While waiting until the last minute can be effective motivation, it is far more comfortable (and profitable!) to plan your projects so that you can meet deadlines without killing yourself in the process.
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That does not, however, mean you should only set small, comfortable targets.
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I used to limit my own success with negative affirmations like, “I can’t afford that” or “I wish I could have my own plane” (the unstated assumption being that I’d never have my own plane).
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But then I then read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki in which he says that when growing up, his father would say things like, “We can’t afford that,” while his friend’s father would say things like, “How can we afford that?”
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I stopped thinking I couldn’t have or be those things, and starting asking myself how can I have or be those things? I started to set higher goals, started researching how others did what I wanted to do, and started planning on how I could do the same.
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You are the sole factor that determines whether or not you set and achieve your goals.
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How successful do you want to be?

Jack Molisani
President
ProSpring Technical Staffing

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Follow Jack Molisani on Twitter: @JackMolisani.
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Read the cover article by Jack Molisani in Intercom magazine, Is Social Networking for You?

Worry

“Most people spend their lives running away from something that isn’t after them.”—Unknown

Whenever we were upset about the possibility of something bad happening, before it actually happened, Mom would smile and say, “Don’t borrow trouble. That hasn’t happened yet. If it does, we’ll figure out what to do then. Worrying about it today isn’t going to help.”

This kind of conversation was usually preceded by the phrase “What if…”: “What if I don’t get accepted by the college I want to go to?” “What if I don’t get a date for the school prom?” “What if I don’t get the part I want in the play?”

Now this is the same mother who was sick with worry if we were late getting home from our dates, but that was worry for a real event happening in the present. She didn’t waste energy being concerned about our being late days before the actual event.

Worry is a negative affirmation. When you worry, you focus all your attention on the negative, scaring yourself with pictures of disaster and failure. Worry is different from contingency planning. Certainly, you want to have a backup plan in place in case your first effort fails.

Mom had us apply to several colleges instead of just one, plan something fun to do if we didn’t go to the prom, audition for other parts in other plays. Contingency planning enables you to await outcomes with equanimity. As a successful woman business owner once said, “Plan A is always the ideal picture. But it is usually a dream bearing no relation to reality. By the time I get to Plan F, I’ve got a plan that has some chance of actually succeeding.”

I make my plans, put my dreams and goals onto paper and send out my ships. I hope they will come in. But I know I am never in charge of when they come in—or which ships come in. I am only in charge of sending them out. At that point, the winds of destiny and the hand of God take over.

Worrying about those ships won’t see them safely past the rocks and the waves. I trust that some of the ships will reach my harbor safely. God will choose which ones. And even if, at first glance, they look like leaky rowboats, they will turn out to be the right ships for me—golden galleons in disguise.

Today’s Affirmation: “All my golden galleons are arriving safely in my harbor now.”

Chellie Campbell is the creator of the Financial Stress Reduction® Workshops, and author of The Wealthy Spirit and Zero to Zillionaire. She has been prominently quoted as a financial expert in the media and more than 50 popular books. For 30 days to a Wealthy Spirit, visit www.chellie.com.

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Follow Jack Molisani on Twitter: @JackMolisani.
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“I really should get up,” I kept thinking. Today was a gym day and that cheesecake I had last night with dinner wasn’t going work itself off. “But I don’t want to,” said the voice in my head that likes sleeping in on a cold rainy morning.

After a few self indulgent more minutes the voice in my head changed from Sleepy Jack to Carrie-Anne Moss’ character in The Matrix saying, “Get up, Trinity. Get UP!”

Well, ok, FINE. So I got up, made some coffee, and headed to the gym.



When I got to the gym I discovered that despite the steady cold drizzle, the pool was open (I’m in Northern Florida for the holidays, so the pool was outside).

And there, posted on both sides of the pool, were two lifeguards alert and on duty—wearing rain gear over their shoulders in a gallant effort to stave off the achingly cold rain.

That put my effort to overcome morning inertia in perspective. I just had to show up, do some laps, and leave. The lifeguards, on the other hand, had to wake up even earlier than I did, and then had to sit there under the rain for hours—all so I could show up for some convenient exercise.


At the end of my workout I felt great and was energized to seize the day, but I came “this close” to not going at all and sleeping half the day away.

So on the drive home I looked at other tasks I tend to put off because “I don’t want to.” Folding laundry. Filing my taxes. Cold calling to find jobs to fill.

And the funny thing is, once I start those tasks I normally dispatch them fairly quickly. My challenge is not doing, but starting.


What have you been putting off because the voice in your head says, “I don’t want to”?

The trick to overcoming inertia is simply starting.

A body in motion tends to stay in motion.

The rest will take care of itself!

Bonus Points:

If you remember your high school physics, Momentum = Mass x Velocity. So if you really don’t want to start (you have a lot of “mass” to get moving, mental or physical) but do it anyway, just think of all the momentum you’ll have to power through your To Do list and brush aside challenges throughout the day!

Food for thought.

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Follow Jack Molisani on Twitter: @JackMolisani.
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It’s not that I love adrenaline; it’s that I love freedom.

Both scuba diving and flying offer something you just can’t get on land: the ability to float, to soar, to move in any direction at will.

Jacques Cousteau describes this beautifully:

“From birth, man carries the weight of gravity on his shoulders. He is bolted to earth. But man has only to sink beneath the surface and he is free.

Buoyed by water, he can fly in any direction—up, down, sideways—by merely flipping his hand. Under water, man becomes an archangel.”

So by now you know that I love to fly, dive, jump out of airplanes, etc. But what you don’t know is…I have a fear of heights.

Many moons ago, my friend Rigo asked me to go to Las Vegas with him to ride the amusements rides for his birthday. One of the rides we did was at the top of the Stratosphere hotel, where they hang you over the edge of the building (1,148 feet above ground!) in a little car contraption. And of course, Rigo wanted to be in the front row. Oi! You should have seen me inching my way along the line, waiting for our turn.

Was I scared? Absolutely.

Did do it anyway? You betcha.

And I had a blast!

I had several life-changing realizations that day:

• The fear I experienced anticipating the ride was far greater than what I experienced during the ride itself.
• I realized that once I got past the fear, the ride was pretty fun.
• Fear is just an emotion, like anger or enthusiasm. I wouldn’t let enthusiasm stop me from doing something, why should I let fear stop me?
• I realized I don’t have a fear of heights, I have a fear of falling. There’s a difference.

I get the heebie-jeebies looking over the edge of a third floor balcony, but can bank a powered hang-glider at 2,000 feet without blinking. The difference is when I’m flying I know that I’m safely buckled in my harness, I’m in firm control of what I’m doing, and that the plane has a 1:8 glide ratio so even if something does happens to the engine I can still safely land.

Ditto for scuba diving. I’ve been in situations that were a tad scary (more on that in my next post), but I learned how to dive safely, drilled what to do in emergencies, and (more importantly) learned how prevent them in the first place.

Fear isn’t some nebulous thing that just hangs around like the smell of burnt popcorn left too long on the stove. There is something about which one is fearful: The fear of falling, the fear of public speaking, the fear of losing one’s job, the fear of running out of air.

“If something stands between you and your success—move it.” —Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

So one learns to wear a safety harness when climbing, to have multiple sources of income and money set aside for emergencies, to know your material cold before going onstage, to monitor your air consumption and always dive with a buddy.

The key to overcoming fear is training and practice (which leads to competency).

And, of course, not letting fear stop you but carrying on anyway.

You are greater than your fears. They are not greater than you.
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Is there something you’ve always wanted to do?

Take a class.
Do your drills.
Learn to fly.

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Follow Jack Molisani on Twitter: @JackMolisani.
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Part of dive training includes drilling basic skills such as how to clear your mask of water, how to share your air supply if a buddy runs out of his, etc.

Anytime we did a drill where I didn’t feel 100% confident in my abilities, the instructor said, “Do it again!” And I did, again and again, until I knew I had the specific skill we were practicing down cold.

My instructor also told me over and over: “Any time anything goes wrong, Stop. Breathe. Think. Then act.”

She explained that the only time divers get into trouble is when they panic. They make fear-based decisions, they forget to breathe, they forget their training. Even if your tank is out of air and you are forty feet from the surface, you still have enough time for a controlled assent—and you’ll even get another sip of air as the gas in your tank expands as you get closer to the surface. But you won’t get that sip if you panic and spit the regulator out of your mouth.

So you have to Stop. Breathe. Think. Then act.
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As fate would have it, I had to follow that advice my very next dive. After receiving my certification, I went diving with a tour company. I was traveling alone, so they assigned me a “buddy” on the boat.

When diving, you and your buddy are supposed to check each others’ equipment before you dive, and then stick together once in the water. This guy did neither. But I was so green (new to diving), I didn’t think to insist he did.

As you dive deeper, the air in bubbles in your wetsuit contract, making you less buoyant, so you need to add air to your “buoyancy compensation device” (BCD), a device similar to a life vest that you inflate or deflate as needed to stay level at any particular depth.

We begin the dive and I’m descending too fast, so I reach for the hose to put more air in my BCD.

The hose isn’t there.

I’m still descending, I’m approaching the bottom, I can’t find the hose, I can’t control my sinking, and no buddy to be seen!

And as if things couldn’t get worse, I hit a current and I start drifting away from the boat, away from my (missing) buddy, away from the group. Instant panic!
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But then the words my instructor drilled into me over and over popped into my head: “Stop. Breathe. Think.”

Stop: I stopped, literally overriding the primal urge to shoot back to the surface.

Breathe: Rather than holding my breath, I was doing the opposite: hyperventilating. So I willed myself to take long, slow breaths, which helped to clear my head.

Think: Finally, I was calm enough to assess the situation. I wasn’t wildly venting air (as would be the case if the hose had been cut), so I knew the hose had to be there somewhere. And since I’d practiced what to do when your gear gets fouled, I was able to free the hose (it was under the shoulder strap), put the BCD back on, inflate it so I was at proper buoyancy, then swam on to rejoin the rest of my group.

Crisis averted.

All because I remembered to Stop. Breathe. Think.

And because I practiced, practiced, practiced my pool drills until I was certain I knew what I was doing.

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I can’t tell you how often I apply “Stop. Breathe. Think.” in the work-a-day world.

Want to send an angry reply to an email from your boss? Stop! Breath! Think!

Are you participating in a negotiation (perhaps for a job offer) and it’s not going your way? Take a break, clear your head, and rethink your strategy.

A problem is only a problem because you don’t know what to do about it. I prefer to not even call such situations “problems” because problems have no solution (otherwise they wouldn’t be problems, right?). Instead, I label such events “unaddressed situations.” Because no matter how bad things look when you are 100 feet down and can’t find your air hose, all you need to do is stay calm, assess the situation, and find a solution.
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Do you have a situation in your job or your life that seems unsolvable?

Stop. Breathe. Think. Then act.

There is a solution.

You just need to find it!
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Follow Jack Molisani on Twitter: @JackMolisani.
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If you want them to help you find a job, help them do their jobs.

The Common Mistakes

Presented in order of chronology, not severity.

1. Not Following Submission Directions

• Read the directions!
• First Impressions Last
• Email, Fax or Snail Mail?
• Formatted or ASCII Resume?

2. Not Building Personal Relationships

• Develop a personal relationship with your recruiter.
• You want someone who will sing your praises to the next person in the hiring process.
• …especially if you are not an exact match or have some other special situation.
• Plus, when a cool job comes in, who do you think they will call first?

3. Bad Manners

• It’s poor form to mail your resume to 45 recruiters in one email…
• …especially when you display them all in the To: field!
• Keep a log of where your resume has been sent.
• Don’t insult the recruiter. (I’m not kidding – it happens!)

4. Applying When You Are not Even Remotely Qualified

• Don’t apply without considering the requirements.
• Do apply for jobs that are a bit of a stretch, but at least be in the ballpark!
• Don’t do “shotgun” applications.
• Pay attention to the “must have” vs. “nice to have” requirements.

5. Not Summarizing Skills vs. Requirements

• If you are qualified, the recruiter will write a summary of how your skills match the job requirements before passing it on.
• Be pro-active: send a matrix of the job requirements vs. your skills so they don’t have to do it for you.
• If you don’t have one of the needed skills, this is where you say, “I don’t have XYZ, but I do have ABC, which is very similar.”
• Suddenly, you are the recruiter’s best friend:
  • They didn’t have to search for the information.
  • You typed the summary for them.
  • You pointed out important information they may have missed.
  • All they had to do is verify the information and pass it on.

6. Misnaming Your Resume

• Remember, recruiters get tens if not hundreds of electronic resumes a day.
• Put yourself in the recruiter’s shoes.
• Would you want to receive 100 resumes a day named “resume.doc”?
• Name your resume so it can be found easily: for example, “Joe Jones.doc”

7. Poorly Writing or Formatting Your Resume

• Your resume is the first sample of your work.
• Managers judge candidates based on their resumes…
• …and will disqualify you if you don’t apply the same standards to your resume that you do your work (attention to detail, “debugging” your resume for typos and inconsistencies, etc.)
• Pay attention to:
  • Formatting Consistency
  • Readability
  • Misspellings

8. Mis-evaluation of Importances

• Highlight your strengths.
• Minimize your weaknesses.
• For example, put the most applicable information, experience or skills near the top of your resume.
• Put less- or non-applicable experience near the bottom.

9. Not Anticipating and Answering Questions

• Recruiters wonder about oddities in resumes, so be pro-active and explain them.
• Examples:
  • Gaps in your work history
  • Your citizenship or work visa status
  • Moving from contract to perm
  • Moving from perm to contract (to a lesser degree)
  • Need relocation assistance if out-of-state?

10. Not Keeping Your Skills Current

• Not knowing the latest programming languages/authoring tools/etc.
• If you can really just pick them up in a week, how come you haven’t already done so?
• Between user groups, professional associations, conferences, etc., there is no reason not to stay current.

Summary

• Follow submission directions.
• Build personal relationships.
• Use good manners and “Netiquette”
• Apply for jobs for which you are qualified.
• Include a summary of how your skills match the job requirements when submitting your resume.
• Name your electronic resume so it can be identified.
• Make sure your resume is easy to read, free of typos, etc.
• Highlight your strengths, minimize your weaknesses.
• Anticipate and answer questions.
• Keep your skills current.

I’m always happy to hear from my readers, so if you have any questions about how to find a good writer or want to report your successes in doing so, send me an email or call me at the number below!

About the Writer

Jack Molisani has been a project officer in the Space Division of the USAF, the manager of training and documentation of a multi-million dollar software firm, and currently is the president of ProSpring Inc., a technical communication and placement firm, and LavaCon: The International Conference on Technical Communication Management.

He can be reached by phone at 888-378-2333 and by email at info2008@prospringstaffing.com.

During the trip he told me a story that I want to share with you now:
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Bobby: “I was sitting in a pub a few months ago talking with a mate, and he asked me if I could live anywhere in the world, where would I live?

I thought for a moment, then rattled off a list of requirements: I want to stay in this time zone so I can continue to service my clients (via internet). I’d want someplace tropical. Where the economy was prospering. Where they had an interesting culture, great food, and where people spoke English. Someplace where everyone has equal rights.

My mate offered: South Africa

I replied, Yes! I love South Africa! I’ve been there, the people are great, and it matches everything on my list!

At that point my friend paused, looked me straight in the eye, and said, ‘So what are you waiting for?’
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That stopped me dead in my tracks. I was about to stammer an answer, but realized it didn’t have one. Here I just stated if I could live anywhere in the world I would live in South Africa, and there wasn’t a single reason I could think of why not to go, except a voice in my head saying, ‘What if…?’ (fear).

The next day I did my homework, found a real-estate agent, and bought a plane ticket to South Africa!”

Bobby leaves a week from Monday to search for his dream home.
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Bobby’s story reminded of three truisms:

o. Everyone dies eventually, and you never know when your day (or your friends’ last day) will be.

o. You can put off until “someday” things you want to do, only to realize in your golden years that someday came and went and you never followed your bliss.

o. You don’t need to have a terminal disease to “live like you are dying” (live each day to the fullest).

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If you could live anywhere, do anything you wanted for a living, etc., what would you do?

So what are you waiting for?

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Jack Molisani
President, ProSpring Technical Staffing
Executive Director, The LavaCon Conference on Digital Media and Content Strategies

o. Follow Jack Molisani on Twitter.

o. The LavaCon Conference on Digital Media and Content Strategies is now open for registration.

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In the mid 1990’s I was laid off from my full time job as a sales engineer with a bank technology company. I spent months looking for a new engineering position, but no one was hiring.

A friend of my family put booths into home and garden shows selling Ginsu^® knives and asked me to fill in for a worker who had to miss a show.  I did well, and ended up working the home and garden show circuit for the rest of the summer.

It has been fifteen years since then, but I will always remember seven business lessons I learned from selling Ginsu knives.

1. Have a good product to sell. Yes, Ginsu knives really can cut hammers and then slice a tomato paper thin. To this day I still have a Ginsu knife in my kitchen cutlery drawer for cutting bread, and one in the car for cutting radiator hoses. The product really works!

The lesson: Find a product (or service) that really works and sell it.

2. Stand behind your product. Ginsu knives rarely get dull or break, but it does happen (especially when you use one to saw down a six foot lemon tree!). The knife’s lifetime guarantee says you can mail it back or present the knife to any salesperson anywhere in the world and they will replace it for free, no questions asked. And they do!

The lesson: Stand behind your product and guarantee its quality.

3. Attract attention. In pitchman lingo, your “tip” is the crowd that has gathered to watch you demonstrate your product. The bigger the tip, the more people who will buy—not just in gross numbers, but also in percentage of closes. But before you can sell your product or service, you have to build your tip—people who are looking at what you have to sell. The problem is that people today are so bombarded with advertisements that they tend to ignore sales people, or worse, go out of their way to avoid them.

In the pitch business, people rarely walk up to a booth to see what you were selling. You have to attract their attention, call them over, be entertaining, be interesting.

The lesson: Customers rarely just call to buy your product or service. You have to find them.  Use social media, live webinars, direct mail, anything you can think of to attract positive attention from your target audiences. You have to makes sales calls, send emails, contact people.

As Chellie Campbell, the author of Zero to Zillionaire says, “There’s money in the phone and I’m calling me some today!” She even painted her phone gold and wears gold fingernail polish on her dialing finger to remind her there is money in the phone. I can’t say I’ve whipped out the gold paint, but I do have a sign on my desk with those exact words to remind me to pick up the phone and find more business for my company.

Note: Not everyone is an extrovert, but “gold calling” does get easier with practice. I once saw a sign that says, “Fishing is not easy. If it were easy it would be called ‘catching’ and everybody would be doing it!”

The same applies to gold calling.

4. The closer your “tip” is to your “joint,” the more sales you will make. OK, this one will take some explaining: As I said your “tip” is the group watching your pitch. (Or hanging around waiting for you to start if you work the room properly.) Your “joint” is the booth from which you are demonstrating your product.

There is a datum in the pitch business that the farther away people stand from your joint the less likely they are to buy. Similarly, the closer people are to your joint the more likely they are to buy. Most people, however, stop about 10 feet away from a booth, cross their arms defensively, and think, “OK, try to impress me.”

I’ll let you in on a secret: Pitchmen know people are hesitant to walk up to a sales person, which is why potential customers usually stop 10 feet away from your booth. So to get people to move closer (and thus more likely to buy), a pitchman might say, “Now I’m going to show how the knife really can cut a hammer, but the people in the back are going to have to move forward to see the shavings.”

Knowing that people don’t like to get close to people (especially sales people), the pitchman will take three steps backwards in his/her booth to make a comfortable “space” for the audience to move forward into. But then, once everyone moves forward to see the demonstration, the pitchman will take three steps forward again and be right there nose-to-nose with the tip and then continue the demonstration.

The lesson: Many people can’t confront a sales pitch right from the start, so have a way to get them involved first. Offer a free webinar, a low cost intro service, etc. Then continue your presentation—and land more clients.

5. Ask for the sale. As a pitchman you can do the most beautiful demonstration in the world, but if you end it with, “There you go, thanks for watching!” people will just smile, nod and walk away empty handed. But, if you ask for the sale, you’ll get some.

Or better yet, assume they are going to buy and just direct them to your helper (see point #6). And once someone buys, others will as well. (I’m sure psychologists have a label for it, but I call it breaking the ice or safety in numbers—many people just hate to go first.)

The lesson: You have to ask for the sale. (As my dad once said while fishing, “Those fish aren’t going to jump in the boat by themselves, you know!”) The same holds true when asking your employer for a raise—you have to ask.

6. Get a helper. People hate to wait, especially wait in line to buy a product. So if you did a good job of building a large tip, get an assistant who can take money and hand the customer the product. Plus, you can then start your pitch again as new people wander by, which gives you the added benefit of new people seeing others buy the product and wonder what the excitement is about.

The lesson: Once you find you are losing sales because there are “too many customers,” it’s time to hire a helper to keep the money flowing. Keep doing what you do best (pitching) and let your assistant handle the admin and delivery.

7. Be open to new opportunities. Never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I’d be selling Ginsu knives to make money. Me, a graduate of Tulane University with a degree in Computer Engineering!

But you know what? I can’t even begin to estimate how much that summer selling Ginsu knives has furthered my career.

After that summer, interviewing for a job was a breeze. I used to be nervous when interviewing, but no longer. If I can stand on a box and sell Ginsu knives to a crowd of 50 sales-resistant show attendees, I can certainly “sell” myself in an interview!

I learned to pitch ideas to people, to state my case, to sell my point of view.

I learned how to attract positive attention, be interesting, be heard.

I learned how to communicate the benefits of what I was selling, and I learned to ask for the sale.

When was the last time you learned a new skill? Spoke at a conference? Asked for a raise?

Be bold. Take a fork in the road you might not normally choose.

You never know where it might lead you!

About the Author

Jack Molisani is the president of ProSpring Technical Staffing, an agency specializing in staff and contract technical writers.   He also produces the LavaCon Conference on Online Branding and New Media: www.lavacon.org

You can reach jack at JackMolisani@ProspringStaffing.com

Follow Jack on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/JackMolisani