Reality Upgrade

There are different ideas of how long it takes to form an initial impression of someone, from 7 seconds to 60. However, everyone agrees that within only a few moments of meeting you, your new contact has already decided whether they like you or not. From that point on, all of your interaction with that person will be either reinforcing that opinion, or fighting hopelessly against it.

The reason that the first impression is so important is that most decisions are made emotionally, not intellectually. For all that we would like to believe we are rational beings, humans are more controlled by our subconscious than we would like to admit. If a potential client likes you in the first sixty seconds, then the only thing you have to convince them of is what to hire you for. On the other hand, if a potential client does not like you in the first sixty seconds, you have almost no chance at all of being hired, no matter how much convincing you do.

The trick to real marketing, then, is not to sell what you do, but to sell yourself; or more specifically, your brand. And you have between 7 and 60 seconds to do it.

A great example of marketing to emotions rather than intellect is Budweiser. Anyone who drinks beer regularly knows that Budweiser is not the best quality beer. However, they sell more than 50% of the beer sold in the US. The reason for this is that they are not trying to sell their beer as the best, but as the one that is the most fun. After all, the “beer drinking ideal” is to have a six pack and hang out with friends. So Budweiser is trying to connect their brand with the feelings of being with friends, partying, hot girls, etc. And it is clearly working.

So learning from Budweiser’s example, you need to find what emotion your potential client is looking for, and connect your brand to that emotion. Then, throughout your relationship, reinforce that emotional connection. Remember, there may be hundreds of people/companies that can do what you do, but only you make your client feel the way you can.

Step 1 - It’s all about them

Step 3 - Keep it simple

Branding? What?

Branding has become a catchphrase in the marketing world. I tend to be biased against anything that is a catchphrase for anything, but in this case I will make an exception, because the concept of branding is incredibly useful. 

Branding can be a great marketing tool, and I will talk about it from that perspective in this article and the ones that follow, but “branding” like this can mean a lot of things. Branding can be the brand name of a huge company, like Coca-Cola or Nike. It can be the local reputation of a small company. It can be the “personal brand” of a consultant or freelancer. 

But it can also be your own personal brand, the image of you as a person. 

In the same way, marketing can be selling a product or a service, but it can just as easily be selling yourself. You sell yourself in everything from a job interview to meeting someone in a bar. Developing your own personal brand is critical in social situations of all kinds. In future articles I will talk more about using branding in casual social situations, rather than business. But for now we will discuss the general concepts of branding in business. 

The first step to branding success is that it’s all about them.

Find out what your client wants, and provide it.

That sounds a lot simpler than it actually is. The real difficulty is in the first part: Find out what your client wants.

This is probably the most difficult part of branding success. The problem is that most of the time, even clients themselves do not know what they want.

For example, I worked for an engineering firm who performed design services for new buildings. The obvious answer to the question “what do our clients want” was simple - they wanted good engineers, for a good price. If we asked them what they wanted, they would even say so.

This was a problem for us, because no matter how good and cheap we were, there is always someone better and cheaper.

Luckily, we realized that what our clients actually wanted was something else entirely. What they really wanted, whether they realized it consciously or not, was comfort. Designing and building a new building is a very complicated, expensive, and confusing process. Our clients were rightly nervous. They were afraid that the engineering firm they hired would mess something up, cause them problems, and cost them more money in the long run.

So, we stopped selling our design services, and started selling comfort. We became the company that an owner would not have to worry about later. Yes, we were more expensive, but isn’t it worth it to know you won’t have headaches later?

And it worked.

So the first step is find out what your client wants, and then give it to them.

Step 2 - Hearts, then minds

I first understood the power of the body to affect the mind when I was sitting in a yoga class many years ago. I was in the class after a very long day, I was tired, and I did not want to be there. I was grumpy, annoyed, distracted, and sleepy. Not the best disposition for a class about relaxation.

The teacher said “Take a deep breath.” I did not really want to, since I was feeling somewhat rebellious. But I was already there, so…..

I took a deep breath, and like magic, I calmed down. My frustration and tension and distraction melted away, and suddenly I was ready to do yoga.

The best way for you to know what I felt is to try it yourself. So take a deep breath.

Go ahead. I’ll wait.

See how that felt? It had nothing to do with your mind…that was your body taking over, relaxing for you.

The deep breath is a great example of how breathing can contribute to relaxation, but there is much more to this concept. By understanding how the subconscious mind uses the body to communicate,

Nervousness, confidence, shyness, anger, fear, discomfort, sexual attraction; all of these are communicated by body language, and for many of us this happens without our even being aware of it. But for those of us who are aware of it…knowledge is power.

Not only is it possible to bypass the subconscious signals and intercept that communication, but it is even possible to change our own moods and feelings. Act confident, and you will become confident. Act fearful, and you will be fearful. More than what you eat, you are what you do.

In this series on body language, we will explore together several aspects of body language, the subconscious signals that each bit of body language demonstrates…and how to fake it till you make it.

After all, in the words of the great psycologist Carl Jung: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”

Direct your own life. Be your own fate.

One major casualty of the computer revolution is the customer service representative.  Or at least, one that answers the phone when you call.

By now, we are all familiar with the “Please listen carefully to the following as our menu options have changed…” uttered in the dead voice of the chick from Terminator, and navigating the labyrinth of phone menus has become a skill all its own.

But when you really just want to talk to a real, live human, and mashing zero repeatedly isn’t working, you can try these two websites, both of which have “secret” phone numbers for quite a few companies that connect you directly to a person.

Get Human

Contact Help

So before you start cursing impotently at the uncaring, inhuman voice on the phone, try the numbers here.

Maybe you can curse impotently at an uncaring human instead.

Willpower is a wonderful thing, and unfortunately it is a limited commodity. But there are a few interesting ways to build up a little more willpower, including something as simple as brushing your teeth with your non-dominant had for a couple of weeks.  

This article in the New Your Times from last year makes some interesting points about willpower, about how it is used and used up, and how you can build up your willpower reserves.

I find it helpful to think of willpower as a sort of credit card. When I need to do something hard, like not eating that ice cream until after dinner, I have to take out a little willpower credit to do it. Then I have to make payments in the form of eating well, resting, brushing my teeth left-handed, and so on.

But on the other hand, when I do something tough, like going to the gym no matter how hard it might be to get motivated, my willpower credit limit goes up.

So go out there and increase your credit limit!

Yes, email filters can take a little time to set up, but by god is that time worth it in the long run.

This list of tips from Lifehacker can be used as a checklist of sorts to buff up your email filtering.

So take a look, spend some time setting up good filters, and give your Blackberry a break.

Google Voice is a new service by Google that seems like it could save a lot of time and effort.  The service gives you a phone number, and then lets you add phone numbers to your account and set up different caller settings, so that different callers ring through to different phones.  You can also have some callers rings straight through to voice mail. And, get this, it converts the voice mail to text, and emails it to you.  

This is great for someone like me.  I hate to be interrupted by phone spam, but then I miss calls from my bank.  And then I have to listen to intermitably long voice mails with someone rambling for five minutes before mumbling their phone number faster than I can write.  This seems much easier.

One update to this service that just came out is integration with Android.  So if you have a G1, and all your contacts are already integrated with Google, this can be an especially useful service.  With the Android plugin, you can actually use your Android phone to place calls where the caller ID will show your Google Voice number. 

As an added bonus, this service lets you give out your phone number with impunity, and not worry about it.  This can be especially useful for anyone who has a tendancy to give out a lot of buisiness cards to random people (ahem).

The service is not open to the general public yet, but it should be soon.  When it does, I’ll try it out and report back.

Welcome to Reality Upgrade.

The entire history of human evolution (or Divine will, or aliens, whatever) has been slowly distilling the very best traits of mankind, carefully weeding out the weak or useless parts. Generations of your ancestors struggled and lived and had hot wild sex, all for the purpose of making you the best that you could be.  You are the absolute top of the line, cutting edge, best of the best human that there could possibly be.  (Well, you might be the cheaper, generic brand version, but you’re still pretty awesome.)  

Your ancestors went through a lot of effort to give you the very best hardware that you could possibly have.  Shit, some of your ancestors probably had to fight saber toothed tigers in order to pass on their genes to you.  The least you can do is update your software.

Upgrade your reality here.