If you’ve never heard that phrase, it’s an old legal one. In some statutes, it’s still one of the criteria used to distinguish manslaughter from outright murder.

Yes, this is your bi-weekly job hunter’s blog, and no, I’m not starting a crime novel here.

But I have been reading some, one of which reminded me of that phrase. I like the way it rolls off the tongue…and I really like what it implies. It occurred to me how useful it might be for job seekers

Whoever acted with “malice aforethought” literally spent time in contemplation of some bad thing they were going to do. They thought about it, planned it, and then acted according to said plan.

Malice – evil, bad to another; a particular and emotionally charged goal.

Aforethought – with intention, premeditation before the act is committed.

They didn’t stumble into wrongfulness in the heat of drunken passion, or because they were messing around at the wrong place in the wrong time. No sir, they did what they did with thought and a desire to get a specific result.

What’s this got to do with getting a job?

I took two clients through mock interviews last week. Won’t name them here, certainly don’t want to embarrass them and I’ve already give them some ‘thick skin’ coaching. The problem is that both of them took the interview like it was practice and so they didn’t prepare.  They sucked. No harm in that as they are learning. But…

People play like they practice. For job seekers sucking in practice is a mistake, because I know that without thinking, planning and practice, people will also bomb in live interviews. I interview 1-5 people per day regularly, so trust me when I say many of those are not good.

Despite mountains of advice, job seekers LOSE in interviews because they aren’t prepared specifically enough. Oh sure they read up a lot on what you’re supposed to say for certain questions. They look at the job ad. They obsess over how badly they need to succeed.

Certainly people think they are ready, but there is no real malice aforethought.

Aforethought…

My buddy Reg Gupton (a real estate coach in Boulder) was the first one to ever really ask me, “What’s your intention?” And he meant it. I was in a mastermind group with him for years, and when I’d bring an idea to the group, or talk about some marketing thing I was going to do, he’d ask me, “What is your intention?”

That’s the ‘aforethought’ part…the intention to do something. The time I remember him first asking it was when I talked about doing some free classes to get clients. He said, “What’s your intention?” “To get clients,” says I.

“How many? What kind? For what product or service? Through what mechanism? What are you going to say? What will you hand out?”

Silly me. I figured if I showed up, had something intelligent to say, was presentable and convincing, that people would just naturally want to hire me as their coach. It was a turning point in my business! If he hadn’t asked me that question, I’m not sure how far I would have gotten.

After three miserable classes with almost no attendance, with people scurrying for the door at the end, I finally decided I needed the answers to those questions.

• Being good at marketing and recruiting wasn’t enough for me to get clients…
• Being good at what you do won’t be enough for you to get hired…

I needed to develop my intention well enough for it to become small steps I could act toward that would help me move people from leery first-timers to people who trusted me enough to hand me their money.

In an interview, you need to have intermediate goals that you can work toward so you can turn leery first-timers into people who trust you enough to hand you the keys to their business.

You have to earn trust, discover what the real issues are, uncover objections, and reveal (if it’s applicable) why you’re ideally suited for the job. All in a 30-60 minute timeframe. If you’re winging it or focused on the wrong things, you really have no intentions about what you’re trying to produce.

That’s one reason you don’t succeed.

And now for the malice…

I like the word malice…it’s specific and memorable. Emotionally tangy.

The person who intends malice isn’t entertaining some vague hope that someone he doesn’t like will fall down a well. The person who takes on malice sharpens his anger or hurt into a specific weapon, and turns it on someone.

There are no unfocused, internal generalities in someone committed to true malice, only a specific, externally-focused commitment to hurt somebody.

To put it in a nicer context, when an NFL lineman goes into the line of scrimmage for a specific play, he’s not just thinking, “By I hope I block good on this one.” He’s got a very specific plan, for a very specific reason, related to that specific play.

He’s not thinking, “Head up; hands up; push hard now…” He’s thinking about how he needs to blow past the defensive tackle and knock some linebacker’s head off as that poor soul trawls down the line toward the halfback.

He doesn’t go after things half-heartedly – he’s got a focused, emotional goal in his heart.

What is it that you want when you go in to interview?

You say you want a job?

The problem with that desire is that it’s focused on YOU. I know you’re hurting. I know you need work and income. But that internal need HAS to be channeled onto an external target if you’re going to succeed.

Why? Because if your interview answers are really about you, your true motive undercuts everything you say. When you sit across from a hiring manager, if your answers are about you, you’re done. If your answers are targeted toward helping the other person to some specific outcome, you’ll succeed more often.

And if you’re willing to put in enough energy and thought to really get focused and specific about what you can do for them, you’ll win regularly.

If you’re not a client of mine yet, let me offer YOU a “Thick Skin Coaching Moment:”

If you have a skill set that is in high demand, or you have so many interviews you can afford to just stumble around and hope it all works out, then you are excused from this harangue.

The rest of you, listen up:

You’re going to stay unemployed unless you get specific and emotional about what you intend to do for someone else, how you will do it and get committed to interviewing to convince the other person, without the shadow of a doubt, that you are going to do what you say.

The interview is not about you. It’s about them.

When you turn your vague internal anguish into malice aforethought, you’ll succeed.

I want to understand it better to become a better recruiter, and so that I can give better advice to job seekers. But I’m not sure I can completely understand it because I’m not sure it’s rational.

If it was a movie it would be like something from Alfred Hitchcock: the job seeker is sitting at the dining room table, nervously pretending to work their home computer, awkwardly wearing clothes they’d never normally wear on a Tuesday or Wednesday. As they work, they realize the house is abnormally quiet. Suddenly they start to notice things they’ve never seen at home that time of the day.

Then it gets surreal – a pea-soup-thick fog rolls in…every sound is magnified, every swirl in the fog briefly takes the shape of something potentially ominous. They sit in the fog and scan the internet for job postings, and when they see something that looks vaguely familiar and safe, they instinctively move toward it.

They scroll down and let their eye linger on the few words and phrases they recognize, and a warm, safe thought comes over them: “I bet I could do that…it says, ‘Build good rapport with executives’ and I’m great at rapport building.”

It’s the only line that matches for them, but they see a tiny sliver of hope and fire off that resume.

I know – it’s not funny, and fog doesn’t normally roll into people’s dining rooms. But it seems like some kind of mysterious unemployment fog seeps into people’s brains, tricking them into applying for things they have no business applying for – vague shapes and ethereal possibilities that aren’t real.

They pull up their resume, tweak a few things, go through the online application ‘hoop-jumping’ process they hate, then carefully log their submission in a spreadsheet. They store up a little hope in their heart and wait to hear something back.

Maybe it’s like whistling as you walk through the fog…a familiar, safe tune for the ear that tries to compensate for strange things happening to the eyes. A normal, controlled noise that tells you you’re not losing your mind. A lonely little whistle of hope that there’s nothing sinister or abnormal out there in the job hunting fog.

There are a heck of a lot of people on social media sites bemoaning how awful it is that no one in the job hunting world will sympathize and give you a chance. I feel for you…and I want you to get back to work. But I’m not going to coddle you.

Because on the other side of that Ethernet connection is someone who lives in the harsh light of day – who has obligations to managers and employees and themselves. On that world, there’s no ‘hoping,’ only hard, cold facts. That manager, who will get one shot at hiring someone to get the work done, doesn’t respond to the bravery of your halting whistle – to him it looks like you’re stumbling around with your eyes closed.

So let me offer you a stone cold, hard-as-life little secret from the professional marketing world in a way that I hope is clear…

You can’t dress up a pumpkin and convince someone it’s a date to the prom.

If someone wants to hire a prom date, and you’re a pumpkin, there’s no sense applying for the job and hoping something miraculous happens. Miraculous things happen in the movies, but frankly that kind of hope is wasted here in real life. Hope might be the best of things (a line from a great movie), bu only properly applied. Ignorantly applied hope wears you down over time. It’s of no more use than whistling in the fog hoping it will help you see better.

It doesn’t mean I care for you less because I’m telling you this.

There’s a little old saying from the good book – “Better bruises from a friend than kisses from an enemy.” No matter how bad it hurts, let me be your friend for a minute.

If you’re a pumpkin looking for work, you’re better off spending 100% of your time finding the market for pumpkins and selling your stuff to pumpkin buyers. If there’s not a market for pumpkins (and you know who you are), you’re better off spending 100% of your time reinventing yourself to be what the market needs.

Like a former client, David A., who spent over a year getting new technical certifications (on his own dime), finding opportunities for entry level programmers, and working to convince companies that there are dozens of reasons to hire a 20-year guy  into an entry level position. He even came up with a “Baker’s Dozen Reasons NOT to Hire a Kid for an Entry Level Job.”

He worked his butt off to find a market and become what it needed. And he got himself back to work.

VERY, VERY seldom does someone at a company see a resume completely unrelated to the job at hand and decide to take a chance on a person who hasn’t already done the primary elements of the job. When they do, it’s usually a friend or a relative, and there’s a high probability it will turn out badly.

So you’re thinking, “Well what’s the harm, maybe something miraculous will happen.” Which proves that you might be one of the people I wrote this for

The harm is that are undermining the time and strength you have to fix what you’re doing wrong with the subtle dishonesty of sending in a resume (a positive action) for a job you’re not qualified for (which will not produce a result.)

See, in any system that’s designed to produce a specific result, there are certain bits of information floating around. That information can be used to help you tell you whether you’re on the right track or not.

For example, the thermostat in your home measures and reports so that you know if the cooling system is producing the desired result, so you don’t toss and turn all night in the sweltering heat of July. The information in this closed system is reliable and allows the system to work normally. But if you ignore the information presented and don’t turn on the air, you can cuss the heat and the system all night long, but you’re still not getting any sleep.

One of the primary reasons systems fail is that people are afraid, and I know how true that is for a job seeker (I’ve been one for LONG periods of time too). People who are afraid don’t want to be (or do not know how to be) accountable for their actions when they’re not sure what the outcome will be. So they purposefully avoid measurement and accountability in what they do, hoping to avoid ‘failure…’ which of course, engineers failure right into the system.

I know too many job seekers who are not listening to the market, or aren’t willing to hear like David did!

Whistling in the fog is a primary daily task for these people.

Screwing up your courage (a phrase I’ve used too many times but really like), committing yourself to not sleeping until you totally, absolutely penetrate the pumpkin buying world, is your best bet. Every second you waste hoping to get asked to the prom is literally killing time, energy, hope and and the opportunity to hone your ability to deliver a message to the right buyers to generate positive responses from your actions.

Marketing guru’s call it ‘blind archery.’ That’s where you blindfold yourself, guess where the target is and fire away.

Applying for jobs where you’re ‘hoping’ is blind archery.

You can fix it. You can change it for today, and gain skills you can use for the rest of your career to make sure you are always in the market where great jobs happen.

It takes courage. It’s painful. But when you stop whistling and act on the information the market’s giving you, you will eventually figure out how to reinvent your marketing or yourself to get on with life.

All of flying is tough…especially in a military environment. There’s a daily ’stand up’ when the instructor pilots fire questions at you that you have to answer just to be able to get into the plane!

There are so many things to learn that are critical to successfully slipping the surly bonds of earth and living to tell about it: checking the plane out, starting it up, taxiing to the runway, ‘running’ the plane up to make sure the engine is going to take the stress of taking off. All that just to get onto the runway and into the air!

And after that, there are dozens of things to learn to fly safely and competently. Then you still have to land the plane without killing yourself.

Your first few times, landing contradicts all your natural self-preservation instincts – you purposefully cut the power and point the nose of the plane at the ground at an angle that seems a tad suicidal. Then at the last second, you pull back and skim along the ground until the wheels touch down.

Too hard or too steep an angle and you’ll bounce off and hurt the plane. Too slow and you’ll land short of the runway, in a big smoking hole of your own manufacture.

(Navy pilots who land on aircraft carriers actually refer to their landings as ‘controlled crashes’…nice!)

Keeping the plane level, adjusting the power, finding all the right angles and then waiting for the feel of the wheels touching down are about as nerve-wracking as it gets, and it never goes away no matter how long you’re a pilot.

Flyers have an old saying – any landing you can walk away from is a good one. After all, landing is one of the two times where you’re closest to the ground, which is the one major object you have to ‘hit’ every flight; and you want to hit it correctly.

After a pilot gets more experience, the goal isn’t just to walk away, but to ‘grease’ every landing – make that transition from flying to rolling so smooth you can’t even feel it, no matter what the weather or wind is doing.

In hiring the landing is the hardest too. Of all the things you’ve got to learn to do well whether you’re a candidate or an employer (analysis, marketing, screening,and interviewing) landing is where it’s easy to make the biggest mistakes.

3 parallels from landing for companies and candidates

1. Too fast – going too fast is dangerous. Hiring managers and candidates both often think it’s wonderful that they got everything over with quickly, but often the worst mistakes in hiring happen when you go too fast.

Bad personality fits, wrong goals, skills that aren’t adequate, needs that won’t be met…I’ve seen all of those accidents happen, and none of them are worth ‘landing’ faster. Especially if the front end of the process (analyzing the job and what results you want) wasn’t done well by the employer, a fast hire can doom everyone to hurt feelings and a bad experience.

2. Too slow – everyone (especially candidates) are like high-schoolers after a first date once the end of the interview process is in sight. Slow communication, a poor process, a salary amount that gets fiddled with at the last second…all these can ruin the chances of a solid connection, even if it’s ultimately a good one.

Remember, landing isn’t like other parts of the process – it’s more nerve-wracking, difficult and important. Employers – DO NOT stall this close to the ground. Candidates – chill…a slow process doesn’t necessarily MEAN anything bad is happening, so try not to let you imagination create all sorts of myths about what’s happening and why.

3. Wrong angle – there’s a perfect angle (or “glide path” in aero-speak) for landing based on the plane, the weather and the airport. The best way to ensure a good landing is to get on that angle early and STAY on it the whole way to the ground.

See-sawing up and down is a sure recipe for disaster. So both parties need to know what they want before they get too far in the process – money, opportunity, management style, relationships: the works. If companies and candidates will clearly define (and stick to) their guns, landing the right person will be a lot easier.

Of course my job (as a recruiter and a job coach) is to help my clients get smooth landings, along with all the other parts of the process. I’m up to 730 these days…and landing doesn’t get easier, but I can spot the potential for trouble a lot sooner than many.

Hiring is still a kick for me when the right person gets to be part of the right team. So I hope your landings are good ones – call me if you want some help figuring it out!

She’s phenomenal at what she does! When someone retains her, really does great. She has a unique perspective, incredible experience and personal habits that make her the ideal choice for companies that are experiencing the kinds of problems she can solve.

Now imagine she won’t talk about it.

First of all, she’s like a cook who doesn’t use recipes, she can’t remember most of the details about how she gets the right end result. Then she’s uncomfortable talking about what she does remember…says she doesn’t want to “toot her own horn.”

What do you think will happen to her business?

One thing is for sure – she’ll never grow. She might survive, but she will never be able to drive consistency or predictability into her business, and she’ll always be dependent on luck or other people’s good graces for her next paying gig.

Why?

She lacks the story to bring power to her business development.

1. No one will know why she’s different. Unless they know her as well as you do, they will have virtually no way (short of digging it out of her in person) of knowing why they should even consider her, much less choose her instead of some other service provider.

Any competitor with a better story will get initial consideration and closed deals faster.

2. She’ll have no one out evangelizing for her. If she doesn’t know her own story, and can’t or won’t relate it, she’ll never have anyone that will carry her message to their sphere of influence because people don’t tell stories they don’t understand!

Any competitor with a better story will get more word-of-mouth leads.

3. In the mosh pit of competition for open needs, she’ll have no basis (other than price and availability) to compete. If she doesn’t see the opportunities, gets there too late, or there are other providers with even a tiny bit more to offer, she’ll lose available opportunities and probably never even know why.

Any competitor with a better story will be able to compete on values-based grounds while she’s forced to lower her price or take unfavorable circumstances to win deals.

4. She can only market at the ‘point of sale.’ She’s literally not useful to people unless they are precisely at the buying point and looking for something she can provide.

Any competitor with a better story has a wealth of opportunities to connect with her potential clients before and after the selling point; next time they will win facing much less competition.

In short, every single business that wants to get and keep customers had better be in the business of knowing, refining and telling their story so that their customers, the market and their staff are all aware WHY they are a top choice.

If your friend doesn’t do that, she’ll be out of business in no time.

She’ll probably have to give up her dreams of business ownership and go get a job. Only guess what – today she may not be able to. Because (as you probably know by now) getting a job ain’t what it used to be.

After all, (as one of my mentors, Perry Marshall, says) it’s not how good you are that matters. It’s how well you communicate how good you are.

What about you Mr. or Mrs. Job Seeker?

How’s your story?

Most of my clients have NO IDEA what their story is. They can’t remember the details of what they did, haven’t figured out what makes them unique, can’t write down what they’ve accomplished, can’t talk about themselves in clear, compelling ways without feeling like a bad used car salesman.

They don’t know how to create long-term value or credibility, or how to get people to know and like them or communicate with them before the actual moment a job opens up…

In short, they’re VERY MUCH LIKE THE BAD BUSINESS MARKETER ABOVE.

Only they can’t just bag it and go do something else!!

I mean, my average client makes $82,000 per year…you can’t replace that by giving up and getting a job at Starbucks or Walmart. If that’s you too, then you don’t have a lot of choices.

Sorting out, refining and learning how and when to tell your story isn’t optional. You either do it, or wait around for someone to discover you by accident.

The good news is that even though it can take a while, the process is pretty predictable. I have the tools, the success rate and the marketing know-how to help you.

Ready?

I’m back in the resume reading business this week…took a recruiting contract, so I’m poring over dozens of resumes every day, interviewing and watching hiring managers walk people through the hiring process.

A few thoughts from my first week for job seekers who trying to crack the code.

1. Think about what you’re NOT saying on your resume.

Most people write 2-page resumes, assuming the resume readers will ’see between the lines.’ But in my first week here I got to sit with two managers as they screened a candidate to decide whether to bring him in for a few hours of interviews. Guess what the phone screen was about?

Filling in the holes left behind by a ‘thin resume’ approach. They had to ask questions just to make sure that the ‘hints’ he’d put in were tied to deeper experience that would help them. He had the answers, they just weren’t on his resume…and easily could have been. So his resume got him a phone screen when it could have gotten him a step farther with a better structure.

Ask yourself – have you structured your information so a reader can understand the context of what you’re saying since they don’t have access to the entire picture that’s in  your head? Have you explained everything in enough detail? Have you made it simple? Are you using word pictures and ideas that they can grasp? Have you eliminated jargon?

2. Never miss a good chance to shut up (from the original “Cowboy’s Guide to Life.”)

It didn’t knock him out, but one candidate just droned on and on when asked a question during his phone screen. 3-5 minutes of talking is WAYYY too much time to spend blabbering on, even if it’s relevant and on target. Think about it – how many conversations do you have face to face with people where you just natter on for 5 minutes without any give and take?

The candidate was probably just nervous and trying to do well using the ‘volume’ approach, but it almost cost him. He couldn’t see it, but I was watching the face of the manager as he kept trying to break in with questions, but couldn’t get a word in edgewise. He was pretty frustrated!

Keep your answers in the 60-90 second range initially, and then ask, “Is that enough, or should I keep going?” Then the interviewer has the opportunity to ask a question, confirm interest, or move on to the next question if he’s already convinced that you have answered the initial one.

3. There’s no impression like a first impression:

For crying out loud, how many times do people have to read about bad cover letters before they take a step back and look at what they’ve written from an HR and management perspective. Says one I read last week, “I first got into programming in [date] when I became the first person to sell term papers online and take credit cards, with online delivery. This business was in a gray area legally and it became necessary to move on.”

A ‘gray area?’ Wow…and it was the FIRST thing on the cover letter!! Guy is probably sitting at home bewildered by the lack of responses for open jobs!

He may think that kind of admission will endear him to certain managers, but no recruiter or HR person can afford to touch him with a 10-foot pole if he’s admitting to helping people cheat in college. Building a nifty online system and getting paid doesn’t change the fact that it’s cheating.

So bottom line – fill in some more detail on your resume…you’ll eliminate more ’screening’interviews because you’ll convince them on paper that  you are worth a full interview. Shut up a little bit…don’t let your nerves kepe you from letting the other guy talk during your interviews (you’re not Jay Leno, you don’t need a 5 minutes monologue for each question.) And for pete’s sake – LOOK at what you’re writing with someone else’s eyes before you send it out.

That’s it from the front lines!

Happy job hunting.

Like some tired lion we live in these too-small places, vaguely yearning to be free, but never seeing how easily
we could get out.

Sometimes we see how flimsy other people’s cages are, but we usually think the walls of our specific cage are built out of triple-welded steel bars. The truth is many of them are pretty flimsy, and often the corners are barely held together with little knots of brittle old twine. You could take a sharp fingernail and unravel most of them…a little effort and the cage that’s holding you in would fall flat around you.

Client #67 found the knots in her job search. Wouldn’t try to escape, but fought like she was possessed over whether what I was teaching would work, why she had to do it my way, yadda yadda yadda…in the end she flexed her little paws, did a little scratching, and (presto!) now she’s out.

(BTW – I don’t call her client 67 out of any disrespect, just that I’m doing taxes right now and realized that over the last year – my first full-time year as a coach – I got to serve 67 wonderful clients. An astonishing number for any new coach, and one I’m proud of. I’m even more proud that most of those clients have been willing to take the blinders off, do a little work and are back at work.)

Her story –

Two months ago she sat with me in Starbucks, droning on (yes, you were droning…) about how awful the market is, how she’s getting older, how maybe she made this mistake or that mistake, or maybe her occupation just isn’t respected or needed…maybe she should move out of state. Took her two months to decide to hire me and I almost didn’t work with her she was so negative about trying anything.

Today she emailed me for advice on how to handle two competing offers. She thinks one (at $120k plus benefits and bonuses) problably isn’t big enough. The other one has the potential to go to $145…or higher, but there’s some risk involved.

Tough decision, I know…

I’m not sure she realizes yet what little, tiny knots were holding her back, or even how she got out. Heck, knowing her, she’s probably still mad about the money she spent to get those knots out (more about that later).

Her knots are like most people’s…

Knot #1: It’s about me.

Dale Carnegie said it a hundred years ago in his book, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Heck, it’s an entire chapter in one of the best-selling self help books of all time: “No one cares about your product. They only care about themselves. If you can’t relate their product to their needs, in their terms, you’re not going to get anywhere.”

Most people can’t do that. They THINK they can and are, but they are most certainly not. Pretty simple to learn with repetition and an observant coach to help, but most people are in a cage that’s held together, in part, by little strings of unwillingness to see how to communicate from the OTHER guy’s perspective.

Client #67 learned how to turn everything around to a hiring manager’s perspective and almost instantly got more hits…on LinkedIn, on her resume, on her outbound emails to hiring managers.

Knot #2: I feel bad tooting my own horn.

Egads…not that! Well, if you are tooting your own horn like a used car salesman, then yes, you should feel bad. That kind of marketing isn’t effective and does make you feel foolish. But there are literally thousands of ways to market better than that. And ALL of them involve telling the truth about yourself, both good and bad. If you’re not comfortable saying what you can do well, then you are probably SOL.

Client #67 didn’t have this problem, but she also wasn’t doing it right. The only legitimate way to do toot your own horn is AFTER you take Knot #1 into consideration.

Toot your own horn in a way that’s of benefit to the other person, and it’s no longer called tooting. It’s called helping.

Knot #3: I shouldn’t do anything unprofessional.

Lord…what a bunch of weenies Americans are today. We want so much, but are trained over time that it’s our duty to stand still, stay in line and wait our turn. How’s that working for you?

If salespeople or recruiters or marketers sat and waited, they’d make more money sweeping floors.

Client #67 didn’t think it would be ok to “bug” people more than once or twice about a job. Once she untied that knot the floodgates opened. More importantly, her hope, vitality and self-confidence returned almost instantly.

Knot #4: I can’t afford it.

An old boss used to say, “A carburator is expensive…unless the car won’t start.”

I used to think coaching was expensive. The first guy I hired charged $950 per month. The first time I paid him I had to think really hard about how I’d explain it to my wife. But then in the very first week, he freed me from severe anxieties that were literally killing my productivity. Once I saw them, I realized I could have changed on my own, but until that moment, I hadn’t.

Client #67 fought and scratched and (frankly) got a hell of a good deal with me. In the end she spent about .7% of the offer that she’ll probably end up turning down because it’s not good enough. .7% for two offers and some effort (and yes, you did work hard and do what I told you to…kudos to you!)

Tired of being in your cage, lion?

Tiny little knots are holding you in. Knots in your head.

(My main knot-untying program kicks off again April 8 – see here)

Get out a sheet of paper.

Now, around the edges, draw a large square box.

Now in the middle of that large box, draw a very small one right in the center. Make it about an inch on each side (come on…really do this, don’t just imagine.)

Now in the middle of the smaller box, draw a large dot.

Ready?

The dot is you. The smaller box represents your current potential. The outer box represents your actual potential.

Most of us live in a very small space compared to what we could easily have. We want more, we see the possibility of more, but never live up to our true potential to be, have, do and give all that we really could.

Know what the little box is made up of?

Your beliefs about yourself.

Whatever you let go on in your own head about what’s possible and impossible, likely and unlikely, seemly and unseemly, right and wrong, that’s what’s possible, likely, seemly and right for you.

While some things truly are right and wrong, most of us live in a cage of things that are not dictated anywhere but in old memories. So that’s where we stop.

We’re like caged lions, once fierce and wild, not stalking around in endless circles inside the cage we’ve created. We see the rest of the world, feel it’s pull, but can’t do more. Sadly, after a few years in the cage, even the most majestic lions become conditioned to their space.

• Don’t think it’s possible to build a marketing system that will get you everything you want?
• Don’t think it’s likely that taking more action will work for you?
• Don’t think it’s seemly to ask other people for help?
• Don’t think it’s right to follow up 7 or 8 times when you send in a resume?
• Don’t think anyone will read more than a 1-page resume?
• Don’t think you can sell well in person, or that marketing isn’t for you?

Then you’ll get the results of someone limited by those beliefs. Personally I think Henry Ford said it best:

“Whether you think you can, or whether you think you can’t, you’re right.”

What you need to know is that those limiting beliefs are just made of memories and fears – they’re not substantial in any way, except that we give them power by holding on to them.

They’re remnants of our past, words spoken to us by powerful people or circumstances that closed us off, rather than opening us up.

So we become strange mimes, living in an invisible box. The original walls were probably someone else’s idea. But today we live in them of our own volition. We think our mother’s voice, or a past failure, or a fear of embarassment are concrete walls that limit our choices and options.

They aren’t.

The minute you choose to tear them down is the very minute you become free of them. It may take a while to live free more effortlessly, but freedom is an instant choice, like turning a crystal and seeing a different color in it than we could see before.

And honestly, even though there have been years of effort to release myself, I think the very thought “effort will be required” was part of my limiting beliefs. I honestly don’t know that effort is required…just desire, the right perspective and action.

I went by a sign in my neighborhood today where a business owner has a letter-sign and puts up funny or encouraging messages all the time. This one said:

“Life is short. Kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love deeply.”

I’m not usually sentimental over signs along my commute, but this one made me ask myself a tough question. Despite everything going on in the world and in my life today, if I knew it was all ending in a month, could I honestly say I’m free of my cage?

Why not?

Glenn Livingston, one of my ‘paper mentors’ as an entrepreneur has a mantra for smart entrepreneurs:

“Fail fast, fail cheap, and get to what works quickly.”

When I initially heard that, my reaction wasn’t positive. I mean, who likes to fail? Like you, I grew up in the corporate world where they have a different mantra. The corporate world trains us that failure is not acceptable, that if we make the same mistake more than once we’re probably not cut out of the right cloth.

Even though people fail regularly, day in and day out, we’re conditioned to cover it over, not let anyone catch us and take risks only when we’re assured of the outcome.

(This despite thousands of stories – like Thomas Edison’s – about how companies and great new products got started precisely BECAUSE someone was willing to fail over and over again until they got it right.)

Heck, most political garbage in a company comes from people trying to cover themselves from a past, current or future failure. After all, they tell us what to do. And often how to do it. When you think about it, they just want what the teacher in 6th grade wanted – for us to regurgitate the answers they think are right. If we can’t do it, we’re “bad.”

The problem with that mentality comes you’re suddenly acting in open space, with no rules or acceptable steps to success. Like when you’re an entrepreneur. Or a job seeker in a market like today’s, when the things that got you a job even five years ago are no longer working.

For most job seekers, today’s market is like walking through a house, flipping light switches and moving the slider on the thermostat when there’s no electricity – despite all the flipping and sliding, you’re still cold and in the dark.

That, my friend, is precisely the moment when you have to start failing as fast as you can. It’s a conscious choice my clients find themselves making if they’re going to be successful. They finally come to see the truth:

I can sit in the dark and cold and hope the electricity comes back on, but eventually I’ll either get tired of it or freeze to death.

Or I can start figuring out how to make fire.

For some people that would be a simple task, but others have only seen fire made from nothing in a movie or television show, or read about it in a book.

But here’s the secret power behind Glenn’s mantra – the faster you eliminate the things that DON’T work, the faster you can find a method that does. If you’re like me, there’s a lot of frustration, cussing and anger trying to figure things out (like when I do plumbing or electrical work around the house…just ask my kids…), but once you’ve done it, magical things happen.

1. You OWN the knowledge in ways book-learners don’t. After all, you can’t really learn to do anything by reading a book or watching a video, you have to do it! Imagine learning to ride a bike or swim from reading a book…not gonna happen. Remember in the movie “Castaway” when Tom Hanks’ character builds a fire from rubbing two sticks together? He dances around yelling, “Fire! I made fire!” That, my friend is true power.

2. You earn the luxury of time. Now that you can make fire one way, you can take your time practicing other ways that might be easier without freezing to death.

3. You earn the right to move on. Now that you have fire, you can move on to ways to protect and nurture it so that you don’t have to start from scratch again.

4. You get the added benefits of fire – like clean water, cooked food, the ability to signal passing ships or planes.

Job seeker – ask yourself:

Are you waiting for the electricity to come back on, or working on building fire?

How fast are you failing?

Think you’ll find a way to succeed before it gets dark and cold?

My program for starting fires as a job seeker in 2010

In 2001, after 6 months of unemployment, I began to experience some pretty serious fear.

After another 6 months reinventing myself for a new job (and making lousy money), fear was turning into outright panic.

On Tuesdays (bill night at Casa de Birkhead) as I faced the stack of bills and the checkbook, I often had to leave and take a walk around the block to just breathe and remind myself I wasn’t going to explode or have a nervous breakdown.

Even today I still face a lot of ingrained fear from my childhood and from (idiotically) training myself to be a ‘glass half empty’ guy for most of my life. But I’m learning, from reading, my coach and from trying new things. Here’s a few thoughts on fear.

Fear itself is OK – fear is natural and not necessarily a bad thing. Fear is useful because it guides and protects us from doing things that will actually harm us, like walking too close to the edge of a cliff, or putting our hand in the fire.

But behind most legitimate fears are horrific, irrational illusions of harm that often don’t serve us like normal fear. In fact, walking through life while persistently coddling this kind of irrational illusion is paralyzing and counter-productive.

Many people become conditioned to the coddling…they associate past memories or other people’s stories of actual harm with circumstances that appear to be leading to the same kind of harm. So regardless of how different the circumstances, they can ‘feel’ the same misfortune coming their way.

For me, getting laid off and facing financial hardship brought back terrible childhood memories and hurts. Nothing about my adult life was the same as when I was a kid, but the illusion that I could put my own family through that same kind of pain was so strong that it was often completely paralyzing.

The associations weren’t valid…I’m not my dad, my wife isn’t my mom, I don’t live in the same town, or have the same abilities. Literally nothing is the same, but for a long period of time I let the illusion of potential future harm alter my ability to act in the here and now. And just so you know I’m not “holier than thou,” I still regularly wrestle those old demon fears…I master them more often now, but they haven’t gone away.

Many people fall into this irrational fear trap…and in the deep bottom of that pit are four predictable results.

First, we feel anxious, nervous and afraid to act. So we won’t or don’t do the very things that might relieve us of the circumstances surrounding our fear. Because we make decisions based on emotional projections of the future and are coddling imaginary hurts, we often can’t act rationally in the here and now. Often if we do decide to act, we go timidly and without confidence, sabotaging our effort and ending in a ’self-fulfilling’ prophecy where we fail.

Second, we use up energy we need for other parts of life. Suddenly we’re too tired and lethargic physically and mentally  to love those around us, stay alert to opportunity, or attempt new habits that might keep us from real harm.

Third, we radiate fear to the people around us. That makes them either pull back from us (which puts us in stony isolation) or join us (multiplying and legitimizing the fear). It’s common knowledge that misery loves company, and a big reason is that sometimes we’d rather be around other people who are afraid than screw up the courage to act no matter what other people think, or what the outcome is.

Fourth, we radiate that fear to the universe and out into our own future. That’s particularly dangerous because a person becomes what he or she habitually thinks about: their mind and heart naturally react to the feelings about their irrational fear in ways that actually push us toward the feared thing, rather than away from it.

Often, we know these things are true, but choose irrational fear anyway.

We believe that fear is the natural and easier response, so we allow it. Or we try to be brave on the outside (put on a happy face), but don’t have the will to really change what’s happening on the inside. So even while we attempt to persuade others and ourselves that we’re OK, inside we’re wracked with doubt and fear, our self-talk remains negative and our actions powerless.

If you’re seeing yourself in this post and  you’d like to fight back, first let offer you the best starting place from my own experience:

It’s OK to be scared!

Stop worrying about it! Stop feeling guilty or strange or anything else about it – just accept where you’re at, even if you’re still afraid. You’re not the first to feel like you do now, you won’t be the last, and you can learn to act in spite of fear. Courage, after all isn’t the absence of fear, but the ability to act even when you are afraid.

There are other steps after that – specific disciplines, self-love and an iron will to do what’s in your own best interest, rather than letting our own heart or feelings dictate what should be managed by our will. But they’re just steps…anyone that WILL take them, can take them.

Fear is a natural reaction, but irrational fear is a learned one that most people can interrupt and learn to do without. Unless you have chemical or other physical issues, attaching yourself to the illusion of harm and letting it knock you off track is a choice you can un-make whenever you want to. It’s a matter of will and technique.

Want to?

I’m thinking about starting a “Mastering Your Fears” call-in session. We’ll get together by phone, talk about and help each other with the fears and self-doubt that are a common part of life today…especially for the unemployed. If you’re interested, shoot me a note and I’ll send you details.

Scott

I hate that answer. Of all the things that can happen when I sell, the very worst is when the client looks at me, smiles politely, and says “I’ll think about it,” “I’ll get back to you,” “I need to talk it over with someone” or any other form of maybe.

From experience, I know that “maybe” is most likely a non-confrontational no, so the person is not convinced.

But unlike a brave ‘no’, I get no feedback.

Selling is a process of ‘homing in’ on each target, like a rader-guided missile into an enemy aircraft. Those systems literally ‘find’ their way to a hit by comparing flight and position data with a moving goal, computing whether its current flight path will end up with a ‘hit,’ and making adjustments when necessary.

Maybe gives me no data for adjustment.

I want a strong yes. I will take a ‘hell no.’ But maybe is terrible. If I get a yes or a no, it means that I’ve done several things well:

1. I’ve been clear in my message.
2. People know where I stand and what I am all about.
3. They know exactly what I want them to do and why.
4. They know what they’re going to get and how much it will cost.

If they say yes, I know I’m on track. If they say no, at least I can steer or re-work my message (or completely change tactics if I need get too many in a row).

But the ‘maybe’ gives me nothing.

Many of my clients leave interviews (selling meetings) with neither a firm yes or a firm no. In fact, often they’ll take the absence of a ‘no’ to mean they’ve had a great interview. Then things just seem to fizzle…they’re always in the running, but never come out with the job offer.

That’s why you should be selling for the ‘no.’

What does that mean?

Literally you should be figuring out all the reasons a company might say ‘no’ to you, and then using  your time with them to explore them in as much detail as you can.

That’s the opposite of what most interviewers do! Trust me, I know…I’ve interviewed probably 7000 people in my life, and most people are there with only one objective – highlight the good, hide the bad, and do anything necessary to get someone to say yes.

It results in a lot of amateurish sales behaviors – the ones you find so icky when they’re practiced on you: manipulating, whining, lying. You know, the things that make you cringe when you think of yourself as a ’salesperson.’

That’s why selling for a ‘no’ is so much better and easier.

Most of the time when you find and investigate a particular reason for someone not to hire you, you’ll both realize it’s not a legitimate issue. Most of the reasons you get eliminated aren’t – skill set minutia, ‘overqualified,’ titles, etc.

When you dig into these reasons with a decision maker, you find most are like soap bubbles – they pop and go away without a trace. (Different story with HR people, but that’s another blog post).

Other times you’ll find a reason that IS valid – values, challenges you haven’t solved (and could be damaging if you fail), management style differences and the like.

When you dig into these, you’ll still get eliminated, but at least you’ll know WHY! And most of the time you’ll be OK with it (after all, if they have completely different values, you don’t want to work there anyway!)

Often, these no’s tell you that you’re exactly on track with your marketing messages – if you’re getting no for the right reasons, that is a WIN!

But often, the digging will reveal that you have much in common with them. And it will reveal that you’re a good digger, which tells them you care enough to ask great quetions, and are professional enough to only commit where you know you can make an impact.

That’s the true beauty of selling for a no – when there are no more no’s, people readily, eagerly say YES.