In any case, it’s just not that memorable a flier.  It wouldn’t get any more memorable if I received the same flier year after year for the next 25 years.  I suspect Maria might have been doing promotion not much different than this for the past 25 years!  I’ve always liked one of the Alcoholics Anonymous credos: “the definition is insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.

In any case, Maria’s calendar is not a good enough calendar to replace the calendar I’ll use for 2010.  I’ve got far better things to put on my fridge!  Today, I was in a bookstore and I saw an absolutely stunning calendar of pictures in space of various celestial phenomena taken by telescopes in space.  THAT is going to be my 2010 calendar, not this mediocre flier.

Maria is one of these people who (whether implicitly or explicitly) says no all the time.  She says “no” to innovative marketing strategies that get people’s attentions, preferring the conventional, traditional, tried and reasonably true methods.  She says a definite “no” to having an e-commerce based real estate business by not even having her own website in this day and age of real estate when personal branding is more important than company branding.  She says “no” to Paul because he might want to be more than a friend.  She says “no” to me and her real estate business by talking to me about partnering and doing new types of business ventures that haven’t nothing to do with real estate.  She says “no” so often because she’s one of these people who Oscar Wilde was talking about when he described a cynic: a person who “knows the price of everything but the value of nothing.”  Remember, maybe usually means “no”.

So how can you know how much you’re a “No” sayer at heart and sabotaging your own success in both your business and personal life?  I want you to try a simple exercise that will help you understand your thought processes.  Get a beige elastic band.  It can be any colour, as long as you can see your writing on it.  Write on the elastic “I Am A Yes Sayer”.  Or try any other positive phrase you like such as “I’m a top Ppoducer”.  Put the elastic on either of your wrists.