Mea Vita: Carpe Diem

This past Tuesday, I was tickled when a local news TV station asked me to share my thoughts about a 200 sq ft furnished shed which was being offered for rent for more than $1,000/month.



Throughout this week, my interview was syndicated to about 100 news outlets. Friends and colleagues, some of whom I hadn't had contact with for many years, reached out to me to say that they saw it on CNN or San Jose Mercury News to name a few.

The Story Behind the Story

About six years ago, I learned that the story, behind the story, is sometimes as interesting as the story itself. Friends who contacted me wanted to know how I ended up on the news. Unlike last time, I did not contact the news. I was simply walking home from a local bakery, with some fresh bread, when I saw a guy recording himself on a video camera. Initially, since he was standing in front of a house with a "For Sale" post, I thought he was a real estate agent.

As I walked by, he asked me if I knew about the shed that was being offered for rent for more than $1,000/month. I told him that I heard about it, a day earlier, when the posting went viral on Reddit. He then introduced himself and asked if he could interview me for his story. Of course, I said yes. He placed a mic on my shirt, turned on the camera, and stood next to it while we had a casual conversation. And then, viola, I was on the Channel 10 Six O'Clock News.

What's the key to persuading people in public speaking and marketing pitches?

Start with the Facts

It's much easier to convince a friend, who knows you, than a group of strangers who have to evaluate you on multiple levels. When speaking publicly, each individual in a group will size you up based on many things, starting with the facts. Are your facts indisputable? Otherwise your audience will conclude your logic is non sequitur. Every single fact must be true to instill confidence in others.

"I like to tell stories and I think I'm good at it."

Do you see what I did, right there? I put forth two indisputable facts; and I did it without being overly passive. While I may be a bad storyteller, I put forth my opinion that I'm good at it. I stated an opinion that might seem like a fact to a casual observer; but if someone digs deeper into my facts, they'll realize that my comments are actually opinions.

The more active your speech, the better. Twitter is a big help with active writing. Generally speaking, the fewer words you use, the more succinct your point. Consider these three statements, conveying the same idea, from most passive to most active:

"I think I am going to go to the store."
"I decided I am going to the store."
"I am going to the store."

Active writing and speaking demonstrate a clear understanding of ideas and concepts.

Bridging Facts to Opinions

A key physiological ingredient to memory recall is adrenaline which is why people remember exactly where they were on 9/11. This "suddenness" is closely related to an epiphany, which I call bridging when it's used to get people from here to there.

Bridging starts with stating points that are closely related to what you're trying to prove, convey, or convince. It's making a series of supporting statements that people don't realize are true. If you can convince someone to believe related facts they didn't know, then your opinions will carry more weight.

For example, if I said, "The earth spins 1,000 mph," would you believe me? Is that really true? Sure, it's true, but most people don't realize it. All I need to do is help people think about it. The circumference of the earth is a bit under 25,000 miles. For easy mental math, let's say the circumference is 24,000 miles. Now, how many basic time zones are there in the world? Answer: 24, since there are 24 hours in a day. Crossing a time zone means adding or subtracting an hour. Simply divide 24,000 miles by 24 hours (24,000 miles / 24 hours) and you get 1,000 mph. Another way to think about this is each time zone is about 1,000 miles wide at the equator (time zones converge at the poles). The United States is about 3,000 miles wide; therefore, flying from NY to LA crosses three time zones and it requires adjusting our watches by three hours.

Following good scientific method principles, I provided two examples to support my statement that the earth rotates at a thousand miles per hour. I gave you a fact which required a little convincing. And then I provided the supporting proof. From here, we move into asserting our opinions, predictions, or forecasts.

Makers vs. Marketers

Die hard makers (people who make products, like engineers) tend to be poor marketers and they will focus on a product's features instead of its benefits. Keep in mind there are many ways to say the same thing without being deceptive or misleading.

Steve Jobs was great at highlighting benefits over features. Had the original iPod been marketed by another company, it might have been pitched as a 6.5 ounce MP3 music player that measured 4"  x  2.4"  x  3/4" and had 5 GB of storage. Even with an engineering background, I'd have a hard time figuring out how much music fits into 5 GB. That's why Apple pitched the iPod as "1,000 songs in your pocket." New concepts are easier to understand if you put them in a familiar context.

But, does this technique, which works on products, also work on people? Sure, but keep your message short when pitching to people and focus on the positive, not the negative.

For example, you call a plumber who completes a job for you and tells you, "That will be $75. But, if you don't pay me within ten days then I'm raising the price to $100."

Now, compare that with, "This will cost you $100, but I'll give you a $25 discount if I receive your payment within ten days."

That's the key to marketing. State a relevant, indisputable, fact that people don't realize. Then simply explain how it's true, followed by your opinion piece with a positive call to action.

The key to good customer service: Be respectful.

Twitter is all about 140 characters. At least it was, until a couple weeks ago and that could be a problem.

The 140 character limit was driven by the 160 character limit of SMS. A 140 character tweet, preceded by the, up to, 15 character Twitter username along with punctuation fits perfectly into an SMS text. (The reason SMS is limited to 160 characters is an interesting story in itself.)

For the most part, tweets are public which anyone can see; no Twitter account required. On the other hand, a Twitter direct message (DM), which's limited to 140 characters, is always private. Originally, a DM couldn't be sent to any random Twitter user. The recipient has to be a follower of the sender to limit unsolicited, spammy, DMs. A smart decision.

With so many other communication channels to choose from, DMs weren't nearly as popular as messaging on other platforms such, as Facebook and other mobile apps.

The Perfect DM Application 

Over the years, though, I found the perfect application for Twitter's DMs: Customer service with "Big" companies (think: oligopolies).

Why can't we, as consumers, e-mail a tech support question to our ISP, phone company, etc? The answer is obvious: because Cox, AT&T, etc would be inundated with e-mail manifestos, tirades, and diatribes.

However, with more and more "Big" companies using Twitter, the drama of a public customer/company battle could escalate into a PR nightmare. Enter the Twitter DM.

Over the past few years, when I've had a problem with Cox, AT&T, and GoDaddy, I've used Twitter DMs to get ahold of their customer service department without drama or waisting my time navigating an interactive telephone menu.

The process is simple: Send a respectful tweet to the corporation's customer support Twitter account:
"Hi, I'm having a problem with my service. Could you follow me so I can DM you?"

These companies have active social media customer support personnel, so it usually takes only five or ten minutes, during business hours, before they've followed me. In many cases, they'll immediately DM me, before I've even noticed they started following me.

For this to work, you need a reproducible problem. With Cox, my connectivity, which is typically 100+Mbps had dropped to less than 100Kbps. I DM'd them a screen shot of the slow bandwidth with a note that I've restarted the cable modem and other steps I took to troubleshoot the problem. They're responses have typically been, "We're seeing the same issue. We can have a technician out there, tomorrow, between 8am-noon, noon-4pm, or 4pm-8pm. Which works best for you?"

Now that is amazingly quick and simple. This entire interaction might take place over the course of 30 minutes, but I actually spend less than five minutes documenting my troubleshooting steps and DMing the CSR.

This technique can work for complicated support issues, too. GoDaddy consolidated my domain names into a single account, but the DNS for some of the domains didn't transfer, which I discovered the next day when incoming mail was bouncing back to the senders. I explained the issue all within 140 characters. They quickly responded that they were on it, as they reinstated the backup copies of my DNS.

Concerns

So, that gets to my concern. Twitter has removed the 140 character limit in DMs which could mean CSRs might be reluctant to continue using it if they begin receiving long and unreasonable messages. And I'm wondering what Twitter will gain by making this change. Of course, they could always switch back to the 140 character limit and use e-mail when needed, as GoDaddy and I did.

Perhaps I'm old-fashioned, but I feel like removing the 140 character limit is the equivalent of showing up at a haiku conference and saying, "Hey, everyone, instead of doing 5-7-5, we're going to do 7-5-7 so we have more content."

Yes, I'm a customer service snob. But I've been on both sides of the fence and I give as good as I expect.

We, as individuals, are responsible for our own personal emissions.

Emissions like sound (how loud we speak or the noise we generate) and smell (cologne, body odor, cigarettes, etc.) are obvious. But, over the past 20 years a new category has emerged: personal digital emissions. In the mid-1990s I began teaching time management training classes. While researching time management strategies I read two excellent books that addressed information overload: Data Smog and Information Anxiety. A lot of our digital emissions causes and is caused by stress.

Digital emissions are the electronic information we emit. There are two types, passive and active.

The passive emissions aren't a big problem. These are the digital emissions such as my phone checking a mail server for new e-mail. These emissions usually interact with other devices or servers.
Rather, it's the active emissions – our emissions that interrupt someone else – which quickly get out of control. So much so that I feel it necessary to post this reminder. Every e-mail and text message sent, and every phone call made, will be an interruption in someone's day. It's worth taking the time to think before acting. Is your digital emission urgent and important enough to justify interrupting someone? Frequency and timing are a factor, too. Equally important is your response to someone's digital emission. Did you take the time to fully read and understand before responding? I just made this mistake, myself, last week, when responding to an e-mail from a friend and professional colleague. Good etiquette, clear communications, and time management techniques are important work and life traits.

I've seen people load up on app after app and tool after tool thinking they've found the silver bullet for time management. Truth be told, it's not the tools that make or break us. Rather, it's our own personal habits and self-discipline. You shouldn't need to worry about forgetting the things you need to do. Instead, you should simply organize in a way so tasks and events come in front of you at the appropriate time.

Here's some advice for refining your digital emissions.

Texting Etiquette

Sending multiple text messages, on the same topic, within a minute or two, is annoying. At least I find it annoying. My phone will ding and vibrate so I'll pull it out of my pocket to read the message. I'll either respond or not and then put it away only to pull it out 30 seconds later when the next message arrives. You may be lying in bed with nothing to do when sending your text message, but what's the recipient doing? Are they working, driving, or in a meeting? A simple text message can be distracting. Multiple texts in a short period are very distracting. Many times the sender only needed to wait 60 seconds to collect his or her thoughts to compose a clear message. Don't text me: "It's Jane's birthday next week," followed 30 seconds later with, "What do you think we should do?" followed another 20 seconds later with, "Are you there?" Please don't ask me to respond, with a sense of urgency, to something that's not pressing.

On a low level, SMS text messages may be limited to 160 characters. But this is no longer an issue since wireless carriers can seamlessly stitch together multiple texts into a single message. So please collect all your thoughts on a single subject into a single text message.

I have a name for this type of texter. I call them the, "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!" texter. Or, more formally, I refer to it as the "Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Look at me! Daddy! Daddy! Daddy. Pay attention to me! Daddy! Daddy!" texter.

There are some people who I don't even want to text with. Three texts, about the same nothing, all within 90 seconds is a bit too much. Take a deep breath and gather your thoughts instead of texting me your stream of consciousness.

E-mail Etiquette

We've all read an e-mail and forgotten to respond. But, some people are terrible at managing their e-mail.

Some people are notorious about going off half-cocked. Or, even more annoying are the partial and vague responders. These people seem to lack communications skills across the board. When corresponding with these people, I'm very careful to only put one action item per e-mail. When asking them multiple questions via e-mail, I list each in a numbered bullet format. Yet, still, they'll partially respond thinking they'll get back to my other questions later. But, they have no time management system for doing this. They'll read an e-mail now and neither respond nor write down the task, and then forget about it. You don't need to respond to every e-mail, only the ones you intend to.

As a general rule, when someone sends me an e-mail with multiple topics and questions, I'll copy and paste each item and write my response below it. This makes my responses clear and it helps me ensure that I didn't overlook any items.

Joe,
Do you think we'll finish this product on schedule? What about the budget?
Have we finished the security and privacy evaluation?
—Tom

My response:

Tom,
>Do you think we'll finish this product on schedule? What about the budget?

Remember in elementary school when we had to respond to a written question by including a portion of the original question in our answer? That wasn't sadistic punishment, rather it was to develop our communications skills.

Once last point is to consider is using the To and CC lines appropriately, especially if you omit a salutation in your e-mail.

When I was a 19 year-old Marine I listened to a captain talk about communications and military operations. He told us stories about his part during the invasion of Grenada and his time in Beirut. In the 1980s, very few Marines had seen combat, so his thoughts carried a lot of weight.

The captain had some insightful experiences. One point he made was about, what he called, the communications pipe (we call it bandwidth, nowadays). As a communications pipe increases, more stuff gets added. The problem is that we always fill it to capacity. The upside is as bandwidth increases, the older technologies, like text chat, can shine during a crisis. His point resonated with me on 9/11 when I couldn't reach my boss and fellow Apple coworkers in NYC via phone or e-mail. But, AIM, being such a low bandwidth channel, worked without a hitch.

1 Infinite Loop

My e-mail addressed used to be joseph@apple.com. There was a joe@apple.com, but it was a honeypot; any e-mail received at joe@apple.com was automatically added to Apple's internal spam filter.

Actually, my real e-mail address was jmoreno@apple.com, but, since no one was using joseph@apple.com, I was able to get it as an alias. People were impressed when lowly me handed them my business card with joseph@apple.com, especially since I'd leave my job title blank.

Every few months another guy named Joseph would e-mail me to check to see if I was still working at Apple. I let him know when I left Apple in 2007 so he could be assigned the alias by the IT department (IS&T). For this, he was grateful.

Recycling the same e-mail address produced an unexpected gotcha. A couple months after I left Apple, the new joseph@apple.com contacted me and asked me to release the e-mail address from my LinkedIn profile. He was unable to use his new e-mail address with LinkedIn since it was tied to my LinkedIn account. This reminded me that all my personal accounts listing my old Apple e-mail address needed to be updated.

One nice thing about having a relationship with my successor is that, for the following few years, the new joseph@apple.com would forward me e-mails from my contacts who weren't aware that I'd left the company.

After the spectacular LinkedIn IPO a lot of people have been asking if this social media company is really worth almost $8 billion or could this be another bubble? For that matter, what, exactly, is social media?

While participating in a strategic planning meeting, recently, I was asked, "What will communications look like in 2020?" After some thought, my answer was, "social media." Social communications, just like mass communications, has been around since the dawn of civilization, however, the media used to convey social communications is very new.

Mass media (the medium, not the industry) began with the printing press which was invented in the 1400s. As a result of technological advances, mass media exploded in the first half of the Twentieth Century with radio and T.V. and it continued growing with the adoption of the Internet.

Social media, however, is truly a new media. Whereas mass media is a one-to-many method of communications that is one way, social media is a two way, many-to-many, communications channel.

Social media, like many new, unexpected, forms of communication, was first looked upon with skepticism. We saw skepticism like this in the mid 1990s as cell phones became popular. The first few times I noticed people talking on cell phones in public, even when polite etiquette was followed, my reaction was, "What's so important that you have to talk now?" Yet, today, talking on a cell phone in public is not a big deal. However, in the case of new media, many still have the same reaction when everyday-people blog, tweet, and use Facebook on a daily basis.

Why does someone need to "tell the world" what they're doing when it's as mundane as, "My cat just rolled over?" In the case of social media, this could easily lead to a conversation between cat lovers who didn't know each other. Everyone enjoys spending some time engaging likeminded people. Social media simply extends the social conversations that we have at the water cooler, on the phone, or during dinner, and moves them into cyberspace.

While specific media and technologies may come and go, such as the 8-track, telegram, or the fax; other, more fundamental forms of communication are here to stay. However, new forms of media do not quickly replace the old ones any more than the telephone has replaced radio communications, or that e-mail has replaced "snail mail".