I was listening to a podcast, where the interviewer was mentioning the classic coffee challenge that I have heard before. This is a simple, yet daring, challenge that take guts to do. You will improve your personal skills of selling, buying, or negotiating. Basically you go to any coffee shop, buy a coffee (or tea, cake, anything) and where you are about to pay, you look at the cashier and request:
- Can I get a percentage off... just for the sake of it?
The end-result of this exercise does not matter. If you got a discount, great. if not, great too. What it matters is that you do it, and then you take time to analyze the way you approach the request and how you felt. Most of the time you will get something out in that moment... or it will be something you will get in the future. Becoming more friendly with the cashier is also a win situation. Next time he will recognize you and make your next visit more pleasant than before (or will give you a bad face, and you can take a laugh out of it).
I did that challenge online with the service Followup.cc this week. I basically emailed the chat girl on the website and mentioned that I was highly interested in their service and that I would like to know if they had a "first-timer" discount coupon. I left the chat, and when I came back to my computer, I found an email from the lady at followup.cc sending me a 50% coupon to join for one year in the service.
I did join the service because it really help me out on the trial-out week.
Changing the subject to my personal life, I was mentioning to Carol that I feel really happy these days. I feel comfortable being in our house in Miami and working in our home-office.
I applied these days another tip, (another advise from the same podcast) about using your friends as coaches and police to make sure I get done three things from my To-Do list. In the first time in the morning, I send a Whatsapp message to my friend in Mexico and to my girlfriend, three things that I will be doing today. Each one responds with a chat with three things they will do that day too. We chat during the day to check on our progress and cheer up each other. Before the end of the day, we ask each other if we finish them or what. If we did not finish them, we tried to give crap to each other. That makes it fun and give us a goal to achieve each day.
This week I excelled in three days, and failed in two days. Anyways, I felt that I was really busy during the week and got a lot accomplish.
If in one year I always do 3 things each day; then at the end of the year, I will have accomplish more than 1,000 things that I was set to do.
Recommendation:
Get your best friends to help you achieve your three goals and this will also help them to become for active. You will recognize as well what friends are good at it and who is really a lazy bastard.
Eduardo Guayo Kouri
- Can I get a percentage off... just for the sake of it?
The end-result of this exercise does not matter. If you got a discount, great. if not, great too. What it matters is that you do it, and then you take time to analyze the way you approach the request and how you felt. Most of the time you will get something out in that moment... or it will be something you will get in the future. Becoming more friendly with the cashier is also a win situation. Next time he will recognize you and make your next visit more pleasant than before (or will give you a bad face, and you can take a laugh out of it).
I did that challenge online with the service Followup.cc this week. I basically emailed the chat girl on the website and mentioned that I was highly interested in their service and that I would like to know if they had a "first-timer" discount coupon. I left the chat, and when I came back to my computer, I found an email from the lady at followup.cc sending me a 50% coupon to join for one year in the service.
I did join the service because it really help me out on the trial-out week.
Changing the subject to my personal life, I was mentioning to Carol that I feel really happy these days. I feel comfortable being in our house in Miami and working in our home-office.
I applied these days another tip, (another advise from the same podcast) about using your friends as coaches and police to make sure I get done three things from my To-Do list. In the first time in the morning, I send a Whatsapp message to my friend in Mexico and to my girlfriend, three things that I will be doing today. Each one responds with a chat with three things they will do that day too. We chat during the day to check on our progress and cheer up each other. Before the end of the day, we ask each other if we finish them or what. If we did not finish them, we tried to give crap to each other. That makes it fun and give us a goal to achieve each day.
This week I excelled in three days, and failed in two days. Anyways, I felt that I was really busy during the week and got a lot accomplish.
If in one year I always do 3 things each day; then at the end of the year, I will have accomplish more than 1,000 things that I was set to do.
Recommendation:
Get your best friends to help you achieve your three goals and this will also help them to become for active. You will recognize as well what friends are good at it and who is really a lazy bastard.
Eduardo Guayo Kouri
