Coffee is for Closers

People dislike the word sell. It implies capitalism, bureaucracy, lying, persuading, untruth.  Visions of sleazy, unfulfilled men with loosened ties, wrinkled shirts and worn briefcases a la  Death of a Salesman come to mind. And for me, always, Alec Baldwin's classic tirade in Glengarry Glen Ross.

People tell me all the time that they could never sell. Which always makes me smile, because we all do, every day. And if we don't learn how to do it well, we'll never achieve all that we want to.

It's easier to sell when it is as I talked about yesterday from a place of truth and integrity. It's harder when you are selling a car you would never drive, a dress you would never wear or a house you would never live in.

But what we all have to get good at is selling ourselves.
Ouch! 
I can hear the winces, the stomachs turning.
Selling ourselves sounds so...so....like we're prostituting who we are.

But that is not what I am talking about. I'm talking about selling you as an expert in your field, the person best for the job, an interesting person to make a friend, a fun date. Yes, the selling is not always related to business. It shows up in all parts of your life. You are your own brand. And even if you don't like the word sell, if you want to make an impact in any arena of your life you need to learn how to do it well.

It's a noisy world out there and it's getting noisier every day.  Everything we do has a chance of being recorded, on a blog, a Facebook post, a Tweet, or walking down the street and being caught on someone's iPhone video that they post on You Tube. You need to be paying attention. You need to be conscious.

I'm not suggesting pretending to be something you are not. That's exhausting!  I'm suggesting the opposite. I think presenting yourself from a place of authenticity and truth is what catches people most.  You can't pretend to have integrity. You can try but it's not long before people catch on and sand castle crumbles.

We get a little distracted in our on line world of commerce and information and we think the most important part of what we do is the interesting tweet or the high gloss sheen to our website. Yes, they are part of the equation.

But what is most important is us. Putting our best foot forward. Selling not just what we believe in, but who we believe in. Which in a perfect world is ourselves. At the end of the day everyone wants to have that cup of coffee.

Do you like the word sell?
Do you believe we are always selling something?

Integrity

I was in a discussion the other day about my former life, the one in which I sold commercial time on radio and TV stations.

"So you sold air! You were really selling nothing."
"Yes, that is true. I sold an intangible, something you were unable to hold in your hand unless someone dubbed a copy of the spot onto a tape."
"You should think about working for a hedge fund. You'd be good. It's really selling nothing. You should move to Greenwich and work with us."

After I stopped laughing I told him thank you, but I didn't think so. For starters, while Greenwich sounds nice for a country home, it is not a place I could thrive seven days a week. But more importantly I could never work in a business like that. Not now. Maybe once upon a time when I was still head over heels enamored with corporate life. But not now.

Being a finance guy a simple no thank you wasn't going to do. He needed the why.

That was easy. Yes, I knew if I could sell country music  in Philadelphia in the eighties when country in the Northeast was far from cool,  I could sell ice to the Eskimos, but  my days of convincing myself all that is  real and good about my product are over. I am now only able to sell that which I have true passion for. Like my writing. My coaching services. Maybe something else. But certainly not selling risks especially when the bet is on a company doing poorly.

Basically I told him I had too much integrity to sell something I didn't believe in.

But how many of us do? 
How many of us sell out? For no other reason than the money?
How many of us are such good actors that we convince ourselves of the value in our goods or services, whether or not it is really there?
And how many of us are lucky enough or brave enough or courageous enough to sell, ourselves or our product from a place of integrity and truth?

September Shoes

I felt it last week when I saw September 1 on my calendar. The compulsion to go and buy a new notebook and sharpen some pencils. Or at least buy a new pair of shoes. All those rituals of late summer we persist  hoping it will make us forget the season is almost over.

Last week I could try and stay in denial. But not today. Today is September 7.  It's Fall. Back to school. Back to work. Back to getting serious. Back to thinking about those new shoes.

A friend I grew up with reminded me of the shoes we were most obsessed with as teenagers. Fred Brauns.  If you were hip and cool and living in NYC in the seventies you had a pair of Fred Brauns, flats with strange shaped  toes in triangles, rounds or squares. They were expensive for their time. Me owning a pair meant saving my own money to add to what my mother budgeted for me.  As my friend reminded me, late August would approach and we would take the bus to Kew Gardens and the E or the F train into the city to shop. I can still breathe in the rush of that butter soft leather that filled the Fred Braun Store.

I've been thinking of those Fred Brauns and wondering about this connection to something ending and something beginning and the hope in between in the form of a shoe.  Yes, the summer  is over but in its place is the fall and  the promise of what is new, what is fresh, what is next.

I am torn between the two. And I am convinced a new pair of shoes will ease the transition.

But I no longer buy shoes as easily as I did when in Corporate America. Shoes for most women are an easy quick fix to a bad day and Corporate America is filled with those.  I learned that trick early on. Shoes can be bought between appointments, on a lunch hour, one short stop on the way home. I don't have that many bad days anymore.  Plus I admit to not always wearing shoes in my office. In fact I write this in bare feet.

Still it is September and I am obsessing new shoes. Not because I am having a bad day. But because that is my favorite September ritual. They are my bridge between the seasons, my preparation for what is next.

I stand differently in new shoes. I feel more confident. There are no marks on new shoes, no scuffs. They are like a freshly washed chalkboard with no mistakes. They hold my feet and they hold promise.


What is your September ritual?
Are you too shopping for new 'school' shoes?
Do new shoes make you feel different?
What promise do you hope the fall holds for you?

Do You Know When?

I got into a conversation with a grounds supervisor at the US Open Tennis yesterday. I remarked that he must get all sorts of crazy questions posed to him from ticket holders. He responded with an easy laugh and a shake of his head. "You have no idea! You want to know what they ask the most? When will this match be over? As if I can tell them that. When."


When, when, when.

We all want to know the answer to when. As kids in the backseat of the car, the first question my brother would ask my father is when are we going to get there. Anyone from the Carolinas up to the Cape at this moment wants to know when Hurricane Earl is going to hit the coast and hoping it doesn't.  I want to know when I will have a book contract in my hands.

But none of us really knows. For sure.

We can guess when the match will be over. We can guesstimate how long it will take before we arrive at our destination. We have a wealth of scientific information and instruments trying to determine exactly when and where Hurricane Earl will hit the coast or if it will. I can set target dates for publication as often as I like. We can predict but we never know exactly when. That is until when shows up.

And even though we know that we still try to control it.
We fight against surrendering to when  when will occur by trying to reduce what we don't know as though we were solving a math problem. Or focusing so hard on the when in the distance we forget to notice we did not put gas in the car.

We forget that there are things in our control and there are things out of our control.
We forget to let  go to some power greater than ourselves.
We forget to revel in the element of surprise.
We forget that when eventually occurs, if it is supposed to.
Or as my father would say "when it's good and ready."


Do you have a when you want to know the answer to now?
Are you trying to force your whens or surrendering to what you can't control?
Do you know when Hurricane Earl is going to hit the East End of LI, exactly?