You’re not in business to sell a product.
You’re not in business to provide a service.

You’re in business to become known for a unique way of interacting with the world.

Interactions that get talked about.
Interactions that give the gift of social elevation.
Interactions that very well could change people forever.

THAT’S THE GOAL: To interact with people in a way that nobody else can touch.

Today we’re going to explore a collection of interactions to incorporate into your daily worklife:1. Interact with swift responsiveness. The medium is the message. The speed of the response is the response. And when you become known for returning calls, sending emails and replying to instant messages quicker than anyone else, people don’t just pay attention – they pay money.

Speed is a form of currency. Speed is an asset that appreciates with every interaction in which it is exalted. And even if you don’t have all the answers. Customers would rather you get back to them right away just to say you’re on the case, than having to wait three days just to discover you still haven’t solved it. When was the last time one of your customers said, “Wow, that was fast?”

2. Interact with nonstop gratitude. Gratitude is not a chore. It’s not a corporate initiative. And it’s not some annual act of forced kindness that makes you feel good about yourself. Gratitude is giving the gift of attention. Gratitude is existing in a perpetual posture of thankfulness. Gratitude is a telling people how much better your life is because of them.

Instead of reaching for another robotic, ready-made script about how important someone’s call is, say something that invites customers to store memory in the heart. How could you turn your words into a gift that erases the memory of every other gift customers have ever received?

3. Interact with true care. You don’t need another soulless bureaucratic tactic that bastardizes caring into a technique. What you need is to create a sincere individual strategy that shows people you care about their experience when they’re interacting with you.

That’s the beauty of care: It’s found in the basic. It’s when you bother to bother. It’s when you show up, even when you’re scared, and take five extra minutes to do something that people remember forever. The best part is, caring is like epoxy glue. It only takes a few drops to make it stick. Your just have to listen to find out where people need the glue applied. Do you have the courage to care?

4. Interact with unexpected honesty. Honestly is attractive because it always has been. It’s a classical value. And few virtues have been around longer. What’s changed is, technology makes dishonesty easier to spot, quicker to spread and harder to disguise.

Every interaction that leaves a customer skeptical about your truthfulness, makes your company suck a little bit more. If you want your interactions to matter, tell the truth when there’s no reason to be honest. Tell the truth when most people would say nothing. How are you branding your honesty?

5. Interact with compassionate intimacy. Instead of plotting how customers fit into your nice little marketing plan; focus on how your product fits into their lives. And not just the conversation about their lives, but their actual lives.

That’s the distinction: Intimacy isn’t starting with customer in mind – it’s start with the customer. Intimacy isn’t projecting onto the marketplace what you think they ought to want – it’s asking people to tell you what matters to them, shutting up and taking notes. What would happen if you treated customer intimacy as an entire business model, not just a marketing tool?

6. Interact with exquisite playfulness. Wearing a nametag everyday never fails to generate spontaneous moments of playfulness. The cool part is, these are people I’m meeting for the first time. What about your customers? Is their very first interaction with your brand friendly, fun and relaxed?

Or has your organization – in the name of professionalism – prohibited its employees from expressing any shred of playfulness?

The point is: Not every customer craves an unforgettable service experience. Sometimes they just want to laugh. To play. To forget about life for ten seconds. Maybe if you focused on that, they’d come back. How playful are you willing to be?

7. Interact with loving unfairness. Love isn’t supposed to be fair. If it was, it wouldn’t be love – it would be strategy. Silly rabbit. Fairness is for kids. That’s how love works: It finds the people who don’t deserve it – then offers itself to them freely and fully when they least expect it.

Next time customers reflexively apologize for minor inconveniences, forgive them. Next time readers offer negative criticism about your brand; tell them you respect their opinion of your work. Because if you only love people when it’s fair, you haven’t learned anything. When was the last time you loved a customer that drove you up the wall?

REMEMBER: The goal of your brand is become known for a unique way of interacting with the world.

Find your nametag.

Stick yourself out there today.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
What engagement style are you know for?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For a list called, “66 Questions to Prevent Your Time from Managing You,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

Sick of selling?
Tired of cold calling?
Bored with traditional prospecting approaches?

Buy Scott’s book and learn how to sell enable people to buy!

Pick up your copy (or a case!) right here.

You can borrow time. You can make time. You can steal time. You can save time. You can take time. You can find time. You can buy time. You can eat time.

But that takes time.

And you’re a pretty busy guy.

ASK YOURSELF THIS: What if you compressed time?

That’s what I’ve been doing since say one.

When I started my company right out of college, I was hungry, impatient and on fire. Ready to take my ideas into the world and change it forever, no matter how many people thought I was crazy.

The only problem was, I had no credentials. No foundation. No body of experience. And certainly no leveragable assets that could become something bigger.

That’s when I learned how to compress time. And here’s how to make it work for you:1. Learn the art of volume. The first lesson I learned as an author was, if you’ve published a book, people think you’re smart. Even if the book is a joke – it’s still a book. Ink is credibility. Which led to the second lesson I learned as an author: If you want people to think you’re really smart, write a dozen books.

So I did. In eight years.

Because it doesn’t matter if you’re right – it matters if you’re everywhere. It doesn’t matter if you know what you’re doing – it matters if you’re doing a ton of it. It doesn’t matter if you’re good – it matters if you’re visible. It doesn’t matter if you’re put together – it matters if you’re putting something down.

It doesn’t matter if you’re persuasive – it matters if you’re pervasive. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the right place at the right time – it matters if you’re in a lot of places. How will you use volume to make your voice matter?

2. Waiting is the new working. I no longer mind waiting in line. I’ve accepted the following reality: Life is the line. There’s nowhere to get to. There’s no future. All you have is right now. And I don’t know about you, but if I’m waiting, I’m writing. Even if only for twenty seconds at a time. You’d be amazed how easily a year of lines turns into a box of books.

Instead of looking at your watch, huffing and puffing and trying to enlist the other people in line to join your pity party, make love to the present moment. Then take notes. Because if you don’t write it down, it never happened. But if you build portable creative environments for yourself; you can leverage every micromoment that presents itself. And I guarantee you’ll triple your output. Are trying to find time, make time or steal time?

3. Make energy a priority. If you can’t put more hours in your life, you can always put more life in your hours. That’s the big secret about time: Having more energy not only compresses it – it multiplies it. Think about it: When you’re truly fueled, you take on more work, you solve bigger problems, you pursue bigger challenges, you contribute more value and have greater confidence in the process.

The secret is, you have to become a master of your own energy patterns. That means knowing what makes the most energy available to you. That means identifying what your biggest energy drains are. And that means developing a personal system for replenishing your energy reserve whenever it’s depleted.

Soon, an hour of your time will be more just as meaningful – if not more – than an entire week of someone with poor energy management. On a scale from one to ten, how effectively do you manage your energy?

4. It’s not the years – it’s the mileage. We learn not from our experiences, but from intelligent reflection upon those experiences. As such, wisdom has nothing to do with how much time has past and everything to do with what you did with the past. In the words of the wise philosopher, Henry Rollins, “Wisdom without experience is bullshit.”

If you want to compress time, get direct experience any way you can. Intentionally put yourself in situations that force you to grow up quickly. Write down everything that happens to you along with what you learned along the way. And then teach those lessons to others. You can gain five years of experience in six months. Are you a master at to drawing wisdom from every experience?

5. Execution is a process of elimination. The reason I was able to write a dozen books in eight years is not because I’m superhuman. It’s not because I’m a genius. And it’s not because I’m a better writer than anyone. I just know how to delete. Here’s a quick overview of my publishing and consulting company:

No meetings. No busywork. No status reports. No television. No task requests. No putting out fires. No managing people. No micromanaging people. No committees to go in front of. No office politics. No office. No commute. No distractions. No paperwork.

And after deleting all of that noise, what are you left with? Work. That. Matters. I challenge you to make a list of twenty things you could easily delete from your day. You’ll be amazed how easy it is to compress time. What things are you doing – everyday – that make absolutely no sense at all?

6. Audit the company you keep. Life’s too short to surround yourself with people who don’t challenge and inspire you. If you want to compress time, play with people who are better than you. That way you can absorb their experiences, sponge from their knowledge and grow from their mistakes. As Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour once said, “You have to put yourself in an environment where you get your ass kicked.”

That’s why I don’t have a mentor – I have a galaxy of mentors. And the accumulated insight from each of their life experiences compresses my time beyond belief. Just make sure you’re not bypassing real experience. Becoming a clone of people you admire gets you nowhere.

The point is: If you can’t whistle while you work, you may as well hustle while you wait. As every unforgiving minute passes by, will you be disciplined enough to practice fertile idleness?

REMEMBER: Your time isn’t just valuable – it’s compressible.

Stop trying to steal what you need to shrink.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…
Are you finding time or compressing it?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…
For a list called, “66 Questions to Prevent Your Time from Managing You,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *
Scott Ginsberg
That Guy with the Nametag
Author, Speaker, Entrepreneur, Mentor
[email protected]

Sick of selling?
Tired of cold calling?
Bored with traditional prospecting approaches?

Buy Scott’s book and learn how to sell enable people to buy!

Pick up your copy (or a case!) right here.