If this describes you, then who decided to fixify your income? Who made that decision?

You made that decision, didn’t you? You decided to earn a fixed amount of money per month. You can trace your decisions back to some moment where you said yes to a fixed income.

Are you aware that saying yes was entirely optional? In fact, if you give it some thought (which I’ll encourage you to do in this article), you should be able to see that accepting a fixed income is a rather stupid choice, all things considered. A fixed income is a sucker bet.

How is that choice working out for you so far? Are you blissfully delighted with it? Do you like knowing that you’ll earn the same amount of money month after month? Does it feel comforting to know how much you’re going to make? Or is there some part of you that’s bored and frustrated beyond recognition?

Do you like the stability of it? Is it truly stable, or is your feeling of security rooted in a hopeful illusion? If some individual can decide to turn off your income with the words “You’re fired,” it’s hardly stable. If that’s your situation, it’s safe to say your income is unstable and conditional rather than stable and secure. We can say that all income is conditional, but how stable are those conditions? Does someone else wield the power to turn off your income?

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that your income seems reasonably stable, secure, and predictable. Perhaps you work in a high-demand field, and you’re really good at what you do, so even if you lost your current job, you could quickly find a new one doing similar work for similar pay. That may be a stretch for some, but for the sake of this article, we don’t even need to pluck that low-hanging fruit. There are plenty of other cuts awaiting a splash of lemon juice.

Downsides of a Fixed Income

Aside from its predictability and possible stability, virtually everything else about a fixed income is negative.

First off, a fixed income lacks flexibility. It cannot adapt well to changing circumstances. This means that fixed incomes can get pummeled in a variety of ways.

If expenses rise unexpectedly and surpass your monthly income, then you have no choice but to draw money from cash reserves or investments or go into debt. If your expenses later return to normal, this debt may be temporary, but you’ll still end up paying extra interest or losing interest on your depleted savings/investments, which takes money out of your pocket.

If you spend more, you can’t simply earn more to compensate. This turns unexpected expenses into threats. They become something you relate to with fear or worry about. What if the car breaks down? What if someone gets sick? What if prices go up? Such events are just part of life. It makes no sense to fear the inevitable. Stuff is going to break, including expensive stuff that costs a lot to repair or replace. If getting an unexpected bill stresses you out, your mindset is a mismatch for reality.

If expenses rise above net income for too long, you can sink into debt for a long time and waste a great deal of money paying interest to someone else. Many people remain stuck there till they die. If their fixed incomes are too close to their expenses, taxes, and debt payments, then getting out of debt becomes hopeless. Hope can only be restored by focusing on the income side.

For this reason, people on fixed incomes often spend an inordinate amount of time fussing over their expenses. Otherwise they may risk depleting their savings or going into debt. They want to fulfill their desires, but their income limits their ability to do that.

“I can’t afford it” is practically a mantra for fixed income people. They sacrifice their true desires in order to stick to their budgets, totally oblivious to the fact that no one is forcing them to waste their lives on expense-tracking tedium. If they desire something with a price tag, but they can’t afford it, they rule it out as impossible for them – as if their fixed income is the final arbiter of their desires. Eventually resentment builds. They start resenting the unfairness of the economy, of people who set the prices, of business in general, of money, and so on. The bad guy is somewhere out there. Nope… the bad guy is the stupid choice you made to fixify your income. Wise up and stop doing that to yourself.

People look really pathetic when they act financially helpless. This isn’t how human beings should relate to themselves.

“Hi, there’s something I really want. Actually, it feels like the perfect match for me, but I just can’t afford it because I’m on a fixed income. Help me! Can you give me a price break or something? I really, really want it!”

“How about if you give me a break and stop pretending to be helpless?”

“No, you don’t understand. I’m on a tight budget. I really can’t afford to pay full price.”

“Now you’re just making yourself look foolish. Who fixified your income in the first place? You did! Why are you putting the onus on me to work within the limits you created for yourself? You’re asking me to fit an elephant inside a breadbox. Why don’t you raise your limits? Raise them high enough to be well beyond your desires, so you can easily afford whatever you want.”

“I can do that?”

“Yes, you’ve always been free to do that.”

“Well, I dunno about that. I don’t think my boss will give me more money.”

“Screw your boss then. Why do you want a boss anyway?”

“But that would mean making major changes in my life.”

“Yes, it would.”

“I don’t think I’m ready for that. It’s too risky.”

“There’s no additional risk because you’ve already lost the connection to your desires. You’re already stuck in a situation where you aren’t experiencing what you truly want. Life doesn’t get any worse than that. To do nothing ensures a continuation of the worst possible outcome – being perpetually unfulfilled.”

“But it could get worse. I could be even more unhappy.”

“If you do nothing, it will indeed get worse. That’s a given. Your desires will slip further and further away as you disconnect from your heart even more. Life doesn’t get any worse than that. The only hope lies on the path of change.”

“So it’s to be torture then?”

“Yes, until it kills you.”

“I can cope with torture.”

“Suit yourself.”

“So how about that price break?”

“Fezzik, tear his arms off.”

Foolishly Guarding Fool’s Gold

It’s funny how people strive to protect that which is worthless. The state of being unhappy and unfulfilled is worth absolutely nothing. If that’s where you find yourself, you’re already at rock bottom.

You may think that you’ll have to risk some of your stuff (possessions, money, etc) to make big changes in your life. That may be true, but if you aren’t happy right now, then all of that stuff is of zero value to you anyway. If you try to maintain your stuff at the expense of your happiness and fulfillment, then you are indeed a complete idiot. You’re trying to sell your very soul, aren’t you? You’re entering into an agreement that says, “I agree to be perpetually unhappy and unfulfilled in exchange for cash and goods worth $X.” Add up the value of all the stuff you believe you’d have to risk to make big changes. Does that value of X make this agreement a wise choice?

Risk the stuff. It’s worthless anyway. But don’t make the insane choice of sacrificing your happiness for stuff.

Switching to a Variable Income

Earning a variable income, where you have the flexibility to earn a different sum of money each month, has a lot more to do with mindset than anything else. It doesn’t matter if you have a job, run your own business, or enjoy multiple streams of income. Those are just different vehicles.

The key is to recognize who determines your income. You do. You may have financial and economic realities to deal with, but ultimately you set the prices for what your time and efforts are worth financially, you decide what skills to develop and what kind of training to undertake, and you determine what kind of value to create and deliver to people. The most powerful choices are under your control.

If you deliver pizza for a living, you can expect to be paid for that particular skill based on its market value. Pizza delivery guys are easily trained and replaced, so you can expect to earn very little from such a job. Don’t blame the job for what it pays. No one is forcing you to choose a low-paying, unskilled job. If you try to squeeze more money from a job than the job is worth in the larger marketplace, eventually your boss or customers will figure out that you’re being overpaid, and you’ll be replaced by someone cheaper.

On the other hand, maybe you want to inspire and motivate people for a living. This takes a lot more skill than delivering pizzas, but it’s in much higher demand relative to the supply. In general, people are willing to pay a lot more to be inspired and motivated than they’re willing to pay for a hot pizza (unless you live in Naples). If you develop a high ability to inspire and motivate people, and you build the means to deliver your value to a sizeable number of people, you can eventually earn more in an hour than the pizza guy earns in month.

You not only have the ability to develop your skills within a particular field, but you can also switch fields repeatedly. If you want to earn more, then keep building skills and changing up how you combine and express those skills to maximize the value you’re able to create and deliver, thereby maximizing the income you’re able to generate. The opportunities to do this are endless as long as you remain flexible and alert.

Your income is not fixed unless you decide to fixify it. It doesn’t matter if you’re getting checks from the government as your only income source. Those checks may not increase in size, but they aren’t the only checks you’re capable of earning. If you don’t like the size of those checks, go out and earn different checks.

A Fixed Income Is a Sucker Bet

Take note that while you’re receiving a fixed income, someone higher up the chain of command is enjoying a variable income at your expense. When you receive a fixed income, you’re actually creating a variable amount of value, but the income generated by your excess value is being siphoned off to line someone else’s pockets. They’re profiting from your ignorance. How generous of you! It may seem like they’re taking on more risk, but keep in mind that if they go down, you go down too. You share in the risk, but you don’t share in the upside. You do realize you’re giving away the farm here, don’t you?

If you’re going to work, then why not receive and enjoy the fruits of your labor instead of giving most of your earnings away before you even see them? You’re already creating value, aren’t you? If you want to be generous, consider giving some of your excess value away to charity. I donate some money each month because it feels good to do so. But I donate to non-profits and charities that spend their money on things I want to support, not to stock-holding officers or investors who are already making millions a year.

Stop pretending to be helpless when it comes to how much money you make. Your paycheck has no power over you – except to the degree you give your power away. You may be working in a system where the higher ups have every financial incentive to keep you powerless so they can keep siphoning the value you’re creating, but ultimately you’re the one who chooses to walk through that door each day. You don’t have to keep doing that. You can get up and leave right this minute if you want. Many people are much happier for having done that.

You are the final arbiter of your desires. If you want something with a price tag, you have the power to earn the money to pay for it. You decide how much you earn. You decide how much you spend.

When you realize that you choose your income, you can focus your energies on creating and delivering as much value as it takes to earn whatever you want. Be intelligent and deliberate about it. Make abundance a priority in your life. This is a lot more fun than fussing over expenses and nitpicking your taxes. Once you develop a modicum of skill, you’ll find that it’s a lot more fun to earn an extra $10K than to save $10K. You can earn $10K in an hour if you develop the mindset and skills to do so. No one is stopping you from doing that.

Stop Fussing Over Expenses and Taxes

When it comes to reducing your expenses and taxes, you have to do a lot of tedious work. It’s not fun, at least not for any sane person I’ve met. Yet people with a scarcity mindset spend a lot more time nitpicking their expenses and taxes than they invest in boosting their income. Not a good trade off… not by a long shot.

When you try to minimize your expenses and taxes, you’ll eventually reach the point of having to make tough calls that could reduce your quality of life. On the expenses side, you may have to do extra expense tracking and budgeting, which takes time. Or you may begin to sacrifice quality to save a few bucks on your purchases.

On the tax side, you’ll have to fill out more paperwork and do more accounting to take advantage of more deductions and save more money. Is that really what you want to spend your precious life doing?

Consider that when it comes to expenses and taxes, you have a hard limit of $0 and can go no lower. Once you’re spending the bare minimum, that’s it – you’re done. So your maximum ideal gain is to spend nothing at all. And even if you could take things that far, your quality of life will surely suffer. You’ll be wasting so much time going out of your way just to save a few extra dollars here and there. Sacrifice and scarcity will be your constant companions. That’s no way to live.

In the long run, it’s much more productive to focus your time and energy – not to mention your precious life – on the side of generating more income. You have no hard limit on that side. For all practical purposes, the sky is the limit. With commitment and persistence, you can boost your income by many multiples of what you might save on the expense and tax side.

Working on the income side is a lot more fun to boot. You get to spend your time creating value and receiving money with gratitude instead of worrying about whether or not you can afford to splurge on organic produce.

For my taxes, I pay an accountant to do all the paperwork for me. That costs extra money, but I don’t worry about it. I also procrastinate endlessly when it comes to doing any sort of accounting work. I do the bare minimum I can. I keep everything in good order, but I don’t balance the accounts very often. At tax time I let my accountant work his magic to figure out the best deductions for me, but if I have to do extra work that I don’t want to do just to save a little more money, I simply decline. That way I get to spend more time on the value creation and delivery side, not to to mention the enjoyment of life side. The pay is much better on that side, both financially and emotionally.

Last year my accountant told me I could save more money by deducting the business use of my car. All I’d have to do would be to keep track of mileage when I drive my car for business reasons. There may have been some other ways to claim this deduction, but they still required me to do more tracking, analysis, and/or paperwork. That seemed like a stupid waste of life, so I told my accountant to skip that deduction – not worth it to me. I’m not going to waste more time on stuff I don’t enjoy just so I can save an extra thousand dollars on my taxes. The IRS will surely have no trouble taking the extra money, and I’m happy to spend my time doing more of what I enjoy, which will easily enable me to earn enough money to cover that missed deduction many times over. I’d actually lose money if I tried to take that deduction. It’s yet another sucker bet for those who choose to live in scarcity.

When it comes to my expenses, I don’t maintain any sort of budget, either on the business side or personal side. Budgeting is boring to me, so I don’t do it. I simply spend whatever I feel like spending. When my expenses rise, expectedly or unexpectedly, I don’t worry about it. I don’t have to worry. I know that if I begin to overspend, I can always restore balance by over-earning just as easily.

Earning money is fun. Spending money is fun. Both activities are interchangeable. Fussing over expenses and taxes isn’t remotely fun, so that isn’t part of the equation – that kind of stuff gets triaged.

My latest credit card bill for my business is $1010, which is on the low side. Most of it is stuff that gets auto-billed each month. I was too busy earning money that month and didn’t have as much time to spend money. The bill before that was $6900. Ah yes, the Bermuda conference. I had a lot of fun spending money that month. The bill before that was somewhere in between. My personal credit card bills fluctuate similarly. Every month I pay off every balance completely, so there’s no revolving balance and no interest charges.

I “waste” money on unnecessary expenses all the time. I overspend on little things. I don’t fuss over trying to save money. I assume that whatever I can spend, I can earn. That wasn’t always the case though – it took years to train up to the level where I could earn enough to cover my desires.

Years ago I had a friend who absolutely hated waiting in line. He saw it as a personal insult. He used to say that all stores and restaurants should have a separate cashier for people who are willing to pay 50% more, just so they’ll never have to wait in line. I thought he was nuts at the time, but he was simply trying to maximize the value he got from life. Waiting in life sucked too much value away.

I really don’t know how much money I earn each month because I only look into it a couple times a year. It’s just video game gold anyway – doesn’t really matter what the exact figures are. I have a general feel/vibe for how the cash is flowing week by week, and in terms of spending I do my best to go with the flow. Is my bank account growing or shrinking? I like to see the numbers keep growing. I check my account balances a couple times a week to take their pulse. I earn money from multiple sources pretty much every day, so my checking account is perpetually refilling itself, but I want to make sure there are no big surprises like fraudulent charges. Some months it’s hard for me to guess what I actually earned within +/- $5K. I simply don’t care to keep track. It’s somewhere in the tens of thousands each month, more than enough to live off.

I do the same with my book. I have no idea how many copies it’s sold. Can’t even fathom a guess within +/- 5K copies. I haven’t asked my publisher for a sales update this whole year. It’s great that we’re up to a dozen languages for translated versions, but as for the money and sales, I don’t really care. I’ll sort it out when the royalty statements start coming. It will be more fun to be surprised.

Even though this may sound financially irresponsible, I think it’s just the opposite. My bills always get paid. I’m paying down my mortgage much faster than necessary. My car is 100% paid for. I’m sharing this with you because it actually works, even though it may sound counter-intuitive.

Managing your finances in real life – the fun way – is very much like earning gold in a computer role-playing game. Earning money is play. Spending money is also play. If you aren’t having fun, you’re missing the whole point.

I think it’s truly irresponsible to waste your precious life on things you don’t enjoy, like fussing over your expenses or taxes. Does it feel good to you to sacrifice quality of life to keep a tight grip on your finances, when you could be making plenty of money if you simply spent more time doing what you love and providing value for others? Would you rather do something creative and have plenty of money to splash around, or spend your time dealing with cheap items that keep breaking down? I think you deserve the best that life has to offer you, but you have to step up and claim it. No one is stopping you from doing that.

Cash Reserves

Suze Orman recommends maintaining a short-term cash reserve (not counting long-term investments) equivalent to about 6 months of expenses. I think that’s a wise idea. A decent cash reserve gives you a lot more flexibility, whether your income is fixed or variable.

I maintain a liquid cash reserve at all times to have a cushion for any unforeseen expenses. I like to see that reserve be at least $50K, preferably closer to $100K. That way if something unexpected happens like a wacko filing a frivolous lawsuit because he spilled boiling water on himself while attempting my brown rice recipe… or crashed his car while attempting to drive after a week on polyphasic sleep, I can easily afford a decent hitman.

When your income source is fairly vulnerable, like if you could get laid off or fired and spend a lot of time out of work, you may want to maintain a bigger cash reserve. But when you assert more control over your income and maintain more options for responding to financial setbacks, you don’t need as big a reserve.

If you have multiple streams of mostly passive income, and if it would take a major upheaval to threaten those sources even if you stopped working for a while, you may be fine with a 2-month cash reserve or less. If I suddenly need more cash, I have lots of options that could easily be implemented in less than 60 days. I could do another joint-venture promotion. I could create and sell an info product. I could do another book deal and get an advance. Even so, when I focus on feeling abundant, I naturally attract a bigger reserve than I need.

Cash reserves are useful because there’s a lag between creating and delivering value and receiving income from it. Some income sources have low lag time. For example, when someone registers for my workshop and pays by credit card or PayPal, the money is in my bank account within a few days. Some sources pay monthly, such as affiliate deals. Others pay quarterly, semi-annually, or less frequently, like book royalties. Some pay “whenever.” A cash reserve helps to smooth out fluctuations. It also keeps you from incurring stupid bank fees from bouncing checks. Having a bank balance that’s too low can lead to a lot of time wasted as well as unnecessary stress.

How do you build a cash reserve? You can get there by skimping on expenses, but that gets really tedious and boring after a while, so I don’t recommend it. Focus on creating more value, training up your value-creating skills, and building a bigger client base for whatever service you provide. It all comes down to getting better at creating and delivering value.

I certainly didn’t make sacrifices to build a cash reserve. I just kept doing what I enjoyed. I stayed alert for new ways to express and deliver value to people. Sometimes it was as simple as asking, “What else can I write about that could help people in some way?” I didn’t have to focus on earning money. When you get good at creating and delivering value, money finds its way to you.

Luck or Choice?

Why do I find myself in this “lucky” situation where I get to do what I want, earn what I want, and spend what I want? If you think luck had anything to do with this, you’re crazy, deluded, and otherwise insane. This happened by choice. I created this career and financial situation deliberately. It wasn’t easy to figure out how all the pieces would fit together – it took years – but it was definitely worth it.

How long it takes you to hit your desired financial stride is irrelevant since the time is going to pass anyway. You can spend that time creating the life you desire, or you can stay stuck with something you don’t want. You might as well work toward what you desire, unless you want sacrifice and scarcity to accompany you all the way to the grave.

Recognize that a fixed income is a sucker bet. It’s like drinking soda. It doesn’t matter that lots of people do it – that doesn’t make it any less dumb. There’s no good reason to sacrifice yourself to line someone else’s pockets. Don’t be a sucker.

You’re free to opt out of the fixed income sucker bet whenever you want. When you do this, rest assured that the other suckers in your life will bark at you for pouring lemon juice on their cuts, and the higher ups won’t appreciate that you saw through their scheme. But you’ll be free to decide how much you earn. You’ll be able to write your own paycheck, not with airy-fairy wishful thinking but with a commitment to creating and delivering the best value you can, regardless of how you choose to express yourself.

Of course having a variable income isn’t all fun and roses. It takes time to get the hang of it and to get a good feel for how to balance the flow of earning and spending. It took me about 5 years before I achieved basic competence with it. I made tons of mistakes during that time, but I learned from them. After that it was pretty easy to maintain stability.

If you pursue this path, maybe you can figure it out in 2 years. Maybe it will take 10. Again, the time is going to pass anyway. If you drop the fixed income mindset, you’ll end up in a pretty sweet place once you eventually figure it out.

As you probably noticed, I made up some words in this article. You’re free to coinify your own words too. This is your reality after all. You make the rules. Just as you can subscribe to other people’s verbal patterns, you can also subscribe to other people’s income patterns. But you don’t have to. You never did have to. Just because a pattern is popular doesn’t mean it’s the best pattern for you. Give that some thoughtification.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Communicate like a human being, not a marketer.

If your email looks even remotely like spam, expect that busy people will treat it as such.

If an email looks impersonal at all or seems like it’s being sent to more than one person, busy people will often delete it without reading it. Busy people get enough personal communication that they don’t want to bother with anything that isn’t personal.

Sometimes I get messages sent through my online contact form that start with salutations like “Hi Marc…” I actually prefer these copy/paste blunders, since it saves me from having to read them before hitting delete.

If you’re going to contact a busy person, make sure your message is personal and specific to that person.

Be authentic.

Get clear about why you want to connect with a particular busy person.

Do you want to become good friends? Do you want to do business together? Do you want to ask for advice or mentoring?

Don’t put up a false front, pretending to want one thing while secretly desiring another.

Don’t pretend you want to be friends and hang out if you really just want to do a deal together. Similarly, don’t pretend you’re interested in doing business if you just want to hang out and be friends.

When you communicate inauthentically, other people will often pick up a creepy vibe from you. They may not even notice it consciously, but they’ll feel turned off by you.

Inauthentic communication is a big pet peeve of mine. It’s such a huge turnoff when someone is being fake with me. You may think you’re good at hiding your real intentions, but someone who deals with a high volume of communication has the opportunity to get pretty good at discerning patterns, so what seems invisible to you may be glaringly obvious to them.

Authenticity is the best policy. Putting up a false front simply isn’t necessary.

I’m not suggesting the approach of radical honesty, blurting out whatever you’re thinking and feeling no matter how offensive it may be. I think a little decorum and politeness is reasonable. However, to say one thing while secretly intending something else is a bad idea. You’re a lot more transparent than you realize. People usually won’t call you on it, but they’ll sense that something is off with you, and their shields will go up.

If you want people to lower their shields around you, make sure your expression reflects your intention.

Be patient.

Don’t buy into the myth of the once-in-a-lifetime networking opportunity. If you maintain an abundance mindset, interesting opportunities will come up again and again.

Think of networking like playing in the World Series of Poker main event. You aren’t going to win the whole thing on the first day. It’s a long road. You probably won’t make it to the final table. That may be a goal to strive for, but most of your experience will involve playing the game and making new friends along the way. The try-hards usually just make fools of themselves.

Networking with people is much the same. Sometimes you’ll encounter what appears to be an opportunity, but it doesn’t quite work out. Don’t force it. Be patient and wait for a better spot. Maintain your poise and self-respect, and don’t be a try-hard.

A few years ago, someone from Oprah’s production company called to offer me an “opportunity.” They were looking for someone to help teach Eckhart Tolle’s material for some webcasts they were doing. Was that a good spot for me? Heck no. I have no interest in presenting someone else’s material when I have so much of my own to share. I knew they could find hundreds of people to fill that role, so it’s not an area where I can make a unique contribution. It may have looked like an opportunity, but it wasn’t a good spot for me. To say yes to that would have been to act out of desperation. So naturally I turned them down. The “better spot” is to share my own material in the form of a 3-day workshop.

When you network with people, do so from a place of abundance. Know that opportunities are everywhere. When a good opportunity comes your way, accept it. But when the opportunity isn’t right, just relax and let it go.

Realize that the rules change once you’re in.

Once you’re “in” with a busy person, it’s still important to be respectful of their time, but if you’ve made it past the slush pile, your status will likely change, and their shields will go down when they’re communicating with you.

Once I’ve established a solid friendship with a person, my rules change. Now my attention shifts from processing their emails and voice mails to managing a relationship.

There’s a continuum here of course. I might spend one minute typing an email to one person, an hour on the phone with another, and a half day in person with someone else. When I’m typing emails, I normally want to process them fast and move on to something else. But when I’m talking to someone face to face, I’m just going with the flow and having fun, not looking at my watch and worrying about the time investment.

Almost every busy person I know experiences a similar dichotomy. Busy people are usually tight with their time in some areas but much looser with their time in other areas.

The people who will send you a one-line email to save a few minutes are the same people who’d have no qualms shooting the breeze with you for hours under different circumstances.

I think the reason for this is simple. Typing emails and returning voice mails isn’t much fun, especially if you have to process a high volume. I certainly don’t want to spend hours each day typing emails. But I like connecting with people face to face – that feels much more natural, and it isn’t tedious at all.

Sometimes when people pop over to my house to visit with Erin and me for the first time, they start feeling anxious after a while. They might look at their watch and say, “Oh I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I just chewed up two hours talking with you. I’m sure you’re very busy and have better things to do.” I have to reassure them that it’s okay for us just to hang out and chat.

I’ve had one-on-one conversations that have lasted as long as eight hours. I’ve had people hang out at my house for days at a time. Why? Because it’s fun. I enjoy it. But if I spend more than an hour answering emails, I start feeling squirmy.

I’m certainly not alone in feeling this way. Other busy people behave much the same way. Even so-called productivity gurus will sit around drinking coffee and chatting for hours about the most mundane things. Why? Because they enjoy it. They apply their productivity tactics to efficiently process the tasks they don’t enjoy much, so they can free up more time to do what they enjoy most.

Therein lies another good lesson. If you try to communicate with a busy person through a channel they don’t enjoy much, you’re going to get processed. But if you use a channel they enjoy, you have a much better chance at connecting.

***

This was a long series, and it should be largely common sense, but these tips aren’t commonly practiced. I hope that by sharing what it’s like to network with busy people (from both sides of the fence), I’ve helped you gain some distinctions that will help you become a more effective networker – and a better friend as well.

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Don’t apologize for reaching out.

Never begin your first contact with an apology.

Every week people send me emails that begin with phrases like, "Sorry to bother you, but…" What does this tell me about the other person’s expectations for connecting with me? It tells me they expect to bother me. Who am I to argue with them? Delete… next.

If you hint that you’re about to irritate or annoy someone, they’ll assume you’re right. Why should they do otherwise?

You might think that you’re just being polite and respectful. Are you really? Or would it be more accurate to say that deep down, you don’t feel equal to the person you’re contacting?

If you have to apologize for bothering someone, maybe you shouldn’t be contacting them at all… at least not until you do a bit more work on your self-esteem.

“Excuse me…” is another weak opener. Why do you need to be excused? Are you doing something wrong?

If you’re going to approach a busy person, do so as an equal. Don’t act like an equal. Know you’re equal.

It doesn’t matter which person on this planet you wish to connect with – the President of the USA, the Dalai Lama, Oprah, etc. Don’t chode yourself with anyone. We’re all equal. We’re all part of the same whole. Why should you feel intimidated to meet another piece of humanity?

Don’t put busy people or celebrities on a pedestal. They may have a lot of accomplishments under their belt. They may be famous. So what? They’re still human just like everyone else. Don’t mistake the public image for the real person underneath.

Be secure in who you are. Know that whenever you reach out to connect with someone, you’re offering something of value. The value is who you are. If you don’t think you’re worth knowing, you need to spend more time getting in touch with your own value. Of course you’re worth knowing.

If you want to be worthy of a busy person’s time and attention, then know that you deserve it.

The surest way to have your communication devalued is to signal up front that you’re a low-value contact. High-value contacts don’t apologize for reaching out.

Get to the point.

If you conclude that making friends isn’t right for you, and you opt to communicate some kind of offer straightaway, then do your best to be concise and direct.

Never ever begin your emails with a paragraph like this:

I know you get a lot of emails, but I just had to send you this message. I’m sure you must be very busy, and I definitely respect your time, so I’ll try to be as brief as possible. This request will take a bit of explaining though. But please take the time to read it all the way through. I’m sure it will be worth your time to do so.

This is the point where a busy person will often hit delete. When I see a paragraph like this, I probably hit delete at least half the time without bothering to read the rest of the message, regardless of length. Historically speaking, such messages have rarely been worth the time to read. Also, when I answer the phone and someone offers up the verbal equivalent of the above paragraph, I know it’s best to get off the phone ASAP.

Plainly state the purpose of your communication in the first sentence. Get to the frakkin point as quickly as you can. Let the other person know the context for the rest of your message.

If you really don’t care to connect on the basis of friendship, then don’t act like you do. That’s inauthentic. You’re better off sending an android-like email and cutting out the fluff. Keep it short and sweet.

Never send a wall of text.

More than two paragraphs is usually overkill when you’re trying to solicit business. If you send long-winded emails, busy people will hit delete long before they make sense of your offer.

Making an offer or suggesting a deal doesn’t require sharing the entire history of your business. Really it doesn’t.

Some people think they should include as much detail as possible in their first message to a busy person. That way the busy person will have all the important info up front. They figure they’ve only got one shot to make a first impression, so the more words they use, the better. So they send first-contact emails that are upwards of a thousand words.

This is a mistake.

If your first contact with a busy person is to send them a wall of text, you immediately give the impression that you’re going to be a time drain. This makes it much harder for a busy person to want to follow up with you.

Make your first message to a busy person as short as you can. Busy people are more likely to read and reply to a 100-word email than a 1,000-word one.

People send me wall-of-text emails every week, but I stopped reading such messages a long time ago. I don’t even skim them anymore. I’d be afraid to reply to them for fear of receiving another wall of text in response.

If you already have a close relationship with someone, a wall of text is questionable but ok I suppose. I’d still suggest you pick up the phone if you have more than a couple paragraphs to communicate – it’s usually a lot faster. But definitely don’t send a wall of text as your first contact to someone new, busy or not.

If you want to share the history of your business or the complexities of your business model or your personal history, it’s inappropriate to do that in an email. Instead, offer to schedule a phone call or face to face meeting, and share the details then. Don’t propose marriage before you’ve had a first date. If the busy person is interested, they’ll follow up with you.

Keep your personality switched on.

The way you normally behave with your friends and family – that’s how you should behave when connecting with busy people. That’s what it means to be yourself.

I’ve seen people act like a deer caught in the headlights when meeting someone they consider famous or popular. It’s like they switch off their personality and freeze up. They can still talk, but it’s not how they normally communicate.

No one wants to connect with an automaton. That kind of communication is very boring.

I think a lot of people hide their personality because they’re worried they might say or do something that will lead to rejection. Can you see that this is a very fear-based way of thinking? You’re going to create exactly what you fear.

Don’t worry about getting rejected. It’s really not a big deal. If you’re secure in who you are, it shouldn’t matter whether or not someone else likes you. It’s much better to relax and be yourself instead of tensing up and worrying about every word that comes out of your mouth. It’s not like such mistakes are fatal. In most cases they’re easily correctable.

When you make a social faux pas and then become aware of it, brush it off if it’s minor. If it’s more serious, acknowledge the mistake and apologize for it. Most of the time the other person will appreciate your candor, and you’ll form a closer bond because of it.

A few years ago, a friend with a very “switched on” personality treated me in a way that some would regard as slightly rude. This happened in front of a bunch of our mutual friends. He didn’t notice it at the time, and I simply brushed it off, but someone else noticed and pointed it out to him later. He quickly realized that he goofed, and he took me aside and apologized. I was touched by the gesture and actually came to respect him even more because of it. He and I are still good friends to this day.

People tend to be very forgiving of personality quirks when they see you’re just being your natural self.

As a human being, you’re going to make social mistakes. That’s perfectly okay. Don’t expect yourself to be perfect. And definitely don’t assume that other people expect you to be perfect. They don’t. When you take things a bit too far and screw up, fess up to it and move on. Learn from your mistakes. This is much better than tensing up or using fake routines and communicating like a social robot.

Keep your real personality switched on, even in circumstances where you might feel inclined to clench up. You’ll make some mistakes now and then, but the honest social feedback will allow you to hone your personality over time. “Being yourself” is not a static state. You’ll continue to evolve.

You can’t grow if you hide your real personality whenever you encounter unusual social situations. The uncommon situations are often the best teachers.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Meet in person.

It’s hard to create much of a connection with someone via email. Email just isn’t expressive enough. Email is communication stripped of its emotional context.

Instant messaging is a step up from email because it’s real-time instead of asynchronous, but it’s still a very thin channel. Consequently, I virtually never use IM. It feels like trying to communicate underwater.

Text messaging is a close cousin of instant messaging and email, depending on how it’s used and how quickly people respond.

Phone calls are a big step up because now you can pick up some emotional context from tone of voice. You can build a halfway decent connection over the phone. But you’re still missing out on body language, and when it comes to creating a strong connection, that’s a pretty big deal.

The best way to communicate is face to face and belly to belly. Nothing else compares to it.

If you do a lot of networking by email and phone calls, but you never go outside and meet people face to face, you’re probably only 20% as effective as you could be – and I think that’s being generous.

Face to face communication is very efficient in terms of the bonds it creates and the value that can be exchanged. Many people can create a strong, intimate connection with someone in a matter of minutes when communicating face to face, but that may never happen via email.

Sometimes when I meet people in person, we can get an amazing connection going in just a few minutes. It’s like our souls recognize and acknowledge each other. If I tried to form these kinds of connections via email or phone, it still wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as face to face, even after years of back and forth contact.

I know a lot of networkers who love to work the phones and email. Personally I find that a huge waste of time. It may seem more efficient at first glance because you can reach more people in less time, but is it really more efficient? What about the quality of those connections? Email and phones are okay for maintaining relationships, but they’re poor choices for building relationships.

I’m not saying that you can’t build some decent connection when communicating remotely. I’m just saying that face to face communication is about a couple orders of magnitude more effective if your goal is to create an authentic connection.

I dare say that if you’ve never met me in person or talked to me one on one, you really can’t claim to know me all that well, even if you’ve read every article and listened to every podcast I’ve created. Many people who’ve met me after “knowing” me online for years have said something like, “This is weird. You’re not like I expected.” That’s because only a small slice of me can really be communicated over the Internet.

I’ve experienced this from the other side as well. At the leadership retreat I attended in July, I finally met some people in person where we’d previously communicated only by email or phone. In every case my expectations of what they’d be like in person were off. Sometimes my mental model of the person was wildly out of sync with the reality, and it took only minutes to realize that.

When you communicate remotely, much of the connection you feel is rooted in illusion. You may harbor very deep thoughts and feelings when typing an email, but only some dull text gets delivered to the other person’s inbox, not the whole mental and emotional context that spawned that text. Similarly, when you read someone’s reply, you’re adding your own mental and emotional context to it, which is going to distort the message quite a bit. Most of the connection you feel with the other person is just you connecting with different aspects of yourself.

Sometimes I meet people who seem really gregarious and vivacious online, but in person they’re so shy and quiet. Other times I’ve seen people who seem very woo woo from a distance, but in person they’re highly intelligent and grounded. My assumptions about people I’ve never met face to face are never accurate, so I do my best to keep an open mind about people I’ve only communicated with remotely.

One of the best ways to meet busy people face to face is to go to conferences, seminars, and workshops where they’ll be, especially multi-day events where you’ll have multiple opportunities to meet and talk to them. Ideally, volunteer to be a speaker at the same event if you can.

If you spend a lot of time networking through technology, spending hours at your desk, make a point of going outside to interact with people face to face. You’ll find that life becomes much more fun and fulfilling when you do this.

Earlier this week I did a live interview for an online radio show. I could have done the interview by phone like I always do, but since the studio was only 15 minutes from my house, I opted to go there and do it in person. It was so much more fun and lively than other interviews I’ve done. I could see the hosts and read their body language from a few feet away. This made it so much easier to interact with them. It made the interview flow much better. There’s just no substitute for face-to-face communication.

Meet people when their shields are down.

Timing plays an important role in meeting busy people. The worst time to try to create a connection is when the other person’s shields are up.

If you try to talk to people when they’re “on stage” or in public performance mode, you’re not really connecting with them. You’re only connecting with their public image. Some speakers are still very human and authentic in those situations, but most have a hard time being fully themselves when there’s so much energy coming at them. They shield themselves in some fashion to avoid being overwhelmed. When you talk to them, they may seem nice enough and be very charming, but you can sense that you’re not really connecting with them at a deep level.

I’ve met some interesting authors and speakers just by hanging out in the speakers lounge for a conference I was speaking at. It’s a great way to meet people and connect as friends. Speakers typically drop their shields when they walk into the speakers lounge. It’s a place for them to just relax. I often hear them sigh as they enter the room. “Ahhh… I can relax and hang out with friends now.”

Sometimes fun connections can happen when you least expect them – if you stay open to them.

For example, I first met Gregg Braden in a restaurant bathroom. We were attending a speakers’ dinner last year and just happened to go to the bathroom at the same time. Sort of an odd place to meet, but in that environment the shields are down, and we joked around a bit before returning to the dinner. When we came out, Erin was standing there waiting, wondering what was taking us so long.

During one of the bathroom breaks at the leadership retreat last month, someone walked into the men’s restroom and jokingly said something like, “Well, this is quite a sight… All these transformational leaders lined up against the wall urinating… What would the rest of the world think if they saw this?” Then we all started cracking jokes about it. I guess this was one of those had-to-be-there moments, but the point is that even very busy and successful people are still human, and it’s a lot easier to connect with their human side than it is to connect with their public persona. The best connections happen when the shields are down.

This doesn’t mean you should hang out in bathrooms trying to network with people. The point is to stay open to connecting.

Connect with laughter.

Sharing laughs is one of the best ways to create a fast connection. This can be done over the phone, but it’s much more powerful in person. Laughter is contagious. Much of the time we don’t even laugh because someone says something funny. More often we laugh for other reasons. Laughter is a vehicle for creating a sense of inclusion and connection.

Personally I love to joke around, to tease, and to have fun. My sense of humor is largely spontaneous, so only a small amount of it comes through in my writing. People who’ve never met me in person often expect me to be this very serious and intense guy. They’re often surprised at how much I joke around.

This was something that surprised me when I first became an entrepreneur. I thought the world of business was this super-serious thing. I assumed that having fun and being business-like didn’t mix. My image of business was colored by TV and movies. Unless it was a comedy, the boardroom always seemed like such a serious place.

When I started connecting with other people in a business context, fresh out of college, I was surprised at how much they joked around and had fun with each other. Even lawyers would sometimes crack jokes with each other or their clients (although generally speaking, I found lawyers to be the least fun-loving profession I worked with, perhaps because their clients don’t take kindly to joking around when they’re paying an hourly rate). It took me years to realize that this was normal and acceptable and that I could actually use my sense of humor to good advantage in business.

I’ve noticed that young entrepreneurs tend to be the most serious. They’re so business-like and don’t give themselves permission to express their natural personalities. Experienced entrepreneurs tend to be more relaxed and sociable; they know how to have fun and enjoy themselves, even in serious business contexts where a lot of money could be changing hands. Generally the people who can’t express their natural selves end up quitting. When you can’t lighten up and have fun, the result is that you burn out.

Networking should be fun. You won’t enjoy it much if you’re super serious all the time. You will enjoy it if you learn to express your natural personality. The way you behave among family and friends should ideally be the same way you behave around business colleagues. Otherwise you’re splintering your personality and living incongruently.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Offer genuine friendship, not neediness.

This idea is more about attitude than actions. Busy people are so accustomed to being approached by people who want to vamp their energy in some way, so their shields often go up when they meet new people. In the back of their mind, they’re thinking, “What does this person want from me?”

You’ll get much better results if you approach busy people from a place of giving, kindness, generosity, friendship, and equality – as opposed to coming from a place of neediness, wanting something from them, seeing them as a potential client or prospect or valued contact, etc.

I meet a lot of busy and sometimes famous people through my work in the personal development field. I don’t approach them from a place of wanting or needing anything from them. I prefer to keep my energy flowing outward instead of trying to suck energy from them. This approach makes people feel comfortable, so they quickly drop their shields, and that’s when the real connection and deeper conversation begins. My focus is on enjoying life and having fun, and the rest flows easily from there.

I noticed that I quickly relax and lower my shields when I’m around the same type of person. As a busy person I learned to be very guarded with my energy. On the occasions when I meet someone who doesn’t want or need anything from me and they’re just happy and having fun, it’s immensely refreshing. Those kinds of interactions really stand out. Those are the kinds of people I love to spend time with.

This isn’t about giving so you can get. If you see it that way, you’re missing the point, and ultimately you’re still trying to vamp something from the other person. You’re still holding yourself in a place of neediness and lack.

This is about giving because you’re using your power to hold yourself in a place of abundance, connectedness, and oneness. You don’t need anything from anyone. You’re simply allowing your energy to flow outward, and you’re exploring new possibilities for connection and love.

When you approach people from this place of completeness, you’ll find that most of the time their shields drop pretty quickly, and they feel very much at ease around you. Comfort allows other people to be fully present and fully themselves.

A couple weeks ago, Erin and I were in Bermuda for our first retreat with the Transformational Leadership Council. This group includes a lot of busy people who are used to getting “hit on” quite often. Members of this group include entrepreneurs, celebrities, and multi-millionaires.

I could have gone to this retreat with an attitude of neediness, thinking about all the deals to be made, the potential business partners, the money to be earned, and the coolness of associating with famous people. I could have behaved like a vampire trying to suck everyone else’s energy. I could have treated them like targets instead of human beings. Blech!

Instead I went in with the attitude that we’re all one, we’re already connected, and I’m there to share, to love, to have fun, to explore, and to create. I felt so happy and abundant throughout the week. I truly didn’t need or want anything from anyone. I didn’t need anyone to accept or validate me.

Similarly, I didn’t go around trying to do favors for people or trying to impress them, since that would also require coming from a place of lack. I simply assumed that I was already best friends with everyone there and that nothing had to be earned.

Throughout the week I shared lots of love, laughs, hugs, stories, ideas, and even some tears. I made dozens of new friends – friends I expect to stay connected with for many years to come.

Will I do business with some of those people later? Sure. But the friendship is the most important part of networking.

More than one person came up to me during the week and said something like, “Steve, I just love your energy. You seem so happy.” I believe Erin got similar feedback since her attitude was similar to mine.

The truth is that at this point in my life, I’d rather form an authentic new friendship than cultivate a strategic business alliance.

And interestingly enough, genuine friendship is perhaps what busy people are most starved for. So many people try to take their energy or seek validation from them. It’s much less common for them to be approached by people who just want to connect with them from a place of love and abundance without wanting or needing anything.

In my almost 15+ years as an entrepreneur, I’ve been approached literally tens of thousands of times by people who want something from me – advice, answers, business deals, money, referrals, etc. But how many times have I been approached by someone offering genuine friendship without secretly wanting or needing something from me? I think that has happened only a few hundred times total. In fact, this year it has become a big focus of mine to have more interactions based on friendship and less that are based on want or need.

Which types of people do I want to hang out with most often? Obviously it feels best to hang out with genuine friends who already feel whole and complete and who aren’t needy.

I should mention that my experience at TLC wasn’t uncommon at all. Almost everyone there seemed to have a similar attitude. We all dropped our shields and shared our true selves with each other. If anyone there had gone into sales-minded networker mode, I think it would have creeped everyone out. But since no one did that – at least not that I saw – the experience was very open and authentic.

Of course if you network with the goal of creating real friendship, all the other stuff you could possibly want or need will arise naturally from that. People who become good friends often look for ways to do business together. I know some people say that business and friendship don’t mix. My advice is not to do business with anyone who believes that. I’ve done many deals with friends – in fact, I very much prefer it. I’m very hesitant to do business with someone I don’t feel a good connection with. Some deals just don’t perform well for one reason or another, but as long as everyone behaves with integrity, it needn’t hurt the friendship. A lack of integrity hurts a friendship a lot more than a business deal that didn’t meet expectations.

It’s perfectly okay to meet someone with a desire to eventually do business with them, but if that’s your primary motivation – if that’s truly what’s most important to you – then the relationship will develop very differently compared to when your primary motivation is genuine friendship. Your life will feel a lot emptier and less fulfilling if you value transactions above friendship.

When I think about all the wonderful new friends I made this year, I can’t even imagine putting business ahead of those friendships. I’d rather stay friends with these people and never do business than earn millions of dollars cutting deals but not have the friendships. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way. Busy people often have plenty of business opportunities coming their way, and they don’t necessarily need more of the same.

Even if you don’t consider yourself a busy person, would you prefer to have lots of money and business partners but few real friends, or would you rather have lots of deep and abiding friendships but little money? I think that deep down, most people would rather have the love and connection. If you pursue money first and foremost, you’re more likely to end up with neither money nor friends. Human beings typically dislike being reduced to transactions.

What do you really want in this area of your life? What kind of network do you want to create? Do you want a network of great friends who like and respect you? Or do you want a network of transaction partners who barely even know you?

Is it possible that the reason you’ve thought about other people as dollar signs or “prospects” instead of as real human beings is that you think money and success will ultimately help you feel more worthy of connection and love? In truth the best way to enjoy connection and love is to connect with others on that basis instead of trying to use money as the middleman.

When you network on the basis of friendship, you take your work to a whole new level. Every deal you transact becomes an act of helping your friends achieve their goals, and your friends do the same for you. Your network transforms into your family of goal achievement partners.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Don’t misinterpret short replies.

Busy people often send very curt replies to emails they receive. Don’t misinterpret one-line replies like "Fine, let’s do it," "No thanks," "Not interested," or "Thanks. " as being a sign of rudeness or lack of caring.

Minimalist replies are common in the business world. Consider them a sign of efficiency, not disrespect. Your message may be one of dozens being batch-processed. The fact that you got a reply at all means the other person considered your message worthy of a response.

If you write back to complain, you become an annoyance. Don’t rant about getting short replies. That’s very low class.

Email simply isn’t the right medium for long-windedness. It’s not the right medium for relationship building. If you want to build relationships, then arrange to meet in person when possible, else by phone. If you spend more than a few minutes typing an email, you really should be picking up the phone instead.

If you send me a 1,000-word email and get a one-sentence reply in response, don’t interpret it to mean that I didn’t care about what you had to say. A more accurate interpretation is that I don’t think a longer reply is a good use of my time, given all the other messages I have to process. Another possibility is that I’m not resonating with your choice of medium. You may be using the wrong channel for what you’re trying to convey.

Sometimes people try to use email to communicate things that don’t translate well to plain text. The camel that gets passed through the eye of a needle doesn’t much resemble a camel on the other side. It’s just a bloody mess of goop.

If you’re trying to compress your whole life story into an email, you’re making a mistake. Your story will be robbed of its essence. Your points won’t be conveyed. The other person grimaces when they see a wall of text. If you want to write so much, either write it in your journal, or become a blogger.

Wait before replying.

If you do get an email response from a busy person, don’t reply back immediately unless you have a really good reason for doing so. Otherwise you may inadvertently annoy the other person. Another possibility is that you’ll be perceived as being too needy or eager.

I suggest you wait at least 12-24 hours before you reply back.

This may seem counter-intuitive, but look at it from the busy person’s perspective. Every day they have a lot of new communication to process. When they process email, they’re anxious to empty their inbox and move on to the next task. For a busy person, it feels great to have an empty inbox, if only for a moment. If you try to email them back and forth two or more times on a given day, they may begin to perceive you as a potential time drain, if only because you consumed a larger slice of their attention that day than their other contacts did. Suddenly you cross an invisible threshold, and they stop replying to you altogether.

The last thing a busy person needs is more urgency. Delivering a rapid response positions your communication as urgent, and busy people know that urgent matters are seldom important. You don’t want a busy person to think of your communication as a candidate for urgency-based processing. It’s better to communicate at a more gradual pace, so you end up in the important bin instead of the urgent one.

Be patient, not over-eager. Let the busy person gradually warm up to you. Work your way in with a few brief, snappy contacts over a period of several days if you can swing it.

The exception is when it’s really important to speed things along, such as if you’re in the process of finalizing a deal before the weekend. With experience you will get a feel for when it’s reasonable to email someone back right away and when it’s wiser to incubate your replies.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Forgive the blow-off.

Busy people are constantly being approached by those who are coming from a place of neediness. This is why busy people often seem a bit aloof when you first talk to them. Their shields are up.

I admit that when I enter new social situations with people who may know me, but I don’t know much about them, I tend to have my shields up. I get approached so often by people who want to vamp something from me that I’ve become pretty resistant to people who approach me on the basis of neediness.

I’ve also gotten pretty good at detecting Trojan horse approaches, where the person acts like they’re offering genuine friendship, but their voice tone and body language betray their underlying intentions. The hand is offered as a ploy to get something. I can often feel an energetic pull coming from such people, subtly tugging at me. Most of the time I’m not even consciously aware of it – it just triggers an intuitive hit that something feels off, and my shields automatically go up. Non-needy people give off a very different vibe.

It can take time to build trust with a busy person who is accustomed to getting “hit on” in some fashion nearly every day. Most likely you’ll be blown off because their shields are up, and they have a habit of unconsciously deflecting advances as a matter of routine. If they didn’t do this, they’d quickly be overwhelmed. In my experience most busy people tend to be aloof and non-committal when first meeting people they don’t know.

Busy people usually prefer not to reject anyone outright because it too often gets misconstrued as rudeness. They don’t want to deal with someone bad-mouthing them to others. Busy people really don’t want to be rude, but sometimes they get overwhelmed, and if you’re the fifth person to approach them about the same thing in a single day, you may get a more forceful rejection than you feel you deserve.

I’ve tried a number of different approaches for saying no to people who want something from me that I’m not willing to give, so that I let the other person down easy, don’t leave them hanging, don’t invite them to argue about it, and don’t create bad blood between us. I usually say something like, “I appreciate the offer, but my intuition says no on this, so I’ll have to pass. I hope you understand.” That has worked well for me. It’s an honest and empathetic answer. When my gut feeling says no, I simply want to bow out gracefully and not put the other person into “overcome objections” mode. So far no one has attempted to convince me why my intuition is wrong.

However, you will probably find that most busy people don’t use an approach like mine. My response might seem very simple on the surface, but it seriously took me years of trial and error to come up with it. Other approaches I tried either seemed too harsh and would too often be misinterpreted as coldness or rudeness on my part, or they’d be too wishy-washy, leaving the door open for endless follow-up attempts.

I would say that the most common strategy busy people use to deflect unwanted advances is aloofness. Their words may indicate mild interest, but they aren’t being sincere. In practice this does tend to work pretty well, at least from the perspective of the busy person. I dislike this method, however, because it can leave the other person hanging, making them feel they’re being strung along. I always hated it when people did this to me.

Much of the time, when you request something from a busy person, you won’t get a straightforward no because they find that too confrontational. Busy people learn from experience that it’s a bad idea to simply say no. When they say no, it makes people try to convince them, and that becomes annoying very quickly when it happens over and over. This happened to me a lot when I first started blogging. People would ask me for things I wasn’t willing to give them, so I’d simply say no, sometimes with a reason, sometimes without. Unfortunately many people are conditioned to treat a no as a potential yes, and they go into persuasive mode and try to identify and overcome objections. This is really, really annoying when it happens repeatedly – a huge waste of time.

You could try being really forceful when you say no, but that creates some backlash. It comes across as being too harsh, and people start badmouthing you for behaving like that. This is one reason you’ll hear stories about certain executives being hard-nosed a-holes or “dragon ladies.” In reality they’re simply trying to be efficient.

To avoid being so confrontational, many busy people will employ a simple blow-off technique. They may say something like, “Sounds interesting. Why don’t you call my publicist and give her the details, and we’ll see if we can work something out?” If you’re an astute observer, you’ll notice that their voice tone and body language are incongruent with their words. The truth is that they have no intention of following up with you. If you do contact the publicist, you’ll simply get stonewalled. This way the busy person preserves their reputation – you might assume the publicist was the one who messed up your chances.

This happened to Erin several years ago when she was running VegFamily.com, her online vegan family magazine. We were attending an outdoor vegan festival in L.A. called World Fest. Several vegetarian and vegan celebrities were there to show their support or to speak at the festival, including Woody Harrelson and Ed Begley, Jr. We talked to Ed briefly, and I took a photo of him with Erin. He was very friendly.

During one of the presentations while we were sitting in a shady spot on the grass, I pointed out to Erin that she was sitting right behind Alicia Silverstone. That didn’t surprise us because we knew that Alicia was a vegan. I told Erin to go say hi, and she introduced herself and chatted with Alicia for a few minutes. I could tell, however, that Alicia was doing the aloof thing. She agreed to do an interview for VegFamily and gave Erin the info to follow up with her publicist. But I could see that Alicia’s body language was incongruent with her words. I wasn’t 100% certain, but I felt that most likely Erin would be stonewalled when she tried to follow up with the publicist. Sure enough, that’s exactly what happened. The interview with Alicia never took place.

Ed Begley, Jr., however, did do an interview with Erin, which can still be found online at VegFamily, along with the picture I took of Erin and him. Incidentally, Erin has short hair in that photo, a look I really loved, but she thought it made her look too boyish, so she grew her hair long again.

Now I’m not sharing this to bash Alicia and praise Ed – not at all. I’m simply pointing out that different celebrities have different ways of handling attention from people they don’t already know. Although Ed did follow through on the interview, if you actually go read it, you can see that he didn’t put much effort into it – and it shows. IMO it was one of the worst interviews VegFamily ever posted, which is a shame because Erin was excited about helping to promote Ed’s environmental agenda. We were impressed that he biked to World Fest on a very hot day in the San Fernando Valley.

When this played out as it did, I saw it as a sign of great disrespect. Erin’s online magazine had a decent and loyal following, and it was a valued publication in its field. Consequently, my opinion of Alicia and Ed dropped significantly. However, looking back with the perspective of greater experience, I now see their actions in a new light. I still don’t like how either of them handled Erin’s request, but I can understand why they did what they did, and I can’t hold it against them. Their solutions may have been imperfect, but I can empathize with what they must have had to deal with.

If you interact with a busy person and get a response that seems disrespectful or unfair, try not to take it personally. Do your best to forgive any perceived transgressions. It’s very unlikely that the busy person is deliberately trying to be rude or uncaring. Their reality is that they must deal with an untenable volume of approaches. They’re human beings, and their methods of processing such requests are going to be imperfect.

If I gave you the impression that I have a perfect processing method myself, that would be untrue. I’m fairly content given the circumstances, but my solutions are far from perfect. Misunderstandings still arise. For example, people who’ve never met me and who’ve never had so much as a single conversation with me will sometimes write scathing blog posts about me, assuming they must be able to discern my true nature from a single article of mine they didn’t like. Then people email me to ask about the stuff those bloggers post about me that isn’t even true. That’s just part of the reality I have to deal with. How am I supposed to deal with that? What can I do but forgive it and let it go?

Another thing that happens is that people take out Google Adwords ads using my name, crafting ads that falsely imply that I endorse their products. I don’t know them, and I’ve never even looked at their products. This is mild compared to what some people have to deal with. One author/speaker I know has to deal with dishonest marketers taking out Google image ads with his photos on them, advertising stuff in his name and image that he has no affiliation with. Then when customers get ripped off by this scheme, they post nasty rants about him online because they assume he was the one responsible for ripping them off. But in reality he’s a generous, kind-hearted guy who just happens to be a celebrity, and he worked very hard to get there. Is it fair that he should have to deal with this sort of thing?

I think communication in general would improve dramatically if we could all learn to practice more empathy. Do the best you can to see the situation from the other person’s perspective. If you want to network successfully with busy people, it’s important to empathize with them and communicate from a place of understanding. That is perhaps the central theme of this series.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Be discerning.

Don’t try to network with someone just because they seem like a high-value target.

When I started my computer games business in 1994, my networking strategy was pretty inane. I would network with everyone and anyone who was willing – especially anyone who seemed to be more successful or experienced than I was.

My networking strategy was, “If someone wants to network with me, that’s good enough.” Of course that was a desperation strategy.

I wasted a lot of time doing this. If I had done even a little bit of homework on some of the people I tried to network with, I’d have realized there were glaring incompatibilities that would have prevented us from becoming anything more than very casual contacts. They couldn’t help me, I couldn’t help them, and we didn’t have enough in common to become good friends. It really wasn’t worth all those two-hour business lunches at local cafes.

Now I’m a lot more discerning. First and foremost, I look for shared values. I seek out people who are happy, growth-oriented, open-minded, self-actualizing, and willing to try new things. People who are unhappy, inflexible, immature, or highly judgmental don’t make good friends or contacts for me.

Define a simple heuristic (i.e. a rule) for the kinds of people you want to network with. This will save you a lot of time and frustration.

Years ago I networked with people I figured I had to tolerate because they seemed like high-value contacts. That approach gave me a lot of headaches. These days I’d never add someone to my Rolodex unless I actually liked them as a person. I don’t do business with anyone I wouldn’t want to hang out with on the basis of friendship. This may sound limiting, but it’s actually incredibly freeing. It ensures that running my business is more fun and rewarding than it would otherwise be. I know when I wake up each morning that I’ll be spending some time that day connecting with friends.

Be trustworthy and cooperative.

A few years ago, an author/speaker that I’d never met invited me to lunch. I’d heard of him, but I’d never met him, so I accepted the invite. But before that lunch took place, I casually mentioned to some other speaker friends that I was going to lunch with him because I knew they’d met him before.

Two of my friends reacted strangely, “Oh… you’re going to lunch with that guy? Hmmm… well, okay. Good luck…”

I gave them a puzzled look, but I couldn’t get a straight answer regarding what they were hinting at. A few days later, I went to lunch with the guy, and it went fine. He was a bit hyper and heavy on the self-promotion, but that isn’t uncommon among people I meet, so I didn’t hold it against him. After the lunch we parted amicably. I figured my friends just didn’t like him for some reason.

Months later, the guy emails me to let me know about a new product he’s about to release. It wasn’t clear to me why he was telling me about it, so I asked him if he was looking for joint-venture partners. Usually when authors/speakers tell me about their upcoming products, they’re looking for JV launch partners. Happens all the time.

Well… what the guy did next totally shocked me. He sent me a long, scathing reply filled with cursing and personal insults IN ALL CAPS. He went completely kittywompus.

I did a double take. I thought to myself, “Holy crap… what the hell happened here?” I went back and re-read my previous reply to him, thinking I must have made a serious blunder, but it seemed totally benign. I showed it to Erin, and she had the same reaction I did – the guy’s response made absolutely no sense to us. We figured that maybe he was drunk when he wrote it or was venting some misplaced aggression.

I tried to follow up with him the next day to ask what was going on, and he quickly replied with more of the same, ranting and raving with lots of ALL CAPS cursing, exclamation marks, and personal insults. It was one of the most immature and unprofessional things I’ve ever seen. I figured he must have a drug problem or something and decided it would be best to steer clear of him. I’ve seen some emotional outbursts when people get stressed from time to time, but this guy and I hadn’t even done anything together other than sharing a lunch and a polite conversation months prior.

I later learned that I wasn’t the only person he went ballistic on for no apparent reason. Supposedly he’s been permanently banned from speaking at certain events due to highly inappropriate and unprofessional behavior. For example, when he’d speak at an event, he’d bash and try to discredit the speakers who were on stage before him, telling audiences to only buy his products and not theirs. Consequently, he’s pissed off a lot of people, and some meeting planners have blacklisted him for life.

When I later told my friends what happened, they didn’t seem all that surprised. Apparently this guy takes pride in being staunchly independent, not needing others, and bashing anyone he perceives as a potential competitor. Looking back, I suspect his lunch invite was merely a ploy to pick my brain for ideas he could use for personal gain and that he was never actually interested in the human side of networking.

Now is this a good way to network? I should hope not.

Personally I have nothing against this guy – we only met once, and I barely know him. But is it a wise idea for him to go around burning bridges with people who might be in a position to help him? On the surface he seems like a smart guy with a wealth of knowledge, but he isn’t trustworthy. I doubt he loses any sleep over it though.

There is competition in the business world, but the pie is big enough to share. It’s unwise to behave like a jerk and create more opponents than allies. Being a good sport is an important part of the game.

Human beings are social creatures. We can do a lot of good for each other. We’re stronger together than we are as individuals. The real core of networking is for us to connect and help each other in new ways, both personally and professionally.

I’m indebted to many people for helping me in business or for offering moral support at the right time. I can’t imagine how hard it would be if I tried to do everything as an island unto myself.

Relationships require trust. If people worry they can’t trust you, they’re going to keep their shields up around you. But if they see they can trust you, then you have the opportunity to form a real bond.

Trust creates friendship. It feels good. It makes people want to connect.

Trust also promotes good professional relationships. Trust is the lubricant of business. No matter how many pages a contract is, if you don’t have at least some trust, you don’t have a deal. In low trust environments, business suffers and corruption soars. In high trust environments, business thrives and corruption diminishes. Where trust is strong, a handshake is almost as good as a written contract. But without high trust, a written contract can’t save you. Once people start pointing to the contract, trust has already eroded, and the deal is headed south.

If you want to be a better networker, be trustworthy. Be a person people that others can trust. Make commitments sparingly, but keep your word when you do. Honor the true spirit of your deals, not just the letter of them. You may still have misunderstandings from time to time, but trust makes it easier to resolve them quickly and painlessly. Make it easy for people to feel safe with you.

It’s good to network creatively, but don’t be crazy. Don’t go so far as to make people fear they can’t trust you. If people worry they can’t trust you, they’ll simply avoid you, and you’ll miss out on many opportunities.

This works both ways of course. Don’t network with people you don’t feel you can trust. If you get a bad intuitive feeling, bow out gracefully. Dodging a bad connection is at least as important as forming a good one.

In business people talk about each other — a lot.  If you aren’t trustworthy, word gets around.

When I worked in the computer gaming industry, there was a small publisher that did a lot of deals with indie developers.  They approached me about licensing one or more of my games. I’d heard of them, but I’d never worked with them, so I contacted people who had worked with them and asked how it went. The publisher’s clients were listed on their website, so this took only minutes. What I heard back was consistently negative — false promises, late or nonexistent payments, multiple breaches of contract, being unresponsive to communication, and on and on. Naturally I declined to work with that publisher. Unfortunately some of my friends didn’t do their homework and signed deals with this publisher they later regretted when they got taken for a ride. Meanwhile, other competing publishers surfaced and behaved in a more trustworthy manner; their positive reputation spread, and they became much larger and more successful than the untrustworthy publisher, which eventually went out of business.

A cooperative mindset is much more powerful than a competitive mindset in business networking. Technically I could define anyone who works in the personal development field as a potential competitor of mine, but that would seem silly to me. Others in this field are doing great work, and we have many shared values. We’re all part of the same team.

When people know you’re a cooperative team player, even in a world that seems competitive at first glance, they’re more likely to want to work with you and to refer others to you. Not every transaction in business involves money changing hands. People do favors for their friends as well. I like doing favors for business friends I’m in a good position to help, and I’m grateful when I’m the recipient of such favors. This sort of thing makes the world of business feel much more like family. Contacts and associates become genuine friends that like to help each other out.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Use a backdoor.

Busy people often have backdoor channels where they automatically pay more attention to incoming communication. In order to use these channels effectively, it helps if you have genuine shared interests that are somewhat uncommon.

For example, if the busy person eats an uncommon diet, and you eat a similar diet, that can be a powerful in.

Suppose someone emails me to say, “I’m coming to Vegas next week. Can I take you to lunch?” Now suppose someone says, “I’ve been a vegan for X years, and lately I’ve been experimenting with raw foods. Would you be interesting in sharing lunch at the Go Raw Cafe in Vegas next week when I’m in town?” Which invitation do you think I’m more likely to accept? Diet isn’t the most exciting thing to me these days, but at least I can anticipate an interesting connection from shared values.

I’ve also been playing disc golf for years. One time a very experienced disc golfer suggested we hook up for a game while he was in town. I didn’t know him, but I was going to play anyway with some friends that weekend, so I invited him to come along, and he offered to share some tips to help us play better. My friends were looking forward to it too since none of us have had any real coaching. Unfortunately we had to cancel due to bad weather, but I consider the invitation still open next time he makes it to Vegas. Of course during the two hours my friends and I play disc golf, we talk about all sorts of things. As with many male bonding activities, the game itself is largely beside the point.

The less generic the backdoor, the better. Look for commonalities that are shared by less than 1% of the general population. If someone says to me, “I’m a fellow blogger / Trekkie / Depeche Mode fan / entrepreneur,” that’s still too common. Even “I’m a vegan / raw foodist” is getting weak because my website attracts a lot of people who follow those diets, I already have more raw and vegan friends than I can keep up with, and I meet plenty of new raw/vegan friends at the monthly raw potlucks in Vegas.

On the other hand, if someone tells me, “I share your interest in polyamory,” that’s unusual enough to stand out. I enjoy connecting with people who share that interest because the people who are into it tend to be pretty unique and fun to hang out with. This also applies to people who are really into social dynamics – for one they tend to have decent social skills and are fun to talk to, and for another they tend to be more courageous than most, which means there’s a strong basis for shared values.

“I’m a fellow author/speaker” is so-so; it connects with me professionally, but it’s still too common to qualify as a backdoor. If it’s someone I’ve heard of and want to meet, I’m all over it. But if it’s someone I’ve never heard of, then whether or not I follow up depends on my time. The main problem is that most of the time other authors/speakers contact me, they’re just looking for partners to help promote their work, and that doesn’t excite me as much as making new friends and sharing ideas.

An excellent backdoor is whatever new interest your target is just getting into. The door is wide open because they probably don’t know many people who share that interest yet. So they’re often happy to connect on that basis because they’re eager to learn, share, and grow.

For example, when I said that I wanted to learn chess last year, several people offered to play chess games with me, and I accepted most of those offers. Earlier this year when I started writing about polyamory, many people who had experience with it contacted me, and I made some interesting new friends because of it. This sort of thing happens every time I share something new that I’m getting into. Many other busy people do the same thing.

On the other hand, day after day the ongoing flood of front door requests continues unabated, no matter what the busy person is currently into. How much chance do those people have of making a real connection?

Every day people ask me for advice about blogging. Every day people ask me to help promote stuff for them. Every week people ask me about polyphasic sleep, and that was an experiment I did in 2005-06. I don’t reply in those cases because discussing those topics doesn’t interest me much. Those kinds of incoming communiqués bore me to tears. Delete. Delete. Delete.

If you want to connect with a busy person, find out what their current passion or interest is. If it’s an interest you share, there’s your backdoor. Never try to fake an interest, but be on the lookout for shared interests that you can use to build a bridge.

Busy people are often very growth-oriented. So even if you can’t identify an interest that you share, if you can teach them something that might interest them, or if you can offer them a cool experience, there’s another great in.

For example, you can offer to teach someone to play tennis or golf if you know how to play. Or offer to take someone kayaking. You don’t have to be a master to teach a beginner lesson and show someone the ropes.

I could list tons of activities I’d love to try, and in many cases I’d gladly accept an offer from someone willing to show me how to get started. Many other busy people are in the same boat.

For example, I always wanted to try doing stand-up comedy. I think it would be a fun challenge. Some friends recently told me about a new club in Las Vegas that’s for people who want to try stand-up. It’s called Hecklers Anonymous. I said, “Count me in!” We’re going to help each other create and test material, and soon we’ll be doing some open mike nights at Vegas comedy clubs. Some members of the group have already done stand-up.

Understand the problem of boredom.

Understand that the main problem busy people want to avoid is being swamped and overwhelmed – and bored to tears – with more of the same. It gets really, really dull to keep getting the same kinds of communiqués day in and day out. The sheer volume of communication is one problem, but an issue that I’d say is equally problematic is having to deal with way too much of the same old thing. The endless repetition of the same patterns can turn an otherwise active person’s life into a seemingly inescapable cage.

This is a really crucial point. Does it make sense to you? If you can understand and accept this part of a busy person’s daily reality, it’s safe to say you’re already in the top 5% of networkers… probably the top 1%.

Busy people still want to meet new people. They really do. They still want to connect, hang out, network, and have fun. They’re not cold and rude. They just need their social lives to be varied and interesting. By shielding themselves from overwhelm and mindless repetition, they’re able to be more present when they do reach out and connect.

Personally I love connecting with people. I often invite people over to my house just to hang out. Once I invited someone I’d only met on Facebook to stay in our guest room for 5 days. But do I want to spend my precious life having endless discussions about the same topics over and over again? Of course not. I want to live a life that is interesting, challenging, and filled with growth experiences. That requires lots of variety.

On a personal note, some people have sent me feedback suggesting that people could use the information I’m sharing in this series against me. I understand their concern. Since I’m sharing personal info to illustrate the key points, you could make the case that I’m giving people the ammo they need to discover my own backdoors.

I understood that potential side effect before I began writing this series. You could say I’m actually counting on it. I suspect that most people will keep using the same uncreative channels simply because it’s easy, and they’ll have their messages processed as usual. On the other hand, if too many people pick up on the same obvious idea and try it, then it will become yet another pattern, and it will soon be processed routinely like any other.

But what if someone does something really creative based on what they learn from this series, and it works for them, and we connect because of it? Is that such a bad thing? Like I said, I love connecting with new people. The kind of person who would do something like that probably has a lot in common with me anyway and might make a good friend or contact. Worst case, I might gain some ideas for a follow-up article for this series.

You see… busy people aren’t trying to isolate themselves. Their goal isn’t to find better and better ways of shielding themselves from the world. I guess some of them do become recluses, but that’s the exception, not the rule. Deep down busy people still want to make new friends, connect, hang out, and have fun. They just don’t want to be overwhelmed, and they don’t want to be bored to tears with the same patterns over and over again. They’re always on the lookout for interesting people who will add value to their lives.

If you can learn to be a person who adds value to people’s lives in unique ways, you have the potential to be an amazing networker. Doors will open for you that are closed to everyone else.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.

Continuing on with our tips…

Avoid cold-calling.

Avoid cold-calling if possible. Busy people get cold calls (and a lot more cold emails) every day. This is yet another pattern that gets filtered. Cold calling is essentially the same thing as spam.

As with spam, cold-calling will sometimes result in a hit. But it requires that you pester and annoy a lot of other people for each hit you generate. It’s a very low-class form of networking and very inefficient.

When I refer to cold-calling, I’m talking about blasting the same message to large numbers of people in an untargeted or semi-targeted fashion. I’m not talking about sending a very targeted email to a specific individual.

The main reason cold-calling is so popular is because it’s brainless. It may take some courage to contact large numbers of people you don’t know, and there’s clearly a skill set that can be developed along this route – people have written whole books about it – but the main reason you should reject this approach is that it’s a desperation move. There are far more intelligent, more efficient alternatives available than spamming people.

When someone sends me spammy messages more than once, I simply set up a filter, so I don’t need to see anything from them again. That saves me a lot of time in the long run. I know other busy people who do this too. If you spam them, they will blacklist you (by name, email address, domain name, caller ID, telling their assistant to stonewall you, etc). Obviously you can bypass their filters if you know you’re being filtered, but is that really what you want to spend your time doing?

The face-to-face equivalent of this is the person who goes around handing out business cards to everyone they meet. Realtors often do this. Again, this method is lame, low-class, and wastes people’s time.

Another problem with cold-calling is that when you do get a lead, it’s usually not a very good one. Deals that arise from cold-calling often take a lot of massaging to make them work. You end up with a lot of mismatches, near misses, and partial matches. This means a lot more work and more stress.

People who truly have something of value to offer don’t need to resort to cold-calling. Busy people know this. So when you cold-call a busy person and they don’t know you from Adam, the simple fact that you used cold-calling to contact them sets off internal alarms. Your method of contact signals that they can almost certainly blow you off without serious risking of missing out on a good opportunity.

Busy people are often on the lookout for golden opportunities, but the hit ratio from cold-calling is just so low that most seem to feel confident blowing off any communication that comes via this method. Like many other busy people, I have so many higher quality leads coming to me through other channels that I simply don’t need to wade through the stuff that comes via cold-calling. The opportunity cost of dealing with cold callers is just way too high.

Ask for an intro.

If you want to connect with a busy person, try not to introduce yourself if possible. A better approach is to see if you can find an existing contact that knows your target and can introduce you. This immediately elevates your status in the eyes of the busy person and makes it easier for them to lower their shields.

I have many existing friends and contacts that I trust. They introduce me to other people, sometimes by email or phone, sometimes in person. The hit ratio of good contacts that come to me through my existing network is probably 100 times higher than what I’d see with incoming cold calls. With cold calling the hit ratio is maybe around 1 in 500. But with intros from my friends, it’s probably closer to 1 in 5. Every friend is different though. Some friends refer higher quality leads than others.

I pay attention to the leads that come through my long-term friends and business associates, especially those that know me very well. They understand what kinds of friends and contacts would be a good match for me. They automatically filter out the bad leads.

I do the same thing for my friends and contacts. I’m not going to waste my friends’ time by introducing them to low-quality leads, but if I notice a good potential match, I’ll make the intro. To me this is simply part of being a good friend. It’s always gratifying to help connect people who really hit it off.

This isn’t something that people do for referral fees – at least not in any field I’ve worked in. It’s simply done out of friendship.

Intros can be a bit tricky when friends are involved. I’m pretty clear up front with my friends that I will only do intros when I think it will potentially lead to a win-win relationship for all involved, so I’m very selective. My higher loyalty is to the truth. I check in with myself to see what consequences would likely result from an intro. If the consequences look good, I make the intro. If not, I pass. Usually when the consequences don’t look good, it’s because the introduction would be very lopsided – one person would simply suck ideas and energy from the other without offering much in return.

For example, a fellow author asked me if I could introduce him to my book publisher, Hay House. I had read his book, and I thought it was outstanding. I thought they’d be a good potential match for each other, so I made the intro. But in other cases when authors have asked me to do this, and I didn’t know them or didn’t think they’d be a good fit, I declined to make the intro. To do an intro for everyone who asked would simply annoy my publisher and hurt our long-term relationship.

To be continued…

Achieve new breakthroughs in your habits, career, finances, relationships, health, and spiritual development. Register now to attend the transformational 3-day Conscious Growth Workshop in Las Vegas, January 15-17, 2010.

© 2009 by Steve Pavlina.