Two weeks ago, I wrote about the problem that occurs when a prospective client runs “hot and cold”—approaching you as if he’s interested and then blowing you off as if he’s not. I called this phenomenon the Approach-Avoidance Tango, because it has the air of a dance. After reading my advice, Mitch, one of my…
I couldn’t help thinking of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol this week. Ebenezer Scrooge would have died a lonely, miserable man with no one to say a kind word on his behalf…if something unexpected hadn’t happened. In his case, that something unexpected was a ghostly encounter with his past, his present, and his future. Every
It can happen to anyone who sells a service: We speak to someone who is thinking about hiring us. She calls again with a question and leaves a message to call her back. We’re enthusiastic about the prospect of working with her—but when we return her call, she’s suddenly unavailable—forever. This is the “Approach-Avoidance Tango”,
A few years ago, I asked one of my clients, Carrie, if she had started thinking about saving for college for her one-year-old daughter, Megan. “It’s funny that you’re asking me this now,” Carrie replied, “Because I just recently sat down with a specialist in college planning.” When Carrie told me the name of the
My friend Rich works for a large regional bank and sometimes does seminars for his fellow bank employees. Rich was kind enough to share his notes with me from a seminar he presented, entitled “Rules for Working with Attorneys”. It was clear to me that with a little editing, these rules could apply to work
In 2005, Steve Jobs—CEO of Apple and of Pixar Animation—gave the commencement address to the Stanford graduating class of approximately 5,000 students. “I never graduated college,” he began, and then he told three stories. The first story was about “connecting the dots”. Jobs told how he dropped out of college, but continued to attend classes
