My new article at BiggerPockets is up on how to make a low-pressure sales pitch when introducing yourself to someone new, someone who could be a potential client, colleague or investor.
First, I describe the "elevator pitch" which real estate investor Dave Lindahl notes needs three things,
Next, I discuss the "nutshell resume" which Leil Lowndes notes in her book How to Talk to Anyone is to "let a different true story roll off your tongue for each listener." So for example, “Don’t say ‘[real]estate agent.’ Say ‘I help people moving into our area find the right home.’" This way of communicating can be extremely effective. You just never know who may be important to you when you meet them. This technique lets the person know you may be of importance to them and can act as a springboard to a more useful conversation. I go into much more detail in the article. Check it out!
Comments
I have struggled all my life with getting out of bed. I tend to hit the snooze button several times and waste at least a half hour if not a full hour each morning trying to get up.
Think about how much a waste this is. Even if it's just a half hour, this extra "rest" doesn't actually help. You aren't getting any more sleep, or if you are, just a few seconds nodding off. It's just wasted time. Over a year's time, it will mean you will have wasted 7.6 days just trying to get up. Over a 70 year lifetime, that amounts to 532 days, or a year and half down the drain. I've tried all sorts of things, from goals about getting up X times per week, to practicing getting up quickly, to setting the alarm on the other side of the room. None of it works, at least for me, and I think the reason is it puts all the focus on the last step (getting out of bed) and not the first one. I've become a huge fan of Scott Adam's systems-approach to life, which I've written about more here. Screw the goals and make systems. I.e. instead of losing 20 pounds, make a goal to go to the gym each day. You don't have to work out, but you have to show up. Usually, when you're there (have taken the first step), you'll go ahead and just work out. So I've taken the same approach to waking up. Make my system just to take the first step. I have to do the following each morning: - I wake up to music, and I have to leave it on. - I have to take a big drink of water (you wake up dehydrated, which is one reason you are tired). - I have to turn my night lamp on. Add to this I have the guideline of keeping my eyes open, although I can cheat on that if I want. I've thought about adding lying up on one of those pillow back rests or actually spraying myself in the face five times with a water fan like the one's people have at sporting events. Regardless, I haven't needed those yet. As you'll notice, I have not goal here. I can stay in bed as long as I like. The only thing I demand from myself are the first steps; the things that will make me substantially less tired. Then maybe I'll surf the Internet on my cellphone a little. All these things start to bring me to life, whereas lying on my back with my eyes closed just delays the process. By the time I get to the shower, the job is basically done. And I usually finish it with just a blast of cold water which will wake you up real, real fast. Systems are great and can be applied to all sorts of areas in your life. This is just one, but it's huge. Since I've started doing it, I am consistently getting up within 10 minutes of my alarm going off. I'm basically saving myself a year of life! In my latest article for Mises.org, I take on not just the "mathiness" of modern economics, but the fact that they tend to get so much wrong. Or as Christopher Nolan put it once, “Take a field like economics for example. [Unlike physics] you have real material things and it can’t predict anything. It’s always wrong.”
In the article, I discuss Alan Jay Levinovitz' article on "The New Astrology" where he points out that, "The failure of the field to predict the 2008 crisis has also been well-documented. In 2003, for example, only five years before the Great Recession, the Nobel Laureate Robert E Lucas Jr told the American Economic Association that ‘macroeconomics ... has succeeded: its central problem of depression prevention has been solved’. Short-term predictions fair little better — in April 2014, for instance, a survey of 67 economists yielded 100 per cent consensus: interest rates would rise over the next six months. Instead, they fell. A lot." But he doesn't seem to draw the proper conclusions, as I note, "It appears that Levinovitz hasn’t quite grasped the full consequences of the argument he has espoused; namely that because economics models are mostly useless and cannot predict the future with any sort of certainty, then centrally directing an economy would be effectively like flying blind. The failure of economic models to pan out is simply more proof of the pretense of knowledge. And it’s not more knowledge that we need, it’s more humility. The humility to know that 'wise' bureaucrats are not the best at directing a market — market participants themselves are." |
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