Publishers Perspective: Change
– By Josh Warburton –
The only constant in life is change, the quote from Heraclitus goes. And change it does! Just when I think I’ve got things dialed in, life throws a curveball, or two, or three. But that’s how life is, constantly throwing new challenges at you. So what’s my message with all of this? I guess it’s probably more a message to myself, so take from it what you will. Roll with it, baby… as the classic song goes. Life is gonna do what life is gonna do.
And that’s what I come back to more and more, and it was something I touched on in last month’s article. That the world is chaos, and you can only control how you react to it. I know it sounds like an oversimplification, but when you break life down, what is it really…? As we humans experience it, it’s a series of things happening all around us in the world we can see, hear, taste, and touch, as well as beyond that space. And it’s us reacting to those things, our moving through it. And that’s about it. I know it’s a simple way of looking at it, but as best as I can tell, that’s just what it is.
So all we can do is try to control our reactions to things to use them in the most productive ways. But how? Most of us react in real-time when someone cuts us off or says a rude comment. And some of that is self-preservation. You do need to respond immediately when someone comes into your lane, but you may not need to when someone speaks an unkind word. I think that’s the difficulty. We are programmed to react. We need to, in many cases. So figuring out when to take my time to react is really the process for me.
When I was younger, specifically as a teenager, I would react quickly, often overreact. But it got me in trouble. My overreaction often got a negative reaction, more so than maybe I’d expected. And when I went into business for myself publishing this little paper way back in 1996, I quickly learned that I needed to measure my reactions when I was trying to sell someone an ad. I also honed my customer service skills during those periods as well. A sharp customer scolded me for not getting to the point and chit-chatting too long. From then on, I almost always had a pivot point in every sales call where I moved it from the greeting and banter with a “the reason for my call today is…” And while it’s a little salesy it keeps things on course as not to waste anyone’s time. And if they’re not ready to talk turkey, they’ll usually say so right there, as a customer in Springdale did last year. We hadn’t talked about one of our favorite subjects yet, where we’d had a good dining experience recently. So we caught up on all that and then got down to business.
And that circles me back around to rolling with it. In sales, as in life, you have to be good at rolling with the punches, not letting each difficult task be a drag. Life will always be challenging, but there are almost always some silver linings. Keep your head up. You got this. Happy reading.
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