How to Extend the Life of Your Direct Mail Postcard or Brochure

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There are many steps you can take to ensure your direct mail materials get noticed and read. Opting for quality graphics and professionally written copy, and including incentives that are irresistible to your target audience is a good place to start. But did you know that there are ways to extend the life of your direct mail postcard or brochure that can generate even more revenue for your business?
Direct mail has consistently demonstrated the potential to create a lasting effect on consumers, and part of this is its proven ability to trigger a positive emotional response. But physical mail offers something else that digital advertising doesn’t: staying power.

Mail-Out Materials that Stick Around

Many postal studies show that consumers have a strong tendency to keep, display, and share certain types of direct mail materials, including:

• coupons,

• restaurant menus, and

• sales flyers

Not only are about two-thirds of potential customers inclined to keep mail they feel offers immediate or future value, they’re also very apt to display that mail in highly visible locations inside their homes. This provides an outstanding opportunity for your brand to engage with prospects on multiple occasions – over an extended period of time – and all for the price of a single mail-out.

Research from the US Postal Service confirms that 81% of recipients read their mail daily and, because of its tangible nature, tend to “save mailed coupons for future use and share mailings with others.”

So, just how much extra life can you expect to squeeze out of your double-duty postcard or brochure?

Surveys have suggested that, depending on the format, many direct mail recipients keep print materials from a few days to a month, or longer. In fact, an in-depth study conducted by the Canada Post Corporation, established that this is indeed the case for:

• product and service coupons (67%),

• restaurant menus (77%),

• promotional mail (41%), and

• retail flyers (61%)

• Getting a Foot in the Door

Just as important as the keeping of direct mail postcards and brochures, is the fact that consumers love to share them. Even if a well-crafted offer doesn’t meet the immediate needs of the person who opens it, they’re far more likely to pass that coupon or sales discount along to someone they know, than they are an email or social media promotion.

Print mail is memorable, and can ultimately be a joy to receive. In today’s noisy digital world, consumers have begun to recognize direct mail as a more intimate bid for their attention – and their response to this personalized approach has been to:

• visit a physical place of business almost twice as often

• visit a company website more than two-thirds of the time

Companies that take the time to research their clients and prospects, and to design direct mail communications that are relevant and offer long-term value, are being rewarded with an invitation into the homes and lives of their customers. And there’s nothing more effective than a foot-in-the-door to nurture a lasting relationship.

Crawl, Walk, Run Your Way to Generating More Business for Your Firm

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Why This Approach Will Work For You

I love to run. Fast. But the reality is, sometimes I run too fast, too quickly, and that can lead to huge challenges for our businesses.

I got into talking recently with my friends at Innovative Attorney Marketing, a full-service marketing agency that drives new clients to attorneys and law firms and a Likeable Local partner. They’ve been working in the legal direct mail and digital marketing space for more than 15 years, so they know a thing or two about growing and maintaining a business. I asked them about their approach, and why “Crawl, Walk Run” works best:

It sounds like you have been a leader in the attorney marketing space for over a decade. What changes have you seen as the industry evolves?

For one thing, direct mail does not work on its own anymore. Potential clients used to receive a letter targeting their legal needs in the mail, open the envelope, and pick up the phone. These days, consumers are much more savvy. They will take the time to research a firm online prior to making a phone call, and will also shop other firms before making a decision. Because hiring a lawyer is such a personal decision, it is critical for attorneys to have a professional digital presence. Furthermore, a digital presence no longer means simply having a good website – you need to have social media accounts, blogs, reviews, be found on page 1 of search results, etc.

Yes, digital marketing is obviously a hot topic. What advice do you have for people who are entering into this area for the first time?

We look at digital marketing for attorneys in a “crawl, walk, run” approach. In the crawl phase, you are establishing a digital and direct mail foundation. You need a solid website which will serve as the backbone for a direct mail campaign. Your website should include your resume so that potential clients can see your accomplishments as well as practice area pages that explain what exactly it is that you do. It needs to be mobile responsive with clickable calls-to-action. In addition, using targeted and timely direct mail campaigns with optimized formatting and custom branding will set you apart from the competition and drive visitors to your firm.

As you learn to walk in digital marketing, you establish a social media presence on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Not only should you establish a presence, but you should begin to interact with others in the form of blogging, sharing, and commenting online. This will keep you relevant, establish you as a thought leader, and drive your SEO efforts.

Finally, when you begin to run, you start to engage in activities such as digital advertising through a pay-per-click campaign, paid social media marketing, and full-scale SEO efforts such as link building and website optimization.

Interesting perspective. What else would you add?

Law firms and other small businesses should not jump into digital marketing without a clear strategy – doing so could waste thousands of dollars and countless hours. In addition, small business owners should focus on what they do best – practicing law if you’re a lawyer, or accounting if you’re an accountant, or consulting if you’re a consultant, etc.

Because successful marketing requires time, expertise, and effort, teaming up with an experienced marketing partner who understands the area is essential for success. Finally, keep in mind that not all companies can benefit from all types of advertising. As an example, consider Radio Shack, who spent $8 million on a Super Bowl ad and then closed almost all of their stores a few months later. Not all advertising is good advertising, which is why it is advisable to work with an experienced partner when planning your digital and direct mail marketing strategy.

Crawl, then walk, then run!

Infographic: Direct Mail vs Email

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In the past direct mail has been referred to as dead. So we decided to do some research and compared direct mail to email marketing, it’s digital alternative.


It would appear that as our lives become more and more consumed by digital media we start to give less time and attention to the messages we receive. The average lifespan of an email is now just 2 seconds and brand recall directly after seeing a digital ad is just 44%, compared to direct mail which has a brand recall of 75%. 

So why are people still saying direct mail is dead? Whilst print costs have fallen over the past few years, postage costs have risen. This means despite the higher response rate of direct mail, email with it’s low start up costs still receives a larger return on investment. A study from Citi Post Mail states direct mail has an average ROI of seven dollars to each one dollar spent, whilst email has an average return of $38.

With triple the return of direct mail email marketing may seem like a no brainer, but both have their strengths and weaknesses. Direct mail is perceived as a more trusted, personal form of marketing, whilst email is seen to be quick and informal. The different values associated with each mail mean customers are very sure about when they want to receive one over another.

Initially it would seem that email is better for generating profit fast, whereas direct mail is better for generating customers. Our overriding conclusion is that direct mail and email work better in support of each other. When creating a direct marketing campaign define your aims and choose the best marketing combination to support them.

4 Things Every Founder Needs to Know About What it Takes to Make a Big Idea Stick

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A startup isn’t a smaller version of a big company, it’s a search for a sustainable business model


All too often, people want to see entrepreneurship as if it were an action movie. The hero, transformed by a great moment of epiphany, champions his idea despite being besieged on all sides by those who seek to thwart him. He prevails in the end by being loyal and true and never wavering from his initial vision.
That’s a dangerous fantasy. As Silicon Valley startup guru Steve Blank has often noted, a startup is essentially a search for a sustainable business model. It’s not like an episode of Mission Impossible, where you have a clear and concrete objective and execute a plan with split second precision.
In fact, it’s more like a role playing game. There are certain rules to play by, but no clear path forward or ending sequence (except, of course, for bankruptcy). Instead, you have to progress through a series of challenges while gaining experience and artifacts along the way. In the end, everyone needs to forge their own path, but here are four things you should know going in.
1. Develop A Customer Before You Develop A Product

Many entrepreneurs treat a new venture as if it was a smaller version of an existing business. You develop a product, identify a market and sell to customers. In the Mission Impossible version of entrepreneurship, once you come up with a trailblazing idea, all that’s left is to execute your plan effectively.

In the real world though, your idea will almost always be flawed in some way. So by developing a fully featured product before you test your idea with real customers, you will almost certainly end up wasting scarce resources. Then, you’ll find yourself scrambling to correct your mistake before you run out of money.

There is a better way. Consider the case of Nick Swinmurn, a young entrepreneur who thought he could sell shoes online. To test his idea, he took some pictures of shoes and built a bare bones website. When someone ordered a pair, he went to the shoe store and bought whatever he needed to fulfill the order. He lost money on every sale.
Clearly, that’s an incredibly stupid way to run a business, but it’s an ingenious — and incredibly cheap — way of testing a business model. The business Swinmurn built, Zappos, was acquired by Amazon in 2009 for $940 million,
2. Your Idea Has Probably Been Done Before

For most of his career, Jim Allison had been content to be a research scientist and had earned some renown in his field of immunology. But in the mid-1990s, he had a breakthrough idea that would change his path. His research suggested that there might be a way to unleash the human immune system to fight cancer.
It was more than just a vague concept. He had done studies on mice that had shown incredible results. They were so impressive, in fact, that he felt he simply had to get the research translated into an effective treatment. So he started going around to all the big pharmaceutical companies to try to get them to invest in clinical studies.

He had no takers. The problem wasn’t that his idea was too radical, but rather that they has seen so many similar ideas before. In fact, there had been hundreds of trials on immunological approaches to cancer and they had all failed. Many agreed that Allison’s approach held promise, but after being burned so many times, no one was willing to take another plunge.
It took three years and tons of heartache, but eventually Allison got a small biotech firm, Medarex, to invest in his idea. Today, Cancer Immunotherapy is considered a miracle cure and many believe that Allison will receive a Nobel prize for his work. Medarex was acquired in 2009 by Bristol Myers Squibb for $2.4 billion.
3. Your Idea Needs To Combine With Other Ideas

When Elance was founded in 1999, it seemed like a really good idea. Taking its name from a Harvard Business Review article titled titled The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy the founders sought to match freelance contractors and firms much like Monster.com did for full-time applicants. Unfortunately, the it didn’t gain any traction.

So the investors decided to hire a new CEO and take the company in a new direction. Instead of matching firms to freelancers, it would help companies manage relationships. This idea met with much greater success and E-Lance became a pioneer in vendor management software. In fact, it became so successful that it attracted stiff competition from the likes of SAP and Oracle.

At that point, the investors felt it was time to sell, but the new management team thought that they could build an even bigger business by combining the two ideas — matching freelancers to firms and helping to make those relationships successful. So they sold the software business and kept the brand name, a small staff and some intellectual property.

In the years that followed, those two ideas combined with even more ideas. The firm partnered with training companies to offer accreditation of specific skills, helped its customers build “private clouds” of preferred contractors and developed algorithms to create better engagements. In 2013, it merged with oDesk to form Upwork, the world’s largest freelancing platform.
All too often, people want to see entrepreneurship as if it were an action movie. The hero, transformed by a great moment of epiphany, champions his idea despite being besieged on all sides by those who seek to thwart him. He prevails in the end by being loyal and true and never wavering from his initial vision.
That’s a dangerous fantasy. As Silicon Valley startup guru Steve Blank has often noted, a startup is essentially a search for a sustainable business model. It’s not like an episode of Mission Impossible, where you have a clear and concrete objective and execute a plan with split second precision.
In fact, it’s more like a role playing game. There are certain rules to play by, but no clear path forward or ending sequence (except, of course, for bankruptcy). Instead, you have to progress through a series of challenges while gaining experience and artifacts along the way. In the end, everyone needs to forge their own path, but here are four things you should know going in.
1. Develop A Customer Before You Develop A Product

Many entrepreneurs treat a new venture as if it was a smaller version of an existing business. You develop a product, identify a market and sell to customers. In the Mission Impossible version of entrepreneurship, once you come up with a trailblazing idea, all that’s left is to execute your plan effectively.
In the real world though, your idea will almost always be flawed in some way. So by developing a fully featured product before you test your idea with real customers, you will almost certainly end up wasting scarce resources. Then, you’ll find yourself scrambling to correct your mistake before you run out of money.
There is a better way. Consider the case of Nick Swinmurn, a young entrepreneur who thought he could sell shoes online. To test his idea, he took some pictures of shoes and built a bare bones website. When someone ordered a pair, he went to the shoe store and bought whatever he needed to fulfill the order. He lost money on every sale.
Clearly, that’s an incredibly stupid way to run a business, but it’s an ingenious — and incredibly cheap — way of testing a business model. The business Swinmurn built, Zappos, was acquired by Amazon in 2009 for $940 million,
2. Your Idea Has Probably Been Done Before

For most of his career, Jim Allison had been content to be a research scientist and had earned some renown in his field of immunology. But in the mid-1990s, he had a breakthrough idea that would change his path. His research suggested that there might be a way to unleash the human immune system to fight cancer.
It was more than just a vague concept. He had done studies on mice that had shown incredible results. They were so impressive, in fact, that he felt he simply had to get the research translated into an effective treatment. So he started going around to all the big pharmaceutical companies to try to get them to invest in clinical studies.
He had no takers. The problem wasn’t that his idea was too radical, but rather that they has seen so many similar ideas before. In fact, there had been hundreds of trials on immunological approaches to cancer and they had all failed. Many agreed that Allison’s approach held promise, but after being burned so many times, no one was willing to take another plunge.
It took three years and tons of heartache, but eventually Allison got a small biotech firm, Medarex, to invest in his idea. Today, Cancer Immunotherapy is considered a miracle cure and many believe that Allison will receive a Nobel prize for his work. Medarex was acquired in 2009 by Bristol Myers Squibb for $2.4 billion.
3. Your Idea Needs To Combine With Other Ideas

When Elance was founded in 1999, it seemed like a really good idea. Taking its name from a Harvard Business Review article titled titled The Dawn of the E-Lance Economy the founders sought to match freelance contractors and firms much like Monster.com did for full-time applicants. Unfortunately, the it didn’t gain any traction.
So the investors decided to hire a new CEO and take the company in a new direction. Instead of matching firms to freelancers, it would help companies manage relationships. This idea met with much greater success and E-Lance became a pioneer in vendor management software. In fact, it became so successful that it attracted stiff competition from the likes of SAP and Oracle.
At that point, the investors felt it was time to sell, but the new management team thought that they could build an even bigger business by combining the two ideas — matching freelancers to firms and helping to make those relationships successful. So they sold the software business and kept the brand name, a small staff and some intellectual property.
In the years that followed, those two ideas combined with even more ideas. The firm partnered with training companies to offer accreditation of specific skills, helped its customers build “private clouds” of preferred contractors and developed algorithms to create better engagements. In 2013, it merged with oDesk to form Upwork, the world’s largest freelancing platform.
4. You Don’t Need A Business Plan, You Need A Business Model

For traditional businesses, strategic planning is essential. You need to anticipate demand, allocate resources and coordinate the efforts of hundreds, if not thousands of people. It takes a significant organizational effort to keep things running smoothly and meet the needs of customers, partners and employees.

Yet a startup has few of these concerns. Usually there are just a handful of employees, if any, a few partners and maybe a customer or two, if things are going well. So it’s not a business plan that you need, but a business model — a clear idea of how you will create, deliver and capture value — and there’s no way of knowing exactly what will work going in.
That’s why it’s much more important to explore than predict. Nick Swinmurn didn’t just dream up a new way to sell shoes, he tested his idea before taking the plunge. Jim Allison studied the immune system for decades before coming up with his miracle cure. Elance continually honed and iterated its model before it came up with a winning formula.

So we need to get over the myth of the heroic leader. It doesn’t take superpowers or a magical suit of armor to be a great entrepreneur. Rather, it takes the courage to begin the quest knowing that you’re just a normal person who will have to find a way through to the other side.

They Call it the Pokémon Go for Brands. How to Gamify Your Marketing with Augmented Reality

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This augmented reality treasure hunt game makes experiential marketing accessible and affordable to your small business.

If you’re attending SXSW this year, you may want to try your hand at a bit of augmented reality to compete for $50,000 in venture capital. Snatch, a virtual treasure hunt played via mobile, will show you how to snatch virtual parcels containing valuable prizes (like 50 grand in seed money), free vacations, and free meals. The catch is, you must hold on to your parcels for six hours before they are yours to claim. Your virtual treasure hunt is filled with mystery and challenge while others try to “snatch” your parcels away from you.

Dubbed the Pokémon Go for brands, Snatch certainly has more than fun and adventure in mind for their clients and “Snatchers”. They plan to break down the walls between Millennials and brands by creating a positive, interactive experience for consumers who want to shop and engage on their own terms.

“Snatch is about people engaging with brands in their own environment, rather than brands being in places we’d rather they weren’t, like YouTube and Facebook,” says Phil Lloyd, Chief Marketing Officer at Snatch. We’re knocking on the door and asking to be let in, not kicking down the door and interrupting.”

The company has recently won the attention, and funding, from Unilever Ventures. While Unilever typically does not offer seed-funding to pre-series A companies, they know that augmented reality is here to stay.

“Over the past year, augmented reality has gone from a novelty to a real part of our day-to-day lives,” says Jan Harley, Director, from Unilever Ventures. “Immersing people in an interactive environment where they’re actively seeking out products and feeling the elation of winning something tangible, is a really exciting addition to the marketing toolkit.”

Gamification offers an experiential marketing experience for consumers, and it’s proving to hold their attention far longer than traditional marketing strategies. On average, Snatch users remain engaged for more than one-hour of cumulative game time and enter the app four times per day. That kind of engagement would cost more than any SMB is likely to invest in advertising through other, more traditional, channels.

“Our platform is built by design for brand integration at the heart, delivered via an addictive and engaging gamification layer,” says Lloyd. The app’s core audience is in the 18-30-year-old range, but it’s really for anyone. My question is, can a small business afford to bring such an augmented reality experience to their customers?

“Our attention is not restricted to the Unilever’s of the world; we don’t delineate between large and small brands,” says Lloyd. Parcels range in value from ten-dollars up to $50,000 (so far).

Snatch is working with mom and pop companies in the U.K., including a hair salon startup, providing very low customer acquisition costs, along with outstanding redemption rates. “When people select their favorite parcel, and compete to hold on to it for six hours, redemption rates will naturally be higher,” says Lloyd. And, the platform really gets people talking. “When you offer things like a year’s supply of avocado’s,” says Lloyd, “how can people not talk?”

Snatch launched just last month in the U.K., has already been downloaded more than 250,000 times, and has held tight to the number one position in Adventure apps. They plan on launching in the U.S. early in summer of 2017 and will continue to expand internationally.

It may be time to graduate beyond content marketing in a world that’s saturated with content.Ready to join the ranks of top brands like Starbucks and Sephora in the world of experiential marketing? Fortunately, gamification is becoming more accessible to small businesses with each passing year.

How We Create Authenticity In Small Business Brands

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A lot of people toss around the term authentic brand, but there’s not enough discussion around what constitutes authenticity—and, more important, how to build an authentic brand.

Authentic is defined as being true to one’s own personality, spirit, or character. On the one hand, we tend to equate authenticity with honesty. But do you have to be completely honest to be authentic?  After all, we are multifaceted beings with various aspects and facets. A truly honest personal brand, for example, would have to include the cranky pre-coffee version of you right alongside the polished-and-fabulous you. Do you really have to show off your not-so-good side to be honest or authentic?

The short answer? No. Doing so would actually confuse your customers. Building authenticity in a brand is not the result of creating a warts-and-all portrait; instead, it comes from focusing on what you do best, and then inhabiting and communicating that in every aspect of what you do. Without that consistency, you create a dissonance that potential customers can sense—and that will likely make them walk away. Authenticity in branding means that you don’t just talk the talk, but you also walk the walk.

Here’s an example. Recently I spoke to a marketer who said, “Our solutions work for any business, so we work with everyone.” This was an immediate red flag. He is in marketing, and first and foremost, a marketer must understand who their client is targeting. Marketers cannot do their job effectively if they don’t have a specific target market. And if the marketing company itself doesn’t have a target market, how can it possibly succeed in helping its clients reach their customer base?

So many marketers fail to market themselves in a targeted way. Many branders fail to develop their own brand. Untold social media companies have little following or engagement on the very platforms they engage with.

These people are missing their biggest opportunity.

When building a brand, consistency is key—for visuals, for message, and for values. We know that if you change up your message or visuals from one day to the next, you won’t get business. It’s not that people won’t like you, it’s that they won’t even notice you enough to like you. Consistency builds a relationship with potential customers and turns them into clients.

But when you are a small service business, walking the walk creates that consistency in buyers minds much faster ad much stronger. It’s very low-hanging fruit: The best way to be your brand is to do for yourself the very thing you sell to others.

If you’re a social media agency, for example, you know how to use social media to market a business, and you know how valuable social media can be to a business (after all, that is what you are selling). It makes no sense for your social media presence to be lacking because you are a business with access to an amazing social media business—yours!

Small businesses: take advantage of their greatest asset—your own ability to do what you do best for yourselves. Not only is this a valuable way to build your business and grow your bottom line, but also it’s a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate how much you believe in the service you provide—you believe in it so much, you use it for yourself. And you become a perfect case study of how well it works!

My friends at Socialfly do this incredibly well. Courtney and Stephanie, two powerhouse co-founder entreprenistas, run this fly NYC-based social media agency that focuses on the beauty and fashion industries. Socialfly stands out because of how much the company engages in and uses the latest social media has to offer. For example, for the past few months Socialfly has done weekly Facebook Live shows on Wednesdays at 10 a.m., sharing the latest social media trends and tips they’ve learned throughout the week. It’s entertaining, it’s valuable, and, most important, it’s a powerful demonstration that this company understands the value of social media—and uses it to promote their own business.

This has been a foundational principle for Worstofall Design as well. During our first few years in business, when we were strictly a design company, we struggled to get clients. We had to rely on potential clients to determine that our work was better than anything we were up against. We didn’t have a target market, and sometimes we went after clients that weren’t a good match.

Over the years we learned the importance of differentiation, of knowing our value proposition, and we started to understand what a brand was. Then, as we started to put effort into building our brand, getting bolder and bolder with each step, we started to see the results! Some people didn’t get our brand, but other people loved it. Those were our customers.

And we love that we can confidently say that everything we help our clients do in branding is based on a philosophy derived from doing it for ourselves first—and getting results. Not only are we telling you how important it is to have a strong, differentiated brand that stands out from the competition, but we can also tell you how valuable it has been for us. In fact, we spend a significant portion of our time each month on brand-building activities because we continue to see results from it.

So, would you rather hire the social media company with tons of posts but no likes or comments, or the one with a weekly Facebook Live show with engaged viewers who like and comment all the time?

Show off what you do in your own business. This is such an exciting prospect because it gives you a training ground to get better and better at what you do—while helping your business grow!

And this doesn’t just apply to marketing-related companies. If you are a coach, share how you’ve grown thanks to your own coach. If you’re a copywriter who helps people create engaging website copy, you’d better make damn sure your homepage is incredibly engaging (believe it or not, I have seen the opposite more than once!). Personal trainers should be fit and healthy. Professional organizers can offer no better reference than examples of their own meticulous spaces. Videographers: show off your skills with captivating videos about your process.

Many small business owners tell me they will focus on their own business when they get more clients. But that way of thinking must be flipped on its head: You won’t get the clients until you put the work into your own business. Focus on what you do best by honing and defining your market, and then inhabit and communicate how you service that market in every aspect of your message and branding—whether you’re a polished copywriter, a holistic acupuncturist, or a branding company that preached differentiation.

One of the best things you can do to get business is to make sure your business is in order in the area you know best. This build’s your brand’s credibility like almost nothing else can. This is how to create an authentic brand.

How Smart People Handle Difficult People

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Toxic people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negativity they spread, while others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos.

Difficult people defy logic. Some are blissfully unaware of the negative impact that they have on those around them, and others seem to derive satisfaction from creating chaos and pushing other people’s buttons. Either way, they create unnecessary complexity, strife and worst of all stress.

Related: 10 Habits of Unlikeable People

Studies have long shown that stress can have a lasting, negative impact on the brain. Exposure to even a few days of stress compromises the effectiveness of neurons in the hippocampus — an important brain area responsible for reasoning and memory. Weeks of stress cause reversible damage to neuronal dendrites (the small “arms” that brain cells use to communicate with each other), and months of stress can permanently destroy neurons. Stress is a formidable threat to your success — when stress gets out of control, your brain and your performance suffer.

Most sources of stress at work are easy to identify. If your non-profit is working to land a grant that your organization needs to function, you’re bound to feel stress and likely know how to manage it. It’s the unexpected sources of stress that take you by surprise and harm you the most.

Recent research from the Department of Biological and Clinical Psychology at Friedrich Schiller University in Germany found that exposure to stimuli that cause strong negative emotions — the same kind of exposure you get when dealing with difficult people — caused subjects’ brains to have a massive stress response. Whether it’s negativity, cruelty, the victim syndrome or just plain craziness, difficult people drive your brain into a stressed-out state that should be avoided at all costs.

The ability to manage your emotions and remain calm under pressure has a direct link to your performance. TalentSmart has conducted research with more than a million people, and we’ve found that 90 percent of top performers are skilled at managing their emotions in times of stress in order to remain calm and in control. One of their greatest gifts is the ability to neutralize difficult people. Top performers have well-honed coping strategies that they employ to keep difficult people at bay.

While I’ve run across numerous effective strategies that smart people employ when dealing with difficult people, what follows are some of the best. To deal with difficult people effectively, you need an approach that enables you, across the board, to control what you can and eliminate what you can’t. The important thing to remember is that you are in control of far more than you realize.

1. They set limits.

Complainers and negative people are bad news because they wallow in their problems and fail to focus on solutions. They want people to join their pity party so that they can feel better about themselves. People often feel pressure to listen to complainers because they don’t want to be seen as callous or rude, but there’s a fine line between lending a sympathetic ear and getting sucked into their negative emotional spiral.

You can avoid this only by setting limits and distancing yourself when necessary. Think of it this way: if the complainer were smoking, would you sit there all afternoon inhaling the second-hand smoke? You’d distance yourself, and you should do the same with complainers. A great way to set limits is to ask complainers how they intend to fix the problem. They will either quiet down or redirect the conversation in a productive direction.

2. They rise above.

Difficult people drive you crazy because their behavior is so irrational. Make no mistake about it; their behavior truly goes against reason. So why do you allow yourself to respond to them emotionally and get sucked into the mix? The more irrational and off-base someone is, the easier it should be for you to remove yourself from their traps. Quit trying to beat them at their own game. Distance yourself from them emotionally and approach your interactions like they’re a science project (or you’re their shrink, if you prefer the analogy). You don’t need to respond to the emotional chaos — only the facts.

3. They stay aware of their emotions.

Maintaining an emotional distance requires awareness. You can’t stop someone from pushing your buttons if you don’t recognize when it’s happening. Sometimes you’ll find yourself in situations where you’ll need to regroup and choose the best way forward. This is fine and you shouldn’t be afraid to buy yourself some time to do so.

Think of it this way — if a mentally unstable person approaches you on the street and tells you he’s John F. Kennedy, you’re unlikely to set him straight. When you find yourself with a coworker who is engaged in similarly derailed thinking, sometimes it’s best to just smile and nod. If you’re going to have to straighten them out, it’s better to give yourself some time to plan the best way to go about it.

4. They establish boundaries.

This is the area where most people tend to sell themselves short. They feel like because they work or live with someone, they have no way to control the chaos. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Once you’ve found your way to Rise Above a person, you’ll begin to find their behavior more predictable and easier to understand. This will equip you to think rationally about when and where you have to put up with them and when you don’t. For example, even if you work with someone closely on a project team, that doesn’t mean that you need to have the same level of one-on-one interaction with them that you have with other team members.

Related: 9 Phrases Smart People Never Use In Conversation

You can establish a boundary, but you’ll have to do so consciously and proactively. If you let things happen naturally, you are bound to find yourself constantly embroiled in difficult conversations. If you set boundaries and decide when and where you’ll engage a difficult person, you can control much of the chaos. The only trick is to stick to your guns and keep boundaries in place when the person tries to encroach upon them, which they will.

5. They don’t die in the fight.

Smart people know how important it is to live to fight another day, especially when your foe is a toxic individual. In conflict, unchecked emotion makes you dig your heels in and fight the kind of battle that can leave you severely damaged. When you read and respond to your emotions, you’re able to choose your battles wisely and only stand your ground when the time is right.

6. They don’t focus on problems — only solutions.

Where you focus your attention determines your emotional state. When you fixate on the problems you’re facing, you create and prolong negative emotions and stress. When you focus on actions to better yourself and your circumstances, you create a sense of personal efficacy that produces positive emotions and reduces stress.

When it comes to toxic people, fixating on how crazy and difficult they are gives them power over you. Quit thinking about how troubling your difficult person is, and focus instead on how you’re going to go about handling them. This makes you more effective by putting you in control, and it will reduce the amount of stress you experience when interacting with them.

7. They don’t forget.

Emotionally intelligent people are quick to forgive, but that doesn’t mean that they forget. Forgiveness requires letting go of what’s happened so that you can move on. It doesn’t mean you’ll give a wrongdoer another chance. Smart people are unwilling to be bogged down unnecessarily by others’ mistakes, so they let them go quickly and are assertive in protecting themselves from future harm.

8. They squash negative self-talk.

Sometimes you absorb the negativity of other people. There’s nothing wrong with feeling bad about how someone is treating you, but your self-talk (the thoughts you have about your feelings) can either intensify the negativity or help you move past it. Negative self-talk is unrealistic, unnecessary and self-defeating. It sends you into a downward emotional spiral that is difficult to pull out of. You should avoid negative self-talk at all costs.

9. They get some sleep.

I’ve beaten this one to death over the years and can’t say enough about the importance of sleep to increasing your emotional intelligence and managing your stress levels. When you sleep, your brain literally recharges, so that you wake up alert and clear-headed. Your self-control, attention and memory are all reduced when you don’t get enough — or the right kind — of sleep. Sleep deprivation raises stress hormone levels on its own, even without a stressor present. A good night’s sleep makes you more positive, creative and proactive in your approach to toxic people, giving you the perspective you need to deal effectively with them.

Related: Why Smart People Don’t Multitask

10. They use their support system.

It’s tempting, yet entirely ineffective, to attempt tackling everything by yourself. To deal with toxic people, you need to recognize the weaknesses in your approach to them. This means tapping into your support system to gain perspective on a challenging person. Everyone has someone at work and/or outside work who is on their team, rooting for them and ready to help them get the best from a difficult situation. Identify these individuals in your life and make an effort to seek their insight and assistance when you need it. Something as simple as explaining the situation can lead to a new perspective. Most of the time, other people can see a solution that you can’t because they are not as emotionally invested in the situation.

Bringing It All Together

Before you get this system to work brilliantly, you’re going to have to pass some tests. Most of the time, you will find yourself tested by touchy interactions with problem people. Thankfully, the plasticity of the brain allows it to mold and change as you practice new behaviors, even when you fail. Implementing these healthy, stress-relieving techniques for dealing with difficult people will train your brain to handle stress more effectively and decrease the likelihood of ill effects.

5 Rookie Branding Mistakes Every Entrepreneur Makes But Shouldn’t

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Nearly everybody just trying to keep their startup solvent skimps on branding and all of them would be better off it they didn’t.

When I started my etiquette business 20 years ago, I hired a college student named Ed to design my logo and website. It was a quick, easy and inexpensive way to get my name out into the world. However, when it came time to update my materials, Ed was nowhere to be found. He left town and did not provide me with his new contact information. I ended up hiring a more expensive and reputable company to design all of my marketing materials and it made all the difference in the world. Even today, my website is my number one marketing tool. It establishes me as “The Etiquette Expert.” It’s my brand.

Your brand is equally important. It is the first symbol people see, it is the last thing they remember, and it is the theme that runs throughout your entire marketing strategy. Big corporations like Coca-Cola, Google, and Apple spend large sums of money and time determining and establishing their brand. So why shouldn’t it be that important to a smaller, more entrepreneurial company? It should be.

If you are just starting out on a shoestring budget or if you have created a business in random chunks, without a formal brand strategy determination, it’s never too late to put a brand in place.

But before you do, you must first be aware of the most common branding many entrepreneurs make.

1. Amateur logo.

Nothing screams “inexperienced” more than a homemade-looking logo. Even if you are proud of what your teenager came up with, take the time and spend the money to hire a professional graphic designer specializing in branding and logo development. Your designer will also create graphic standards defining the color palette, visual style, font size and style, and usage requirements for your logo. Use these standards to set the tone throughout your entire marketing campaign.

Related: How to Become a Millionaire, Explained in 1 Minute

2. You have no consistency.

If you started getting inquiries before establishing your brand, you probably had to rush to get basic marketing materials in place. Your business card, letterhead, social media banners, website, marketing brochure, handouts, labels, invoices, and more should all carry a themed and branded look. Use the same font and colors throughout.

Related: Here’s a 6-Figure Service Business You Can Start for Under $100

3. No motto.

Big companies create a tagline or motto that encapsulates the message they want to convey. “Think different” is Apple’s, “Let’s Make Today Great” is Kellogg’s, and “Go Further” is Ford’s. Products also carry slogans: remember Alka-Seltzer’s “Plop, Plop, Fizz, Fizz” and Burger King’s “Have it Your Way”? Develop a catchy tag line that represents the benefits your clients and customers will receive. Can’t afford to hire a marketing company? Hire a freelancer by the hour.

Related: 11 Ultra-Successful Entrepreneurs on How to Start Over If You Lose It All

4. Not monitoring the competition.

Before you brand, check out your competitors. They have a similar—or the same—audiences as you do. Research similar businesses in other markets as well. Look at their logo, tagline, overall look and feel, and any marketing materials you can access. Review their websites to see how their services stack up to yours. Note any good ideas and revise them into your own unique brand.

Related: 11 Ways to Make Money While You Sleep

5. Not knowing who your customers are.

Not everyone is your customer. In fact, knowing the data on exactly who your customer really is can result in an incremental 241% return on investment reports a Clickz study. Hone in on and “own” a niche. For example, my niche is business etiquette. That means that I target my marketing efforts to corporations, colleges and universities.

Specializing in a niche requires less investment than mass marketing, and comes with the bonus of free word of mouth advertising and brand loyalty. Niche market members are passionate about their interests, values and hobbies and are more likely to talk about those interests and your brand with others in their network. They also are more apt to keep coming back for more.

Spend some time reviewing your current brand, and if it needs work, make it your top priority. After all, it is the lasting impression that defines your business and will keep you in business for many years to come.

Here’s How You Can Tell if You Are an Entrepreneur at Heart

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Being an entrepreneur at heart involves a combination of two key essentials. It’s the combination of these two ingredients that makes for an entrepreneurial spirit, no matter your role or title.

If you’re not already in business for yourself, you might ask yourself from time to time, ‘do I have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?’

Sometimes it is an internal dialog and other times it’s an entire conversation over lunch with someone who is already deep into the role of running a company. You may also be asking, ‘are you born an entrepreneur or is it learned’?

It’s an interesting question. Not all entrepreneurs have learned the same skills, been exposed to the same things or born with the same characteristics.

Some say that entrepreneurs are crazy enough to pursue their out-of-the-box ideas. Others say entrepreneurship stems from a deep insecurity and need to prove themselves. Many think that entrepreneurs are not risk averse and have a healthy appetite for risk.

None of this is true. Some entrepreneurs are risk averse and frightened to death – that’s their obstacle. Some entrepreneurs boast a healthy amount of confidence and don’t desire to be famous at all. Here’s the the combination of two key essentials every entrepreneur at heart has.

Entrepreneurs at heart are enchanted.

What does this mean exactly?

“The state of enchantment is one of certainty,” says W.H. Auden. “When enchanted, we neither believe nor doubt nor deny: we know”

To be an entrepreneur at heart means to be enchanted with your idea in a way that makes outsiders think you’re ‘crazy’, ‘tunnel visioned’, or ‘blinded.’ On the inside, you feel like they are the ‘crazy’ ones and you know your truth.

Similar to being in love, being enchanted means that you’re willing to allow yourself to be kidnapped by the intensity of a feeling. This is one half. The other half is having willingness.

Entrepreneurs are willing to enchant others at all costs.

They are willing to bring their feelings to life and enchant others, despite all internal and external obstacles, fears, challenges and realities in society.

When people ask entrepreneurs why they are willing to fail and jump through hoops, they might say because they learn from every mistake and failure.

Behind the failure and the lesson, though, is a deep enchantment that keeps their driving force alive. There is a willingness to share their enchantment and continuously bring it to life for their community and tribe.

In a similar way, you may do whatever it takes to show someone you are in love with them, to bring the feeling of live to life for both of you to feel together.

Entrepreneurship = Enchantment + Will

Guy Kawasaki explains in his book, Enchantment: The Art of Changing Hearts, Minds and Actions, ‘that enchantment can happen during a retail transaction, a high-level corporate negotiation, or a Facebook update. And when done right, it’s more powerful than traditional persuasion, influence, or marketing techniques.’

Ultimately, entrepreneurs are always in a state of enchantment, sometimes it’s with one idea, sometimes several ideas and sometimes it’s an enchantment for life itself. They are always willing to enchant those around them with their latest finding.

4 BIG Mistakes To Avoid When Your Business Starts To Grow

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Watching your business grow is a happy feeling. Nothing feels better than the sound of money flowing in your account after all the hard work you have put to bring all the pieces together, successfully creating a winning combination for your team.

If you thought getting your business up and running successfully was a big challenge, brace yourself for something even bigger. It does not end here. It’s just the beginning. When growth happens, you either make it or break it. And most entrepreneurs fail to successfully handle rapid growth. This is why more than 90% of all the startups fail.

But we are not here to talk about failure. We are here to talk about the reasons behind these failures. Simply put – we are here to talk about the mistakes entrepreneurs make when their business starts to grow, which ultimately leads to failure.

Let us have a look at them –

1) Baking that perfect plan
Bake the perfect plan

A plan is only as good as its execution. But most budding entrepreneurs are too busy gazing at the numbers that they forget this thumb rule. And this is the story of not just a growing business. I’ve been part of well established teams that still spend weeks crafting that perfect plan, leaving too little time for execution. As a result of this there is complete chaos.

According to Dan Vining, Business Lead at one of the Unites at SSOE, “Capturing a lot of detail doesn’t bring value.” He advocates the formula of sticking to the basics. In his own words, ”Stick with the fundamentals and don’t let it become a ‘science project.’ I like to follow the KISS principle “keep it short and simple.”

As they say, If you spend too much t’me thinking about a thing, you will never get it done.

2) Don’t blindly follow the masses, coz sometimes the ‘m’ is silent / Sticking to the ‘We’ll do it because everyone is doing it approach’
following

You cannot follow your competitors blindly and adopt a market strategy that they are using. Don’t forget you were able to set-up a successful business only because you were innovative enough to think out of the box and bring ideas that others could not. Staying updated with what the competitors are doing is one thing, and following them blindly is something you ought to avoid.

For instance, don’t run a television advertisement for your business just because your competitor is running one. Look at the bigger picture – your business requirements, your budget, your audience. Create a strategy keeping all these factors in mind. And then figure if running a Tv commercial fits within your requirements or not?

After all, each business has its unique set of needs. Rather than following your competition blindly, it is a far better idea to make the most of what you already have.

3) Going with the easiest hire
hiring

So your business has started to expand exponentially and you need manpower in huge number. Does that mean you will hire anyone who comes for the job? This is where even the smartest of minds can deviate from the path.

Hiring one wrong person could put the future of your entire business into doldrums. When your business starts to grow, you need to have people in the team who can take responsibilities. A smart leader must always look for self-starters, people who can take charge without you having to spoon-feed them about everything. This post on

Akio Morita, co-founder of Sony Corp., has some wise words to share about hiring the right people ,”No matter how good or successful you are, or how clever or crafty, your business and its future are in the hands of the people you hire.”

4) Neglecting what you have already acquired
customer value

Another unpardonable offense that businesses make more often than not, when they start to grow, is to neglect their existing customers. They are too busy on acquiring new customers that they tend to neglect facets of service like steadfast customer support, interacting with the existing customers and more. But this is nothing short of a SIN that you are making.

You might be amazed to know that businesses have to invest roughly 500% more resources on acquiring new customers than they do to retain the ones they already have. Looking at the statistic one can easily understand why it is important to focus on retaining the customers by giving them privileged service and support.

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