January 28, 2020

Thoughtful Thursday: The Truth About being ‘Triggered’ — You’re Not!

Thoughtful Thursday: The Truth About being ‘Triggered’ — You’re Not!

In today’s cultural landscape, words like triggered, unsafe and harm have expanded beyond clinical use into daily dialogue.

While originally meant to validate genuine emotional distress, these terms are now often weaponized to shut down debate, silence opposing views, and evade discomfort.

But here’s the reality: Not every moment of unease is trauma.

Often, what we label as being “triggered” is simply being unpracticed at navigating challenging ideas or difficult conversations. 🎯😤

The Difference Between Trauma and Discomfort

It’s vital to acknowledge that trauma is real.

Those who have endured deep emotional or psychological pain deserve empathy and support.

However, conflating everyday disagreement or intellectual friction with trauma dilutes the term and disrespects those with real suffering.

Using “triggered” to describe the discomfort of hearing an opposing viewpoint isn’t self-care—it’s intellectual avoidance.

It reframes debate as aggression and dialogue as danger. ⚠️

This mindset doesn’t safeguard you; it stifles growth.

Why Resilience Matters

Resilience isn’t something you’re born with—it’s built.

Like a muscle, your capacity to handle disagreement, uncertainty, and cognitive dissonance strengthens with practice.

Each time you withdraw from a tough conversation, instead of engaging, you miss a chance to develop emotional and intellectual fortitude.

Life is full of uncomfortable moments.

Offense is not injury.

A conflicting opinion is not abuse.

If you feel overwhelmed by views different from your own, the issue may not be the world’s intolerance—it may be your lack of practice in dealing with diversity of thought.

From Protection to Practice

It’s comfortable to stay in familiar territory.

Social media algorithms, curated news, and echo chambers make it easy to avoid dissent.

But real growth happens outside your comfort zone.

Instead of defaulting to the language of harm when faced with pushback, try reflecting:
❓Am I genuinely traumatized, or just uncomfortable?
❓Is this conversation threatening my well-being, or challenging my beliefs?
❓Could this be an opportunity to learn rather than retreat?

Choose Strength Over “Safety”

Cultivating emotional and intellectual resilience leads to richer relationships, deeper understanding, and a more nuanced worldview.

It empowers you to engage with the world as it is—complex, contradictory, and challenging—rather than hiding from perspectives that differ from your own.

So the next time you feel that defensive heat rise—pause.

Breathe.

Ask yourself whether you’re facing real trauma or the ordinary friction of human exchange.

Choose practice over protection.

Choose strength over symbolic safety.

#ThoughtfulThursday—Your mind—and your ability to contribute meaningfully to the world—depends on it. 💪🔥

If you’re tired of the coddling and crave more unfiltered takes, subscribe for weekly doses of uncomfortable truths.

Cheers,
Roy
My Podcast Show Audacious Moves to A BILLION shares the specific Moves I made to achieve jaw-dropping growth in an insanely competitive internet business.

”The Audacious Unheard of Ways I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES” is the latest in my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series.

• Posted 1.28.20 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
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January 27, 2020

Why salespeople don’t like talking to you if you’re not buying

Why salespeople don’t like talking to you if you’re not buying.

How often do you get the feeling that once the salesperson you are dealing with finally gets that you’re not interested in buying from them, they abruptly start to close down the conversation and usher you to the door?

It’s like “Now that I see that you’re not going to but anything from me, I’m not prepared to invest anymore time in you.”

This type of salesperson is looking for the easy sale and when they sense it’s not coming they want to dump you and move on to their next target.

Effective and honest sales is NOT about the quick and easy sale that can be scaled.

These quick hitters spend their time designing their sales process to minimize the amount of face-time they have with a potential client and maximize the number of pitches they make during the day to yield as many sales as they can.

And some sales organizations add an additional component to the sales process — “the closer”. This is the dude or dudette that enters the client meeting when it’s obvious the client resists buying.

The closer’s role is to harden the interaction even further and push for the sale. The logic is simple: if the client isn’t buying from the first salesperson, maybe, with more push and a different person they will soften up and buy.

This “get ‘em in — get ‘em out” pressure process gives the sales profession a bad name. It’s the stereotypical hard sell approach devoid of any meaningful human interaction with the potential client.

The salesperson in this scenario cares little about the person and more about the product.

It’s about leadership

This is not a sales issue per se, it’s a leadership one. The reason the sales process is based on speed and superficiality and not quality is because leadership actually believes that it’s the only way to meet sales and revenue objectives.

And they prioritize getting sales over anything else, including building long lasting relationships that will not only spawn a regular flow of sales, it will also create a referral network that will increase sales beyond expectations.

It’s hard to believe in the sales world today, replete with experts pronouncing how critical it is to focus on building intimacy with clients that the impersonal hard sales process is still practiced by many if not most organizations.

Either the pundits have it wrong — and they don’t — or leaders don’t trust that people will hand over their money if they are treated to an amazing experience with one of their sales professionals.

I think leadership is so focussed on showing good performance in the short term that they simply cannot risk investing resources to build long term health.

They say the priority is to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty but their actions belie their intent. I mean how can you even promulgate a relationship building strategy when sales compensation is driven by how many dollars they generate today?

Also, what’s the response if customer feedback is extremely negative; that people absolutely hate the sales approach used?

My experience so far is that your views are politely listened to and abruptly ignored; organizations generally are not interested in forsaking a immediacy in favour of a longer term horizon.

What’s the solution? Will a person continue to be subjected to the pusher and the closer who are only interested in you saying “yes”?

I suspect so, because I don’t believe leadership has the jam to make the change.

If you’re in sales I ask that you push back if you are being asked to push or close products. Take a stand for the people you engage everyday to buy from you, and push for a sales process that is sensitive and responsive to the needs of the client.

And if you’re a potential buyer, go somewhere else where sales actually likes humans.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 1.27.20 at 04:42 am by Roy Osing
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January 25, 2020

How interdepartmental collaboration can be improved in cool and unique ways

How interdepartmental collaboration can be improved in cool and unique ways.

There’s a BIG problem in how businesses work today—a problem serious enough to stop work productivity dead in its tracks.

Yet, few seem to be aware of it, let alone find a solution.

Business departments are not collaborating as well as they should be.

“Yeah, no one’s working together but we’re still selling well and meeting KPIs. I don’t see what’s wrong here.”

If happier and more hard-working employees, significantly improved work performance, and increased revenue are things your business doesn’t need, then you can forget about fostering innovation.

I trust you are in the majority of leaders who want to see his or her business succeed. If that’s the case, I urge you to read on and find out what’s really disrupting interdepartmental collaboration—and how you can fix the problem.

The silo mentality

Silos are used in farms to separate different types of grains from each other. They’re wonderful inventions of machinery for agriculture, not so much for businesses.

The silo mentality can seep into business departments and affect teamwork and collaboration severely. How this materializes is that departments start to hoard valuable information and become reluctant to share it across the company.

This could happen for a multitude of reasons including power struggles, lack of belief in other team members, and poor communication practices.

The silo mentality is a serial killer of work performance.

It destroys trust and relationships when employees are reluctant to communicate with each other. Businesses cannot take advantage of golden opportunities because they don’t have enough data to make informed decisions.

Customers lose faith due to deteriorating customer service and product quality.

The problem is, it’s tricky to find out if the silo mentality is plaguing your business until something bad happens.

There are several telltale signs to be aware of in determining whether your team members are affected by the issue.

Fragmented decision making

Teams in silos make decisions for the sake of their respective departments rather than the company.

Departments want the best for themselves and don’t see a reason to address the needs of other business units.

Lack of responsibility leading to a blame culture

There is no clear indicator of who is responsible for what in completing company tasks. Project responsibilities float around departments without any sense of ownership.

If something does not go as planned, it’s always Employee X or Department Y’s fault, never themselves.

Non-existent innovation

Businesses may find themselves stuck in a rut innovation-wise. IT systems are still working on Windows XP. Department heads find themselves working overnight on stacks of paperwork.

There is seemingly a resistance to adopting new technologies and innovative systems that make work easier and more enjoyable.

Resistance to change is such an ever-present problem in businesses that the Harvard Business Review has an article on how to overcome it… back in 1969.

Incoherent company vision

Executives and department leaders have different views on how the business should move forward. For example, the sales team is demanding a new CRM tool but the CEO sees no reason to since sales are already going through the roof with the old CRM.

In other words, there is a clash in vision between the ones at the top of the organizational chart and employees who are doing the majority of the work.

Now that you know what’s causing the silo mentality, what can you do to overcome it and inspire collaboration across all business units?

Build a culture of empathy

Empathy is the key to effective interdepartmental collaboration.

You should encourage teams to take on the role of other departments for a day or two. By learning about other people’s work, your employees will be able to look at their colleagues from a different, more insightful perspective.

They can even pitch in ideas from their own experiences to solve the problems of other departments which is one of the most cited benefits of good interdepartmental collaboration.

Can you make someone who is not empathetic, be more empathetic? Of course not.

But, you’re building a culture, not forcing individuals to change their personalities. When you establish a culture of empathy, employees will collaborate by themselves with other business units, no matter who they are.

You don’t need to herd them around like sheep — that’s the power of good company culture.

Tell employees why it’s important to collaborate

Give your team members a clear and relevant cause to be passionate about — why should they collaborate?

When your employees are passionate about the vision and purpose you bring forward, they will collaborate.

The best way to drive this motivation is by telling your team members what they stand to gain from collaborating well with other departments.

It could be fat bonuses, extended leave, a higher chance of getting promoted. Whatever it is, make the purpose of collaboration important and reward employees for their efforts.

Revamp communication procedures and policies

If you’re reading this, your company’s communication procedures are likely to be outdated and inefficient. It’s time to change.

Remove all the dumb rules that impede collaboration in the first place. One common rule that should be banished forever is being able to contact other employees only at a certain time in the day or with a certain communication medium (read: emails only). Never do that.

Don’t be afraid to embrace technology. There are tons of collaboration technologies today that help your employees communicate and collaborate a lot faster than back and forth emails. Slack, Trello, and Jira are some examples of tools that are being used by many leading companies today to great success, which your business can pick up.

Make sure the workstations are working properly and glitch-free, so they support the tools you use for your business needed to enable efficient collaboration. The last thing you’d want is a piece of shoddy software with features that are merely nice-to-haves.

Communication policies should also be revamped depending on what your business needs.

Generally, communication policies should facilitate open and non-hostile interaction between employees while also enabling the free flow of information between departments.

For example, your policy can clarify who to contact in urgent times or how team members should communicate with each other daily (e.g. team chats or face-to-face meetings?)

Lead by example

The final tip is arguably the most important solution in overcoming the silo mentality.

Leaders must embrace whatever change they want to see in their companies. If you want your team members to practice the pillars of successful collaboration, you should be doing the same. Always lead by example.

Inspiring collaboration across all business departments is achievable only if you overcome the silo mentality that is affecting communication and information sharing.

Practice the tips mentioned above and your team will be working seamlessly with each other in no time.

— Lisa Michaels is a freelance writer, editor and a thriving content marketing consultant from Portland. Being self-employed, she does her best to stay on top of the current trends in business and tech. Feel free to connect with her on Twitter.

• Posted 1.25.20 at 05:55 am by Roy Osing
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January 20, 2020

Wacky Wednesday: Why Most Customer Appreciation Days Are a Joke

Wacky Wednesday: Why Most Customer Appreciation Days Are a Joke

You’re not fooling anyone—Customer Appreciation Day isn’t appreciation.

It’s a corporate apology note written in invisible ink. 📄🙈

For 364 days, you treat customers like numbers on a spreadsheet.

Then, on the designated day, you roll out the bargain-bin confetti and act like you care.

Newsflash: We’re not fooled.

And honestly? It’s embarrassing.

Why wait all year to pretend you value the people who pay your bills? 🤷‍♂️

That’s not gratitude—that’s guilt management.

Real appreciation isn’t marked on a calendar.

It’s reflected in fair pricing, quick support, and not making us jump through hoops just to feel seen.

Instead, you hand out plastic junk that breaks before the “Thank You” banner comes down.

Keychains? Lanyards? Pens that explode? Seriously? 🖊️💥

You might as well hand us an invoice for our own disappointment.

And let’s talk about the insult cherry on top: New customers get welcome discounts, free months, priority access—the whole red carpet. 🧧🎪

Meanwhile, your ride-or-die regulars get nothing.

Loyalty shouldn’t mean getting the leftovers.

If you treat new sign-ups better than the ones who’ve funded your growth, you’re not building loyalty—you’re breeding resentment. 😡

Here’s the tough love…

If you want customers to stick around, stop with the one-day performative nonsense.

Show up every day.

Respect our time. Value our loyalty with actions—not cheap Trash & Trinket Merch.

Otherwise, don’t be surprised when we walk.

And we won’t be taking the free stress ball with us. 🚶‍♀️💨

Fix it—or watch your “appreciated” customers become someone else’s priority.

If you’re tired of the coddling and crave more unfiltered takes, subscribe for weekly doses of uncomfortable truths.

Cheers,
Roy
My Podcast Show Audacious Moves to A BILLION shares the specific Moves I made to achieve jaw-dropping growth in an insanely competitive internet business.

”The Audacious Unheard of Ways I Took a Startup to A BILLION IN SALES” is the latest in my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series.

• Posted 1.20.20 at 06:00 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink