Using Those Business Cards

One of the first things you do when starting a business is to have business cards made up. The next thing you need to do is give them out. If you keep them in the card holders or the box in your office, they are not doing what you got them for.

You should send a card out with any correspondence you send. You should tell all your friends and family what you are doing. Give them a bunch of cards to give to others.

Do you go to a dry cleaner? A special car repair place? What about the grocery store, do you like to go to a
particular checker? All of these people should have your business card, and know what you do.

One of the first things we tell our PFYS students to do is to get their name out there. We tell them to get cards made up and give them out to everyone. With lease purchasing we
emphasize that we offer referral fees. For example, we gave cards (a bunch of them) to our video store. We told the
owner that if we do a deal with someone who got the card from his store he would get 10% of whatever the assignment fee was. Well, guess what, he received a $500 check he wasn't expecting. Well you can imagine his surprise and shock when we dropped it off. He was ecstatic, and told everyone and we mean everyone about us! In fact this particular owner received numerous checks from us.

Remember, for those of you in creative real estate, or wanting to get into real estate we show you how to do this
as a business. This avoids you always having to look for the deals, we show you how to get the deals to come to you.

So even if you are not doing creative real estate, think about a way you can set up a referral program. For example,
let's say you do manicures. Give your cards out to a hair salon and tell that owner that for everyone she/he sends you, you will pay a $10 referral fee; and will recommend their salon for haircuts. Or you could both work together and give discounts to each others' customers. There are a number of scenarios that could work for a salon and manicurist.

Use your imagination, and you can come up with many different ways to work with others and have them promote your business.

Just don't forget your business cards do you no good sitting in your office. You need to give them out EVERYWHERE.

Copyright DeFiore Enterprises 2002

Chuck and Sue have been helping folks start successful home based businesses for over 17 years, and we can help you too! To see how, visit http://www.homebusinesssolutions.com for the latest FREE tips and tricks, educational products and coaching in creative real estate investing and home based businesses.

Motivation is not a thinking word, say John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen, in their book, The Heart of Change.

They go on to say:

Analysis has three major limitations. First, in a remarkable number of cases, you dont need it to find the big truths. Second, analytical tools have their limitations in a turbulent world. These tools work best when parameters are known, assumptions are minimal, and the future is not fuzzy. Third, good analysis rarely motivates people in a big way. It changes thought, but how often does it send people running out the door to act in significantly new ways?

More every day, we see the need for emotional intelligence in the business world. Our thinking can only take us so far. We can gather data to rationalize our decisions, but often were better off using our intuition.

Yes, you must be analytical about choosing your new computer or phone system, but when it comes to trying to figure out why Allens team is failing, when you know in your gut, its Allen, isnt productive. It doesnt provide any more information that you already know.

And no amount of intellectual arguing is going to change someone at their core and motivate action or change. You have to reach in and touch their emotions. You have to find out whats important to someone, and you have to model whats important to you at the feelings level.

EMOTIONS IN YOUR FACE CHANGE PEOPLES MINDS

Kotter and Cohen give a marvelous example of this. A CEO takes a client out for dinner and listens to him talk about his disappointment with a product that, supposedly built to specifications, keeps being delivered defectively. We ask again and again for things to be changed, says the unhappy customer, and the person we talk to nods his head but he doesnt seem to listen.

What the CEO does is send a video team over to the customers office the next day and ask him to speak candidly, which he does, and then he shows the video to his employees, many of whom had never interfaced with customers, and never experienced this sort of strong, negative feedback.

THE ARM CHAIR LIBERAL MOVES INTO THE WORK PLACE

I saw this happen repeatedly in my days in non-profits when I raised money for the homeless. I spoke all over town on homelessness and encountered all sorts of reactions, including Why dont they just get a job?

If I could convince the person to actually come down to the shelter and meet the homeless, things changed. It changes your mind to sit in the same room, face-to-face with someone who was previously just a statistic. Its impossible to retort, Why dont you just get a job? when you listen to a mother with 3 children tell how she cant make as much money at her minimum-wage job as she can on welfare, and while shed rather have a decent job like everyone else, the numbers dont add up.

Why doesnt she just get a job? Because she can live better on welfare. You begin to see the complexity of the problem. She may be homeless but she isnt stupid.

You see a man with 4 children and no wife, who hasnt a suit, washing machine, computer, fax machine or answering machine to take calls while hes out looking for a job, and you begin to see the complexity of the problem. Why doesnt he just get a job? becomes How could he get a job?

NO ONE EVER CONVINCED ANYONE BY LOGIC

I could talk till I was blue in the face about homelessness, and not have any impact, while 30 minutes in a homeless shelter, seeing real people, seeing a face instead of a problem, reached in and touched people at their core. Theres no place for cold logic in a homeless shelter. It assaults your heart, and therefore it assaults your brain.

EMOTIONS TAKE PRECEDENCE

Emotions have a stronger impact, because theyre essential to our survival. We dont need to know a whole lot about the bear thats standing in front of us snarling; in fact if we DO stop to think, our life will be at risk, so our brain pumps us full of fight or flight chemicals which preclude thinking and cause us to TAKE ACTION.

MOTIVATION

In conducting tours of the homeless shelter, just the act was my main objective. I knew that the reality of a face-to-face encounter would accomplish what I couldnt, and eventually didnt even try, to do. Motivation is real when it comes from the heart. Whatever the person decided to do after touring the shelter, was between them and their heart.

The outcome was always a new understanding of a situation that had previously existed as cold facts in their head. The changed behaviors it elicited were differentsome decided to volunteer, some sent a check, some went back to organize others, but all were touched.

It never failed to touch me to go over there, and that showed too.

Peoples general reaction changed from theres a problem, to what can I do? And each individual, moved from his or her armchair in front of tv to the reality of the problem, as represented by real human beings, decided that there was something THEY could do. They decided they wanted to make a difference.

I used it to motivate myself as well. Sitting over in my office, overwhelmed by the workload and the enormity of a problem for which there is no solution except day-by-day, one-by-one, I was often discouraged. A trip over to the shelter was always the antidote to my flagging energy.

THE PROS

The Archbishop of San Antonio often spoke at our fund-raising banquets. He always began by giving a specific example of a specific person in a specific encounter. He put a face to a problem, touched people at the feelings level, and caused change.

Motivation is not a thinking word.

Susan Dunn, The EQ Coach, offers coaching, Internet courses and ebooks for your personal and professional development. Visit her on the web at www.susandunn.cc and mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for FREE ezine, FREE Strengths course.