Life Unsettled

The decision making process and having a basic understanding is useful for understanding customers and employees but probably most important ourselves. In order to influence customers to buy our product or services, it's useful to better understand why sometimes it is so difficult to get people to change their mind. Given that it is difficult to change someone's mind, customer retention is that much more crucial to business success.

The easiest way to understand some of this is to look at politics today. Now, I don't really care whether you like Hillary or Trump. This is only an example and is not taking any side. Everyone seems to agree that there are some people who support one or the other no matter what they hear, will not change their mind. The same thing can happen with the opinions of companies or products.

The difference with a company is that usually the stubborn opinion is usually in the negative. That is also much worse. In the political case in this example, the timing is what is most important. Nobody has to make a decision on which lever they will press until November. However, by making a decision months ago, they are left defending it when they hear one bit of new information. That is, they are not weighing the entire database information but rather the new piece versus their complete decision.

Similarly, I have seen when somebody explains or when I show or tell somebody what an expert does. I get an interesting response. I often hear," well, this is the way I do it." Have you heard that yourself?

Do you defend your idea what method no matter who is trying to help? Probably one of the biggest secrets to my successes is to keep an open mind as long as possible.

One practice surprised me immensely and greatly aided customer satisfaction, I saw used several times. That practice or method was allowing an angry customer to vent their anger. Afterwards it was apparent because of the process followed. Now, usually you may hear a person cut off the complaining or screaming customer in order to answer their questions. So what is missing? First, as we've already mentioned, you may not yet know the entire story nor the real clause of complaint. You may have made your decision too early.

What he did with the angry customer was wait until the person was finished. Anything before that might have appeared to be arguing. When the customer was finished, he was able to acknowledge the customers concerns; address the issues and in some cases remedy parts of the problem. As it was only after venting, the customer might listen.

In understanding the decision making process, whether it's someone else's or our own, we have a better chance of achieving success.

The decision making process and having a basic understanding is useful for understanding customers and employees but probably most important ourselves. In order to influence customers to buy our product or services, it's useful to better understand why sometimes it is so difficult to get people to change their mind. Given that it is difficult to change someone's mind, customer retention is that much more crucial to business success.

The easiest way to understand some of this is to look at politics today. Now, I don't really care whether you like Hillary or Trump. This is only an example and is not taking any side. Everyone seems to agree that there are some people who support one or the other no matter what they hear, will not change their mind. The same thing can happen with the opinions of companies or products.

The difference with a company is that usually the stubborn opinion is usually in the negative. That is also much worse. In the political case in this example, the timing is what is most important. Nobody has to make a decision on which lever they will press until November. However, by making a decision months ago, they are left defending it when they hear one bit of new information. That is, they are not weighing the entire database information but rather the new piece versus their complete decision.

Similarly, I have seen when somebody explains or when I show or tell somebody what an expert does. I get an interesting response. I often hear," well, this is the way I do it." Have you heard that yourself?

Do you defend your idea what method no matter who is trying to help? Probably one of the biggest secrets to my successes is to keep an open mind as long as possible.

One practice surprised me immensely and greatly aided customer satisfaction, I saw used several times. That practice or method was allowing an angry customer to vent their anger. Afterwards it was apparent because of the process followed. Now, usually you may hear a person cut off the complaining or screaming customer in order to answer their questions. So what is missing? First, as we've already mentioned, you may not yet know the entire story nor the real clause of complaint. You may have made your decision too early.

What he did with the angry customer was wait until the person was finished. Anything before that might have appeared to be arguing. When the customer was finished, he was able to acknowledge the customers concerns; address the issues and in some cases remedy parts of the problem. As it was only after venting, the customer might listen.

In understanding the decision making process, whether it's someone else's or our own, we have a better chance of achieving success.

If you have 'a' breakthrough in your life, you are missing out. True breakthrough success is relized when you had multiple and your personal life is more than you ever dreamed it could be. The radio interview question 'what was your breakthrough moment' is really a limiting idea.

Just about everybody will say: “I have no time.” I’m sure you’ve heard that. Just about everybody utters it at some point. What in the world does it mean? First of all, very successful people look at you kind of funny or at least in their minds think of you kind of funny when you keep on saying you don’t have any time. Everybody has the same amount of time.

Time is the great equalizer. So much is wasted, that wise use can increase your relative success

First of all, you need to find time if you want to be successful, if you want to do something new, if you want to make changes in your life. More important: Change the expression. Don’t say: “I don’t have time.” Find another one. It sounds good, but: “I don’t have any time” is really just a great excuse. Why is it a great excuse? Everybody uses it, so it’s verified. It’s too easy and it’s not a positive outlook on your life or your future.

Before I go on, let me tell you for this episode I’m giving you a lot of summary and some details, but I will have a handout that you can get at www.LifeUnsettled.com/time. It’s a very detailed PDF that will give you a lot of suggestions you can work through and get more time in your life.

First of all, procrastination. Another thing that people don’t realize is many of the things they do that they think is accomplishing things. It’s all the little things that they do during the day, running the errands, basically busy work. Yes, it needs to be done, but it’s not the most important. It is a form of procrastination. It’s just disguised procrastination.

Some important things to keep in mind: Move on, that is don’t dwell on whatever you’re doing. Whatever you’re doing, if you can, set a timer for it. If you have an iPhone, an Android, or something, there’s a clock feature there that has a timer on it. If you think it’s going to take an hour and 50 minutes, two hours, an hour…set the time! Don’t go more than two hours on anything. Even serious, concentrated work, time it and push yourself to get it done to the best of your ability within that timeframe. You might go back and do some other work on it, summarize it, fix it up, etc. That’s almost like another task, so you’ve completed one and you’re going to do another one. You’re going to edit it or you’re going to fix it up, whatever it is.

Another is keep energy up. One of the problems with not having enough time sometimes is that your energy is not good enough, not strong enough, and that very often is that you really do have to take out and dedicate some time for regular exercise. That will keep your energy level up throughout the day. If you turn around, go to exercise or do something say at 3:30-4:00 in the afternoon, you will have that energy. You’ll get rid of the stress and you’ll have that energy into the evening.

Time is the most limiting factor, but also the great equalizer. There is income inequality, but no time inequality. We all get the same amount, every day!

Separate your high productive time. When are you most productive during your day? Is it in the morning? That’s what it is for me. Is it in the evening? Whenever it is possible, set that time aside and that’s when you get that harder work done. One of the things that I really concentrate well in the morning. A lot of people think that mornings are not good for them, but it may be better than they realize. One of the reasons is, in the morning you have no things that have interfered with anything yet, there’s no email that you’ve read and other things that you might’ve done that causes you to be thinking a dozen different directions. You just start out, take your shower, take your walk, whatever it is to wake up, water on the face, get your work done before you do your email or before your mind starts drifting off into other places.

On top of that, if the night before you were thinking about the topic or the project you were going to do that morning,

Just about everybody will say: “I have no time.” I’m sure you’ve heard that. Just about everybody utters it at some point. What in the world does it mean? First of all, very successful people look at you kind of funny or at least in their minds think of you kind of funny when you keep on saying you don’t have any time. Everybody has the same amount of time.

Time is the great equalizer. So much is wasted, that wise use can increase your relative success

First of all, you need to find time if you want to be successful, if you want to do something new, if you want to make changes in your life. More important: Change the expression. Don’t say: “I don’t have time.” Find another one. It sounds good, but: “I don’t have any time” is really just a great excuse. Why is it a great excuse? Everybody uses it, so it’s verified. It’s too easy and it’s not a positive outlook on your life or your future.

Before I go on, let me tell you for this episode I’m giving you a lot of summary and some details, but I will have a handout that you can get at www.LifeUnsettled.com/time. It’s a very detailed PDF that will give you a lot of suggestions you can work through and get more time in your life.

First of all, procrastination. Another thing that people don’t realize is many of the things they do that they think is accomplishing things. It’s all the little things that they do during the day, running the errands, basically busy work. Yes, it needs to be done, but it’s not the most important. It is a form of procrastination. It’s just disguised procrastination.

Some important things to keep in mind: Move on, that is don’t dwell on whatever you’re doing. Whatever you’re doing, if you can, set a timer for it. If you have an iPhone, an Android, or something, there’s a clock feature there that has a timer on it. If you think it’s going to take an hour and 50 minutes, two hours, an hour…set the time! Don’t go more than two hours on anything. Even serious, concentrated work, time it and push yourself to get it done to the best of your ability within that timeframe. You might go back and do some other work on it, summarize it, fix it up, etc. That’s almost like another task, so you’ve completed one and you’re going to do another one. You’re going to edit it or you’re going to fix it up, whatever it is.

Another is keep energy up. One of the problems with not having enough time sometimes is that your energy is not good enough, not strong enough, and that very often is that you really do have to take out and dedicate some time for regular exercise. That will keep your energy level up throughout the day. If you turn around, go to exercise or do something say at 3:30-4:00 in the afternoon, you will have that energy. You’ll get rid of the stress and you’ll have that energy into the evening.

Time is the most limiting factor, but also the great equalizer. There is income inequality, but no time inequality. We all get the same amount, every day!

Separate your high productive time. When are you most productive during your day? Is it in the morning? That’s what it is for me. Is it in the evening? Whenever it is possible, set that time aside and that’s when you get that harder work done. One of the things that I really concentrate well in the morning. A lot of people think that mornings are not good for them, but it may be better than they realize. One of the reasons is, in the morning you have no things that have interfered with anything yet, there’s no email that you’ve read and other things that you might’ve done that causes you to be thinking a dozen different directions. You just start out, take your shower, take your walk, whatever it is to wake up, water on the face, get your work done before you do your email or before your mind starts drifting off into other places....

I’m going to talk about the kind of women I like and motivation hustle. No, no, no – this is not an eHarmony or Match.com episode, not at all. By the way, kudos and thank you very much to Trishia and Julie for urging me to do this episode. I had these discussions, saying this was going to be a future episode, and they said they were really anxious to hear it, so here goes.

The business women that is has motivation hustle develops drive like an immigrant.

What I’m talking about is women, as we’re talking about women going into business, being entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial, success-oriented, driven, etc. There’s a lot of things that happen in a woman’s life that’s a little different than a guy’s. In particular, first, many, many women will start out, and as they enter college, you’ll notice a difference. Go to any college, if somebody wants to argue with me over this, just go to any university, and you’ll see the engineering courses, the ECS electrical engineering computer science, computer science, mathematics, etc. – the statistics are filled with guys. Generally, the women have a much larger majority in the things, whether it be arts, sociology, social work, etc., that feel-good. The key difference they found it in colleges, is that guys tend to pick things that are going to earn them more money later on. Women tend to pick things that feel better or feel good. By the way, before you send me anything, I know this is not universal, it’s not everybody, but it is very largely biased towards those two categories.

What happens? Many of the factors—and this is actually kind of crazy—many of the factors are because women are thinking more in terms of both marriage, even though they may not admit it. They realize marriage, family, etc. is going to lead to somebody else, the husband, etc. taking the major role for income. They’re more geared towards other things. I thought this changed about 40 years ago, but apparently it hasn’t a great deal.

Actually, when you think about this, this is absolutely crazy, because here, if 50% of marriages fail and the mother usually—I should say almost always—has custody of the kids – Hell! It’s much more important for the women to pick those higher-paying careers with a greater return on the college degree. They should be concerned about that when they’re younger.

Here’s what happens when eventually the families are formed and that case, which I would like to say is unlikely, but where somebody is divorced. This ends up, in some cases, leading to superstar women. But first let me explain that. When there’s a divorce… I’m going to break down what happens to women into three categories. One of which is, and you’ve all seen these women who are absolutely decimated. They spend their time whining and complaining, etc. Unfortunately, there’s too many people that help enable that.

A middle category is a category of women who are trying to constantly balance having some income or as much income as they can, taking care of their kids, and being at all of the events, and everything else. Unfortunately, those also have a lot holding them back, because of taking care of the kids and all of the other things that are involved, but they’re doing as much as they can.

There’s a third category of women who comes into a whole different drive, and in here is what I really have as the purpose for this episode. There are really two purposes. One for business owners anywhere to help identify the women who are really just absolutely wonderful to have to work with, etc., those are the women I like. The second purpose is a signal to the women to realize and reflect a little bit on some of the choices that are around you. Now, I’m not here to paint any pretty pictures. I just want to help and see people succeed.

This third category of women is what I would refer to as a new immigrant class. That is: She stands there, usually setting up her own business of some kind, and she will not let that fail.

I’m going to talk about the kind of women I like and motivation hustle. No, no, no – this is not an eHarmony or Match.com episode, not at all. By the way, kudos and thank you very much to Trishia and Julie for urging me to do this episode. I had these discussions, saying this was going to be a future episode, and they said they were really anxious to hear it, so here goes.

The business women that is has motivation hustle develops drive like an immigrant.

What I’m talking about is women, as we’re talking about women going into business, being entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial, success-oriented, driven, etc. There’s a lot of things that happen in a woman’s life that’s a little different than a guy’s. In particular, first, many, many women will start out, and as they enter college, you’ll notice a difference. Go to any college, if somebody wants to argue with me over this, just go to any university, and you’ll see the engineering courses, the ECS electrical engineering computer science, computer science, mathematics, etc. – the statistics are filled with guys. Generally, the women have a much larger majority in the things, whether it be arts, sociology, social work, etc., that feel-good. The key difference they found it in colleges, is that guys tend to pick things that are going to earn them more money later on. Women tend to pick things that feel better or feel good. By the way, before you send me anything, I know this is not universal, it’s not everybody, but it is very largely biased towards those two categories.

What happens? Many of the factors—and this is actually kind of crazy—many of the factors are because women are thinking more in terms of both marriage, even though they may not admit it. They realize marriage, family, etc. is going to lead to somebody else, the husband, etc. taking the major role for income. They’re more geared towards other things. I thought this changed about 40 years ago, but apparently it hasn’t a great deal.

Actually, when you think about this, this is absolutely crazy, because here, if 50% of marriages fail and the mother usually—I should say almost always—has custody of the kids – Hell! It’s much more important for the women to pick those higher-paying careers with a greater return on the college degree. They should be concerned about that when they’re younger.

Here’s what happens when eventually the families are formed and that case, which I would like to say is unlikely, but where somebody is divorced. This ends up, in some cases, leading to superstar women. But first let me explain that. When there’s a divorce… I’m going to break down what happens to women into three categories. One of which is, and you’ve all seen these women who are absolutely decimated. They spend their time whining and complaining, etc. Unfortunately, there’s too many people that help enable that.

A middle category is a category of women who are trying to constantly balance having some income or as much income as they can, taking care of their kids, and being at all of the events, and everything else. Unfortunately, those also have a lot holding them back, because of taking care of the kids and all of the other things that are involved, but they’re doing as much as they can.

There’s a third category of women who comes into a whole different drive, and in here is what I really have as the purpose for this episode. There are really two purposes. One for business owners anywhere to help identify the women who are really just absolutely wonderful to have to work with, etc., those are the women I like. The second purpose is a signal to the women to realize and reflect a little bit on some of the choices that are around you. Now, I’m not here to paint any pretty pictures. I just want to help and see people succeed.

This third category of women is what I would refer to as a new immigrant class.

I want to talk about one of the problems that I see in the area of self-motivation or hustle. In the first part,  I just want to talk little bit about the quandary of motivation;  the difficulties people have who have much more opportunity than what you might have. If it is difficult for them, how much more difficult it might be for you.  In the end,  I am going to give you four points tell keep yourself relatively motivated.

To be successful you must hustle. For long term business success, hustle needs to be sustained.

I often look, study, and see: How do people motivate themselves, how do you learn, how do you succeed, how do you make progress?

Recently with a whole bunch of events that I’ve seen on TV, etc., related to the sports world, as well as other people, comes with an interesting question. If people who already have great promise for success, that it’s even guaranteed, they already have the success, they already have the millions – if they can’t motivate themselves to just follow the rules or be good to collect the money, how are you going to get somebody who’s not guaranteed, who’s starting out and saying: “Gee, I wonder if I can become a millionaire, a multimillionaire and make all that money. How will I have whatever I decide as success”? How do you motivate those people if you can’t motivate the people who already have the guarantee? They are different people. They are different situations, different people. You have to have, already built into your DNA, those motivational factors, those factors of life that say: “This is what I should do, this is what’s right, this is what’s wrong.”

Recently, take a look, the most prominent example, of course, is Johnny Manziel. He had a life that was guaranteed to be wonderful for him. Now, maybe because his parents are well off or something, he doesn’t think he’ll ever have to worry about that. Whatever it is that’s going on, whatever that constant decision to make himself look bad on everything from TV, to selfies, the constant ongoing mistakes that he seems to make. But he’s not the only one; there’s lots of them. There’s been lots of people in the football world or other sports world, where they have done things that are just ruining their career.

Just the other day we had the NFL draft, a few days ago, and during that draft, here was this video that pops up, and this guy lost somewhere between 7 and 12 million dollars because that video showed him smoking from a bong with a gasmask on. It’s not just those in those situations. There was somebody who was guaranteed a ton of money, and he knew it, even though that was a couple years old, he knew it well back then because he was that much of a star player; expected to be the top draft pick, other than a quarterback.

Let me go a little bit adrift, then, from just football players or other sports figures. I use those as an example, because these people are guaranteed a great income that’s going to be provided for them, or they’re already under contract and they screw up. What happens to the person who’s trying to work their way up, going to college or other things? Take a look at some things. It turns out 30% of people being interviewed lose the interview not because of what goes on in the interview, but because then when the research is done on Facebook or some other social media, they don’t want that person or that person of character coming into the office. In discussion with some younger people, I’ve had them say things like: “Well, that’s not anybody else’s business, or that’s self-expression,” etc. Fine, it’s self-expression, but somebody who was going to give you a job just found out things about you that they feel uncomfortable with, bringing you in, having you go out, and be “their employee.” How do you stop that kind of behavior besides just giving knowledge and information? How does somebody motivate themselves, or just to follow certain guidelines of their own as when they represent or put th...

I want to talk about one of the problems that I see in the area of self-motivation or hustle. In the first part,  I just want to talk little bit about the quandary of motivation;  the difficulties people have who have much more opportunity than what you might have. If it is difficult for them, how much more difficult it might be for you.  In the end,  I am going to give you four points tell keep yourself relatively motivated.

To be successful you must hustle. For long term business success, hustle needs to be sustained.

I often look, study, and see: How do people motivate themselves, how do you learn, how do you succeed, how do you make progress?

Recently with a whole bunch of events that I’ve seen on TV, etc., related to the sports world, as well as other people, comes with an interesting question. If people who already have great promise for success, that it’s even guaranteed, they already have the success, they already have the millions – if they can’t motivate themselves to just follow the rules or be good to collect the money, how are you going to get somebody who’s not guaranteed, who’s starting out and saying: “Gee, I wonder if I can become a millionaire, a multimillionaire and make all that money. How will I have whatever I decide as success”? How do you motivate those people if you can’t motivate the people who already have the guarantee? They are different people. They are different situations, different people. You have to have, already built into your DNA, those motivational factors, those factors of life that say: “This is what I should do, this is what’s right, this is what’s wrong.”

Recently, take a look, the most prominent example, of course, is Johnny Manziel. He had a life that was guaranteed to be wonderful for him. Now, maybe because his parents are well off or something, he doesn’t think he’ll ever have to worry about that. Whatever it is that’s going on, whatever that constant decision to make himself look bad on everything from TV, to selfies, the constant ongoing mistakes that he seems to make. But he’s not the only one; there’s lots of them. There’s been lots of people in the football world or other sports world, where they have done things that are just ruining their career.

Just the other day we had the NFL draft, a few days ago, and during that draft, here was this video that pops up, and this guy lost somewhere between 7 and 12 million dollars because that video showed him smoking from a bong with a gasmask on. It’s not just those in those situations. There was somebody who was guaranteed a ton of money, and he knew it, even though that was a couple years old, he knew it well back then because he was that much of a star player; expected to be the top draft pick, other than a quarterback.

Let me go a little bit adrift, then, from just football players or other sports figures. I use those as an example, because these people are guaranteed a great income that’s going to be provided for them, or they’re already under contract and they screw up. What happens to the person who’s trying to work their way up, going to college or other things? Take a look at some things. It turns out 30% of people being interviewed lose the interview not because of what goes on in the interview, but because then when the research is done on Facebook or some other social media, they don’t want that person or that person of character coming into the office. In discussion with some younger people, I’ve had them say things like: “Well, that’s not anybody else’s business, or that’s self-expression,” etc. Fine, it’s self-expression, but somebody who was going to give you a job just found out things about you that they feel uncomfortable with, bringing you in, having you go out, and be “their employee.” How do you stop that kind of behavior besides just giving knowledge and information?

This topic is probably my favorite on many, many dimensions, and that is causality. Causality, what do I mean? Causality means something that causes something else, or is a partial cause for something else. The study, the watching, the asking of questions to delve into the depths of causality are critical for everything, from anything you’re going to do in business because it’s going to have an effect on the customer, or: What do you do that has an effect that’s negative or positive for the customer now? If you don’t understand that, what are you going to do in the future, all the way to your kids. Just take a look at what your kids do and how they do.

I’m not saying there’s right or wrong answers, but what I am saying is: Always look underneath the covers. Some of the examples are really kind of interesting. You take a look at kids, for example: What do you do if your kid does something wrong? What happens if your kid doesn’t study? If you repeatedly don’t do anything, are they going to study? What happens?

Watch any time—you may have done this, or caught yourself in this, or one of your spouses or whatever—what happens when a baby cries? You’ll see very often that the mother picks up the baby, and then the baby stops. There is sometimes that that’s necessary or appropriate, and other times you shouldn’t pick up the baby. Now, I don’t know the answers to that, not at all. I don’t have the foggiest idea, but watch how sometimes babies train their mothers because they want to be picked up, they want to be held. Heck, I do, too. (But I’m a little too big for the pick up part.)

Anyway, also take a look at education, everything that’s happening in education today. Here, again, ask questions. I see all the time, and it really, really gets to me when I see these flyers outside or the thing in the mail that says: “It’s time to vote for a new bond issue,” or this, or that, or the other thing, and it’s usually about something like: We need lower classroom size, or new classrooms, or more classrooms, or more teachers. First of all, there’s an over-supply of potential teachers out there. There’s all kinds of women, in general, (some men but mostly women), go through the education departments at our universities and then can’t find jobs. Why? Because the unions close them off because of the tenure, etc., role.

Then you think of: What’s the cause in there? The tenure causes not only the good, but also the bad teachers to be retained. The idea is supposed to protect the teachers. Why are we protecting them? They’re not supposed to be giving political speeches in class, either. They’re supposed to be teaching our kids. It’s also not a popularity place. They’re not supposed to be winning over the students, not in the sense to be popular, but in the sense to be respected, well thought of, and to be teaching.

Back to classroom size, much smaller than when I went to school, so the problem isn’t the classroom size, it’s that they can’t have discipline. The problem is other things that they have to figure out, but they have to go back to the root cause.

Take a look at government programs, how many programs there are for poverty, etc. None of them ever get deleted. What are they doing, what do they do? What is the purpose behind them? Okay, yes, to make somebody so that they’re not destitute or unhealthy, or something like that. But if it doesn’t work, why doesn’t it work? What happens when we supply or provide something, and make it easy to get? How easy should it be to get? I mean, these are difficult questions without easy answers, but they should be discussed and they should be thought about. The idea that when you have a program that makes it so that somebody has the ability to get income, and food, etc., and if they start making money, they’re going to lose that – they’ll be afraid to go out and make money. There’s a disincentive.

I’ve met, over time, a lot of women who were single moms, and they would talk to me,