First Alec Baldwin runs around ranting about closing and generally being pretty mean. I guess it was an inspiring speech, but I think, if faced with a boss like that, I might be compelled to beat him to death with well, anything handy.
Then, account executive Jack Lemmon, that smooth operator, calls a lead, makes them feel special (you’re serious, so I’ll spread my appointments around, you’ve won a prize, you’ve been selected!) and then piles on the pressure – “you only have tonight or tomorrow to sign.”
Unfortunately, no dice. After several unsuccessful attempts at cold-calling, Jack goes off on office manager and lead distributor Kevin Spacey, demanding better leads.
But the Glengarry Leads (the most promising potential clients) are only for closers.
Now Al Pacino is trying to back out of the 3 day out clause for a real estate purchase. The sleaze of this movie is reminding me of my title processing days, when I got to experience stressed-out, commission-crazed loan officers. To be fair, this was in the middle of the real estate boom, turnover rate was high, and many people were flocking to the industry to cash out big. I also worked with an excellent office manager, whose ethics were stellar throughout, despite constant pressure to close.
I am definitely not a closer. Because of this, I’m not in sales or customer service. Additionally, I now try to only work for companies with a useful product that I can believe in, so I can talk to people about it without feeling like I’m trying to sell them on it.
I’ve been lucky in that, after trying out several fields, I’ve landed at this job, and I realize not everyone has as much of a choice when it comes to their job. But if you do have any choice at all, try to work someplace where they won’t make you sell (or barter) your soul.
Although one might think world domination is for the unscrupulous & negotiation is a great skill, outright sleaze, lies and bad ethics should be avoided. That kind of thing will always come back and bite you.
I’m out on my balcony, having opted for peace and quiet over watching cylons die – my husband’s been trying to hook me on Battlestar Galactica for awhile now, but I remain a sporadic watcher at best. Don’t get me wrong – I like the show, but I’d rather be reading a book or a blog, or watching my herbs and vegetables grow.
And they are growing indeed. Tiny little shoots, and then bigger ones, and then – oh, glorious! – white or yellow flowers, which mean teeny little strawberries, tomatoes, beans or peppers. The tomato flowers look promising, and with the basil plant, all we need now is a mozzarella tree.
The beans surprised me the most – they’re the only plants I started from seed this year, and I’m always amazed that covering seeds with dirt and throwing water in their general direction produces food.
When I was little, I’d always kill bean plants, because I’d get fed up with waiting for them to appear, and pull them out to check the roots. Acquiring readers is like that, except that it’s easier to see the results, thanks to Google Analytics or feedburner. Whether you’re building your subscriber list, creating your personal brand or assembling a team of bank robbers (to fund your world domination), it can take time.
Speaking of both analytics and growing your list, Darren Rouse’s recent post on ProBlogger offers advice on how to grow your blog’s seach engine traffic. In his post, Darren also shows a screenshot of analytics for 18 months of search engine traffic for his blog Digital Photography School. Do you know what part I find the most encouraging? The far left side of the chart compared to the far right side of the chart. There’s a steady upward trend. The point is, in order for a trend to exist, there had to be a low point to start from.
Another example of why you should let your beans be (i.e. be patient) is Google’s gmail. When it first came out in Februrary, 2007, I was annoyed by gmail invites from my friends. I said, you’re emailing the invitation to me. Doesn’t that indicate that I already have an email?
Skip ahead to a couple of months ago, when I decided to give up and give gmail a try. Skip ahead to now, when I have all my email accounts routed through gmail, hate my Outlook at work for not threading my conversations, and have jumped through the gmail gateway to google docs, google calendar and google reader.
Aside from my sneaking suspicion that despite their motto, Google is compiling secret, comprehensive dossiers on all of us, I have fully embraced the Google apps, and live in fear of the day they decide to start charging. Of course, my diabolically clever husband will just figure out a different set of apps to use, but what about people without diabolically clever technical skills or spouses? Anyway, it took a good long time (a year and a few months), but, game, set, match, Google, I’ve converted to your wicked ways.
With luck, good ideas and patience, hopefully people will start to convert to yours. You’ll reach your goal, and have lots of delicious green beans to eat. (Or whatever). Drop me a line, and let me know what you’re impatient about, and how you’re coping with the slow going.
The first step is saying hello. If you can say it in an original and interesting way, that’s great. If you can’t, just saying, “hello” is a very acceptable beginning, unless you are also doing something strange, like not wearing pants. If you’re the nervous type already, I don’t recommend this. In fact, I don’t really recommend this for anyone.
Second, try to find a common interest. I like to ask people what they do. Generally, this is pretty interesting, and if you’re lucky, you’ll stumble upon the reason why they do what they do, which may lead to finding out their genuine interests. This is my favorite part – listening to someone talk about his or her passion is fascinating. If you are interested as well, you’ve found your common ground. If you don’t know anything about it, you get to learn something new, and probably useful.
Third, be helpful. If you can connect two people whose businesses would benefit from the interaction, do so. If you can pass on advice about your field, or take the time to answer someone’s questions, try it. Sometimes people just want your opinion. Or, maybe your trash is their treasure, and you can pass something on that you’re no longer using. Something that has been emphasized across all of the blogs that I read regularly is the idea that you should try to contribute where you can offer value.
Fourth, follow up after your conversation. Don’t be a stalker, but do take the time to send out an email (or another form of contact) to the people whom you really connected with, and if you met at an event, don’t forget to thank the hosts for putting on the event, or to let them know that you appreciate the people they’ve helped you to meet. This goes for online interactions as well.
On that note, tonight I went to Buildguild, the first of a monthly meeting for web geeks in the Salem, MA area. Marc Amos & Angelo Simeoni organized and hosted the event, and I met some neat people with a variety of skills and interests. For anyone who attended, if I didn’t get a chance to speak with you, please feel free to get in touch. Marc and Angelo, thank you. You guys did a great job and there was a fantastic turnout.
To Jim, the guy in the Threadless T – I remembered, the design I wanted to submit was just text. The front would say, “Soylent Green is People” and the back would say, “People Are Delicious.” but I wasn’t sure if I had read that somewhere, or if it was an original (albeit disturbed) thought from my own mind.
All the pictures I could find on “networking” were boring, so Image Credit tonight goes to the penguins. More info on Soylent Green.
I’ve often wished I could smite. I covet the ability to draw a pillar of light & energy from the sky at will, then to fry someone on the spot when they irritated me.
Needless to say, when Nintendo Wii’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl came out, Pikachu was hands down my favorite character.
He’s such a cuddly little bugger. You run up to your opponent, open your cute little arms for a big hug, and then call down the wrath of god, incinerating everyone around you.
Anyway, my last job was a pretty stressful situation. Consequently, my desire to smite increased exponentially. For example, someone would do some small-potatoes-bonehead-thing, like cutting off my car, and I would want to leap out at the next red light, rip their car door open, and rain down bolts of sulfurous death-rays onto their head.
After running out of places to hide the bodies, I sensed that this was not altogether healthy, gave my two weeks notice, and evacuated the building shortly thereafter.
Here’s the point. If you find your wrath (or frustration, or sadness) building to dangerous levels on a regular basis, you’ve got to make a change. Put up with what you can, but when it becomes too much, take action.
The best way that I’ve found this concept summed up is in Orson Scott Card’s book Children of the Mind, one of the books in his Ender’s Game series.
In his story, Card describes a philosophy called Ua Lava, loosely translated as “Enough already!” He says, “…when bad fortune comes, you bear it until it becomes unbearable- your family is hungry, or you can no longer function in your work. And then again, you say, ‘Enough already,’ and you change something. You move, you change careers, you let your spouse make all the decisions…You don’t endure the unendurable.” Similarly, if you have a surplus of good fortune, you take that surplus and you give it away.
To take a step back here, let me say that I’m not insisting that you adopt this philosophy, and I’m not attempting to make light of your problems, or the complexities of adopting a solution. I don’t know enough about your situation to judge, and anyway, nobody asked me to in the first place. I’m just saying, you can’t expect to dominate the world if you can’t even dominate yourself enough to make a change.
One more thing – even in the midst of the worst situations, laugh when you can, because unless you work alone, like contract computer programmers or assassins, your mood will affect those around you. Luckily, at this last job, I was graced with a co-worker whose compassion and sense of humor could help me to find something to smile about on the most difficult days. Here is a link to his wonderful blog that allows me to get my fix even though we no longer work together in a state of excruciating triage.
I just finished watching Pirates of Silicon Valley, described by Wikipedia as: “a 1999 film based on the book Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer by Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine…which documents the rise of the home computer…through the rivalry between Apple Computer and Microsoft.”
It reminded me of Monty Python’s Corporate Takeover skit from The Meaning of Life.
Monty Python’s The Permanent Assurance Company Part 1:
Monty Python’s The Permanent Assurance Company Part 2:
Part 2 is worth watching solely for the horrifically bad puns in the song at the end.
Anyway, this is what I’ve learned tonight. Bonus points if you can guess which movie each item is from.
Theft and piracy are time-honored traditions in the business world.
To be successful, you should have a company culture. You should choose one that fosters hatred between project teams and encourages resolution through crazy bar fights.
Loyal friends quit and become teachers rather than watch you plummet down a spiral of self-destruction. So, if your friends start abandoning you, you’re on your way to being like (the fictitious) Steve Jobs!
Forcing your Evil Corporate Overlords to walk the plank is permissible.
It is acceptable to fling frisbees at your employees if you first provide them with champagne.
A pirate flag doesn’t always mean success, but it looks good stuck to the front of your company.
The very best logos are the ones that can be replicated in metal, hung on the wall, then broken apart and distributed as weapons in times of extreme need.
