New Electronic World Order
As most of you know I am in the business of working with people who want to create more business. Creating more business can also mean creating a better life. Creating a better life often means spending more time with family and friends building, strong relationships.
I have recently been intrigued by the electronic experience. I am a computer, cell phone, and PDA user out of need. I have a love/hate relationship. All are necessary evils for me. We need them today to do business. For me, business and managing my time make these tools needed in today’s business society. We have taken these tools beyond the workplace, bringing them into our personal lives. Let me share some observations so that you might see what I see.
I read my email during the business week almost daily. Some days I read it twice per day. Occasionally I will miss a business day, never opening my email. Email correspondence takes me an average of about 30 minutes, never longer than 45 minutes. First I delete all those emails that get past my spam filter. Then I answer those important business and personal emails. Recently a new email product was introduced that allows the sender to create a video message. Timing the video from start to finish takes three to five minutes. Each of these videos can take as much as 10% of my current email reading time, which now becomes video-viewing time. If for some reason you miss something in the video, you have to replay the whole video. When having conversation with the originator of these videos I am told that this type of email makes email more personal. Grandparents can use this to send their image to grandchildren. Grandchildren can be seen “live” by grandparents who live thousands of miles away. How about this for a new idea, have an assigned time once every 30 days (or more frequently) for a telephone call and videoconference. Go visit the family FACE to FACE. Email was designed to give us more time to do more face to face relationship building…not less. The significance of this is to encourage us to make more of our free time by creating more one on one interaction, making relationships stronger.
Remember when mom or grandma would take you for a walk in your stroller? I don’t. However, I do remember my mother taking me with grandma and my baby sisters for a walk with the baby in the stroller. We would interact, play, joke, and learn as we walked. Today I see parents and grandparents enjoying the great outdoors with their families while having cell phones plugged into their ears. They are with their children, but not “there” with them. The learning time has ceased to exist because there is no longer any interaction between adult and child. I think the invention of those small headsets was created because people of my generation are embarrassed by holding the handset to their head while interacting with their child. It makes me sick. We are already seeing the results in our schools where teachers are becoming more of the parent.
What is the point of this? I am almost as guilty of these crimes as those described above. I, like most of you, have become a slave to the electronic world we live in. Recently I came to my senses. I started to practice what I have been preaching for years. I started to do more face to face with my clients. Guess what? My referrals started to increase from the clients I met with face to face. I have been doing this with my limited family for years. It works there, too, building stronger, more supportive, nurturing relationships. Use these electronic pieces of equipment to their best use. Remember, it is the relationships we build today that will last a lifetime.
Gerry Rose runs INTEGRITY Networking Solutions in Oceanside, CA. He works with realtors who want to attract the right prospects and their affinity partners who want to generate more referrals. More than 10,000 businesses have been presented the INTEGRITY Networking Solutions system in San Diego, Riverside, and Orange Counties.
Gerry’s stimulating presentation Unlimited Prospects, Unlimited Referrals is ideally suited for small business owners, home-based businesses, and independent professionals who want clearer direction and want to attract more prospects, develop dynamic systems, and strengthen their companies’ accountability. Gerry does one on one consulting, conducts a range of keynote speeches from thirty minutes to full-day education workshops.
His book series, Unlimited Prospects, Unlimited Referrals, are available on the website, www.integritysd.com.
Gerry has more than 20 years’ experience directing business owners how to grow their businesses. He is a networking dynamo. Those who know him will assure you that he does a great job of bringing people together—which is why he started Integrity.
Involved with networking organizations since 1984, Gerry is a Distinguished Toastmaster, a member of Toastmaster International, and has chaired numerous chambers of commerce and non-profit organizations.
Are you truly committed to attracting the right prospects and generate more referrals? If so then contact INTEGRITY Networking Solutions for availability and information. You can contact Gerry by mail at 1610 Quiet Hills Drive, Oceanside, CA 92056. Direct dial (760) 439-4623; e-mail to gerry@integritysd.com. For more information, go to www.integritysd.com
