Personal Development Training and Motivational Humor from the Motivational Smart Ass!

“What, exactly, do you do?”

That’s a good question, and one that some people find hard to answer. Even though it’s hard, it’s an important one to answer. And if you are in business for yourself, it is vital that not only can you answer it, but that your contacts, prospects, and blog readers can answer it too!

One of my favorite blogs is Ittybiz.com. Their tagline is “Marketing for businesses without marketing departments,” and they give a lot of great advice over there (note: if you are easily offended by straight talk and a little profanity, you might not like their site)

Today they had a post titled, What Do YOU Do? The Un-Meme Redux. The post challenges readers to answer a very important question: “What do you actually do?”

I decided to give it a go. My answers are below. In addition to reading my answers (and contacting me of you or anyone you know could use someone who does what I do), I suggest you answer the questions for yourself. They definitely made me think, and the act of writing out the answers was very helpful.

Here are the questions and answers:

What’s your game? What do you do?

On my blog and as a speaker, I make people laugh while sharing with them ideas to make their lives easier and more successful.

As a blogger, I focus on telling humorous stories and then pulling lessons out of those stories that people can use to grow their business, further their careers, stress less, or just have more fun.

As a speaker, I focus on showing groups how ideas from improv comedy can help them think quickly, flow with the unexpected, and improve their communication skills to provide better service, sales, and leadership.

Why do you do it? Do you love it, or do you just have one of those creepy knacks?

I love making people laugh. And I love teaching. I also love writing, especially when I can get into that juicy “Flow” state.

More specifically on the teaching, what really jazzes me is helping people realize that they can do more than they previously thought. That they can in fact push themselves beyond their perceived limits. And that they can let go, stress less, and enjoy the process.

Who are your customers? What kind of people would need or want what you offer?

Keynote Speaking:
Any group that is putting on a meeting or conference and wants something fun to add energy and humor while conveying simple but powerful “soft-skill” type lessons.

The ideal audience consists of service professionals and managers who

1. Build relationships with clients
2. Deal with constant change (or feel they are constantly running around putting out fires)
3. Are overworked and overstressed

Also groups that have (or need) a sense of humor and won’t be offended by the term “smart ass.”

Training Workshops:
Same as above, but more geared towards smaller groups (10-50 people) during retreats or orientation programs that want core creativity and communication skills transferred in a fun and engaging way.

One on One (Mentoring/Coaching):
Intelligent professionals with a sense of humor who want to do more but feel “stuck.” Anyone who has a sense of what he or she wants to do but doesn’t know how to do it. Or anyone who just has a nagging sense of, “I want to do more but don’t know what it is.”

What’s your marketing USP? Why should I buy from you instead of the other losers?

I offer an interactive and hilarious experience that teaches people skills they can apply immediately to make their lives easier and more successful.

I am the only (ok, maybe there are a few others) person in the world that combines improv comedy, stand up comedy, and practical business advice to create a memorable, effective, and funny way to teach people to stress less, achieve more, and laugh their asses off doing it.

What’s next for you? What’s the big plan?

On the immediate horizon is a brand new book about one of the most important “success principles” I have come across (I’ll be announcing it soon).

I am also following my own advice (from the mentoring programs about “doing more”) and fulfilling my lifelong dream of writing my first novel.

The big plan is to help thousands, (well, ok, hundreds of thousands, if not millions) stop doing things that get in their own way and start doing the things that lead to less stress, more fun, and greater achievement. And I’m going to do that with my blog, books (old and new) and speaking programs.

If any of the above sounds like something you or anyone you know would be interested in, please email me or make an introduction. Even if not, I again suggest you take a crack at answering those questions, especially if you are a small business owner. If you don’t have your own blog, feel free to post your answers in the comments below!

***
Are you planning an event and looking for a great speaker to add humor and energy? Then visit Avish’s Motivational Humorist page now!

In the American employment system, people are divided into two separate yet equally important groups: the managers who do stupid things, and the employees who suffer at their stupidity. These are their stories…

Once upon a time there was a girl named Lizzie. Lizzie had a full time Monday to Friday job, but she decided to take a side job doing some training work. As part of this job, Lizzie does two things: deliver one on one trainings on Saturdays to individuals, and give longer seminar type trainings to groups as her schedule allows.

Thursday, 4:00 PM

This week, Lizzie happens to be fortunate enough to have Thursday and Friday off from “regular” job. Then her phone rings…

“Hey, are you off work tomorrow?” her boss asks.

“Yes, why?”

“We want you to do a six hour training session tomorrow at 8AM.”

D’oh!

What you may not realize is that this was a new training program that had not been developed yet, so she also needed to create the materials for the training that night!

Crazy. But that’s not the big management fail.

Lizzie thinks, “wow, this is short notice, but I like the work and I like the company.”

She agrees to do it, does the prep work Thursday night, and spends her day off doing six hours of training.

Friday, 5:00 PM

Lizzie thinks, “wow that was a crazy 24 hours, but I got it done and it went really well. It kind of sucks that after that craziness I still have to work on Saturday, but at least I am only scheduled for one hour, from 10-11 AM.”

Saturday, 9:45 AM

Lizzie double checks her schedule online before heading in to work. It still says, “10-11 AM” only.

She thinks, “Cool, just one hour and then I can enjoy some of my weekend.”

Saturday, 10:00 AM

Lizzie arrives at work (a scant 15 minutes after double checking the schedule), and as soon as she walks in the door her boss says, “are you doing anything the rest of the day?”

Uh-oh. That’s always a loaded question. Sadly, she didn’t think quickly enough to lie.

“No. Why?”

“John called in sick. I need you to take his shifts.”

She looks at him. “You’re not asking me, are you? You’re telling me.”

“Yeah. I suppose I am.”

John was scheduled for 11-4, with a one hour break.

That’s right, Lizzie’s day went from one hour to six hours! With no notice! No prep! No consideration or apology!

Lizzie thinks, “This job sucks. This work sucks. This manager sucks.”

And that, my friends, is Management Fail!

I get it: Ding Happens. Someone calls in sick and then people have to scramble and sacrifice to cover. It sucks, but it’s a part of life.

However, there are good ways of dealing with those Dings, and there are bad ways.

The good ways lead to a team that feels appreciated and happy they were able to pull together and deal with a problem. The bad ways lead to resentment, anger, and a mass exodus.

This story was an example of the bad way of dealing with it. Here are four things you can learn from my Lizzie’s experience to help you avoid “Management Fail”:

Be Compassionate

People hate to deliver bad news (I know I do), and do it in many different ways:

• Some get overly apologetic.
• Others stay very factual land straightlaced.
• Some get all wishy washy and whiny.
• The best balance compassion and understanding with firmness.
• The worst, usually the insecure ones, work themselves up in advance and use anger or dominance to preempt what they believe will be a negative response.

The last one is a great strategy if you want to lose your best people. Otherwise, take it down a notch. Drop your defensiveness, have a little compassion, and be a human being.

Be Considerate

In this story, Lizzie checked her schedule online 15 minutes before she was supposed to be there. At that point, she was still listed as having just one appointment. It wasn’t until she got there that she was told she had to work an additional 5 hours.

I suppose it is possible that the person called in sick one minute before my friend got to work. It’s possible. It’s much more likely, in my humble opinion, that the call came in earlier and the manager just thought, “oh, Lizzie is coming in, I’ll just tell her when she gets here.”

That’s straight-up dumbassery.

Not giving any advance notice, via email or call, is a big fat Fail for four reasons:

• It gives no time to prepare – Lizzie thought she was working for only one hour. She didn’t take her wallet, or any food for lunch, or even a bottle of water (they oddly enough have no drinking water at this place). She only had a couple of bucks with which to try to get food on the one short break she had. No matter how short the notice was, a little advanced warning would have helped.
• It’s way out of proportion – It’s one thing to tack one extra hour onto someone’s five hour shift. It’s completely another to tack five hours onto a one hour shift. The first is a 20% increase in time. The second is a 500% increase! That requires at least the attempt of prior notification…
• It smacks of fear – Of course there is the possibility that the manager intentionally didn’t call because he was afraid that it would be easier for her to say “no” over the phone. Once she was there, it would be easier to force her into it. That kind of manipulation may garner some short terms gains, but it is a recipe for long term mistrust and dissent. It also means there is some deeper problem going on, either with the manager or the employee.
• It’s incredibly disrespectful – The manager couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone and say, “John is sick, I need you to work five hours today.” People (bad managers especially) seem to forget that good communication is the first step towards building trust and good relationships. If your people don’t feel respected, they won’t stick around.

Don’t be an inconsiderate, disrespectful, fearful dumbass. Give as much notice as you can, even if it’s only a tiny bit.

Be Thankful

So at the end of this, were they effusive in their thanks? Nope. Just a simple, “see you next week.” Oh wait, I forgot: after giving her only 16 hours notice to prep and deliver 6 hours of training and then giving her no notice that her one hour shift had become six, they then on Sunday sent an email announcing a staff meeting the next evening, off hours, and she was, “strongly encouraged to attend”!

Manage.

Ment.

Fail!

One of the years I was on the the board of my local speakers association chapter, my friend and fellow speaker Steve Coscia was the President. He summed up his presidential strategy succinctly:

Find great people, and thank them often..

Those simple seven words are a better management strategy than most of what you see out there.

What tickles me about this situation is that when she interviewed for the position, the people at the company told her she was overqualified for the job! But she likes that type of work and wanted to do it, so they hired her. Now they have someone who they admit they are lucky to have, but do they take any of the simple steps to appreciate and keep her? Nope.

You might be thinking, well if she’s overqualified then maybe the manager is used to treating the regular staff that way. If so, I say two things to you:

1. A little consideration, respect, and thanks are good strategies regardless of the employee
2. If a manager can’t distinguish between how they need to interact with different employees, then they have no business being a manager (or need some serious training)

There may be a lot of nuance that goes into being an excellent manager. But it starts with simply not being a dumbass manager, and that starts with those three things:

1. Be Compassionate
2. Be Considerate
3. Be Thankful

If you do nothing else but those three things, you will be well ahead of the management failing herd…

How about you? What example of Management Fail do you have in your past? I would love to hear about them in the comments section below!

***
Are you planning an event and looking for a great speaker to add humor and energy? Then visit Avish’s Motivational Humorist page now!
 

If you have any doubt that stupidity exists in the world, then you must listen to the audio I have linked to…

This is from a few years ago, so you may have heard this before. But for me, this is the first time I have heard it, and I am still shocked. Visit this website and take a listen:

Verizon Math

It’s a little long, but I could not stop listening to it. It was like watching a car wreck. If the car was driven by Morlocks. Who were eating babies. While singing muzak versions of Metallica tunes. It was incredibly painful, but I couldn’t turn away.

I…I don’t know what to say about this…even I, who make a point of noticing the stupidity in the world, am shocked at the sheer and utter dumbassery displayed on this call.

Keep listening until (or forward to) the 16 minute or so mark when the manager gets on the phone. That’s the person above the supervisor, and she is as stupid as the rest.

In an nutshell, a guy was told (by multiple people) that his data plan would cost .002 cents per KB, but his bill came to .002 dollars per KB.

The poor guy repeatedly tries to explain the problem, but in the greatest display of the “I don’t get its” since someone tried to explain to Snooki the concept to dignity, neither person on the call grasps the simple math at all.

It’s not calculus! It’s just decimals. In fact, it’s not even math, it’s just knowing the difference between dollars and cents!!! But every time he tries to walk them through the math they keep interchanging dollars and cents. I once tried to explain the geo-political conflict of Kashmir to a hamburger…I feel I had more success than this guy.

I have to warn you, if you’re like me, then you will feel your irritation and frustration rising as you listen to the call. Can you imagine being this poor guy trying to explain something so painfully obvious to people who just won’t get it??

Take a listen, at your own risk:
Verizon Math

Why am I Posting an Audio From Four Years Ago?

A few reasons..

First, as I said, it was new to me. Which means it’s probably new to a lot of you.

Second, as I have recently learned from some customer service interactions, I have no doubt that this kind of incompetence still exists, whether at Verizon or elsewhere (or both).

Third, I feel like I’d like to start a crusade of some kind. I know there is war and disease, and pain and suffering in the world, but if I could reduce the amount of bad service in the world, I would be happy. I don’t even need there to be stellar service; If I could just eliminate every instance of sheer and utter stupidity that occurs in customer service interactions, I feel I would be doing the world a tremendous service.

Of course that is too Herculean a task. But I will do my best and continue to tilt at windmills…

The next time you call a customer service rep and hear an accent and think to yourself, “oh geez, not another outsourced call center,” ask the rep if they know the difference between .002 cents and .002 dollars. If they say, “yes,” ask yourself if you’d rather deal with incompetence or an accent.

Then wonder why, as the caller himself says, “the education system has failed us.”

I usually like to have a point or takeaway lesson in these posts, but this situation, and the stupidity of the two employees so boggles my mind, that I am at a loss.

So let me leave it up to you: What point or lesson do you think we can all take away from this customer service interaction?”

Share your ideas in the comments below and let’s see what we come up with!