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It’s December 31st again and tonight we will bring in the New Year at midnight when the ball drops in New York City‘s Time Square.  2009 was a rough year for most of us.  The economy hit us all hard and we all tightened our belts and spent less then in previous years.

The biggest mistake for many companies was to cut back on marketing.  I’m not just saying this because I’m in the marketing field.  I didn’t cut back in this area.  Although it was a rough economy, I felt it was important to do as much as possible to get the HJMT brand out there.

If you are considering doing marketing and PR in 2010, do it.  Don’t hold back.  Remember the old saying, “you need to spend money to make money?”  Go for it and get out there!

You’ll see your business will benefit from the added exposure and visibility.  I know it.  I’ve been there myself!

Have a wonderful and prosperous 2010!

It’s my daughter’s birthday today. She just turned 18.  It doesn’t mean much to anyone but me, my family and her friends but it also means that HJMT is also 18.

You see, I started the business a few months before she was born.  After I gave birth, I went into full gear and worked diligently to start a firm up out of my one bedroom beach front apartment in Long Beach.  Within a year or so, my business expanded and my husband and I had to get a bigger apartment.  We lived in a two bedroom apartment facing the beach for nearly two years.  I hired staff immediately, because at that time, publicity and PR was very labor intensive.

My first employee was a young man who lasted about a week.  I had given him keys to my apartment and when he quit, he left the keys on my computer with the door wide open.  I had several more of those unpleasant experiences where some of my employees actually used petty cash for lunch at McDonald’s and then put the receipt in the petty cash drawer as if it was “cool” to do so!

After that incident, I had enough and my husband and I decided to buy a high ranch home.  We figured that my business would be in the garage and I would stay there for many years while the kids grew up.  We finished the garage, put heat and air in it and it really looked like a real office.  I hired a bunch of mother’s who were in the PR field and left to raise their families.  Within a year, I had more than seven people working for me.  People had keys to my house and would come in and out as they pleased.  One time I hired a woman and she actually had the “chutzpah” to come upstairs and knock on my bedroom door!

In any event, the garage lasted not as long as I hoped and I decided to rent an office in Long Beach to be close to the family.  After five years, across the street from the Long Island Rail Road station, we decided to move to Westbury.

As soon as we moved, we tripled in staff and in income.  Today, we had three offices — Manhattan, Rochester and Long Island.  I have the most incredible staff who work so hard to make sure that they do right by our clients and I have the most amazing clients who hire us year after year because they respect our work and know that we do a great job for them!

So in retrospect, here’s to my daughter and here’s to her twin, HJMT!

The statement, “Flexibility is the key to success” seemed to haunt me as I was presenting for my final certification with a nationally recognized training firm—my first “real” training job.  It was almost as though the master trainer (or so to speak), used this phrase as an opportunity to disrupt and throw curve balls to the candidates, perhaps to evaluate their level of flexibility.  The group faired forth and met with success.  Still, those words continue to stick with me.

The wisdom of those words is poignant because humans are creatures of habit.  I remind people of the nature of habits when correcting an accent or speech problem.  Speech is, possibly, one of the first habits humans develop.  If incorrect speaking behavior is permitted during formative years, correcting those problems later becomes the equivalent of breaking a habit as old as the speaker.

The thesaurus offers synonyms for the word, “flexibility” such as, “suppleness,” “elasticity,” “litheness,” and “give.”  These are the qualities that help business people to play well the cards that life and their jobs have dealt them.  The manager or employee who is well skilled at adapting to change finds ways to be more successful and thrive under any conditions.  Part of this willingness to change and grow is in the ability to look at prior mistakes and seek ways to correct them moving forward.

Therefore, one crucial job of the trainer / educator / instructor is to provide paths in which individuals can examine and develop ways in which they can become more flexible.  It is a quality that is equivalent to gold and should be presented to businesses and participants as such.  As trainers, our main goal is to ensure that each participant moves closer to the much-desired result—better and more effective ways of doing things.  They (and we) will work better if we help them and ourselves to become more flexible.

One way of developing this precious quality is through practicing public speaking—specifically impromptu speaking.  The communicator who can formulate and articulate ideas quickly will, indeed, have come a long way in her or his ability to “go with the flow.”  Part of the secret of delivering an effective spontaneous speech is by staying quiet long enough at the start of the speech (only a few seconds) to gather the thoughts and then grow to a point.  Silence can be misinterpreted, but is rarely misquoted.

In my estimation, public speaking is probably one of the greatest ways that people can develop into better and more useful souls.  I believe it makes people become “weller than well.”  I have seen participants transcend any reservations they once had about public speaking.  Once they got past their old ideas and began to practice public speaking regularly, things of great import began to occur.  So it may be with you and your class members as well.

Another component to being successful with change is the willingness to practice.  Practice, practice, practice—That’s how to get to Carnegie Hall, right?  We get the most from new ideas and ways of doing things when we truly practice them.  Only by repetition can these new ways of doing things become grooved and part of our daily lives.  As we improve, we will achieve greater results.  Also, we will see our fellows change as well.  Through practice, people become good at accepting change.  Becoming “skilled at change,” among other things, will increase our own credibility and help us to gain greater personal and professional satisfaction.

Richard J. Atkins, Ed.D. is the founder of Improving Communications, and offers public and private classes to develop Business Writing, Public Speaking, Customer Service, and Leadership. Visit www.improvingcommunications.com or call 516.317.2900.

Today as I was driving into the city, I spotted the following dump truck, read the back of it and laughed.  It said, “Nothing is like a Good Dump!” I thought you might catch a giggle or two too!  Enjoy the day…

Split run marketing is a very old concept, which is made even easier with the advent of electronic marketing.

The concept is extremely simple.  All you do is have two or more different offers, or looks and present those offers to groups of prospects.  For example, send an email to one group saying save money.  Send another email to another group saying best value.  Send another email to another group saying save time.  If you were to send 100 emails to each group, track which group gets which email and then figure out which marketing message garners the most response.

Then when you go to send 5,000 emails (and I’m not suggesting spam, rather I’m suggesting this with a permission list of people who have signed up to receive your information).  Use the message that resonates most with people.

Split run marketing can also be done easily in telemarketing (again, not irritating, unwanted, unwelcome telemarketing, rather telemarketing existing accounts that expect and want to hear from you).  Test different scripts to determine which one sells the most.

Split run marketing can also be done on the web with landing pages, colors, positions of buttons.  Experiment with minor changes to see what sells best.

Split run marketing can be promoted in social media as an experiment.  For instance there can be a blog entry on best value and see how many people click through versus how many people want lowest price.  Or write an article and see how many people are interested in what it is that’s being promoted.

Although the concept is old, it still applies.  It is easy.  It is inexpensive.  And it works.

By Jim Estill

www.jimestill.com