I was expecting a very traditional terms of service that you’d normally see online.

However, Aaron drafted me something totally different and at first I was taken back a step but after I read the Terms of Service agreement in full, I realized that it was actually quite genius, hilarious, fun and masterful all in one.

I can’t believe I’m calling a Terms of Service agreement genius, hilarious, fun and masterful but it is.

Here’s the Terms of Service draft that I’m referring to. Get ready for a good laugh and to be impressed by how he hits all the major points in a fun way. He does a great job of keeping it engaging so people can actually read through it.

DAILY CONVERSIONS TERMS OF SERVICE

1. Who, Why, What

Who:  DailyConversions.com is maintained by __________ (“DC”).   At times DC may also be referred to as “we”, “us”, or “DailyConversions.com”.  The person who is viewing or interacting this site we will refer to as “you”, “hey you”, or where appropriate “jerkface” (only if you’re being bad).

Why:  This Terms of Service Agreement (“Agreement”) is our contract with you, and tells you what you can and can’t do and what we can and can’t do with you.

What: DC is a bad ass blog about bigtime balling bloggers.  It blogs about success, failures (not ours of course), and making money online.  We make $$$$$ by: (1) telling people about some of thing you have told us about yourself (if you have given us permission); (2) telling you about people that have paid us to talk about them; and (3) selling advertising space.  If you’re buying from us, you will PAY for what you order when you order it.  Since we wear the pants around here, its up to us whether we’ll run your ad or not, and like your prom date we may reject you…so try again.

2.  VERY BAD THINGS THAT YOU CANNOT DO

We want you to like us, we do. But the internet is dangerous, and we don’t like danger spilling over onto our website. So while some of this may seem OBVIOUS, we have to tell you because sometimes its good to be reminded.  So when using our site we expect the following:

• Don’t Spam, or use this site to sell your crap without our permission.  This isn’t the classified section of the newspaper;
• Don’t give us viruses or try and hack your way into our computers;
• Don’t post comments on our blog that are useless;
• Don’t be a robot.  Robots are evil.  That means don’t use auto posters that are meant to leave things like “You blog has great informashuns!  Thank you! Best content 2007! I my wife tell me about your site, I say I no believe but she write…you best Site!” with anchor text to your crappy site about “Best Los Angeles Dog Groomers”.  Seriously….don’t.
• Don’t be a jerkface.  A jerkface is someone who discriminates, defrauds, hates, or acts like an idiot. Don’t do any of that.  We’ll ban you
• Don’t post things that you’re not supposed to or don’t have permission for.
• Don’t do other things that we don’t like, which is up to us.

If you follow the rules, you can stay. If you don’t, we can kick you out, haul your ass to court, or tell the Alphabet boys what you’ve done so they’ll put you under surveillance.  Our failure to enforce against one person is not a waiver to enforce our rights at any time for the same or different offenses.

3.  INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY

Don’t steal our stuff.  By stuff, we mean the awesome content, advice, pictures, videos, sounds (ummm, not sure what kind of sounds we’ll make…but you can be sure you can’t have them without our permission) (altogether known as “Content”).  So our Content is protected by all the freaking laws you can think of.  Seriously. This includes US Copyright Law (17 U.S.C.A Section (weirdsquigglythinginsertedhere) 107).  This means don’t use it, think of using it, or even stare at it with the intention of doing something we didn’t give you permission to do.

 

If you’re giving us content for our site, you’re pinky swearing that it’s yours or you have permission to use it in the way you’re using it.  Violations of other people’s “stuff” is not taken lightly here at DC, as we don’t like it when people jack our Content.  So if you jack someone else’s and try and pass it off to us like “oh hey bro, it’s cool you can totally use this”  then you’re going to pay for anything bad that happens to us, our employees, our advertisers, vendors, family pets, or agents.

 

Since we are opposed to copyright infringement we are registered in accordance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to receive notices of copyright infringement or if you otherwise believe your intellectual property rights have been violated.  To send us a DMCA takedown notice, please contact us through our contact form on the site.    The DMCA notice should identify in the subject line our website, the words DMCA Notice, the name of the copyright owner and if applicable, your name if you are someone other than the owner, the title (and preferably URL, if Internet-based) of the work being infringed, the location of the infringing material on our site, and the following statement:

I have a good faith belief that use of the copyrighted materials described above as allegedly infringing is not authorized by the copyright owner, its agent, or the law.  The information in this notification is accurate and I swear, under penalty of perjury, that I am the copyright owner or am authorized to act on behalf of the owner of an exclusive right that is allegedly infringed.

You must sign the notice, and if you send it by e-mail, an electronic signature is fine.

4.  RESPONSIBILITIES AND YOU BREAK IT YOU BOUGHT IT.

DC may allow you to post content.  You agree you will only post in accordance to this Agreement, and agree to remain responsible for anything that you post.  By posting your content you’re giving us the right to use that content via a license to use it how we please.  Seriously, we can take your content and hack the crap out of it, spin it, and even make money off of it without paying you a dime.  We’ll send you a fruit basket though…maybe…actually probably not.  This “license” is not revocable and goes on forever and ever and ever and ever.  But wait, there’s more.  If anything bad happens because of something you submit, you agree to pay us, our legal bills, or other bills that may result because of what you submit.

5.  U MAD?  GONNA LAWYER UP BRO?

We have lawyers.  A whole team of them that are ready to knife fight on a whim, but we’d rather resolve this like gentlemen.  So if you have a problem you will first come to us and tell us about this problem.  We may talk about this problem for awhile, and if neither side is happy with the result then we can duke it out in Court.  The Court must be in California, and will be decided based on California law.  Any law that applies or controls this contract is California law.   YEA DOG, that’s right, you just got hometurfed broseph.  But you’re agreeing to this hometurf being California because we have to have one universal location to resolve disputes in.  Oh, and the winner of any dispute or lawsuit is entitled to have their attorneys’ fees and costs paid for by the loser.

6.  SURVIVAL OF THE DEAD….AGREEMENT

Sometimes, people mutually agree to stuff that courts just won’t uphold.  That shouldn’t affect the intent of our contract, though, so you agree that if a judge declares a portion of these Terms of Service of no effect, the rest of the Terms of Service will stay in effect as much as is still possible without the part that the judge struck down.

7.  THIRD PARTY SHARING

Our site may have links to third party websites that we have no control over, such as YouTube, Facebook, and MySpace (seriously..who uses myspace anymore?).   We have no responsibility over this content (although I those companies want to give us free shares in their company we’re cool with that) and therefore you have to take up any problems you have with those sites with their owners.  Leave us out of it.

8.  LOUD NOISES

WE HAVE TO USE CAPS LOCK FOR THIS SECTION BECAUSE SOME DEAD GUY 100 YEARS AGO PROBABLY SAID IF WE DON’T THEN IT DOESN’T COUNT.  SO WE CAN’T GUARANTEE THAT OUR SITE WON’T BREAK YOUR COMPUTER OR THAT YOU’LL FIND IT AMUSING OR THAT IT WILL HELP YOU MAKE MONEY.  WE TRY OUR BEST, BUT THAT’S ALL YOU GET JUST LIKE WHEN YOU BUY SOMETHING AT A RANDOM GARAGE SALE…YOU’RE BUYING IT “AS IS” EVEN IF IT BLOWS UP OR FRIES YOUR BRAIN.  SO EVEN IF SOMETHING TERRIBLE AND CATASTROPHIC HAPPENS BECAUSE YOU VIEWED OUR SITE, YOU CAN’T SUE US, OR ANYONE THAT IS CONNECTED WITH US. SINCE WE’RE IN CALIFORNIA, AND YOU MIGHT BE CALIFORNIA WE HAVE TO TELL YOU ABOUT THAT FANCY LAW THAT SAYS IF YOU GIVE UP YOUR “GENERAL” RIGHTS TO CLAIMS YOU DON’T HAVE TO GIVE UP YOUR RIGHTS TO CLAIMS THAT YOU COULDN’T HAVE KNOWN ABOUT (MAKES SENSE RIGHT?) WEL GUESS WHAT YOU ARE GIVING THOSE RIGHTS UP BECAUSE THIS IS A CONTRACT AND WE JUST TOLD YOU.  SORRY!  SO WE’RE DISCLAIMING ALL WARRANTIES AND LIABILITY FOR ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING, WHETHER OR NOT WE KNEW OR SHOULD HAVE BEEN PSYCHIC AND KNEW.  KING OF THE CASTLE MEANS THAT WHEN YOU COME INTO OUR SITE, YOU PLAY BY OUR RULES AND IF WE END UP BEING RESPONSIBLE FOR SOMETHING WE’RE NOT GOING TO PAY YOU A PENNY MORE THAN WHAT YOU MAY HAVE PAID US IN THE PAST MONTH, OR $50 WHATEVER IS SMALLER.  IF YOU’RE FROM ONE OF THOSE WEIRD STATES THAT SAY YOU CAN’T HAVE PROVISIONS LIKE THIS IN A CONTRACT, OR THAT WE CAN’T LIMIT WHAT WE PAY THEN OUR DAMAGES ARE LIMITED TO THE SMALLEST, TEENIEST, TINIEST, BIT ALLOWED BY LAW.  WOMP WOMP.

 

 

9. MISC THINGS

IF YOU’RE FROM A FOREIGN COUNTRY, WELCOME..GUTENTAG, NEI HO, BONJOUR, JAMBO, HOLA……we’re going to be transferring your information from our country to yours, so you’re ok with us transferring this information by virtue of having visited and used our site.  Unless you’re from Germany, then…well…..let us know and we’ll figure out what to do with you.   Headings to these sections are meant to be for entertainment purposes only and have no binding effect.  We can transfer our rights and obligations in this agreement whenever we want.  Just because we don’t put someone in a burlap sack and beat them with a sock full of quarters for violating any section of this Agreement doesn’t mean we’re waiving our right to enforce our Agreement, it just means we’re cutting someone some slack.  It doesn’t mean we’ll do the same for you or anyone else.  Too bad, we do what we want because we’re the honey badgers of bloggers.   Follow the law and don’t be a jerkface.

I’m headed down to Affiliate Summit West 2012 in about a week and believe me it’s going to be a very busy event. Not only do I have to check in with clients, and talk to some new potentials to see if they would be a good fit for me, I’m also going to be looking closely at clients (and my own) competitors to see how they are running their marketing.

A good percentage of exhibitors at Affiliate Summit in particular are way behind the times for marketing anyways, some are stuck on tactics that worked several years ago for a limited number of affiliate networks/companies. They wrongfully think that because a certain company or two has blossomed using an aggressive tactic, that it should work for them too. But, the reality is that no two companies are the same and no one marketing tactic is not going to work the same for everyone. The potential is limitless and companies are incorrectly making the same mistakes.

This year I’m setting a personal goal to work with several new companies, get involved in a new venture or two, and utilize new marketing tactics that I haven’t used before. I’m expanding my horizons, setting new goals and making new dreams and plans – setting my future how I want. I think that readers should be doing the same with their businesses, setting goals, trying new things and continuing (or starting) to prosper.

I talk to a lot of other consultants and marketers that seem to have it in their mind that they have been successful because of a certain marketing tactic that they have learned really well. And, I find that to be a ridiculous concept, because in my consulting business I’ve been successful by being innovative and always pushing clients (and myself) to try new things. Companies don’t get ahead by doing the same old thing and copying everyone else, they get ahead by making new relationships, truly pushing the envelope and innovating their marketing.

I hope you all have a great holiday season, shoot an email to brian@dailyconversions.com if you’re going to be at Affiliate Summit West 2012 and we’ll talk!

The challenge was to go to a crowded movie where there were only a few remaining seats, sit dead center in the middle of the theater and influence the crowd to not sit next to me. Oh ya, there was one more condition, I couldn’t ask anyone to not sit next to me. I had to influence them all through body language and conversation with a friend that I brought with me for the experiment who was also sitting next to me. The goal was to get nobody to sit next to me, or my friend, and have nobody in front of or behind me.

This is an interesting case study because it required me to think on my feet the entire time and make a quick judgement call on each person entering the theater and what I would have to do to influence them to not sit next to me.

I’ll give you a couple of the tactics that I used throughout the case study, why I used them and what type of people I used them on if applicable.

• Talking really loud – This was used on quiet/shy looking people and older demographics that looked like they wouldn’t want to have to confront me if I kept up the talking throughout the movie. Granted this was still before the previews had even started so this didn’t work on everyone. Some people probably assumed I would quiet down.
• Putting my feet up on the chair in front of me and taking my shoes off slowly – This seemed to work on just about everyone, nobody wants to take the change of sitting in front of someone with their shoes off and smell someones feet right behind them the whole movie.
• Talking loudly to my friend about my  “illness” – I would use this when nothing else worked and someone got close to sitting next to me, they would immediately divert or sit several seats away.
• Coughing/sneezing uncontrollably – This was a universal tactic that I used when nothing else worked or if I couldn’t think of anything else for the type of person that came near.
• Talking to my accomplish about tall people that “always sit in front of me” – this would keep people clear of the seats in front of me if they were even remotely tall.
• Rocking in my seat - This would keep almost everyone from sitting behind me, they wouldn’t want to be distracted the entire movie from someone obnoxiously rocking in their chair and most people want to avoid confrontation of having to ask me to stop.

All in all this was a very fun case study. It was mostly doing different degrees of obnoxious acts to get people to steer clear. In a theater with several hundred seats, I managed to have the lefts to the left of us, right of us and in front and behind myself clear. This were the only 4 seats open except for the very first row aka stiff neck alley.

There were a few other tactics not listed that I just can’t remember, and as an adult and accomplished marketer repeating this case study probably isn’t a great idea. However, it is an interesting piece to look back on and get my mind going on how negative things can influence someone not to do something. If you know how to get someone not to do something, you can probably reverse that and figure out how to get them to actually DO something without the negative. I think as marketers it’s crucially important to understand both ends of the spectrum of postie and negative influence.

Now the big question. How can you reverse this tactic to instead of steering people away from something, steer them towards something? And, can you use decoys of your own to steer them to another product/website/etc of yours?

Context is critically important. One of the first lessons we learn is the importance of context – there is a time and place for every message.  Anyone caught passing a note to the cute girl in the front row in first grade and facing the embarrassment of having the note read aloud by your teacher can relate.  Mitt forgot that he was not only in front of millions of potential voters, but an army of social media pundits eager to pounce on any mistake.

For those of us who live on the internet, realize anything we post becomes part of the permanent record.  When running a promotion or committing anything to writing, think about the impact of your words in various contexts – from the front page of the New York Times to being rebroadcast by your least favorite political talk show host.  You can never assume a sentence will always be placed in context.

Consumers interpret moments in unexpected ways.  After the bet comment, the debate hall had moved on to the next question.  If you read the wire service or newspaper coverage that evening, the bet was not even mentioned.  But by Sunday morning it was the most talked about moment of the debate.

Again, when you make your living with words in public places, you have to think beyond your perspective before you post.  One of the most important lessons I am learning these days is the impact of culture on perception.  Take two people from different regions with different backgrounds, and they can see a message two totally different ways.  You know your audience, but you must also continually educate yourself on cultural impact on marketing.  Know your dominant culture, and experiment with writing in the voice of other cultures.  Work at reducing your risk of misinterpretation.

Don’t over commit.  (Or is it co-Mitt?).  Mitt was convinced he was right and Perry was wrong.  The bet proved he stood behind his opinion.  Naming any amount of money was unnecessary. Mitt is working to build a reputation as the trustworthy candidate, the non-fire bomb thrower.  He is working hard to make his word means something.  So he should have just offered Perry a bet.  Extend his hand to show he’s putting his word behind it.  Naming an amount of money, no matter the amount, was not required.

The risk to marketing people is over commitment.  To confuse truth with spin.  To go from selling the sizzle on your steak, to selling the sizzle on someone else’s steak.  And every time you cross that line, you run a risk.  In my career, I’ve learned to work hard to promote my product or service, squeeze every benefit and advantage out of the copy, but don’t overreach.  It seems to always cost more than $10,000.

This was a post by Rj.

For me, consulting started many years ago. I was having a lot of success with different aspects of my other businesses and it didn’t take long for others to want a piece of the pie. I’d get everything from daily partnership requests, to companies offering me obscene amounts of money to help them do what I’ve done.

At this point, I was thinking to myself  “Ok, I can keep my businesses going and help others have more success with theirs, to make even more money” make sense right? It worked pretty good and I made some money doing it, not the kind of money I would make working on my own projects, but it was nice supplemental money.

Most of the consulting clients were great clients. I was able to help them expand their businesses, make more money, get more customers, optimize their marketing efforts, and help them meet a lot of new contacts in their industry. I would say that my biggest success as a consultant was learning how to be completely honest with people, in fact brutally honest. I mean to the point that people hated hearing what I had to say because it hurt their ego for me to pick apart something that they thought was pretty good marketing wise, but ultimately increased the size of their wallet so they were happy at the end of the day.

But not all clients were great clients. I’d say roughly 1 out of 10 turns out to be a total nightmare. There is definitely a darker side to consulting. The darker side being working with clients that have you on strict NDAs, won’t let you use them as a reference, won’t let you brag about any of the big bucks you helped them make or thousands of additional affiliates or customers you got them, and more than anything the ones that don’t want you to have any of the credit for any of the success.

In fact, I still get clients every now and then that no matter how great the results, I’m still not allowed to mention a word, they want all the credit… and if they are paying for it, that’s something I have to live with. It doesn’t help me get any more clients, and sometimes makes me look weird when I have to beat around the bush on what kind of results someone else got, since I can’t really talk about it. As far as anyone is concerned that company did it all themselves. I usually can’t go around bragging that I created a major marketing strategy for a company that hit it big because of the strategy I created, that I helped create virtually every aspect of one of the most successful companies in a given industry since it’s inception, or that I increased a companies revenue $xxx,xxx last quarter.

Another type of client that I like to avoid at all costs is the client I call the double dipper. They want to pay consulting rates, but double dip and treat you like their employee. They quickly try to throw the consulting contract out the window and find ways to get you to do tasks that should be done by hourly employees. This is hugely insulting and I never stand for it. I made the decision long ago that I’m running a business of my own and not going to be hired exclusively for anyone else and commit 100% of my time to that one thing.

I’m successful because I do things my own way. I keep a steady flow of projects to keep myself motivated, and work on my own schedule. When I start having work hours, daily commutes, and hourly meetings, it messes up my flow and I’m not successful. I’m successful because I do things different than everyone else. My work habits down to my marketing strategies. In fact, I haven’t done that in, well, forever. The last company I worked for was selling TVs as a salesman on commission over 8 years ago now. I have never had a 9-5, and never plan on it.

Learning how to say no was a huge for me. Even to this day, I still get dozens of offers every month to do consulting, train marketing teams, create strategies for their business, setup email or conversion funnels, help them meet new contacts in their industry, etc. It’s extremely hard to say no, and it was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn. But, I have to be selective for the reasons in this post and some others I’d rather not post. And, it always stinks when you make friends with someone and ultimately have to say no to helping them.

I generally stick to a given rate and if I have an opening like I do right now for 1 client, then I will look through the different offers and pick not only on rate but on the overall feel I get from that company. I have some secret criteria that I use to qualify clients and it goes beyond their capital access, if I feel like they are “action” people and are actually going to get out of their own shell, and what their existing standing is in their industry. But there are other factors of what I look for in a company before deciding to consult with them, that I’d rather not list, maybe another time

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Let’s start from the very beginning of the process of working with a new client.

This is actually one of the most important parts of the whole future relationship. The reason is that it dictates how they perceive you and how much weight they give your input.

Here’s a case study on a situation I ran into

Several years ago I was consulting a company, for now we will call them Company X. This was one of my very first “big” consulting gigs and I was so excited to work with that company at the time, that I agreed to provide consulting for them at a discounted rate (that they knew was a highly discounted rate).

I agreed to it because I wanted them on my “resume” of consulting clients. Company X happened to be a giant in their industry, and they were in the same industry as a company I had consulted a little over a year earlier, whom I helped make a lot of money (Company Y).

Consulting begins. Now, I started to realize right away that Company X was making the same mistakes that the previous client was making, and I started to tell them exactly how to fix that problem, what needed to be changed, etc. It was very clear and obvious to me what had to be changed, and I conveyed that to their higher ups. However, this time around they didn’t want to take any of my advice as the previous company (Company Y) had taken (whom ran with and made a TON of money off of, by direct result.) Instead they wanted to do endless meetings and unnecessary paperwork and focus on literally everything except fixing their problems/increasing their profit. Essentially utilizing me for the complete wrong reasons.

This happens more than you would think in the consulting business. Someone hires you, you have the answer to their problem but for one reason or another they don’t act on that advice. We’ll get to my belief on what makes company not take advice well (ego can be part of it too).

A few more weeks went by with Company X and when the first months renewal came up, I had some other offers and projects on the horizon that would net me much more money (since I was consulting at a discounted price) and because I didn’t want to take money from them and have no results on their company (even though it was due to their inaction) – I was looking for great case studies and to build up my brand, and this wasn’t helping in that cause since they were extremely slow and inactive to my advice. I gave up on the consulting deal with this company and moved on.

Less than a week later I received a frantic call from a friend at Company X who had just been given a hard deadline of when they needed to increase profits by or their would be some major restructuring at the company. He seemed in fear of his job, etc. I explained to him that I was already working on 3 other projects at the time and that they would have to pay me much more money this time to get even a fraction of my time, and that I wasn’t happy with how things ended having had the answer to their problem over a month ago and they took basically no action and didn’t regard anything I had to say to help them.

So I reluctantly agreed to do this, for the much higher premium since I was busy and had to outsource one of my other projects now. I was kind of irritated at the whole thing, so I told them I wouldn’t be doing any unnecessary meetings, and it would be a 1 month trial pending they take my advice. I wasn’t looking for a paycheck to do nothing, I was looking for a case study of how I increased profits massively for big companies.

However, contrary to what I thought was going to happen, things were much different this time. All of a sudden (because I charged what I should have charged from the beginning, and laid down the new rules) they regarded my opinion much more and actually listened to (almost) all of my advice. They went on to not only hit their profit goal, but they beat it by more than double.

Later down the road, I had talked with the company and basically came to the conclusion that because I gave such a discounted rate, they didn’t take my advice seriously and didn’t act on anything and saw me as the low man on the totem pole that they could just use for advice on their marketing tactics (that weren’t working). Later when I was charging more, and they knew I could easily leave if they didn’t listen, AND they had a profit deadline – all of a sudden I was like a rock star in the company and everyone was taking action on my input and utilizing the consulting how they should have from the beginning.

The moral of the story for me is that you can never discount yourself. I mean that more than just in terms of a consulting salary too. When you lower your perception by accepting something that’s not an ideal scenario, it never seems to work out. I think this applies to all marketing and business in general. People like to assign a value and perception on you and your product, and if you help them to lower that perception and value it’s probably not going to work out.

I wanted to give a shout out to Dukeo the master of Reciprocal Marketing for creating such an excellent caricature of me (above).

Dukeo is a skilled marketer that has created an excellent way to market his blog by creating caricatures of famous marketers (like the one of me above). And then in turn it seems most of the marketers/bloggers link back to him without being asked. I sure did!

This marketing strategy could be applied to virtually any industry, any business, any business model to get people to look at your content and then get famous people in the industry to link back to you. It’s brilliant! Dukeo is one smart internet marketer.

Phone number in the wrong format, and make me correct it?

Does it really matter if I list my phone number as 1-222-333-4444 or 1(222)333-4444 or even 1222333444, are you not smart enough to know how to call me? And taking this even 1 step further, why can’t you the website owner have a very simple code built in to correct it for me, into your preferred format? If I typically list my phone number as 222-333-4444 and you make me re-enter it, I’m going to be moderately annoyed, possibly stopping dead in my tracks and not continuing.

This brings me to another, super super annoying thing that will make me leave a site and not complete a form that I otherwise may have.

Making me re-enter all of the data on a form because I put something in the wrong format or forgot 1 field, is not going to fly.

This is perhaps one of my biggest pet peeves and I will literally not buy or fill out your form and go to a competitor if this happens. I have to assume that you are pretty dense and no longer trust you with my business if you don’t realize how irritating this is. I’ll let it slide on something like a contact form where I’m reaching out to you to try to get a favor or make a deal happen, but if its a direct lead form or purchase form, I will probably not buy or send you my lead and not return.

Having a 1,2 or 3 page/step form and then timing out in the middle is super annoying.

I can perfectly understand if you have a time-out of say, 1 hour or something like that. But if you have a 3 step form and are asking me detailed questions, I’m going to take my time answering them and that’s likely more than 5, 10 or even 15 minutes for me to get through it and put any sort of thought into what I’m writing. I will absolutely not start over, because most likely I was filling it out on your site and not saving a copy elsewhere. And, I’m sure not going to remember or want to write it all over again.

Don’t make me confirm ridiculously hard letters/numbers in your security box.

I absolutely hate when I can’t figure out what a number or letter is in a security box, especially if all of the letters are extremely different to tell what they are. Seriously, you need to put up with a bit of spam or have an easier security box, or you are going to be turning away a lot of leads that don’t want to be bothered by a ridiculously hard security boxes.

There are a few different negative personality and behavior traits that I’ve come across, that I think you should aim really hard to avoid. I broke them down into types and gave them a name.

The desperate rumor pest.

The desperate rumor pest is not someone that likes to brag just to brag or spread rumors just to spread rumors… In the back of their mind they think they are building repertoire with the person or persons they are “sharing secret information” (aka made up information) with. This character type has a dark side that you may not see at first, because you are busy laughing or awing at them with what they are telling you about, but at the end of the day this is a desperate character type that you should be leery of. Lastly, I call them pests, because it seems like every time you talk to them they just want to talk to you about the latest gossip, rumors and anything but business to waste your time and continue building their fake repertoire talking about hog-wash. A cleaver rumor pest will try not to be a pest when giving you this privy information in an attempt to remain disguised. Remember, the rumor pest is desperate so they are using this as a means to communicate with you in a way that hopefully you will start confiding in them and maybe even doing business together.

The chin talking fibber.

This character type is one of the funniest types to encounter, as a skilled “person reader”. If you ever see me in mid conversation with someone at a marketing conference and start laughing uncontrollably at seemingly nothing, that means that I’ve encountered a chin talking fibber. The reason I call them a chin talking fibber is that their face, and often times their chin is a dead give away as far as telling the truth or lying. I can watch someones body language and with relatively good accuracy tell you what was true and what was false out of the information that they gave. There are a lot of subliminal signs that you will want to look out for. A couple quick ones are to watch for subliminal shakes of the head. If someone is ever telling you “yes” but moving their head in a “no” left to right motion, you should be very leery as it could indicate that they are just saying yes to something they “hope” they can do, but really aren’t sure, hence the subliminal “no” shake of the head. That can work in reverse too, shaking the head yes when saying “no”, like something you’d see Robert DeNiro doing in a mafia movie… holding the chin really tight and shaking up and down. At the end of the day, the lies are meant to get you to do business with them, claiming this that and the other thing.

The too good to be true smooth talker.

I’m sure we all know this time. Everything comes out a crispy smooth. There’s no problems in the world, everything can be accomplished with just a little bit of work! Nothing is too hard for this type and if you spend enough money, you’ll be the next Bill Gates… at least according to the smooth talking too good to be true types. I run into these guys all the time. A quick way to test if someone is full of them-self is to ask a question that is obviously a “no” answer, and see if they do everything possible not to utter the word “no”. This is a big sign of a guy way too full of him/herself. I’m not saying that it’s bad to never say no, but combined with a guy that already sounds too good to be true, adding the refusal to say the word “no” can be a sign that you’ve run into these types. Be careful, because once in a while you will run into someone that can actually do everything (me) — just kidding. On the flip side, I don’t think anyone on earth exists that’s good at EVERYTHING.

Hope you enjoyed and took something away from this. There are a lot of good people out there, don’t get me wrong… but be careful because there is a lot of evil, and other people that want to take advantage of you, tarnish your reputation, hurt you, and do other not so nice things just because they have nothing better to do, or even worse to get ahead themselves!