The Daily RICHual

It's finally time to discuss a travesty that has been going on for a few years, and by that I mean, the disappearance of the letter T....

So, right up front I’d like to disclose that the world is changing. I’d also like to disclose that while a few of these changes meet with my approval (as I AM the all being master of time, space, and dimension), most do not.

One particularly annoying change in the world is the disappearance of the letter T from the alphabet. Where did it go? What caused this? So, what am I talking about here?

The new speech allows the T to be present at the beginning of a word and many times at the end. It’s in the middle it’s been banished

The DailyRICHual focuses on Success and how we get to that place. The last episode was about discipline, this one is about having the right attitude. Henry Ford said that, "whether you think you can or that you can't, you're probably right. SO, here are 7 tips to havingthe right attitude.

Long, long ago…. Like 1980 ish, I attended a track and field clinic and one of the speakers was the great Joe Newton, perhaps one of the greatest high school running coaches of all time.

I have notes I took somewhere, probably in a box in the basement, and I’m sure I gleaned a multitude of gems from coach Newton. What I don’t need notes to recall and what I’ve carried in the 40+ years since is Coach Newton’s definition of Discipline.

As we say good-bye to 2022 and look to the coming year with hope and anticipation, I can’t help but to think it’s going to be a much better year. It HAS to be, right? The question, then, becomes: How do I (that’s you, me, anybody) make it a better year? For me, the answer has always been clear: Gratitude and Optimism. We will deal with gratitude in a future writing. For now, let us focus on Optimism.

It has been said that “what you think upon, expands,” so I guess I have to believe that if I (and others, you too) can think optimistically, we have a chance at turning this big clumsy pessimistic ship around.

We’re born optimistic, we don’t know any better. Babies don’t read the paper or watch the news or listen to water cooler “woe are we all” oratories.

How do you start your day? What is your Ritual?

Actually, I guess what I really mean is, how do you begin each day in order to maximize the day and yourself?

SO, I did some research and discovered that there are a bazillion resources with two bazillion things you must do to greet the awesome day.

So much for that approach.

After ten days of watching the world track and field championships, I noticed a disturbing trend. Athletes would finish their race, and most, not all mind you, would lie down almost collapsing, on the track.

What? In the old days lying down after you finished was reserved for one of two situations, 1) you were awaiting the arrival of an ambulance or 2) it was hours later and you had earned a nap.

Now I’m not sure why athletes would choose this.

I have a confession to share: I have procrastinated.

A week and a half ago, I had decided to begin a program I appropriately named The 120 Day Something Else Too Challenge. It never got off the ground.  The idea was to continue my daily run ritual each day and add to it….. Each and everyday…Something else too.

Cycling, lifting, our shiny new rowing maching (which my wife loves), the elliptical (which I DO NOT love),

I’m not sure I’ve mentioned it in this podcast, but I have a puppy. He is an almost 10 month oldEnglish Cream Retriever named Winston and he already weighs 65 pounds.

I haven’t had a dog around in decades. My ex and I used to raise Newfoundlands, but they were outside dogs, used mostly for breeding and showing.

Winston, as an Inside, dog is more of a family member than anything else and is the object of my observing most all the time

My wife is a news watcher. I, for many reasons, am not. I am also a former teacher of American Government to 9thgraders. Here’s what I notice in passing, however, that is disturbing.

There is no longer a tangible anchor in this country. We’ve lost the core values that bind us together as a nation.

And I am open to being wrong here, but there is so much LEFT/RIGHT that it’s difficult to find the middle, while in fact, MOST of us are in the middle.

Yesterday we looked at word of mouth marketing. Let’s dig a hair deeper.

In the days of yore, two old guys hung over the fence and discussed that new fillin' station that opened on the edge of town, the substitute preacher who rocked the sermon, and that new first grade teacher.

These codgers, and everyone else, are still talking. They’re just doing it in different places, like Facebook, like Instagram, like TikTok.

If you’re trying to take your business to the next level, let’s talk marketing. In fact, let’s chat about the greatest marketing of all time, word of mouth marketing.

Common sense says I market, I get customers, I give them great service. And that’s certainly one way to do it. That’s the path that gave us advertising, postcards, slogans and logos.

Unfortunately, many of us are stuck in that protocol.

A lot of people use social media….. A LOT! Most are just playing and having fun. Others are trying to leverage Social Media to increase engagement. For those folks, here are five simple tips:

1.Start with a plan. Three things, what’s your message, who is your audience and which platforms are they using.

I’m teaching a class Thursday called Setting the course for 2022. It’s primarily, I guess, a business planning class. I think it’s more than that. I think it’s a life class. I think it’s a class about intention. I think it’s a class about being on the path to having a great life.

Is that a little heavy? A little overdone? Maybe, but I don’t think so. The choices we make in our business, our family, our friends, what we choose to believe, and the path we choose to follow are all the manifestations of the course we set in our lives.

Let’s talk about learning. There are tens of millions salespeople in this country and most of them are just marking time, just getting by. A few, maybe less than 10%, maybe less, want to be the best they can be every single day. They believe in growth, they believe in excellence, they believe in learning.

Yesterday we focused on identifying your strengths as one of the three ways we can utilize them to catapult our business. Here are #2 and 3

2. Once you have identified your strengths, closely look at how those strengths might help someone who works with you. If you're a fabulous listener, how could that help the people you work with. Maybe you're the product/market expert. Surely you can identify ways that would help someone who worked with you

There are basically three steps in utilizing your strengths to catapult your business: identification, examination, outreach. Let’s handle one today and the others tomorrow.

1. Identification. This is touchy. To identify our strengths, we must first be self aware enough to know what they are. That may or may not come easy for everyone, so here are five tips to uncovering your strengths.

Last week, I participated in the Coldwell Banker Sales Rally and Marketing Roadshow, something I haven't done in, maybe 13 years. While it was a nice opportunity to take a trip down memory lane with some old friends and also meet new ones, it was mostly a chance to talk about one of my favorite topics: your strengths, and why they are so important in your business, your ability to do your job effectively, AND maybe the rest of your life.

When I am designing a Keynote slide and wish to use a picture to anchor a few words of text as well as my verbal message, it’s important to know how to use the Arrange feature. The arrange feature let’s the user decide which should be in the foreground and which should be sent to the back. Without this feature your message would get stacked onto itself and could be lost.

One of The keys to success is a person’s ability to know what’s important, to know the things they should be spending time on as opposed to the things that simply suck away time. It takes several steps to do this well: 1) having a plan to guide you, 2) being able to prioritize within that plan, and 3) actually DOing the more important thing.

Yesterday’s driver rant has given me an idea. Fully enforce, with officers, cameras, whatever it takes, two things: speeding (let the demarcation line be 7 miles over), andrunning red lights (one of the most dangerous habits that just seems SOOOO common). Mail the tickets, charge the fines, take away the licenses. MOSTLY charge the fines.

We could balance the budget in a year.

I live in the Denver metro area. Our population, at least according to the statistics has grown about 6% in the last four years. I’m not buying it.

EVERYTHING AND EVERYPLACE is way more crowded than ever before and the location of the largest overcrowding is one place: the roads.

Now maybe it’s not true, maybe it’s just that it just seems more crowded…. And more crazy. But more crowded and more crazy is more dangerous. Yesterday when one of my fellow drivers performed an act that was probably illegal in about six ways, my wife lamented, “didn’t you ever learn to drive?”

In the last episode, I shared sleep benefits from Matthew Walker’s book Why We Sleep.

Today, let’s focus on three tips to a better sleep, subjectively chosen by me.

1.Regularity. Go to bed and wake up at the same time every night. For me, that has been an easy pattern, I’m an 8 hour guy, usually 9:30- 5:30. The regularity is what our systems need to insure all those benefits previously discussed. The awesome idea here is that while many people use a wake upalarm, few use the to-bed alarm. Hmmmmm

2.If you wake up in the middle of the night, which we all do, and you can’t get back to sleep,

After hearing him on several podcasts, I decided to read Matthew Walker’s book, “Why We Sleep.”

Now while I have listened to all of the podcasts, I have yet to finish the book, so while I haver the overall JIST of what he wants me to know, I am lacking some of the deepest details….. Maybe.

Nonetheless, having been exposed to Walker’s research as well as that of Dr Andrew Huberman at the Huberman lab, I am suitably petrified to not get proper sleep.

I have an iPad2. Perfectly happy with it.

My Macbook is a 2018. It’s awesome.

My watch is half of an apple watch 6.

Clearly, I don’t need updates. In fact, is it just me or do our gadgets seem to have to updated CONSTANTLY?

Hey tech makers, let’s update LESS and get it right MORE!

The last time an update really got me excited was when Keynote added the Anvil animation effect (and that was a while ago).

Sometimes we over build up the greats of our professions. We put them on a pedestal, and maybe they deserve it. I don’t know.

What I do know is that once you place someone up there, you’re actually tellingyourself they are better than you and maybe even limiting yourself in your own quest to be great.

In 1972, Frank Shorter won the Olympic Marathon. His training had been consistent. One of his training partners, Kenny Moore placed 4th.

They were on an easy run the day following his win and Shorter said this to his partner:

Experience is a great thing. Those with experience generally have a tremendous advantage over their peers in any endeavor.

There’s another side of experience that doesn’t get so much press and that is having so much experience that you take what you do for granted, sometimes even go through the motions.

Mike Smith, the cross country coach at Northern Arizona, who’s teams have won 4 of the last 5 NCAA cross country championships works hard to avoid this take it for granted thing.

“If you have that belief - pure belief in your heart - that you want to be successful then you can talk to your mind and your mind will control you to be successful.”
Mind over matter, right?

Mind over fear, right?

It is amazing how much of running, business and life are mental

"Somewhere in the world, someone is training when you are not. When you race him, he will win." - Tom Fleming -

I revisited a great quote today from Des Linden, 2018 Boston Marathon champion and the new world record holder for the 50K distance and I like it so much that I thought it would make a good RICHual

And while Des is certainly a great runner, this quote works for business and life in general.

“Some days it just flows and I feel like I'm born to do this, other days it feels like I'm trudging through hell. Every day I make the choice to show up and see what I've got, and to try and be better."

Earlier in the week, we talked about customer service NOT being a passive thing. It's active. Customer service is active, even PROactive, not passive. It’s an action, not a reaction. It has life and a purpose. “Well done is better than well said,” were the words of Benjamin Franklin. Yoda proclaimed, “Do or do not. There is no try.” Customer service is about DOING.

With that in mind, here are the Eight Irrefutable Laws of Customer Service.

The actual quote goes like this: “A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one,” and it comes from Robert Greene in his 1592 booklet 'Greene's Groats-Worth of Wit’ At the time this was written it was semi thought to be a compliment. Since the 16th century, it has become sort of an insult. Today, I totally mean it as an insult.

In the very late 60’s, I discovered the Distance Running News, a magazine that shared, surprise…. Distance running news.

Sometimes a great customer service story is focused on a grand gesture, an act that amazes the customer. A Nordstrom accepting the return of four tires from a dissatisfied man even though they don’t sell tires. A maid at the Ritz Carlton guaranteeing that the hotel would replace a guest’s missing laptop computer if it wasn’t found by days end. Most of the time, however, customer service can be found in the little things: a smile, a giving attitude, or a kind word.

In poker, they seem to go “all in” often

"ALL IN" for the business professional revolves around several areas: business, yes, but also the rest of our lives. To be truly "ALL IN" in life means more than just work. It means with the family, your body, your mind, your soul. It's about balance, yet a sort of imbalance. What I mean is keeping your life in balance by having more than just work, but creating an imbalance to the same old, usual stuff by pushing everything to the limit. When was the last time you just totally "got after it,"?

I recall hearing an interview with James Taylor and he was asked what song he believed he had sung in public the most. He said Fire and Rain. When asked how many times he’d sung it in public, he said, maybe 10,000

So how do you make it fresh? How do you keep from being totally bored with it?

His answer: it might be the first time you’veheard me sing it.

Over the weekend I experience most people's total unawareness of anything around them. How do we fix that?

I was chatting with a friend not too long ago about a class I teach called "Visual Chi: Creating and Delivering Outstanding Electronic Presentations." He seemed to go somewhere else for a few seconds (maybe a bad memory popped up) and then said, "Oh, another PowerPoint class, huh?"

"Geez, I hope not,"  I replied.

It's not that I have anything against PowerPoint, or Keynote for that matter, it's just that anything can be abused or used for evil instead of good. Even the best laid plans of presentation software creators can go south and that's what's happened to most PPT and K presentations.

Someone once said, "people don't like to be sold, but they love to buy.”

There's a tremendous wisdom to that short sentence as well as numerous far reachingaspects that cover many facets of many businesses. More on those, another time.

Left to their own resources, people will buy. They will buy technology gear, life insurance, lawn mowers, Chevys, Toyotas and Fords. They will buy houses.

The problem is, I’m not obsessed with it, Obsessed with what, you ask?  Well technology and the rush to the latest coolest thing.

I saw today that the Apple Watch 6 has hit its lowest price ever. I didn’t even know there was an Apple Watch 6, I’m still pretty dazzled by my Apple Watch 3.

I’ve done some reading lately and since, for many people, reading is a RICHual of sorts, I thought I’d share the latest tom come across my easy chair.

1. The War of Art - Steven Pressfield

2. The Practice - Seth Godin

3. Think Again - Adam Grant

4. Become What You Are - Alan Watts

I still get to the door of the store and end up saying, dang it, I forgot my mask.

Then, as I walk back to the car to retrieve said mask, I mutter things like, “that’s really bright, it’s not like we haven’t been doing this for like, over a year.” And some other self degrading comments that shall remain unpublished.

So what is the problem?

Am I just forgetful? Well, actually, toquote my Mother, if my head wasn’t screwed on I would probably forget it somewhere.

After a short hiatus, one week for just taking the week off, the last week being buried under a home flooring and painting project, the Daily RICHual is back

I was listening to a podcast last week and I heard I guy mention the three L’s to growing as a person. I thought it would make a nice, brief, stand alone RICHual:

Listen, Learn, Leverage.

As I was watching The Maltese Falcon for the umpteenth time Sunday, I anxiously awaited the "showdown" scene between Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) and Brigid O'Shaughnessy (Mary Astor). After a rough and rocky relationship (both business AND personal), Spade let's her know that he's turning her in for murder, even though he loves her. Spade's wonderful dialogue, both mildly loving and extremely sarcastic goes like this:  "I hope they don't hang you, precious, by that sweet neck. Yes, angel, I'm gonna send you over. The chances are you'll get off with life. That means if you're a good girl, you'll be out in 20 years. I'll be waiting for you. If they hang you, I'll always remember you."

If you are like me, even a little bit, you are inundated with the latest technological advancements to the point of being a) confused, b) overwhelmed, c) tired of the speed of the merry go round, or d) all of the above.

As we await the coming of the iPhone 27, OS 24, Microsoft 52 and the third version of everything in the last twelve months, how do you (I) keep up? The answer, I believe, is simple: make smart, relevant choices.

Anyone (well, most anyone who tries) can give reactive customer service. While reactive service is okay and proactive service is better, I think most of us prefer someone who isn't making us ask for help, or beg for service. I'm more satisfied when my service provider actually looks at my needs - my best interest and anticipates how they can help.

The greatest service providers, places like Nordstroms and the Ritz Carlton, understand that this phenomenon does not just happen without effort. That's why they work at it daily. We could do the same.

True pre-activeness, however. has some foundation beneath it. In order to be preactive you must do four things:

"Don't think, React!" That was the daily advice of my Junior High School basketball coach, Mr. Korwin. He believed that if we spent too long pondering the next move on the court, we would be prone to mistakes, indecisiveness, and poor judgment. For us, gangly eighth graders, it may well have been excellent advice.

Better advice might have been to learn to be proactive rather than reactive. Being proactive meanswe're taking charge of our situation, trying to be a bit in front of the wave, so to speak. Proactive people are taking control of today.

What are you doing to keep your business simple? How are you able to balance life and work without the work part getting out of hand? Are your systems aimed at running a smart, practical business? Do you have systems in place?

Technology is moving at a break neck speed. New gadgets, designed to save mankind from the discomforts of life, are developed daily (maybe hourly). Some things, however, remain as they have for years, decades, even centuries. 

One such example of an old idea that technology has yet to improve is the common pallet. Pallets have been around and been pretty much unchanged since the peak of the second industrial revolution, leading into World War II. Large scale production was creating a need for better handling of goods. The pallet solved some of that problem. While the actual inventor of the pallet is a bit of a mystery, we do know this: it was patented by George Raymond and Bill House. Interestingly, George and Bill had patents accepted on the forklift the same day theirs was accepted on the pallet. Those two things sure went together, but I digress. By the way, my first summer job, in fact, was moving pallets at Argon Industries in downriver Detroit.

"My son, Isaac, called me on that danged telephone contraption today," my great Grandfather said. "Why can't he just come over here if he wants to talk with me? It's only three towns away. Instead he expects me to hold that thing up to my ear like it's natural or something."

Thus was the lament of my Great Grandpa Blackmer as he struggled with the changing times. I too struggle with every text message and/or tweet from my younger generation hip, jiving sons. "Why can't you just call me?" I ask. It's a lot easier than this sucky texting thing.