Recently I put together a video series I titled “Effective Email Communication,” because I see so many emails that are, well, crappy.

I know that isn’t a professional word, but I can’t think of another word that captures what I’m trying to say.

I’m telling you, they are bad emails.  And “bad emails” don’t discriminate… I see them from old people (who should know better), young people (who think emails are going the way of the dodo birds), educated people, executives, professionals, and branding and marketing experts.

We need to do better at our communication (remember the 2012 theme for JibberJobber?), and we can start with our emails.

Here’s ONE tip on writing better emails: write a subject line that will decrease the chance of me deleting your email before I read it.

When I come into my office every morning, here’s what I do:

1. I open my email.
2. I look at the subject lines, and select all the ones that look like spam, or are not personal, or that I think I know about already.
3. I delete all of those from step 2, without reading them.
4. Then, I go through whatever is left over.

I’ve been doing this for more years that I can remember. I did it with Outlook, I do it now with Gmail.

And I bet many of you do the same thing… do you open that email from the Nigerian spammer, or do you delete it?

That’s what I thought.

I bet there are others that you automatically judge, based on the subject line, that you simply delete.

Here’s some unsettling information:  You are sending emails to people who are doing the same thing, to your precious emails!

Ouch, right?

My message: write BETTER email subject lines! That is the topic of my 7 minute clip titled “Compelling Subject Lines: Want your email to be read?” (the forth clip in the email series).  You can get the entire video series here for $50.

That was it.  I think I went in, did whatever you do on your last day (I can’t remember), was probably taken to lunch buy the team, and I’m sure I left early.

I remember driving home, for the last time.  Again, every emotion running though my mind.

I distinctly remember feeling an intense, heavy burden leave my shoulders.

I was free.  Free to find a better environment.  Free to work with a leadership team I wanted to work with, instead of one I was forced to work with.  Free to find a better paying job, and continue moving forward with my dream of being an exec at a big, traditional company.

I had no idea what the next six years would bring.

Thank goodness I was laid off.

Note: I talked about not being able to find my resume on Day 2. I just learned about  the Resume Index, which has a lot of do-it-yourself templates to look at… check it out

We had been married for almost eleven years when I got laid off.  During those 11 years, my wife had supported me through two degrees and a couple of positive job changes.  She took many leaps of faith as I formulated my career path, and was excited during the journey.

Even during this time, the most unwelcome change in my calculated path, she was supportive.  She was there to help me pick myself up off the ground.  Even though she was going to go through her own introspective time, and we went through a rough time of not communicating (because we would only share the positive news, which was few and far between), she was there to support.

And, when I had the crazy idea to do something on my own, which eventually led to JibberJobber, she was my biggest cheerleader.  And the first few months, when I worked from about 5 am until 11pm every day, and did nothing more than figure out this business, she took over all family stuff and let me do this.

Over the years, she has supported me in a lot of ways, and is a major reason why we are where we are today.  She is much more supportive than I have been of her endeavors.

I want to thank her, and invite you to thank her, for being the most significant person in helping change the outcome of my layoff from what could have been bad to something that has been beautiful, touching tens of thousands, maybe even millions, of lives.

Thank you!

Third day laid off, but still in the office so I could transition the new president to take the reigns.

I thought about the key people I had working for me who had since left the company.  Greg was awesome. He was the whole package, as far as I was concerned.  When he told me he was leaving I left work early that day, because I need to be away, and have a place to think.  He was key to the company.

And he left.

Want to know what I told him?  ”You need to do what’s best for you and your family – don’t worry about us or this company.”

That’s the same thing I told Cory, who was my right hand man.  I loved working with Cory.  He was amazing.  And the day he left I think I went home, baked a cake, and ate a bunch of cake and ice cream (not in celebration, more as a comfort food tactic.  Hey, I’m human :p).

“What’s best for you and your family.”  That’s what I always said.

I wondered why I never did what was best for ME and MY FAMILY. I gave too much to this damned company for them to let me go the way they did.

I gave too much to this company to get a few piddly weeks of severance.

Why did I not take care of ME and MY FAMILY?

Never again… never again.  What I sowed, I did not reap.  And now I had some relationships to fix.  Little did I know I wouldn’t be whole enough to work on them for years down the road.

Please, I implore you: Do what’s best for YOU and YOUR FAMILY.

I normally don’t blog twice on one day, but I have the next few weeks of posts already written and need to squeeze this in.  Last weekend we uploaded a number of fixes and enhancements to the website – about 40 of them.  You might have seen some already… here’s one I really wanted to let you know about.

This is our third enhancement to what we call the Email to Log Entry feature.  It is my Number 1 feature in JibberJobber.

We first announced the feature with a 9 minute video, showing you how to create a Log Entry on a contact that already existed in your database.  You can see that announcement and learn more here (from eight months ago).

A month later we announced the important feature that helps you prevent a long email thread going into the Log Entry.  You can put a series of characters in the email, and when the JibberJobber server sees your series of characters, it will not put anything after the string in the Log Entry.  This is a very important feature that allows me to keep my Log Entries from getting big (and, keeps my email signature OUT of the Log Entries.  Learn more here.

Today, I want to announce the next enhancement, which is just awesome.  Here’s the PROBLEM it solves:

In the past (before this enhancement), I would have to add the person to my Contact list, and then I could send an email that would create a Log Entry.

Not a “big” deal, but it was a pain to have to go to JibberJobber and create a new record BEFORE you could send an email to create the Log Entry.

Now, you can send an email to your special Email to Log Entry address (see this video if you don’t know what I’m talking about), and if the person isn’t in your Contact List, it will be added!! And, the email will be added as a Log Entry!

This is HUGE.  It is a major time-savor.

Here’s what you need to know/know:

1. Again, this is a Premium feature.  This alone makes the $9.95/month worth it (so I’ve been told :p)
2. By default, this feature is turned off.  We don’t want you to accidentally create new Contact records without you knowing about it, so you have to turn the feature on.  Click on My Account, then go to Preferences, and then check the box that says this:



3. Here’s the most important thing… the FORMAT of your email needs to be one of these two:”First Name Last Name” <email@address.com>OR”Last Name, First Name” <email@address.com>So, you need to have:ONE: The first and last names IN QUOTES.  If there is a comma, then we think the last name is first, and the first name is after the comma.  If there is no comma, we think everything before the space is the first name and everything after the space is the last name.  Take out acronyms and all the other junk that can end up there to keep it clean

   TWO: The email address, in the <brackets>.

There you go.  Enjoy this super awesome feature of JibberJobber!

I have used this feature multiple times in the last day as I have found new contacts and prospects, and saved TIME with this feature… AWESOME!

If you haven’t upgraded yet, click here to see the best upgrade options.

Day 2 of being laid off (six years ago).

I was told they wanted me to stay on for the week to transition the new president.  He didn’t really need it, but I think they were being nice just to give me another week of salary.  What other options did I have? None…

So I spent the second day, as I remember it, with my door closed, looking for my old resume, that was six years old.

After a few hours of not finding anything, I went online to look for resume templates (not something I recommend).

I’m sure I dinked around looking at news sites, and spending time with my emotions swirling, wondering what the heck was going on.

I am sure I wondered why I was making a salary that day, when I didn’t do anything really for the company. But they asked me to stay, so I did.

And thus, one of my first days of doing meaningless stuff.  And I’m sure the depression started coming in.

The writing was on the wall.

But to this day, six years ago, I didn’t believe it could really happen to me. I had done too much for the company. I sacrificed things. I put them before my family, and my health.

But one board member walked in and told me it was time for the board of directors call.  He had left the company about 18 months before, but had been involved in board meetings without my knowledge.

He knew what this call was about, and he tried to prep me.

I was going to get laid off, on the phone.

After it was done, he took me to lunch so I wouldn’t have to lick my wounds in private.

Then, after lunch, we had a meeting where we announced to a stunned company that I was leaving, and he was going to take my place.

What emotions did I experience?  I think all of them.  Across the spectrum.  Hope and shame at the same time.  It was weird.

And thus, my journey began!  Thank you for being a part of it…!  Six years since that day, once dreaded, now celebrated!

You, too, will celebrate your day that you might now remember with bad feelings.

January 18, 2008. Showing Compassion to a Job Seeker.  This was a good one, for sure.  Here are seven specific things I suggest to help that special job seeker in your life…. and with a supporting story for each point.

Read it here

I found an interesting post on RecruitingBlogs by Paul Gumbinner, a recruiter. I love to hear what recruiters think about the job search process and job seekers. Their perspective can really help us refine our message and usually self-made systems.

Paul’s post is titled A New One On Me, and talks about his experience with a shady competitor that was doing something that was likely unethical.  Apparently, it is abundant in the recruiter space. It’s an interesting story – read it here.

What really got me, though, was the comment from Sandra McCartt – Sandra comments a lot on these posts and always has really good, fair input.  Check out this snippet from her comment:

I tell candidates that when any recruiter asks them to sign any kind of contract or any agreement other than a permission to check references they should limit it to that specific job if they are dumb enough to sign anything at all.

and later….

I agree he was foolish to sign it.

So what do you sign, with a recruiter?  I’d love to get Nick Corcodilos to weigh in on this one… but here is my take-away for today: Don’t Sign Anything!!

JibberJobber is a relationship management tool.

In Never Eat Alone, Keith Ferrazzi said something to the effective of “it’s not enough to collect names and number (and email addresses), we should know how strong the relationship is with our contacts.”

He suggested a system where you rank each contact as an A contact, a B contact, or a C contact.  In JibberJobber we have a 0 through 5 star ranking system.

Debbie (who I saw has logged in more than 1,000 times – congratulations Debbie!!) asks this question:

There are the stars for rating the strength of relationship. One time you shared your one star criteria” room for improvement and want to move it forward”. Can you share your criteria for the other stars?

Right under the star section on the add/edit page (of Contacts) there is a link that says “Click Here for more info on this.”  When you click that link it shows you this:

First, you must understand that you can use this feature however you want… here is an example of what many networking “experts” suggest.

Imagine you have a friend from school, named Joe, that you’ve kept in touch with for years. You follow eachothers careers, and when you are in town, you get together for dinner or to hang out. This is a person that you trust with anything, and if you were in a bind, they would help you out in any way that they could. This person would get five stars. 

Let’s say that Joe introduces you to a friend of theirs. You can tell that this friend, Sally, has a great deal of respect for Joe, and Joe is highly endorsing you. However, the casual introduction to Sally is brief, and you don’t really have the basis of a good networking relationship. When you enter Sally into your network, you would probably give her two stars. 

Now, let’s say you go to a convention and there is a terrific guest speaker. You introduce yourself after her speech, but so do dozens of other people. You really don’t have any relationship with this person, but you know you want to develop one. Give this person one star. 

Note that the goal is to CULTIVATE the relationships with each person, so just because someone is just a  or a  that isn’t bad. You need to work on your relationship with that person, and their rank will eventually increase.

Now, almost 6 years later, here’s how I use it (mine is totally on a whim, and subject to change… you can use the stars however you want):

0 Stars: If I hear  about you and want to put your name in the system.  If I haven’t met you.  This is so I can get you in my system, but I know I have no relationship and probably have not had any communication with you.

1 Star: If I met you in person, or we have been introduced via email, and I’m not sure if there’s a relationship there, or if we don’t really have something significant to pursue.

2 Stars: If I met you in person and I really want to pursue something… we’ve had a good conversation, even if it was really short, and I think there is something there.

3 Stars: When we’ve had a few conversations, or when I can tell that you are a networker and would value the relationship (ie, if you do me a favor, or are an evangelist, etc.)

4 Stars: When our relationship has moved forward and I feel it is really strong.  This is a great place to be – I am confident that goals align, or that you love what I’m doing and will be a champion/advocate for me, etc.

5 Stars: When our relationship is awesome, and I feel like I can call on you for anything and you’ll respond and help… and that I’d bend over backwards to help you if/when I can.

So that’s how I kind of use it… what do you think?