To become a better listener try not saying anything

I’ve always thought of myself as being a pretty good listener.   People that have been in sales-oriented careers like me know it’s obvious that being a good listener is a crucial skill.   Despite that, I know that I could be even better and the same could be said for most people.   I’ve been trying a new approach for me which I believe is really helping my listening skills.   I’ll let you in on a little secret – it’s only four words.   Shut the **** up.

Crude yes, but yet also equally effective.   I keep in mind that when someone is telling me something I should resist all temptation to wait for them to take a breath and then say what I was thinking.  We’ve all heard that before.   It doesn’t mean I don’t show them non-verbal signs that I am listening and understanding what they are saying.  I will nod, or shake my head, but just letting them continue without simply saying something in response to fill empty space (the perceived empty conversation space is always much longer than the actual empty conversation space BTW).

What is resulting is that in shutting up I am hearing more and by saying less when I do say something it (hopefully) has more impact and is more relevant since I’ve taken the time to really consider what I am hearing.  Before you dismiss this as being obvious ask yourself when was the last time you actually stopped yourself from replying automatically and just didn’t say anything?   If the answer is you can’t remember then you should think long and hard about whether or not you are being as good a listener as you think you are.

If I accomplish only one major goal this year, it would fine with me to achieve truly being a better listener.  That would be something that would benefit me and everybody I come into contact with for the rest of my life.

Shut the **** up.   Are you able to do that?   Try it out and you might find you learn much more and are thought of as being wiser than you really are.

A Disturbing Trend

A Disturbing Trend.

Free Conference call – one of the best deals around for its users

The web is rife with companies that have what seem to be unfathomable business models.   We are regular users of www.freeconferencecall.com and every time I use it I think what a good service it is and of course you cannot beat the price.

I finally was curious enough to look up what is the revenue model and as I suspected (or likely had read someplace) the model is based on fees charged for line transmissions.   Of course those fees are not visible (or easily visible) to users.   I use the term “users” since people that use Free Conference Call don’t pay money so consequently they are not and cannot be customers.

It’s one thing to have a business model that claims it has future plans to monetize its users or players (think of the way Facebook started, Zynga and even Twitter), it’s quite another to have a model that does not plan to ask its users to fork over any hard cash.

So I checked around and one of the more concise descriptions on how Free Conference Call makes money came from Aaron Parekci’s blog from March 2012 – http://aaronparecki.com/articles/2012/03/25/1/how-does-freeconferencecall-make-money .  Despite my now having a better overall understanding of the platform and how per www.feefighters.com Freeconferencecall.com does ~20 million calls per month and (per feefighters.com) it did ‘$23 million in revenues in 2010. So it’s a win-win-win right? Freeconferencecall wins, the conference callers win, the rural phone companies win, etc… Everyone, that is, except for the large phone companies. They are paying a ton of money to the small companies. AT&T estimated in 2007 that they were paying an additional $250 million to connect these calls.’   Basically the user pays nothing and the phone companies pick up the tab.  Yes this is odd to say the least.

My normal thought process includes the phrase ‘if it seems too good to be true, it probably is’.    Something about FreeConferenceCall.com just does not make sense (or cents) to me.   But for the time being I am happy to not pay, to have our own number, and to have clients accept the platform without any issues.

How about you?  Do you pay for a conference call service or are you a FreeConferenceCall.com user or fan?

Taking pride in every aspect of your job will always make you a success

Last week as I arrived home in the NYC suburbs after a long day I received a different kind of gift in the form of an abject business lesson.   We have a small yard and when we bought the house one of the things that really attracted us to the property was a canvas awning attached to the house that covered the small brick patio.   In mid-April we called the company – Fitzgerald Awning that puts it up and takes it down each year knowing that it seems to take them awhile to get out to their customers once the weather turns nice.    In fact we had called more than once.

I had never met the people that do the work and knew very little about the company.   In the past, one day I would come home and the awning would either be up or down depending on the season.  It looked pretty complicated and I was not convinced it was a job I could do myself and the cost to put it up and take it down was not prohibitive.   By happenstance the company came to my house at 7PM on a weekday when I was actually home.   I was able to meet and talk to the people doing the work who turned out to be brothers who co-own this family business and their employee all of whom do the actual work.

Last fall during Hurricane Sandy the awning was still up (they had not yet come to take it down although we had called but as everyone knew the hurricane was coming we figured that they were overwhelmed) and we rode out the storm watching and wondering if the awning would act like a sail and be ripped off the house.  It not only survived the hurricane, but it seemed to not be affected by the storm at all.  I actually sat outside under it a few times during the storm because it was exhilarating (and not too smart I’ll admit) to sit outside under shelter during a hurricane.

So I asked the owners how they attract customers and Greg mentioned that it was all word-of-mouth and that they had more customers than they could handle.   The reason was that the two brothers and the other employee put up and took down every awning that they made.  Their father came up with the idea on how to make and install the awnings and their attention to their customers was all they cared about.  They even acknowledged that we had called several times and apologized profusely for having made us wait.

I asked about expansion and Greg said they had no interest as the work had to be done by the family.  Think of it, a business that had all the customers it can handle, a somewhat unique product and product approach, and no desire to expand.  It was less than 30 minutes from the time they arrived until the time they left.  It impressed me that for two months they could be spending 10-12 hours a day putting up and taking down awnings.  Sounds boring to me but these guys seemed more than content and just interested in doing a great job for their customers.

Our awning is almost fifteen years old and Greg (or maybe it was his brother George?) suggested that we may need a new one (they will make one for us – custom of course) next year but they would come back and patch up the few holes that were made by tree limbs falling during the hurricane.  No extra charge.   Do you think we will look elsewhere for a new unit?  Not a chance.  We would not want to work with anyone else but Fitzgerald Awning.  (Don’t go looking for a website – why would they need one?)

I’ve started and run several businesses in my career and have always striven to do the best job I can for both my clients and my team.    Yet I was reminded of what is most important when doing business of any kind.  First, take pride in every aspect of your work.   This way if you are not a financial success (as there is no guarantee), you will still be a success in the eyes of people that truly understand what’s important.  And I guarantee you’ll be a happier person that way as well.

Will you miss getting behind the wheel of an automobile?

I’ve made the observation that China is an entire country learning to drive at the same time.  This is in contrast to people like me who had their learner’s permit at age 16 and their driver’s license shortly thereafter.     As a recent report suggests younger Americans are eschewing driver’s licenses at a greater rate than at any time during the past 30 years. 

Last week I drove more than 700 miles each way to South Carolina from Connecticut and aside from some traffic on the return trip I enjoyed the ride and being behind the wheel.    Google’s self-driving cars will ultimately have my experience be a rarity or even make it extinct.   Will the adoption of driverless cars happen by a majority of Americans in the next twenty years?

Is this hard for you to believe?   Think about it.  Driverless cars are eminently safer than human driven vehicles.    On Wednesday Tesla Motors Elon Musk detailed his plans for driverless vehicles.  While Mr. Musk prefers to use the term ‘autopilot’, the result is the same.   You sit in the car and plug in a destination and off you go.    In a world of only self-driving vehicles there would be no more speeding, almost no more accidents (after all even self-driven cars will experience unforeseen things like weather and road conditions that cannot always be forecast), less traffic (I can’t see a day with NO traffic) and no more fun operating a car on the open road.   Car insurance rates should also drop dramatically shouldn’t they?

I thought about all these things during my 24 hours of driving last week.   How it makes total sense to have auto-piloted vehicles.    You plug in your destination, you get a schedule based on traffic forecast, get in the passenger or back seat and you know exactly when you will arrive at your destination – efficient, predictable, and safe.  And also, boring.  Just like airline, bus, and train travel.

I admit there are many other benefits such as elderly people having the freedom to come and go in their auto-piloted vehicles even after they have lost their ability to operate a motor vehicle.  Come to think of it, by the time there’s widespread adoption of driverless automobiles I should be pretty close to having that as my only option.   I’ll be happy and sad at the same time.

Driverless cars will make distracted driving a thing of the past.   And quite possibly thirty or more years from now it will cost you more to operate your vehicle (if that is allowed at all) should you so desire.  Somehow sitting in the passenger seat of a convertible driven by Google just doesn’t have the same thrill and enjoyment as driving yourself.

What do you think?    Will you miss getting behind the wheel?

Opening a business with a bad plan will always result in failure

The restaurant business is a difficult one in the best of times.  I know this from having several friends in the business – some of whom are successful, others that have been somewhat less than successful.    I am consistently amazed when I see new restaurants open in either the strangest of locations, or in a location that has had a string of failed restaurants.

I work in New York City on East 36^th Street between Madison and Fifth avenues.   When we moved in this past December there were two Irish pubs nearly across the street from one another as well as another well-known NYC watering hole (Gingerman).     In addition to those establishments there are four other restaurants plus a Pret-A -Manger on the corner.    For this reason we were all surprised (not unhappily), when yet another brand new Irish pub called Peter Dillon’s opened this past winter.

It is true that the three existing local pubs on our little block get crowded around Happy Hour.   So perhaps the owners of Dillon’s felt they had an answer to their perception of an unmet demand.    Inside the bar is a dark and attractive interior with a dozen tables and a nice long bar.   The feel inside is a bit cold; lacking the inviting warmth of what I find makes Irish pubs worth patronizing.

I walk past Dillon’s frequently during the lunch hour and I never see anyone in there.   My reason for walking past is that Dillon’s is strictly a bar, it does not serve lunch or dinner while all the other establishments do.   In fact not only do the other places serve lunch and dinner, but two of them, (Slattery’s and Galway) serve a $10 lunch special – a limited but good lunch menu and a beer (or non-alcoholic beverage if that’s your preference).   People stream into both Slattery’s and Galway while Dillon’s sits there unoccupied.

What were the owners of Dillon’s thinking when they thought to open a brand new (the renovation had to be expensive) third Irish pub within 300 feet of the competition?    Then to top it off, why be a ‘pure’ bar instead of a bar-restaurant?   I realize that serving food is a big deal compared to serving drinks only, but the Dillon’s business plan should have had a competitive analysis of the local marketplace.  And now that people have gotten into the habit of not going into Dillon’s, a turnaround to popularity will be more difficult than an initial opening.

I’ve only been into Dillon’s once for a drink after work.  There were a few people there but not very many and as I noted I marvel every time I walk by at lunch and the place is completely empty.   I don’t expect it to last through the summer if it takes that long.   For whatever reason it just makes me sad to watch while it unfolds in slow-motion.

Opening a business with a bad plan will always result in failure.   The work done upfront makes all the difference and there are no shortcuts.   At least that’s the way I see it.

I’m saying good-bye to my printed newspaper – mostly

 

 

 

 

 

A study from Deloitte last week entitled “Readers abandon print for digital platforms but it’s a slow revolution’ really caught my attention.   

Excerpt from the article:

Newspapers

– Print plummets: 39 percent of newspaper reading respondents said print was their favorite format for reading their chosen titles, down massively from 75 percent just a year ago. It’s difficult not to make a connection between that fall and the rapid adoption of tablet PCs over the same period.

– But digital soars: Laptops and desktops still account for most news consumption online, but mobile is gaining. Of smartphone users, 32 percent say they use their device to read news articles every day or at least once a week, and that figure rises to more than half for tablet owners.’

I’ve been receiving three physical newspapers for many years now.  When I ride the commuter train to New York City I am in the minority of people who read a physical paper.  The usefulness of my long ago learned skill on how to fold the New York Times or Wall Street Journal so that I can read it without disturbing the person next to me is only useful to the unlucky passenger who sits next to me.   It’s obvious that most of the passengers read news on their tablets or phone.

What I’ve found when I read the news on my tablet (Kindle Fire or iPad) or phone is that it’s easy and I like it.  In fact I even tend to read articles in a different order than when I page through a newspaper.  The digital news reading experience is improving all the time and I never have to worry about the lights going on or off on the train ride or struggle reading because there is not quite enough light.

So I’m ready to give up printed newspapers – mostly.   I still enjoy the weekend edition of the New York Times – the Sunday Times Magazine with the crossword puzzle is one of my favorite guilty pleasures as is the NY Times Book Review.    What is the most likely compromise (my wife is resisting the change even more than I have) is that we will go digital for all but a weekender NY Times subscription.   My expectation is that we will quickly adapt to digital reading on an everyday basis and for a while enjoy the printed NY Times on the weekend.  For a while means that eventually we probably will be willing to give up the printed versions entirely once a digital means to do the crossword puzzle is made more user-friendly.

Will I miss the printed newspaper?   Well I won’t miss the residual ink on my fingers.  But chances are is that I, like many other people of a certain age will play the ‘remember when’ game once printed newspapers become extinct.  And the ultimate extinction of newspapers is really the only outcome isn’t it?

How about you?  Have you given up printed newspapers or will you hold on as long as you can?