.

Good items:

• Vacation in Provence
• Attend Burning Man
• Learn to play “Stairway to Heaven” on guitar
• Own a house outright

Weak items:

• Travel the world (The whole world? Impossible.)
• Exercise every day  (Miss one day and it becomes technically impossible.)
• Stay in touch with people (Who? How do you know when you’ve done that?)
• Be more forgiving (More than what? “Be” is not the best verb for a list of things you want to do.)

Be willing to change your list as life goes on. I think the reluctance to do this is why most lists get abandoned. At first this sounds like a prescription for non-commitment, but changes are necessary to maintain the list’s integrity. Inevitably, there will be items you come to realize are no longer important to you, and there will certainly be items you want to add.

But don’t take these changes lightly. Never add an item you can’t see happening. Even Goddard had “Appear in a Tarzan movie” on his list, which he now considers to be an irrelevant boyhood dream. It is still unchecked.

I find it quite incredible that he was able to plan his life so clearly at age 15, and I don’t think most people can do that. So don’t force yourself to make a “final” list. Do an initial period of brainstorming, then add items as they capture your heart. When you recognize that an item no longer compels you, think about deleting it.

Remember it’s not all or nothing. You don’t have to finish the whole list. Goddard is in his eighties now; he probably won’t make it to the Moon like he’d hoped, but I don’t think he’s sobbing over a wasted life.

The list is forever a work in progress, bound to change a little as you change.

Reject the “Bragging Rights” motivation. Eliminate any items if you’re only doing them so that you can say you did. This is a list of experiences you want to have, not a legacy of reasons you should be admired. Be especially wary of goals like “visit all 50 states.” Does it really matter if you don’t set foot within all of the arbitrary political boundaries that make up the States of the Union? Isn’t the point to see the landscapes and people, not to tick off boxes?

Litmus test for this one: would you still do it if you weren’t allowed to tell anyone? Climb Everest? Read War and Peace? Really?

Ask “What specifically do I want to do?” Sometimes an idea might really excite you, but it’s not precisely the experience you’re looking for. For example, on my list I initially had “Attend Oktoberfest in Germany.” I’m sure it would be great, but all that I really want to do is drink beer from a ridiculously huge beer stein at a party in Germany. If I don’t make it there at the right time of year for Oktoberfest, I can still accomplish my dream.

Would a two-hour layover in Heathrow airport satisfy your “Go to London” goal, or is it an evening stroll along the Thames that you dream of?

With every item, dig deeper. What do you really want? Is “Visit Egypt” enough, or do you want to stand before the pyramids? Do you want to “take a singing class,” or do you want to sing onstage? Do you actually want to study marine biology, or just swim with dolphins?

Remember, this list is your life. Depending on how ambitious your list is, it probably represents how you’re going to spend most of the rest of your life. If you treat your list as things you hope to get around to, you won’t find the time and resources. If you’ve got thirty-five countries to visit, you’re not going to be able to sneak them into the same lifestyle you’ve been living, unless you’ve already got an excess of spare time and spare money, or you already make a lot of effort to travel.

As of right now, you invest all your time and money somewhere already, so these life list items will be taking the place of something, not simply added on top of your life as you know it.

The list will very much define your lifestyle if you’ve got some big goals. The course of your career, family life, and daily habits are all going have to be adjusted for these things to happen. At any given time, you should be “adjusting” towards at least one of them. “Bowl a perfect game” would be an incredible experience, but even the best pro bowlers seldom achieve it. If you don’t want to spend your years becoming a world-class bowler, best leave it off. Remember, each item is a target, not a wish.

Avoid goals that depend on luck or other people’s co-operation. “Have lunch with the Pope” is probably setting yourself up for disappointment. Same with anything weather-dependent. “Cross Tower Bridge in the fog,” is possible but would require some luck and patience, while “Wait out a hurricane in a cave” is a real longshot. For each, ask yourself “Can I make this happen?”

Don’t necessarily omit items just because you’ve already done them. Ok, this is optional, but I think it helps to remember that you aren’t starting from zero. You know which experiences you’ve had that were ones you always wanted to do. If they really were significant goals at one time, put them on the list, already crossed off. They deserve to be there. But be strict with these; don’t add “Go to Los Angeles” just because you’ve been there, unless you always dreamed of it.

Don’t add easy items just to improve your “score.” Everything should have real emotional significance to you. Don’t add a list of cities just because you know you’re going to visit them soon. And definitely don’t add stuff like “Get an oil change.”

Beware of “one chance only” goals. The scope of a life list is your whole life, so specific times or dates should be avoided. For example:

• Run the 2011 New York Marathon
• Lose 20 pounds by December 31

There is a place for time-specific goals in life, but I’d advise keeping them off this list, because they can become impossible, sapping the integrity of your list. “Run a New York Marathon” is probably good enough. Setting a target date makes sense, but keep it off the list. You can always make another attempt.

Add small items too. Small, easy goals are helpful because a) it reminds you that not all meaningful accomplishments are huge and difficult, and b) you can cross something off this week if you want. “Pay for the car behind me at the toll booth” or “Try sake” are great examples. But they do have to be experiences you really want, not straw men to knock off. Remember: integrity is paramount.

Keep a “To Look Into” list. This is also an essential component to a healthy life list. Don’t be so quick to add something to your list just because it looks cool at first glance. Look into them first. Is it really worthwhile?

Remember that every item you add will take limited time and resources. You can make the really important things happen, but it’s too easy to keep adding exotic countries and neato skills to your list that you will never feel compelled to achieve.

Keep a running list of candidates for your list, but don’t put it on if you aren’t sure you intend to do it.

Tuscany, Italy

The Fun Part

Now it’s time to begin the rest of your life. The only ingredients required are imagination, integrity and intention.

Here are the steps:

1) Brainstorm.

Have fun with this. Dream. There are certainly already experiences you know you want to have. Write them down. Don’t worry at this point about how you will make these things happen. Suspend fears about money, difficulty or criticism. But do make sure they aren’t frivolous.

Consider what you want to do in the following areas:

• Travel (Tour China, see Angel Falls, camp in the Australian outback)
• Skills and knowledge (Speak Spanish, learn to write calligraphy, know your constitutional rights)
• Experiences (Drink in an Irish pub, play in a band, drive a Ferrari)
• Career (Own your own company, become a partner at your firm, quit the industry you’re in)
• Finances (Make six figures, become debt-free, donate 10% of your income to charity)
• Relationships and family (Have a child, trace your family tree, get married)
• Physical feats (Run a marathon, do 100 pushups, do a wheelie on your mountain bike)

Of course, no need to limit yourself to those.

Also, check out other people’s lists for ideas:

• John Goddard’s Life List – Must-see
• 43 Things
• SuperViva
• Creating a Bucket List – A mishmash of life list articles, including hundreds of ideas for goals
• Project 183

You don’t need to worry about getting every single goal down, you can always add items later.

2) Make an *official* list.

Pick a format. Pen and paper is just fine, but if your penmanship sucks you might do better to keep it in a word processor so it’s more attractive. You can also do it online, at 43 Things.

Add the items you intend to make reality. But keep your wits about you. Nothing gets on this list without these litmus tests:

• Am I doing this because I want to experience it, or just because I want to say I’ve done it?
• Do I honestly intend to invest the amount of time, money and energy this will take?
• Can I picture this actually happening, given the lifestyle I intend to live?

Remember, without integrity and intention, all is lost. Keep it real. If you only end up with 11 things that you truly intend to do in your life, that’s great. Better than 100 wishes. What we’re trying to avoid at all costs is a list that you forget about or stop looking at.

3) Give it a once-over and cut anything that isn’t truly compelling or that you can’t see happening. Be brutal with this, because every questionable item you eliminate frees up time and money that can go towards the really important ones. By paring it down you are making it more likely to succeed at what remains.

4) Put it in a prominent place. Print it out, or do up a good copy on nice paper, and post it somewhere where you will see it every day. It deserves that much. Remember, it’s your life, not a side project.

Public accountability is great. Create some by showing people. Post it on your website if you have one.

5) Pick one item you can do fairly soon, and take a step towards it right now. You should have some items that aren’t too difficult at all, maybe something you can even get done today. If not, take a significant step right now. The bigger the better. Imagine what it would feel like to actually go ahead sign up for French classes today, or even book a flight. Always be working on at least one item, preferably several.

Crossing Them Off

As I mentioned, knocking off the whole list isn’t the goal. It’s just a collection of goals. Getting them all would be spectacular, but even fifty percent of the average person’s list would represent an incredibly rich and notable life, with an abundance of stories to tell.

Those moments when you do achieve them will be precious indeed. And they will be specific, glorious moments: heaving yourself up the last step of the Matterhorn, tying on your black belt for the first time, clapping shut the rear cover of Crime and Punishment. Dreams do come true, if you make them.

***

This Thursday I will be publishing my own life list, such as it is, and adding a permanent page on Raptitude where you can see its progress any time.

I would love to see yours, or at least hear some of your life list items. Please share in the comments!

Photos by JRob86, Adam Baker, Robert Thomson and Eric Perrone

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Tagged as: ambitions, emotion, goals, individuality, love, moments, productivity, purpose, quality of life, self-esteem, travel

There's a lot riding on the effectiveness of your sales team. Every employee in your organization, and indeed the organization itself, is dependent on how well the sales team performs. You can be sure you have a top performing team if each of your salespeople has these eight attributes.

1. Achievement Drive
The best salespeople love good competition and thrive on besting themselves and others. They are never complacent or satisfied with the status quo. They celebrate every win, but only briefly; then the desire to experience another win kicks in and they are off on the next quest. When interviewing for sales positions, have applicants provide plenty of examples of setting goals, formulating action plans, overcoming obstacles, executing their plans, and getting what they want. People with great sales potential can readily do that. They are go-getters and generally have plenty of past achievements to point to. If you need someone who can hit the ground running, look for take-charge people who have an abundance of achievement drive and plenty of successful selling experience under their belt. These people don't come cheaply, but if you can afford them, they are worth every dime, provided they have the other attributes listed below as well.

If you can't afford the top guns, you can create your own by finding rookies with the right attributes and molding them into superstars. Real-world experience is a strong predictor of sales success, but that experience need not be direct selling experience. Research consistently shows that anyone with the right attributes can be successful at selling provided they receive good sales training. To ensure that you have the right people, know what attributes you need and have a sure-fire way to determine whether sales candidates possess them.

2. Empathy
Great salespeople are not just driven to achieve, they also genuinely care about people and insist on treating them well. They are good listeners and great problem-solvers who go out of their way to provide knock-your-socks-off service to every customer every time. Customers expect salespeople to be a knowledgeable expert and a caring consultant and salespeople that possess achievement drive well balanced by empathy deliver both. Empathy cannot be faked - most people can spot insincerity in an instant. Sales figures will most definitely reflect the degree to which salespeople possess enough empathy to be consistently considerate of the needs of the company on the one hand and their customers on the other. One caveat here; empathy without a balance of achievement drive can result in poor sales outcomes. A salesperson with too much empathy and not enough achievement drive will back down in the face of objections and frequently fail to close.

3. Self-Confidence
Self-confidence is essential to sales success. It is the factor that allows an individual to keep going in the face of adversity and is the best source of rejection protection. Great salespeople don't take rejection or the loss of a sale personally. They stay confident in their ability to present their product or service effectively and recognize that circumstances beyond their control sometimes influence outcomes.

4. Self-Esteem
Self-esteem is the "I'm worth the effort" factor that keeps great salespeople learning, perfecting and improving upon their skills. The best salespeople settle for nothing less than complete mastery of their profession. They spend a great deal of their free time doing things to improve themselves. They know that, in the world of sales, competence and expertise require constant updating of knowledge and skills and they do the work because they know they are worth the effort it takes to be the best.

5. Enthusiasm
In selling, enthusiasm comes from believing whole-heartedly in the company and what it offers. Not just a little, but completely. Salespeople with integrity will not sell something they don't believe in and without integrity, both you and your customers are in trouble. Your salespeople have got to believe that what you offer is exceptional in some way. If they don't, don't count on having a sales staff with much passion or enthusiasm for what they are selling. Before they will effectively sell for you, you have got to sell them on the value of your products and services, on your mission and vision for the company and on the rewards that will follow their actions. If your mission, vision and unique selling position (USP) is not readily understood, you will need to convey them. Help your salespeople see the connection between what your company provides and why providing it is important. Also convey how your offering is superior and uniquely useful to the customer. It's a mistake to have salespeople on staff who cannot generate and express passion around your offering. Without enthusiasm they are dead in the water and will likely drain the energy and enthusiasm from other people on the sales team.

6. Attentiveness
The most effective salespeople are very good at reading people and gathering important clues from the environment and they are masters at hearing what is not said. They are observant listeners as well as keen observers of non-verbal communications. They are proficient at using non-verbal feedback to know when to change the direction of a conversation, ask a question or attempt a close. They are also able to use the power of non-verbal communications to convey interest and concern, build rapport, test a customer's resistance or readiness to buy, and to connect with prospects and customers on the deepest levels.

7. Likeability
People do business with people they like. It's human nature and there is no getting around it. Of course, not all people like the typically high energy, powerful types that gravitate to selling and the most successful salespeople are aware of this fact. To compensate for it, they have learned to be chameleon-like and to adjust to their customer's style. Likeability, by this definition can be learned and, with the right training, is generally relatively easy to master for those who gravitate toward selling as a profession. Never underestimate the importance of the likeability factor. If you have salespeople on staff that are not willing or able to flex their style to make themselves likeable, either get them the training they need or move them out of the sales arena.

8. Self-Discipline
Top sales performers are very disciplined. They don't need external controls to keep them doing the right things at the right time. In fact, one of the worst things a sales manager can do to high performing salespeople is to manage them too closely. Great, or potentially great, salespeople want and need very little supervision. They are race horses, not plow horses, and managers will get a lot more out of them by giving them clear goals and then giving them their head and letting them run. Those who have the self-discipline to drive their own actions will generally bring in far more revenue when they are given plenty of freedom and flexibility to perform so long as it is well balanced by clear expectations, goals and objectives. If giving your sales staff plenty of freedom and flexibility has not resulted in increased revenue, you either don't have the right people in place or you have not clearly defined expectations, goals and objectives. Make sure you have the right people and that they know what you expect of them. The right people will make your job easy and keep your company profitable.

Selling is both a science and an art. The science comes from technical training. The art requires both natural talents and skills and, where natural talents are concerned, your people either have them or they don't, and few companies can afford to discover which it is the hard way.

Dr. Sherry Buffington is Chairman and CEO of NaviCore International, Inc., a firm dedicated to building high performance people. She is the originator and co-developer of the highly acclaimed CORE Multidimensional Awareness Profile (CORE MAP) and a leading expert on discovering and developing top talent. She has been helping organizations improve outcomes and increase profits since 1984. To learn more, visit their website at www.NaviCoreInternational.com

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Confidence: Your Key to Certain Success
By Sherry Buffington, Ph.D.

One of the most important attributes an individual can have is confidence. Confidence is invaluable in every area of life, but in business or in achieving any measure of greatness, it is absolutely essential. Unfortunately, there are few places we can go to learn this essential skill. Yet, it is a skill and, as such, can be developed with the right tools.

The first tool for gaining confidence is knowledge. Knowledge of your own strengths and limitations, and knowledge of the arena in which you wish to excel. But knowledge alone isn’t enough. Knowledge leads to confidence only when it is validated by experience. We test the validity of what we think or believe by putting the theory into actual practice and gathering data or feedback from the experience. If the feedback is positive, we assume our theories are correct and act accordingly. If the feedback is negative, the bold among us will adjust our course, while the more timid often allow the negative feedback to stop them cold.

Confidence can be gained by knowing, understanding and correctly applying the following formulas and factors:

(1) Knowledge + Experience + Positive Feedback = Confidence.
(2) Positive feedback comes from successful outcomes.
(3) Successful outcomes are the result of consistent practice and repeated attempts.
(4) Repeated attempts are possible only when we believe we will eventually succeed.

The formula seems to be saying that we must believe in our ability to succeed before we have experienced any semblance of success, and that is true. That’s where the knowledge part of the confidence formula comes in, and why it is the first equation in the formula. Before we can believe we will succeed without ever having made an attempt, we must have some knowledge as to what success entails and what strengths and abilities we bring to the mix. We must also know the truth about “failure”.

Failure is not the result of attempting to achieve a goal and falling short of the mark. Failure occurs when we allow falling short of the mark to cause us to quit trying. Actually, there are only two ways to fail. (1) Give up before you reach a goal you really want or (2) continue on a path that is wrong for you. Just because you made a wrong choice initially, there is no reason to believe the erroneous choice is the one you must stay with.

Suppose, for example, you got into your car intending to meet a friend at an unfamiliar location. You get turned around on the way there and get lost. Using failure formula number one you would discover you are lost and attempt to correct your course. But, because you are too far off course for just one correction to get you back on track, you make another correction and another one. After three or four corrections you decide you will never be able to find your way, so you give up, park your car, and never reach your destination.

Using failure formula number two you would decide that even though you made a wrong turn, you must stick with it because that’s the direction you are now headed in and to make a new choice would mean you failed when you made the original decision that got you lost. So you continue down the wrong road, knowing it’s wrong, but refusing to make an alteration because you’ve already made a choice, however wrong it may be.

Both scenarios sound pretty absurd in that context, but the world is full of people who give up and quit before reaching their goal, and who stay with bad choices long after they have discovered they are bad.

To ensure success you must be willing to alter your course and keep altering it. You must be willing to try again and again, as many times as it takes, to reach your destination. Whether you reach it or not will depend on your belief in your ability to eventually arrive and that brings us back to the confidence formula.

The faith to keep trying ultimately comes from knowing yourself and your abilities, and knowing how to use them most effectively. In the hustle-bustle of today’s world, we sometimes forget to take a thorough look at our most valuable asset . . . ourselves. Only with self-awareness and understanding can we come to believe in our ability to find the right solution and to arrive at our goals.

People who don’t know themselves are easily side-tracked. They have no well-defined personal boundaries and no center of power. A thorough and accurate self-assessment can provide the compass we need to get and stay on track. Without a center of power and personal boundaries to guide us, there is no way we can achieve our goals because there is no way to know for sure what our goals are, or should be.

Happy, centered, well-directed successful people are people who know their own core being and honor it. These are the people who have the basic tools to attempt new things, to set new goals and to persist in pursuing them. These people succeed because every achieved goal increases their faith in their ability to succeed and enables them to try greater and greater things. The happy result is a high degree of self-confidence and success which just keeps perpetuating itself.

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Article by Sherry Buffington, Ph.D.

Sherry Buffington, Ph.D. is president of NaviCore International, Inc., a Dallas based training,
consulting and coaching firm which specializes in helping individuals succeed and organizations increase their productivity and profits by maximizing the potential of their people.

Buying a hot dog is an essential, unquestionable transaction, the lowest common denominator of American commerce. The sale of a hot dog delivers about the same amount of marginal satisfaction to the buyer, who gets -- by my reckoning -- about 40 cents worth of food, heated and assembled nicely for $1.75, and to the vendor, who makes something like $1.35 for three moves -- unfolding a bun, tonging a hot dog, and splashing on some relish. No sales, no specials, no markdowns. Day in, day out, clear and glorious. No one screws anyone. The emptor is plenty caveat.

That's why I wanted a deal.

I've always understood that certain transactions are designed to be pushed back and forth, made with the expectation of counteroffer, laid on the table in order to be hashed out for weeks or bickered over for mere minutes in the halo of a streetlight. I like getting my price, something that acknowledges my end, makes me feel my business is appreciated. In my time I've struck deals with landlords, car mechanics, electricians, house painters, cable guys, real estate agents, drug dealers, with bullies, bosses, pimps, pit bosses, and local politicians. These people expect no less; negotiation is their creed. But I wanted to test myself.

What if I opened every transaction to a haggle? What if I made my own bid on a TiVo? A counteroffer on dry cleaning? What if I treated the list price for a dress shirt as merely a suggestion? Could I insert myself into every transaction so that price wasn't so much of an absolute? I wanted to know. For three months, I would haggle everything that came my way, insisting to everyone who would listen that price was a fluid force, a matter of argument.

And I started with a hot dog.

The vendor was working a cart on the corner of Forty-seventh and Broadway, across from the Edison Hotel in Manhattan. I stood in a nearby Starbucks and watched as he rolled the cart into place and laid out his garnishes before I approached.

I ordered my dog -- his first sale of the day, I knew. He poked around in his vat and drew one out. Younger than I, this was a man working without thinking, without even looking my way. I decided on the direct approach, no bullshit, to make him snap to, just to see what it would get me.

"Any chance you'd knock a buck off that price?" I said. He stared at me so hard, I couldn't focus on the city moving behind him. "First dog of the day?" I said. "You know, special sale?" He held the hot dog over its bun as if the next thing I said might make it drop.

"First what?" he said, not looking pleased.

"You know," I said. "First-hot-dog special." He glared at me. "Jump-start things. It would be good," I said, without being certain of any retail equation that supported the assertion, "for everybody."

"Fuck no," he said. He looked me up and down. "Why? You don't have money?"

I shrugged. Of course I had money. He knew that much. There was a five-dollar bill pinched in my fingers even now. I crumpled it down, hoping he wouldn't see. It had been perhaps twenty seconds since the deal was put on the table. I had made so many mistakes that I simply wanted to rewind time to the point where I was back in Starbucks, thinking I had everything figured out. I could see a new strategy, a new family of strategies, becoming clear to me. Open with a little banter. Leave the money in the pocket. Wait till the dog is in the bun.

I pointed to the hot dog. "It doesn't look all that good," I said, hoping, I guess, that he'd take a look at what he was offering the world -- a mere hot dog -- and capitulate.

"What?" he said. "It's a hot dog."

"Looks good to me," the woman behind me said, holding out her money.

The hot-dog man looked at me then and slapped closed the lid to his cart. "No deals!" he snarled, wrapping the hot dog in paper with a twist and reaching past me to the woman.

She held up her hands. "Not without peppers on it."

You gotta have rules. I decided early on that paying a salesman twenty dollars on the side so that I could get the floor model of a microwave was less a negotiation than a bribe. Years ago, I bought my best leather jacket in the West Village and got $150 off when I offered to pay cash. When I asked the Russian salesclerk how that worked, why cash was so king, he shrugged. "We will mark the coat as stolen," he said. "It is very simple. Boss will not care." More like a felony than a negotiation, really.

And as I learned after the hot-dog incident, you gotta have a plan. Particularly when your next task is to haggle the single most inarguable, unapproachable price in this great republic, a price flashed on the streets, a price seemingly outside the influence of anyone -- prince, pauper, and, as evidenced these last four years, president alike: the price of a gallon of gas.

This time, I did my homework. After driving past just about every station in my hometown in Indiana, and then most of the county, recording prices, noting locations, I headed straight to the most expensive station and parked in front of a pump.

I shouldered my way in the door, bells ajangle, announcing to the two clerks that I was ready to rumble. "Is that price firm?" I asked, hooking a thumb over my shoulder toward the pumps.

The clerk behind the counter deadeyed me. I was certain no one had ever asked her this before, but to use the word slack-jawed would be to understate her lack of interest. "What price?" she said.

"Gas. A gallon of gas. It seems high."

She looked at my car, then back at me, sighed deeply, then leaned forward on her large bosom. "We can't do nothing about that."

I'd expected resistance. I had worked out my own special move for this occasion. I whipped out a Polaroid of the price a mere eighteen miles away. "Ten cents cheaper," I said softly. "Just down the highway. Today." My coup de grâce! My hand was visible in the shot, holding a copy of that day's newspaper, fuzzy and unrecognizable.

She perked up then, passed the picture to the other clerk, and laughed a little. "Well," she said, "it's worth the drive."

I sagged. "Are you saying you can't knock off even five cents a gallon?"

She looked at me then, straight in the eyes. "Honey," she said, "I'm just saying I'll drive over tonight and fill up my own self."

I was a little embarrassed. Worse, I really needed gas. So I slapped a five on the counter and said no more.

It was clear that I needed help. There are, of course, real professionals who can teach you to haggle. Universities now offer advanced degrees in mediation and conflict resolution. On multiple shelves at the larger bookstores there exists an entirely approachable literature of negotiation. Throw a rock. Hit an expert.

I chose to start at the top, training with the Godfather of Negotiation, Herb Cohen, author of You Can Negotiate Anything, a seminal classic of empowerment lit, and the recent Negotiate This! He's got the requisite experience, having served as a consultant in the Iran hostage crisis and the NFL players strike, taught at Harvard and the FBI Academy, counseled Carter and Reagan alike. I journeyed to his Watergate apartment in search of help.

He sat before me, an old Jewish guy in a plain white T-shirt and short gym shorts, sitting surprisingly far back in his Barcalounger, sipping iced tea. It was like sitting at the feet of the master. Literally. From my perspective I could see mostly the bottoms of his shoes. He had recently stepped in gum.

"What people don't understand is that a price itself is a kind of negotiating point," he says, snapping through my all-day session in fast-forward. "They're just making you an offer. In some ways, a price is a disadvantage to the seller, because if the sign says $99, the buyer might think it's a steal. He might have been willing to pay $129. And the seller doesn't get a chance at that extra $30."

Exactly! I tell him about my pitch for the gallon of gas.

"Those women don't care where you buy your gas. They don't have any stake in it," he says. "You have to speak to the right people -- the people with the power to make changes. Besides, you didn't offer them anything."

How's that?

"You're offering them less money," he says, "without giving them anything in return." He holds a finger straight up in the air and wags it at me. "You always have something to offer. Loyalty. Future business. Increased volume. Whatever. You have to think about their needs. You have to create an offer that gives something rather than takes it away."

After a couple hours of this, he wants lunch, and I offer to buy. His wife comes in as he stands. "You're not going anywhere in those shorts," she says.

Cohen looks at me, hands out, palms up. "You're not buying lunch." Then he looks at his wife. "I'll put on a coat."

"A coat!" she says. "Those are gym shorts!"

"They look fine," Cohen says.

"They do not look fine," she says. "They look awful, Herb."

He points at me. "You aren't buying lunch."

"There is no lunch," his wife says, "if you don't change those shorts."

Cohen concedes. I concede. Some things can't be negotiated.

I am not a friendly person by nature. I am willing to make small talk, but only on select days. When the sun shines, when the hormones flow the right way. Other than that, I'm gruff and disinterested, a little demanding, and bored silly by empty chatter. But after speaking to Herb, I sought out and bonded with the stoned salesman at Best Buy and asked after the children in the clerk's photo badge at Wal-Mart. "Humanize yourself," Herb had told me. "Make them understand your life before you make an offer."

So it was that while haggling over an eighty-hour TiVo at Circuit City, I blurted out, "It's for my son!" And, realizing that that made me about as remarkable as a sneeze, I added, without thinking, "He's narcoleptic!" A complete lie. First, I already have a forty-hour TiVo. Furthermore, my son is no narcoleptic. In point of fact, he might even be encouraged to watch a little less television. But I spun out a tale of a boy who needed to rewind television when he woke up from his sudden fits of sleep. It was all very sad, but we had learned to cope. The salesman called the manager. The manager told me there had been a kid like that in his French class in high school. I might need a bigger memory cache if my son slept more than thirty minutes at a pop. He made suggestions. "Does he fall asleep during sports, too?" he asked earnestly. Then he gave me a price, sixty dollars below list. I thanked him, told him I needed to talk to my ex-wife, then took the price and drove across the street to Best Buy, where I got them to knock off another twenty bucks.

I started using other strategies, too. Every time I stood at a counter, every time I stared into another pimply face, every time I set my purchase on the flat space between, I held up what I was buying as if I weren't all that sure I wanted it. When I asked if a price on a tube of Crest was firm, I was met with the blankness that only a haggler knows. But I found that if you ask the right questions, there are deals to be had. I got 20 percent off a two-liter of Popov at CVS when I learned -- simply by asking -- of a sale that hadn't happened yet, from a clerk I bonded with who seemed to feel that I had somehow missed an opportunity that was still six days away.

Within weeks I discovered that restaurants will typically give you four desserts for the price of three if you ask for a sampler. That a draft beer is generally good for a free refill with a little prodding. That you can get an extra 20 percent off at Ikea by pressing past the cashiers, past the floor salespeople, up into the bottommost managerial rungs, by comparing the price of one perfectly well priced dresser with its slightly less well priced but better-sized counterpart one floor down.

I was pleased with my success so far, but I wanted a bigger test, something with a whiff of exclusivity. So I decided to have a dress shirt made at Nordstrom. From the moment they laid the cloth over my shoulders, I began to discuss the pleasure of having a shirt that fit right. "Every man should have a custom shirt," I said, standing in the cozy, paneled fitting room, cup of warm tea steaming by the mirror. "It seems more like a right than a privilege." The tailor, pins fanned in mouth, concurred by humming. The salesman nodded, adding that he had three.

"Three is a start!" I said. "I'd like one for every day of the week."

"That's my goal, too," he said.

"You should make me a package deal," I said. "Give me a better price and sell me a week's worth."

A passing sales manager told me the price was firm, that the shirts never went on sale.

"Never?" I said. "You never make deals?"

"Rarely," he sniffed.

That was my crack. "Rarely?" I said. "Or never?" He sighed then, having opened the door that little bit. I held out my hand and introduced myself. "I'm Tom," I said, not having the heart to tell him I'm the guy who can always outwait a salesman. I was giving him something, I told him. I was selling him an idea: a week's worth of shirts. I could see that he liked the concept. "Consider me your word of mouth," I added. We settled at buy four, get one free.

Rarely, my ass!

Negotiation can be a fairly inexact science. You often end up with more than you want, or less, or something else entirely. I had wanted only one shirt, especially at $129. Now I was looking at five. But I would have a week's worth, and, more than that, I'd made myself a deal. Try that on an off-the-rack shirt and they'll probably tell you to wait for it to go on sale. But when you're dealing with a product built on service, the price hangs in the air in front you. You bat at it a little and you can knock it down.

Take my front lawn. I didn't particularly want it aerated, but when I saw a worker plugging my neighbor's yard, it looked like the smart thing to do. Especially if I could get my price. I approached the lawn guy and peppered him with questions. What were the benefits? Breaking up the roots, loosening the soil, blah, blah, blah. I listened intently, without any interest -- other than getting a better price than my neighbor. I asked him again and again, until it seemed he had a stake in this, that it was an argument he wanted to win. This was part of Herb's strategy, too -- allowing others the space to tell their story.

"Since you're here," I finally said, "could you give my lawn a quick once-over?"

"Once-over," he said. "You mean free?"

Eventually he agreed to do what he called a seventy-five-dollar job for twenty dollars -- if he didn't have to do the hill in back and if I agreed to a winterizing contract. Only later did I realize the guy had locked me in to a $240 commitment for about thirty minutes of hard labor. It was, at best, a murky victory.

Beware of the counteroffer. That was the lesson there. And so I added it to the list I was developing, my own personal rules for negotiating. Never let them know how much you have to spend. Draw people into your life. Show your personality. Learn people's names. Work your way up to the person who has a stake in the sale and the power to make a deal.

First among these rules was Cohen's advice not to think of money as the only thing I had to offer. I found that trading favors proved relatively easy. I negotiated with the local street sweeper to make three passes in front of my house in exchange for calling my neighbors and having them move their cars. I got my coffee at the local diner in exchange for always parking in the lot of the liquor store across the street. I cut my dry-cleaning bill in half in exchange for returning two hundred wire hangers that had built up in my closet.

I began to stand around and think over the possibilities of a transaction before I leapt in. I would scratch my chin. The cashier might look at me then and query, "What can I do for you?" At times like this, I would look for openings.

I bought candy on the cheap at the dollar store by making an offer ten minutes before it closed on Halloween. "I'll give you ten bucks for what's left," I told the manager, who jingled her keys nervously.

"It's a dollar store," she said. "And that's a lot of bags."

I reached into the bin and counted. "Thirty-one," I said. "I'll clean you right out. No leftovers."

She laughed and looked out the window. She was, I realized, like most people, a prisoner of her job. She had places to go, children in costumes. "I'll bag it up," I said, reaching into the bin.

"Okay," she said. "But only if you help me take that bin to the back before you leave." Gladly, I told her. Now she was talking my language.

These things fill your head. The smallest triumphs. The tiniest beats. Quarters add up. Dollars. Deals. And soon you don't look at a sticker price as anything more than a warning sign in the road. Curve ahead. Dip. Yield.

Then came the moment when the lessons, long since internalized in the process of negotiating everything from a plate of ribs to a gross of no. 2 pencils, came together and saved me no small measure of cash, heartache, and aggravation. When the process of negotiating was less an exercise than a necessity.

I was on vacation when I took it upon myself to go swimming with the keys to my rental car in my pocket. I lolled in the waves for half an hour or so before I realized that I'd lost the keys, like a damned fool. We were renting a house on an isolated beach in south Florida. It was Saturday night.

When I called the roadside-assistance hotline and gave them the news of the keys, the woman gave a deep sigh. "That can be expensive," she said. I took a deep breath myself. We both knew what we were getting into. A negotiation was about to commence. By this point, I was interested in just this kind of fight.

I knew right where to begin. "What's your name?" I said.

"Darnita," she said.

"Well, give me the worst-case scenario, Darnita. Just hit me straight between the eyes with it." I wanted her to feel what I was facing.

She laughed. "Well, it's a transponder key, which means it can't be reproduced, so the car will have to be towed into a dealer on Monday. If they can make you a key -- if -- well, it's going to cost a lot."

"How much, Darnita?" I said.

"I hate saying this, but we had a Camry last week that billed out at $1,200 for a new key."

Once I would have panicked. Once I would have allowed the anger to rise in my throat. I would have told her she was fucking crazy if she thought I'd pay $1,200 for a car key. But now I simply leaned back. I knew what I had to do. It would take me some time, but I decided in those first moments that I would flip this whole thing. I had the tools.

"Darnita, put yourself in my shoes," I said. "I'm on vacation, and my rental-car company doesn't have the sense to save an extra set of keys. I'm thirty miles from town, with four children and little food, and I don't have a car until Monday. I mean, you can imagine the kind of panic I'm in, can't you?"

"Oh, Lord," she said. "We'll have to do something."

They replaced the car that night, even reimbursing me for a hundred-dollar cab ride. When they didn't show, twice, to tow the other car, I used that against them. I'd call again; I'd tell it all in order with dates and times, the inconveniences. I would push past Darnita to her supervisors, to the regional manager, upward, ever upward. I would draw the picture for each of them. Me: silly but not selfish, having made an innocent mistake. Them: duty bound but helpful, able to, darn it, reach out to this one guy and offer him a break. I'd tell the story again and again, amplifying the suffering, downplaying the fault, subtly shifting my annoyance from my own carelessness to the stiff corporate response they mustered. I'd keep the anger to a minimum. I'd make them laugh. Darnita, Chantelle, Marilyn, Brent, David F., Steve. Up and up the line I went, giving each a picture of a vacation being stolen from me, and eventually I came to convince them it was their fault.

Finally, on the fourth day, I got a call from the regional manager in Tampa. "Look, Tom," she said, after I greeted her by name. "We know this has been a nightmare for you. I'm just sorry it ever happened. We're comping the rental for you, and we'll be down to pick up the car later today."

"And the keys?"

"Forget it," she said. "We'll take care of it. You've been more than patient. Everybody here says you've been terrific." I found myself silent. But what transpired next surprised me most of all.

"We just want to say," she pressed on, "thank you."

Last week I was walking my dog in the large city near my town, in the hours before my son's football game. I leaned back and dozed on the marble steps of a war memorial, enjoying the last bit of sunshine for the season. At one point, I opened my eyes and there was a man selling hot dogs on the sidewalk below.

So I stood. A hot dog was oddly appealing to me just then. The cart was loaded with fresh chopped onions, a warm tin of chili, a pile of shredded cheese. I approached and offered my money. He handed me my hot dog.

For one moment, I thought about making an offer on a second one. But I heard the words of the master, telling me to let it go. "Is screwing a working guy out of seventy-five cents really worth the time?" Herb had asked me during our session. "What's the hourly rate there?" So I started slathering on the mustard instead.

"I've got something for you," the vendor said, and when I turned to look, he was holding a hot dog.

I smiled and shook my head. "I'm good," I said. "No thanks."

But he was holding it out for my dog, who wolfed it out of his hands without pause. I laughed. The man seemed happy; the dog, ecstatic. Why not? It's what I had been saying from the start. A free hot dog? That's a good deal for all.

How to Demo Twitter

Posted 1 day ago and seen 5612 times

This is the set of links that I used to demo Twitter to the Surfing Industry Manufacturers Association. The purpose was to show consumer brands like Reef, Sector 9, and Sanuk how they could use Twitter as a tool. I went down through this list to show them why Twitter is such a valuable marketing tool.

Introduction

Home page

Profile page

Monitor

Search

Surftech

Starbucks VIA

Guy Kawasaki or Alltop

Watch

Search for “Comcast”

Search for “Comcast ” or “Directv”

Sell

Dell Outlet

Kogi BBQ

Support

Comcast Cares

JetBlue

Interact

Virgin America

Starbucks

Prospect

Camaro

Camaro near Palo Alto

Advanced searches

Surfing or skateboarding

Tools

Tweetdeck for Mac or PC

Tweetie for iPhone

Tweetmeme to build traffic

Twitterfeed to insert RSS feeds.

CoTweet for a "CRM" approach.

Objective Marketer for tweeting.

Best Practices

Always be linking—“inform.” Example: Surfing.alltop.

Always be responding.

Always be getting retweeted.

Dogmas to Ignore

You should “me-form.”

You should not repeat tweets.

You should not automate tweeting.

You should not use ghosts.

Comments (4)

Oct 03, 2009

Joe Buhler said...

Good stuff, but I wouldn't put any advice related to Twitter at the level of "dogma", a bit over the "all"- top, maybe?

Oct 03, 2009

DotSauce said...

This is great list of businesses who get Twitter. I think Hummingbird 2 would be a fantastic addition to Twitter tools section. ( http://bit.ly/eH12M ) This new software lets you keyword target and follow real people. Really excellent performance for small business and individuals looking to gain alot of interested followers and new customers.

Oct 03, 2009

Jean said...

really .. nice post ..congrats .. Out ghost and spammers users on twitter

Oct 03, 2009

James Deck said...

Fantastic set of links. I especially like how you categorised them by best practice category. Thanks guy!

Leave a comment...

Photo by pedrosimoes7

Guest post by Mr. Self Development.

Everything that exists has a purpose. My computer has a purpose, my shoes have a purpose, my watch has a purpose, if I had a dog, he or she would have a purpose, and most importantly, you have a purpose.

You showed up on this planet for a reason. Maybe you showed up to sing, or to dance, or to teach, or to write, or to entertain, or to act, or to talk, or to cook, or to paint, or any other thing, but you showed up for a reason. There’s a purpose that you came here to fulfill. Don’t “sell out!”

In other words, don’t settle for a life of doing a mundane job that you’re not passionate about. You only live once, you must live your life to the fullest; you must die empty.

Don’t buy into the thinking that it’s too hard to become a singer or whatever else you’re passionate about. It’s exactly that thinking that will make it appear like an impossible task, and your perception will become your reality.

Yes, it will take work; you and I both know that anything worth achieving is going to take a ton of work, but we also know that it will be worth it in the end.

Everyone is born a diamond in the rough; we just need to be uncovered. The truth is, if anyone else can succeed in this world, so can you. No one is any better than you.

So don’t sell out! No matter how long it takes, I don’t care if it takes the next 45 years; you owe it to your creator and to yourself to live out your intended purpose.

You will never be truly happy until you’re doing what you were created to do. Yes, you may be able to settle and push your feelings of dissatisfaction to the side, but there’s nothing like the exhilaration of doing what you love and watching others benefit from it. Even if you never make a dime from it…the joy of doing what you love is priceless.

Don’t “sell out” because you’re afraid of how much work it will take

Even natural-born hunters like lions must spend years practicing before they’re any good. It’s definitely going to take a lot of work to live your passion. Probably many hours for many years, but when you’re doing what you love, you’ll enjoy it, and you’ll work hard to ensure that it doesn’t take you forever to succeed.

Don’t “sell out” because you’re afraid of how much time it will take

You’ve probably heard the story of the guy who wanted to be a doctor, but was unwilling to go back to school for eight years. When asked by his friend why he wasn’t going to fulfill his dream of becoming a doctor he said, “I would love to become a doctor, but I would have to go back to school for eight years, and in eight years I’m going to be 40 years old! His wise friend responded, “Well, how old will you be in eight years if you don’t go back to school?”

The point is the years will go by, the time will pass, you will eventually get into your future; make sure you arrive there having accomplished what you were created to accomplish. So what if it takes you a little longer than normal, so what if you succeed at 60 instead of 16, will it matter at 60? No. The only thing that will matter is if you sold yourself short, if you settled for mediocrity when you were born for greatness.

Don’t “sell out” because you’re afraid you’ll fail!

You will eventually succeed. If you work in an area you’re passionate about and give your best, you will eventually experience success.

In conclusion, do what you were created to do, even if you must do it while you’re working your “9-5” job, with seven kids, a dog, and a hamster. Make the time; nothing is more important. The world needs what you have, and the world is waiting for you to be manifested. Success will be yours when you do!

This guest post was written by Mr. Self Development. Please support Mr. Self Development by subscribing to his blog. Mr. Self Development is a motivational author who offers a practical guide to success and wealth.

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