Jesse Meijers

A lesson in empathy – How to place yourself in someone else’s shoes

Jesse Meijers — Sun, 01 May 2011 07:00:47 +0000

Placing yourself in someone else’s shoes can be extremely hard. Recently I wrote an article about a lesson we can learn from Abraham Lincoln. Today, I found this fantastic empathy experiment on Ted.com. It is a great experiment and will take you on a journey to understand the world from the perspective of others.

Sam Richards: A radical experiment in empathy

A lesson in empathy by Abraham Lincoln

Jesse Meijers — Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:22:47 +0000

One thing that I used to be rather bad at, was empathy. Placing myself in someone else’s shoes was hard for me. For an entrepreneur this is very important, it is a lesson worth learning. The story that helped me learn this lesson is about Abraham Lincoln, a very inspiring man. It will help you too!

The young Abraham Lincoln

When Lincoln was a young man, he was a very critical man. He would give his comments on just about anything you can imagine, including cynical remarks about other people. It is hard to imagine this man would become on of the most influential and admired people the world has ever known.

The turn around came when the young Abraham, then a state legislator, published anonymous letters in the Sangamo Journal of Springfield, criticizing the work of James Shields, attorney and auditor of the State of Illinois. Back in those days it was rather common to challenge someone to a duel, which was exactly what this man did.

Since Shields had challenged Lincoln, Abraham had the privilege of choosing weapons. He chose the broad sword. On the day of the duel, it quickly became apparent that Lincoln had made a wise decision; his long reach ultimately led to Shields backing out of the duel.

This dire situation learned Lincoln a lot… he vowed never to criticize another person again. Instead, he would do his best to understand the other person. Lincoln learned to use empathy instead.

Empathy during the civil war

During the civil war, Lincoln showed his greatest act of empathy. It is this moment that I always remember when I come to situations that need me to put empathy to use.

After being defeated twice in battles before, general McClellan had finally gotten General Lee defeated. Both parties had suffered enormous losses, and Lee saw no other option than to run. McClellan and his army gave chase. It came down to a very important choice; attack Lee again or give up the chase…

McClellan decided that his men had suffered enough and blew off the chase. When Lincoln received his debriefing he was furious. He immediately wrote a letter explaining McClellan that he could have won the war, if he hadn’t such a stupid decision… The letter was never posted however, and was later found amongst the papers that remained after Lincoln had deceased.

What did happen was that Lincoln placed himself in the shoes of McClellan. His men tired, wounded or dead. Not enough supplies to get back, let alone fight. Lincoln decided right there that if he had been in McClellan’s position, he would undoubtedly have made the same decision. So who was he to criticize!?

Remember that this decision led to many more deaths. Something Lincoln knew all too well. Still, he could imagine making the same decision. This is empathy. And whenever I find myself in a situation where I need to place myself in someone else’s shoes, I remember this story. If Abe Lincoln could do it when so many lives would be lost due to this decision; then who am I not to do the same for far lesser problems?

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Beyond proactivity: Accelerating personal development

Jesse Meijers — Fri, 04 Mar 2011 13:27:45 +0000

About 5% of people on the world are proactive by nature. The other 95% are procrastinators. It is no small feat to overcome procrastinating and become (more) proactive. Yet this is one of the main things that separates successful people from the rest.

But that is just half of the story. Obviously the 95% of people who are not by nature proactive, should aim to become so. But proactivity alone is just the beginning. If it is not combined with thinking, it will lead to nothing.

Are you an acter or a thinker?

People can be divided into 2 categories. Those whose first reaction is to think about something, and those whose first reaction is to act on something. The latter group is the 5% who is proactive.

Whether you fall into the group of thinkers or acters is rather easy to determine. Just imagine someone comes up to you with a business proposal. This can be anything. What is your first reaction?

If you’re an acter you’d probably make your decision as an impulse. And immediately get to work. If you’re a thinker you’d probably ask a couple of questions to create a pro/con list, to determine whether this is a good idea.

Why you need to both acter and thinker

Which category of people you fall into, only determines what your starting point is. The hard part is that you need to learn the other skill. If you act without thinking about it, you will just make the same mistake over and over again. If you think without acting, you will think of the greatest ideas … but they never come to be, because that needs action!

Thinking and acting have a certain rythm to them:

Think of the pattern as a walking pattern. If you are inside a room, choose 2 locations. One location represents the ‘Thinking’ spot, the other the ‘Taking action’ spot. When you think about something you are in the thinking spot. If you then take action, you are basically moving from the thinking spot to the taking action spot. And vice-versa.

This is the pattern we all travel, between thinking and taking action. Whether you are a thinker or an acter determines in which spot you feel most secure. You are comfortable there. For example, I am a thinker by nature, so I feel quite comfortable thinking decisions through. Instead of taking action.

My business partner is an acter by nature, who always takes action. This is what he feels comfortable with. We both had to learn how to use the other side of the pattern… He had to learn to use his thinking to supplement his acting, while I had to act to supplement my thinking!

The usual patterns

The usual patterns don’t look like the pattern in the last section… Rather they look more like the image below, if we picture the pattern as a moving pattern:

Acters spent almost all of their time in the doing area of the pattern, while thinkers spent most their time in the thinking part. Both have great hesitations to leave their location, and don’t remain in the other location for very long, if at all.

The goal is to get balance between the two locations. So that moving away from a location feels as safe as moving towards it.

Taking the first step towards balance

It is hard to get out of your comfort zone. But that is exactly what you should be doing: move to the location that is not your normal behaviour. So the first thing to do is become aware of the fact that there is a different behaviour that is possible in any given situation. And it differs from your instinct!

There are always 2 ways to go to the other spot. Before you act on your instinct, or after. Moving before your instinctive reaction is hardest, but you will learn the process faster. I recommend this.

Thinkers

For thinkers the best way to do something is to simply revert to ‘gut feeling’ when it comes to a decision. Give yourself no longer than 1 second (yes that is short) to decide. As soon as you notice yourself thinking, making a pro/con list, etc, you need to make the decision immediately.

Usually you will lean to a certain decision and thinking only increases your own belief that this is the right decision. So just pick it instantly next time.

Alternatively, you can postpone the acting part a little. This means you do the acting after a little bit of thinking. Just set a timeframe to make your decision in and stick to it. For example, agree with yourself to decide tomorrow at noon. And hold your promise!

Acters

For acters the impulse is to act, so their biggest challenge is to not jump into anything. As soon as an opportunity presents itself, keep yourself from making a decision. Promise yourself you will postpone the decision to noon tomorrow. And, again, keep your promise!

Alternatively, if you have acted, you can use thinking retrospectively. This means that after you have acted, you reflect back on the process. Think about what you did, why, what the concequences are, etc.

Once you achieve balance

Once you have achieved balance in this pattern, there is one more step to take. That step is to increase the speed with which you go through the pattern. If you want to visualize this, it is moving the two positions closer to each other.

The idea here is that you can very quickly switch between thinking, and doing. There is no real trick here, as long as you are aware of the fact that you can increase the speed, it will happen automatically!

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The Pygmalion Effect – Using Self Fulfilling Prophecies to your Advantage!

Jesse Meijers — Sun, 09 Jan 2011 09:03:44 +0000

You have probably heard of the Pygmalion effect, usually called a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is used to describe the effect that when you’ve talked about something bad happening, that it would actually happen. The fact is, this is much closer to the truth than most people realize. And you can use this to your advantage!

The science behind the Pygmalion effect

The reason why self-fulfilling prophecies work, has to do with our subconscious mind. Whenever we talk about a self-fulfilling prophecy, for example when I say that I will be successful, I am imprinting this into my subconscious mind. The brain works in such a way that it remembers better when we repeat this, so every time I say it, this imprint becomes stronger.

An interesting interaction happens with the conscious mind and the subconscious mind. The conscious mind is heavily influenced by the subconscious mind, but we hardly ever realize this. This interaction means that whatever we have imprinted in our subconscious mind, will be picked up consciously and executed.

Using self-fulfilling prophecies to your advantage

Actually, using the Pygmalion effect to your advantage is very simple. The idea is actually very old, in the form of mantra’s. A mantra, which originates from Hinduism, is a form of prayer that has a powerful effect when repeated. As such, it is basically the Pygmalion effect: repeat something, so it becomes imprinted in your subconscious mind.

So the only thing you have to do, is create your mantra (or mantra’s) and keep repeating them. This doesn’t have to be done out loud, you can do this silently too. The key factor is repeating, so your subconscious will pick up the idea and make it grow stronger and stronger.

A word of caution

The nasty matter of fact is that the Pygmalion effect can also be used in a bad way. Have you ever noticed how people who claim that they always have bad luck …. always have bad luck? The key here is to only concern yourself with positive thinking. Stay away from bad ideas, because repeating those will also imprint them in your subconscious!

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It is good to make mistakes

Jesse Meijers — Tue, 14 Dec 2010 10:25:02 +0000

Most people are affraid to make mistakes. This is only logical. After all, no one likes it when they look bad. Because of this, they will often refrain from doing certain things where they feel the chance of success is small. Or rather: they don’t take action. So I wanted to share with you an amazing story that explains how you can increase your success, by not worrying too much about mistakes.

Taking action is more important than taking the right action

First of all, I have experienced that taking action is much more important than taking the right action. Mistakes can be mended. Missed opportunities however, rarely come again.

Let me give you a first hand example. In my first company we had a problem to solve. We didn’t have a good distribution network to sell our product through. When we came in contact with someone who could help us, we made a wrong decision. We took him onboard, while he couldn’t commit 100% to our company.

Do I look back at this as a mistake? I do. Do I regret making that mistake? No I don’t.

If we hadn’t taken action right then and there, we would have missed our window of opportunity. Now we missed our window of opportunity because we couldn’t get sales to work the way it should have. But at least I took action, made a mistake and learned from my mistake.

When I ended up in a similar situation a while ago, I knew exactly what to do. Had I waited back then and not taken in the sales person, the company would probably still have failed. But I wouldn’t have learned such a valuable lesson!

Results within 24 hours

The other week I got back in contact with a friend that I hadn’t spoken to in about ten years. She is currently unemployed and has been looking for a job for a long time. We got talking about my businesses and how I started my current company after I stopped with the previous one.

Since she’s an artist, the conversation shifted towards interesting things in the market for artists. We talked about independent artists and how they work, which business models there are which can be used, et cetera.

Apparently this inspired her, as I got a message from her the next day, telling me she had decided to take action. She had spoken to someone she found through LinkedIn, who started a clothing brand: Supa Dupa. He was very enthusiastic about her artwork, and she is currently starting to do some designs for them!

Talk about fast results just by taking action!

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The difference between value and price

Jesse Meijers — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:41:48 +0000

All successful entrepreneurs know that there is a distinct difference in value and price. But most people don’t fully understand this difference. If you want to build a successful business, understanding this distinction is simply crucial.

What is price?

Everyone understands what ‘price’ is. It is the amount of money you pay for goods or services. Sometimes price is not as easy to deduct, but in essence it is that simple.

As an example let’s take a simple software system which you can buy, which will cost you $1.000,-. Then the price is simply $1.000,- (sorry if this seems too obvious, it is important to clarify what price is for the next bit!)

What is value?

Value is the actual worth of whatever it is that you are buying, such as goods or services. Value is not easy to deduct and therefore needs some more explanation. Let’s look at a simple software system again. If I can use a software system and it allows me to either:

Increase my sales by $1.000,- per month (for simplicity’s sake we assume no costs are involved)
Decrease my costs by $1.000,- per month

Then the value of the system is $1.000,- per month or $12.000,- per year.

The difference between price and value

If both software systems in my example are the same, then I am able to make a great deal. If I know that this system is saving $12.000,- in costs per year for a company and yet it costs me $1.000,- to buy it, there is a huge difference between value and price!

So remember that value is the perceived worth while price is the actual cost.

Some examples

I have been using this difference for years to build a successful company, and so have many others who understand this principle well. Here’s some examples of ways to use this knowledge:

Warren Buffet – uses this knowledge to buy stocks which have a lower price than they’re actually worth. Knowing this, he is basically buying a bargain and he can be sure that in due time, the price will once again reflect the actual value; leaving him with a nice profit!
Reselling – did you know that Red Bull was a hugely popular energy drink in Japan before it came to Europe? Some smart guy figured that the success of the drink could easily be turned into millions by changing the name to Red Bull. The value was reflected by this smart man’s imagination, while the price of the reselling rights outside of Japan was the price. And much lower than the millions or even billions of dollars it is generating each year!

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Easily increase your turnover … without spending a penny!

Jesse Meijers — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 19:17:08 +0000

If I told you there is a way that you could increase your turnover, without even spending any money, would you be interested? Of course you would! You probably spent money on silly things that promised you extra turnover or profit, but actually didn’t do anything other than costing you money… Well, let me explain how to do it… for free!

Story of the tool salesman

I met a tool salesman once who specialized in a certain area of tools. He sold cutters, picks, drills, etc. Me being from an entirely different market, I obviously asked him ‘what do you do’. And he told me he sells ‘cutters, picks, drills and the like’. The best one he told me, was the drills. Those sold best for him.

When I asked him why he thought the drills were the best selling item, he simply replied: because most people want to drill, and they need a drill. So I explained to him that this was wrong…

Most people couldn’t care less about drilling a hole. What they want … is a HOLE! They would be perfectly happy if the hold magically appeared in the wall at the right place. With the right depth. And width. But they don’t care about the drilling! They only care about the hole; about the result!

Thinking in advantages

The big difference between what I told the man and what he told me is this: the tool salesman was thinking in products. Thinking in products is what most salesmen do; they will explain you that you need the PowerHammer 2000 XTR because, well, it packs more power (and by the way, is more expensive!). So buy that! It is a great product! Just look at all the impressive features it houses! AMAZING!

Thinking in advantages and result is different. You simply ask the person what kind of hole they need. Big? Small? Deep? Shallow? In what kind of wall? How many holes?

This difference goes a long way. Don’t think in products. You are no longer a tool salesman. You are a hole-solution-provider. Present yourself this way!

The result…

This tool salesman actually increased his turnover simply by doing this one, free thing. This simple mind shift led him to more than triple his turnover! That is really how simple it is. Think in advantages for your customer. Don’t sell a product. Sell a solution!

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See one, do one, teach one

Jesse Meijers — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 08:42:53 +0000

Recently I was talking to a friend of mine who has worked for NATO and United Nations. We got talking about learning skills and how rules of thumb which explain methods can help you in easily remembering a process to learn something. In his line of work, the method ‘See one, do one, teach one’ is used. This is a very good method to remember when you want to learn a skill yourself, and to remember when you are teaching someone else a skill.

See one

The first part of this rule is see one. The way to read this is that when you want to learn a skill, it is good to see someone else executing the skill first. Obviously you want the other to be an expert or master in the skill.

The ’see one’ part is all about training your brain to remember what the skill is. Analyze what is going on, and why. Make notes if needed, and think up mnemonics if you can for the hard-to-remember bits. Remember to ask questions!

Do one

The next step is to get your feet wet. Simply executing the skill. Preferable under the watchful eye of the expert or master that you had been observing while ’seeing one’. In this stage it is about getting yourself used to executing the skill. In the beginning this is usually hard (depending on the skill of course), but in time the skill gets easier to execute.

The idea is that your practicing leads your subconscious to take over the execution of the skill. Once this happens, you no longer have to consciously think about all the aspects that you observed while ’seeing one’. The skill becomes natural to you.

Teach one

You have truly mastered a skill when you can teach others the skill. This involves you showing and explaining the skill to others (the ’see one’ phase for your pupil). Answer all the questions your pupil has patiently.

Then it is time to let your pupil ‘do one’ for himself. Watch the process, but don’t give directions. You should only help when help is asked, and even then you must be aware not to give the answer plainly. Asking a question which allows your pupil to discover the answer themselves is a much better learning tactic.

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Work smart, not hard!

Jesse Meijers — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 19:40:20 +0000

“Work smart, not hard”. Isn’t this a big cliche? Doesn’t everyone dream of working smart and not hard? And doesn’t it turn out differently all the time? Let me explain how you too can work smart instead of hard, and make more money while you’re at it! Here’s how I did it…

Let other people do the work

The big secret of working smart and not hard is to let other people do the work for you. That is easily done when you have a big business with hundreds of employees, but how do you start out? Well, let me tell you how my business partner and me started letting other people doing the work for us, and making a lot of money at the same time.

The idea is pretty simple, and can be explained along the lines of an investment. Let’s say you have a project which would mean you’d earn $100.000,-. The project would cost you 10 weeks working full time to do by yourself, so this means you earn $1.000,- per week. Not too shabby!

But we want to make more money in less time! The solution to this problem is to hire someone else to do the work for you, for example, an employee or a third party company. The trick is to find a cheaper way to do this, for example a company or person that can do it in the same amount of time for $80.000,-. Usually you can find a cheaper deal in the form of outsourcing abroad or hiring someone full time (since wages are usually much lower than what you can charge per hour to customers).

How this helps you to make more money

If you would walk this route, your income would suffer, because this solution would only mean $20.000,- in your pocket! While doing it completely yourself would mean a whopping $100.000,-! But the big advantage of having other people doing the work is that you’ll spend far less time on searching a company or person to handle the work (let’s say 1 week) which means your weekly rate is much higher!

Here’s how the numbers work:

	Doing it yourself	Having others do the work
Turnover	$100.000,00	$100.000,00
Third Party Costs	$0,00	$80.000,00
Your Share	$100.000,00	$20.000,00
Time Spent (weeks)	10	1
Weekly Rate (Your Share / Time Spent)	$10.000,00	$20.000,00

As you can see, having other people doing the work can mean increasing your weekly rate with 100%!

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How to identify great business ideas

Jesse Meijers — Sat, 25 Sep 2010 16:11:23 +0000

You are going into business with a partner, who has developed 2 fantastic products. The first product is a prevention against cancer, that people have to take every day. The second is a cure for cancer, which you take once when you have cancer and heals you. If you have only enough money to market one of these, which would you choose?

What most people choose

The fact of the matter is that most people will go for the prevention. Obviously this has a huge sales potential. Just think of the literally billions of people world wide who might be interested in this! And they have to take it every day!

The math seems to add up to favoring this decision. But as I always say, if you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to reflect. Is this really the best choice?

What successful entrepreneurs would choose

If you would ask a successful entrepreneur what product you should market, they would give the exact opposite answer: go for the cure. At first glance, this doesn’t make sense, because the math can’t be fixed to overshadow the huge potential of the prevention, can it?

Indeed, it can’t. But there is more to it than this. The fact of the matter is that most people couldn’t care less about taking a prevention medicine every day. Just take a look around: how many people that you know actually make sure they get enough vitamines, fibre and other important stuff every day? I bet you hardly know anyone who does…

Yet, if you were to have terminal cancer, wouldn’t you give up anything that you own just to be cured? Of course you would! Most people (except maybe if you’re 100 years of age) wouldn’t think twice about wanting the cure. That is why the potential of the cure is so much higher. When people are in need of something, they’re willing to give a lot more in return for it!

Other examples

Obviously the cancer example is a rather delicate subject. But it illustrates this point so well. People do not behave rationally. People do not do the right thing every day. People do not work out as much as they should. People do not exercise regularly. But when they’re overweight and have diabetes because of it; they will do anything for the cure.

It is the same with accountancy firms, who made huge amounts of money off of small companies. What happened is that 2 people team up to form a company, and all is well. But when in time one wants out, they suddenly find they haven’t taken into account how to handle this situation. Accounting firms have ‘helped’ these desperate people to settle their debates. But I can assure you that they made a huge profit simply because the need was so high for their clients.

Rate your business idea

If you go into business, always ask yourself if you are fulfilling a need for your customers. It is much easier to sell to a need than create one. Don’t get me wrong, there are times when you can create a need for your product. Yet this is much harder than fulfilling a need. So if you’re trying to decide which business idea is good, remember: always fulfill your customers needs!

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