Prison Break! Part Two

Well, it appears the season for spectacular prison escapes more or less coincides with the Major League Baseball season. That makes perfect sense. Baseball, after all, has been called "the  national pastime," and nothing passes time like prison. 

Plus, baseball is a game in which long stretches of relatively little action can suddenly be broken by some really extraordinary even. It's the same way with prison. Nothing, nothing, and then BOOM!

First there was the escape from the Clinton penitentiary in upstate New York. That was a well-executed job that ran into trouble when the getaway car failed to show up. Good, but no cigar. 

Now we have the escape from a Mexican "supermax" slammer by Shorty Guzman, heap big drug lord and billionaire certified by Forbes magazine. Besides their entertainment value, what important business principles can we learn from these two escapes?

First, the Clinton escape seems like the work of inspired entrepreneurs -- but amateurs compared to the corporate power of Shorty's job. David Sweat and Richard Matt were "under-capitalized" in human resources, tools and machinery, and definitely with regard to money. 

They had to make-do with what they had, and they made the most of it. But what they had was nothing compared to what Shorty had. To help in the escape, for instance, they had to enlist the lady who worked in the prison tailor shop. A very nice lady no doubt, but not a pro, and finally unreliable. Shorty, on the other hand, could hire the best.  

With regard the actual escape procedure, the Clinton boys had to cut their way into a narrow pipe, crawl 400 yards, and then access the street through a manhole. But Shorty had an electrically-lit, fully-ventilated mile-long tunnel big enough for him to stand in (though, admittedly, he's not called Shorty for nothing) which even included some sort of motorcycle on railroad tracks! It's the difference between the Home Brew Computer Club circa 1980 and Apple Computer, the most well-capitalized company in the world. 

I actually think Shorty's tunnel under the prison may have been constructed long ago, just in case he was ever incarcerated there. Because success means planning for every eventuality. 

Finally, when Shorty powered out of that tunnel on the motorcycle, there was no doubt in the world that his ride would be waiting for him. We can be certain of that. Just like in Apollo 13, failure was not an option. "Right this way, Senor Guzman!"

"HELP!" -- How To Get More Referrals

For any entrepreneur, a key skill is obtaining referrals to
new clients from current ones. And it is a skill. There’s
a right way and a wrong way to do it.

For example, asking “Is there anyone else who might be interested” is a mistake. It’s a closed question to which the answer might simply be “No.” Further, when you ask for “anyone” it doesn’t really help the client to think about specific people you can contact. So try to be more specific. Ask for a specific “who” that has some of the same issues as your current client. Avoid a general and vague “anybody.”

The best approach is related to principle of “pain avoidance” that motivates so much of human behavior. In any sales or marketing presentation, you always want to identify any pain a client is in and show how you can relieve that pain. So in asking about referrals, you want to inquire about someone who has the type of problems that your product or service resolves.

The more specific you can be, the greater your chances of getting a referral. “Who do you know who is having product reliability problems? Who is having problems with computer support?” Those are the kind of sharply focused questions that have the best chance of getting results.

Asking for referrals should really be built into the agenda of a presentation right from the beginning. You’re not going to get a hit every time, so the key is getting up to bat as often as possible. Be creative. Make some calls expressly for the purpose of getting referrals. Go to some conferences and trade shows in your industry. Talk to people who are in positions of public contact, like reception staff and personal assistants.

After any business related conversation always ask for referrals. And always say “Thank you,” even if you mean “Thanks for nothing!”

Prison Break! But where's Morgan Freeman?

As everyone knows, several weeks ago two convicted murderers escaped from a maximum security prison in a godforsaken area of upstate New York. After a manhunt involving more than 1000 cops, one of the escapees was recently shot and killed and the other was captured a few days later. 

This was a big news story. Prison escapes have always been fascinating, whether in fiction or in real life. And this escape was definitely worthy of "The Count of Monte Cristo." It involved almost unbelievable feats of planning, cutting, climbing, crawling, and tunneling over many months, or possibly years. 

The prisoners also seem to have talked some prison workers into helping them: a woman, whose husband they promised to kill once they got out; and a male guard, apparently an art lover, whom they bribed with paintings and drawings created by one of the cons. (And they're not bad!) 

Certain features of the escape -- the planning over long periods of time, for instance -- have inspired comparisons with "The Shawshank Redemption," the 1994 film adaption of a Stephen King short novel, starring Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. Although the film was not initially a commercial success, it was nominated for multiple Academy Awards (but didn't win) and has since gained great popularity. 

In fact, surveys have revealed that millions of people consider "The Shawshank Redemption" to be one of the greatest movies ever made. Ask anyone about it and they'll tell you, "I love that film!"

I happen to agree that it's a very powerful story. It hooks into the conventional appeal of prison escape stories, but then adds a deeper dimension. 

We're all in prison, sort of, aren't we? We're all stuck doing repetitive tasks that seem to have little benefit, at least not for us. But we've got to keep at it, because we're stuck with it, just like the characters in "The Shawshank Redemption" are stuck in the penitentiary.

So how do survive in that situation? What the film suggests, I believe, is the need for an escape plan, the more elaborate the better, concocted and executed over many years, or even over the course of a whole "life sentence."

But here's the twist. The plan itself is the escape. Whether or not you ever do get outside the walls, just having a plan can radically change your day-to-day experience. It's got to be an actual plan, however, not just a "dream." 

If you been in the exterminating business for fifteen years and you've got fifteen more to go, you can plan to become a hunting guide in Alaska some day. But if you've been in the exterminating business for fifteen years and you're five feet sour inches tall, you can plan to play in the National Basketball Association when you retire. That's just a dream -- and if you invest too much in a dream, it can turn into a nightmare. 

In "The Shawshank Redemption" film -- and in the New York prison break -- the escapes were actually "successful." The walls were breached. That may be too much to hope for in many cases, but you don't have to hope. You have to plan. If you need to hope for anything, just hope for the best. 

Your Inner CEO -- Humblebragging: "You don't like me! You really don't like me!"

Are you familiar with the term “humblebrag?” You may not have heard or used the word very often, but you’ve certainly seen humblebragging in action – and it’s becoming more widespread all the time.

Here’s a good definition of humblebragging from an article in the online edition of The Independent, a British newspaper:

A humblebrag occurs when someone, possibly unconsciously, manages to show off about something while simultaneously couching it in terms of self-deprecation.

In my opinion, we‘re living in a Golden Age of humblebragging and we’ve been there for some time. I believe this Golden Age began with Sally Field’s famous “you like me” Academy Award acceptance speech in 1985. Here’s a brief video clip of that iconic moment:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rl_NpdAy3WY

It’s quite perfect, isn’t it? A famous actress, at the greatest moment of her career, manages to capture the affection of millions of viewers by fronting vulnerability and insecurity. In fact, she’s actually bragging about that vulnerability and insecurity at the very moment that we (and she) know that she’s just won this big award. Yes, that was the birth of humblebragging in the modern age.

Even with the widespread use of humblebragging today, I was surprised to find the large amount of research that’s been done on the topic, even in serious academic journals. So here’s the bottom line on all that humblebragging research, which also surprised me: humblebragging doesn’t work.

Research shows that people see through humblebragging and regard it as insincere and manipulative. Yet humblebragging keeps growing. Not just at the Oscars telecast – although that is a very fertile field – but in all walks of life. Surely you’ve encountered it, and you may even have humblebragged yourself. I certainly have, and I sincerely regret it as one of my many flaws (that’s a humblebrag right there.)

Well, if humblebragging doesn’t work, but you still want to strut around the barnyard like a rooster without having to admit it, what are you supposed to do?

Here’s the solution. Get someone else to brag for you! Someone who will go into a meeting and say, “Pete would never tell you this, but he’s got an absolute genius for making huge amounts of money for anyone he works with.” Or, “Ashley doesn’t like to speak about this because she’s an ardent feminist who’s against the objectification of the female sex, but Ashley really is one of the most beautiful women in the world, if not THE most beautiful.”

I’m sure you can think of many other examples. Meanwhile, be alert for humblebragging in all its forms. Believe me, they’re out there!

Here’s a link to The Independent article about humblebragging:
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/features/nobody-likes-a-show-off-the-excruciating-rise-of-the-humblebrag-2363207.html

And a paper from the Harvard Business School on the ineffectiveness of humblebragging:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2597626&download=yes

Your Inner CEO: Some words (about money!) you need to know

Often we use words without knowing what they really
mean….and that’s usually fine, because communication can
still take place without understanding the dictionary
definition of a word. But from a business perspective it can
be useful to explore what we’re actually talking about when
we start talking, especially for certain basic concepts.

Like money, for example…

Money is difficult to define even though it plays an important part in our lives every day. But here’s a definition of money that might be as good as any: money is any circulating, quantifiable, and symbolic medium of exchange. That definition includes three specific attributes of money, so let’s take a look at them one by one.

First, money is a circulating medium. It can be passed without much difficulty between individuals, or it can be shipped from one place to another. So a piece of land is not money. The value of a piece of land, as expressed by money, can circulate between people, but not the land itself.

Second, money is quantifiable. That’s what makes it possible to circulate. If pennies were the only denomination of money that we had, we’d have a hard time even paying for a package of gum, which now costs about a hundred and twenty-five pennies. Fortunately, different quantities of money can be expressed by bills or coins of the same size. A hundred dollar bill is no bigger than a one dollar bill. The quantity that one represents is a hundred times larger than the other, but the physical size of the bill is the same.

The last quality of money is the most interesting, and is really money's most basic characteristic. Money is symbolic. As a purely physical object, money has almost no value. It’s a scrap of paper or a piece of metal. But its symbolic value is literally infinite. Money can symbolize anything and everything, and it can symbolize all those things at once. A dollar bill can represent part of the cost of a hospital, or of an atomic bomb. It can be a gift from the Tooth Fairy, or it can be part of a drug deal. In the end, money is both tangible and mystical. It may be the most important of all humanity’s creations, and it’s certainly the most imaginative.

Riches is an easy word to define. Riches just means having a lot of money or having a lot of the things that money can buy. A rich person’s riches is easy to recognize and document. You can see it in a big house, an expensive car, or a lot of big numbers on a bank statement.

It’s usually fairly easy to tell if someone is rich. People tend to express their wealth in a public way. That doesn’t mean that all rich people are extravagant, but you don’t often find them sleeping on park benches. Also, people can go from poor to rich or rich to poor very quickly. You can win the lottery or lose your winning ticket. (You can also find it again.)

Wealth can include riches but wealth is also a larger concept. Wealth is a sense of abundance that riches can help to bring about, but it also transcends riches. When we speak of wealth-building, we mean not just acquiring a lot of money but also having the consciousness capacity to use the money wisely. Strange as it may seem, money is one of the building blocks but it’s not the foundation of true wealth.

That foundation includes many other things. It even includes developing your vocabulary. So when you have a spare moment, try looking up the definitions of everyday words even if you think you already know what they mean. 

With a smartphone, you can do that almost instantly at dictionary.reference.com. You might also subscribe to the excellent smartphone app called The Free Dictionary, which will send you a new word plus a comprehensive definition every day. 

Your Inner CEO: "Run that by me one more time...."

Your purpose in business is always to assist your clients in solving their problems. A great deal of research now suggests that clients want to buy products and services, not be sold to. So, initially, a prospective client will want to know your answers to the following questions: “Do you fully understand the problems I have? And do you have a solution to these problems?”

As soon as you’ve established what a client’s problem really is, your next task is linking those issues to the solutions you offer. But there may be times when you aren’t able to do that. You may not have solutions. If that’s the case, simply apologize for not being able to help and mention alternative sources that might be able to do so.

But assuming you do see an opportunity to assist, you need to be very thorough with your questioning in order to elicit detailed answers: “Tell me how you’d like me to help you solve this problem? What other problems have you experienced?” Try to entice some emotion from the client as well as pure information. Clients will appreciate the time you're taking to understand their needs. They’ll be grateful to you for qualifying them so carefully.

Once this is done, you’re ready to begin a conversation about the benefits you offer. Offer clients key benefits that will address the specific problems you’ve discussed. If clients ask for more information, that’s of course an extremely positive sign. It shows they’re interested in what you've said and shown so far.

Never forget that clients want to get out of hell much more than they want to get into heaven. How can you determine if you’re the right person to help them do that? Summing up, here are the important points you can keep in mind:

Always ask open-ended questions to make sure you understand what clients need. “Let’s keep talking….”

If you believe that you can't provide a solution to clients’ needs, 
just move on. You owe it to both them and yourself not to waste time. This is nothing for anyone to be offended about. It’s just a reality of doing business.  
 
Describe how you've been able to assist other clients with similar
needs. Try to have testimonials from specific individuals to support this. If it becomes clear that there is not a good fit with a prospective client, try to provide a referral to someone else that might be able to help. “What goes around comes around.” Yes, it really does. 

Your Inner CEO: Generosity

More than two hundred years ago the economic philosopher Adam Smith made a statement that’s still being discussed and argued about. Smith said that society works best when people act in their own self-interest. But what exactly does that mean? Is self-interest the same as selfishness? Actually, self-interest is the opposite of selfishness. Let’s take a look at why that’s true.

At first glance, it’s easy to see why people do selfish things. A man finds a wallet on a bus. The wallet has money in it, so he pockets the money from the wallet and throws the wallet in the trash. Whatever this means from an ethical perspective, there’s a clear logic to it. The man wants more money than he has, and he acts accordingly.

Yet sometimes, and more often than you might think, the man will return the money. But why? Keeping it for himself can be explained in one sentence, but returning it takes a little insight. Why do people do generous things? Human beings sell goods and services in order to get money, but generosity means providing something without the clear expectation of a definite return.

Actually generosity and self-interest aren’t really so different. It all depends on how we define self-interest. Is it just the satisfaction of short-term desire for material gain? Or is self-interest more than that? The fact is, most people have long terms goals beyond just making a quick profit, or even beyond making money at all. They may still be acting out of self-interest, but not in material terms.

Suppose a traveler runs out of gas on a dark country road. Just then a farmer comes by in a jeep. The farmer happens to have a can of gas. He stops and puts the gas in the car of the stranded driver. When the driver offers money to the farmer, the farmer shakes his head. “I know what it’s like to be stuck on a dark road,” he says, “so here’s the only payment I ask. Someday you’ll see somebody stranded just like you were. When that happens, I want you to stop and help, just like I stopped for you now.”

Was the farmer acting like a completely irrational person? Would it have been more reasonable to say, “All right, that’ll cost you ten bucks.” Not at all, because all of us benefit from living in a society where we help each other. People act generously partly because generosity may someday be extended to them. A young man giving his seat on a bus to an older woman provides a model for that woman, and in fact for everyone on the bus. Hopefully, the woman will remember the generosity she received -- and someday she’ll help someone else. It will be like repaying a debt.

And what about if you don’t repay the debt? Someone who benefits from generosity but doesn’t extend it is a kind of free-loader. They’ve taken but they haven’t given. Indeed, people like that are not uncommon in the world. Do they feel badly about themselves? Not always -- because there’s a simple way to justify their behavior. They say, “Nobody ever gave me anything, so I don’t have to give anything back. I haven’t received Appreciation, so I don’t have to offer it.”

But that’s absolutely false. How can anyone who gets out of bed every morning into a new day assert that they’ve never received anything? How can people who can see with their eyes and hear with their ears believe that they’ve never received something for nothing? They’re alive, aren’t they? And that life didn’t cost them a dime. 

Your Inner CEO: "How was your day?"

Everyone has daily rituals, and most people have specific rituals in their work. What’s the first work-related action you take every day? How many breaks do you take as the day goes on? Do you have idle time to contend with, or do you barely have enough time to finish your assignments?

Both of these options are bad news. The first one places you in a lethargic holding pattern. The second is a ticket to emotional and physical burnout, probably sooner rather than later. So in the spirit of good career health and work-life balance, here are a couple of ideas for enhanced productivity.

First, learn not just to organize, but to accurately prioritize. Despite how it may seem in the moment, many “emergencies” don't matter in the long run. Technology has increased our sense of urgency. A FedEx letter cries out for more immediate attention than something sent bulk rate, but the delivery system can be out of proportion to the value of the content. You may be worried because you’re four minutes late for a meeting. But the meeting itself could be a waste of everybody's time.

Unless you take conscious control of the process, you'll tend to react to apparent urgency, even if it's relatively unimportant. What's even worse, you may miss what's genuinely important unless it also carries an obvious banner of urgency.

To avoid this, make a commitment to interrupt yourself several times a day. Stop what you're doing and ask yourself the following question: "Is this how I want or need to spend my time right now?" If the answer is "yes," go back to what you were doing. You will have affirmed your decision very consciously.

But there are also other possibilities. Maybe you’re doing something you need to do, but it doesn’t need to be done at this moment. So put it aside in favor of something that's more time sensitive. That way you'll avoid getting caught in deadline pressure later.

And if you neither want nor need to be doing something, now or ever -- just stop! It may surprise you, but if you stick with the "want/need" question for a few days, you really will catch yourself doing things you can't justify doing on any grounds, and you'll find yourself making changes to better serve your needs. 

Your Inner CEO: Money!

Is money the root of all evil? No, but there is absolutely nothing like money to bring all our issues to the surface. Money and also the desire for money have brought a lot excitement into people’s lives -- often the kind of excitement they could have done without.

Money is the number one source of problems between husbands and wives. It can make trouble between friends, too, and it’s an ongoing issue between employers and employees. Who is giving? Who is getting? And what does that mean in terms of any relationship?

Money makes many people uncomfortable. Salary and income are some of the last things a people want to disclose about themselves. If they don’t make much money, they’re ashamed of it -- and if they make a lot of money, maybe they’re ashamed of that too.

So money and our relationship to it can be complicated and confusing. You need to sort this out, because money and how you handle it are some of the most visible expressions of your character and personality.

To get started with this, there is an essential paradox about money that has to be understood. On the one hand, money is inherently limited: t\en dollars is not twenty dollars. You can’t pay for a twenty thousand dollar car with a ten thousand dollar check. In that sense, the value of money is very clear and straightforward.

But at the same time, money is also inherently unlimited in its potential. Ten dollars may be ten dollars today, but it can be twenty dollars tomorrow, or even twenty thousand dollars. Or it can also be no dollars at all. In this sense, money is undefined. It is raw unmanifested energy. It can be used for virtually any purpose, for good or bad.

Money can be a medium of security, but also of insecurity. There are people with millions of dollars who are still worried about their financial security. Wealthy people have been known to commit suicide because they’ve lost half their fortune. A person could still have a huge net worth, but if it’s only half of what it was before, he feels threatened, he feels vulnerable, he just can’t go on. Yet he still has more money than the vast majority of the population.

The key point is that money in itself has no specific value. It has the value that we give it. Imagine a wealthy financier pulling up at a toll booth in his Bentley. He tosses his fifty cents toll, but accidentally over shoots the bucket with his quarters. No problem, he just throws in some more loose change. Retrieving the fifty cents is not worth his time and effort.

But if a homeless person comes along and finds the fifty cents, that’s a major windfall. For one person, any given amount of money may be meaningless, but to another person it may be all they have. How you perceive money determines its worth. You actually decide the value of money.

If you don’t understand this, you can get you into serious trouble about money. But once you do understand it, you can make money your servant rather than your tyrannical master. 

Your Inner CEO: "I put a spell on me."

Thinking in new ways about yourself is a powerful tool for building self confidence. The same tool can be applied to how you think about other people. When you look around, you may think see nothing but super-confident, totally fearless individuals. 

But you can be certain that those same people have had plenty of uncertain moments. You just don’t see them right now. And don’t assume that everyone else can see your own stresses and anxieties. That’s what psychologists call “magical thinking.”

Magical thinking has nothing to do with reality, and it’s a major barrier to becoming the kind of person you want to be. So don't let yourself make magical statements about yourself or other people. 

If you feel this starting to happen, calmly say to yourself, "Hold on a minute, how do I know that's true?" If you can come up with some evidence that disproves the magical statement, that's even better. It may take a bit of effort at first, but the impact on your self-confidence will be huge.

True confidence isn't just about thinking well of yourself. It’s also about not thinking badly about yourself or anyone else. Stop thinking "Why did that happen?" or "Why do I feel this way?" and start thinking "How would I like to feel?" or "When do I feel confident?" or, "What can I do now to feel better in this situation?"

Stick with it and don't expect everything at once. Building self- confidence is a process -- and if it seems like a very long process from where you are now, that just proves how important it is to get underway.

Your Inner CEO: Corporate Fear

Faced with a charging lion or a maxed out charge card, two people may both feel fear. But the courageous individual takes on the challenge, while the other does nothing. The choice is yours, whether it's in lion country or a conference room.

In order to first control and then overcome fear, an effective CEO has to learn what fear really is. The complicating factor, however, is that fear exists in many different forms. In biomechanical terms, fear is a collection of hormonal responses released by the brain. Once these hormones disperse throughout the body, they begin to trigger defensive mechanisms such as raising adrenaline and cortisol levels, and increasing heart rate and respiration. This is the so-called "fight-or-flight" response. These symptoms are meant to stay active for only a few seconds or minutes, which is just enough time for a person to react to the object of his fear.

But what happens when that object of fear isn’t real? What if it's simply a situation created by your imagination? For many people, the high levels of adrenaline and increased respiratory rates remain in the body for longer periods, adding more stress and consequently making the body experience "burnout" and total exhaustion.

Once you understand what your fears are as a biological phenomena, the next step is to become consciously aware their presence in a rational rather than an emotional way. You can do this in the form of a “thought experiment.” When you start feeling anxious, take a moment in which you step back to say to yourself, "It's beginning. I'm becoming afraid." By acknowledging fear and keeping company with it, you will eventually learn to master it.

Mastering fear does not mean destroying it. No one can ever completely destroy fear, nor is it necessary to do so. Fear will still be part of who you are whether you like it or not. But to help you reach an accommodation with this part of yourself, here are a few practical steps you can follow:

>> Get up and out: Many people have panic attacks early in the morning while they're still in bed. So get up and get moving. Get the morning paper, turn on the TV and notice that life goes on around you. Get dressed and go outside. See that there is life and action around you at all times. It puts your inner life into the correct perspective.

>> Exercise: Get moving enough to get the blood flowing. Do some sit-ups, push-ups, lift weights and walk the dog a few blocks. Exercise replaces "fear hormones" in your body with neurochemicals that promote strength and power for longer periods of time.

>> Play some music: Turn on the iPod. It’s a great way to calm yourself down.

>> Live in the here-and-now: Certain words and phrases can help you detach from negative thoughts; "Relax…” “There's no problem…” “I’m in control…”  Saying this aloud will force you to concentrate on the tasks at hand and sway your mind from focusing on things in the future that may never occur.

>> Think positive: Reviewing a past success, particularly before a presentation or a meeting with your boss, is an excellent way to eradicate the butterflies. You’re instantly reminded that you've achieved great things before, and there's no reason why you shouldn't achieve them again.

>> Food and fear: Eat something light and simple, like toast with orange juice. It's hard to be afraid when you’re eating, and it's especially hard to be in fear when the sugar and other nutrients from whatever you are eating enter your bloodstream.

>> Talk to yourself: Remind yourself that you are the master of your own body and your own mind. Never become a slave to your own fears, especially when they begin to hurt others like your family or friends.

>> Get plenty of rest. It's almost impossible to feel secure when you're exhausted or frightened.

Your Inner CEO: Out With The Old, In With The New

Today there’s a hunger for new breakthrough technologies in all areas of business. Apple probably did more to create this hunger than any other company, with Steve Jobs’ dramatic unveilings of new Apple products. As an entrepreneur, of course, you are the product – so you need to re-invent and re-introduce yourself on an ongoing basis.

You need to show your clients that you’re on the cutting edge. You need to make them believe it, and you need to believe it yourself as well. You have to convincingly present your understanding and mastery of change. That’s the only way to satisfy the hunger for newness that has become a principle of business success.

The US Post Office has been losing millions of dollars a year. One reason is the fact that the Post Office is locked into a certain way of doing things that simply cannot be radically changed. First class postage was a moneymaker for the post office, but what happened to first class postage when fax machines began to appear – not to mention email. The Post Office had all their distribution centers, they had trucks, and they had mail sorting, but all that became irrelevant when totally new technologies appeared.

Here’s the point. If you can offer your client new and powerful problem-solving benefits, you don’t have to compete with whoever had been the dominant player. You don’t need to be on the same playing field as the post office. You can create a whole new game with new and different rules.

Consider what happened to telecommunication systems. With all the old landlines, to succeed in that business you had to have cables and right-of-ways and all kinds of other hardware. Then somebody put a microwave tower on a hill and everything changed. Steve Jobs created the iPhone and everything changed again. These were huge leaps beyond where the old phone-system was.

Another example: the publishing industry is trapped in a 400-year-old paradigm, based on printing hard copies of books. Now an almost infinite number of electronic books can be distributed just by pushing a button. An e-book publisher can completely bypass the traditional publishing industry.

At one time the most accurate watches in the world were made in Switzerland. You needed to be extremely meticulous and spend years looking into a magnifying glass at little gears in order to make them. You had to understand everything about gears and springs to be a watch manufacturer. Then some people in Japan said, “Forget that! We’ll just put it on a quartz chip. It vibrates at an absolutely stable rate when stimulated by a tiny battery.”

The amazing part is, the Japanese didn’t invent quartz watch technology. The Swiss invented it, but they didn’t patent it. So the Japanese just put it in the chip, because the Swiss had already told them how to do it. The Swiss were so invested in the springs and gears that they couldn’t see how the time for change was here.

At one time the Swiss had 95% of the watch market. Now the Japanese own 95% of the watch market. Because the Swiss didn’t take the technology that they had invented themselves, they got beaten with their own technology.

What lessons do stories like these hold for you as the CEO of your own inner corporation? How can you create a new version of yourself that makes you attractive as an innovator? Or how can you recognize and improve upon an already existing idea, so that it becomes your own? “Out with the old, in with the new” – we should all embody this ancient principle, and we should make it seem like we just thought of it ten minutes ago.

Your Inner CEO: "Hey, what's your problem?"

An old business truism states that everyone is really a salesperson. At every moment we’re all selling something. It may be a product or service, or it may be we’re just selling ourselves.

With that principle in mind, one of the strongest principles of marketing psychology is the concept that buyers don't really buy products or services. They don’t buy special features. They don't buy innovations, and they don’t buy bells and whistles. What they do buy is the perception that a product or service (or an individual) will make their lives easier in some very practical way. They buy the solution to a problem.

For example, a flat screen television might include the feature of internet connectivity. That’s technically impressive, but it’s only meaningful if a customer has the desire to connect to the internet through his television. And it’s most meaningful if the customer has been trying to connect a TV to the internet and has been having trouble doing it. No one is going to make a purchase simply because of a positive feature. But lots of people will make a purchase if that feature relieves them from some form of pain.

It's the savings in money, time, and aggravation that the customer is really buying. A salesperson who formulates a sales proposition or product offer around those benefits will sell far more internet TV's than someone who simply offers television with internet connectivity. The goal of solution-oriented selling is to create an offer that does two things at once. It highlights what the product or service will do -- and most importantly it links those capabilities to relieving some discomfort that the buyer now has to endure.

Making this happen involves deeper levels of questioning and exploration than was expected in the past. This kind of exploration brings greater understanding of the client’s needs, and the questioning process itself builds trust, rapport, and empathy with the client. Variations of this process have been followed instinctively by highly gifted executives for many years – but now it’s really essential for everyone who wants to do well in the profession. Tools that were previously known to only a few have become prerequisites for working in the new, faster-paced environment.

Needs-sensitive communication involves not only knowing what a client’s conscious requirements are – but also revealing a whole new set of problems and solutions that the clients themselves may have been unaware of. You are now not only the provider of a product or service, but a consultant and collaborator. The role is similar to that of professionals in engineering, law, finance, and other relatively abstract areas of business. 

You may drive a taxi, but but don't think of yourself as a taxi driver. In the 21st Century, you're an urban travel consultant.