I am hereby boycotting all companies who use “recession” as a buzzword in their mailing lists. OkCupid, eMusic, Wordtracker, PBwiki—you’re on my LIST! You have incited my wrath and must suffer the consequences. Beware the vengeance of my… huge… readership.

Well, quality is better than quantity. My readership IS huge. I love you guys.

I am sick and tired of seeing perfectly good companies use whiny buzzwords to (negatively) engage their customers. (It was a shock to my system to see Wordtracker talking up “negative” keywords on Google until I realized they only meant keywords not to list, instead of actual negative keywords. Whew.) I think it’s absurd to keep talking about a “recession” and “financial crisis” when we’re all just monkeys doing monkey things. When you engage your customers, discuss your merits and positive traits—don’t give them a reason to be afraid and then talk about how you can supposedly fix it. Especially if you sell set-fee monthly music subscriptions that don’t roll over, or social dating services. Give me a break!

Forgive me for the rant (or don’t), but it’s incredibly frustrating to watch companies using this kind of marketing. I bet in most cases they’re trying to appeal to people’s situations, maybe even to comfort them—but I just don’t think it works that way. Stop reminding people of how afraid they are (or should be). Times are NOT tough! Times are ALWAYS tough! You are the same amazing person you were before someone told you that you had something to be scared of.

Get over it and get back to work being brilliant! All of you!

(Okay, I’m not boycotting ALL the companies who did it. I’m not going to boycott Learning Strategies. I love Learning Strategies. But I’m disappointed! Super disappointed! Let’s get on the ball, here, people!)

[Edit: Seth made a great post that overlaps here and states the problem very succinctly!]

More “recession”-based email after this post was made:

• ...from Business District Magazine.
• Does it make me a pessimist if I don’t think this is over?

I recently made a post in Pavlina’s Personal Development forums because some people were asking about the PhotoReading seminars that Learning Strategies offers, and it just so happened that I attended one last weekend. Of course, y’all knew that, but I mostly talked about my hypnagogic hordes of bugs. Oops.

This particular seminar happened in Dallas (in Addison, which is just north of the city) and was instructed by Millicent St. Claire. I link to her site because she’s fantastic to work with, but I’ll tell you right now that her site doesn’t manage to put across just how awesome she is. It’s a great site, but she is very real and effective in person. She’s also incredibly warm and vibrant, engaging, and excellent at what she does.

The seminar was split into three sessions: Roughly 6p-9p Friday evening, 9a-7p Saturday, and 9a-6p Sunday. I was thankful for Friday’s brevity after my long drive from Austin (I got on the wrong branch of 35 North, so I was on the road about four and a half hours), but Saturday and Sunday I arrived in class super early to play with biofeedback games and talk to people and relax. The classroom was a great environment for anybody wanting to learn something. It was wholly non-traditional, intensely creative, and very focused on accelerated learning right down to the details. There were poignant quotes on the walls, beautiful posters, 3-D stereograms for photofocus practice, cups of rainbow-colored markers, fresh white paper, and scads of brain toys on the tables. (Man, we had a ball playing with those toys.) It was like the best kindergarten ever.

There were rules, too: No stress. Ever. And all that was asked of us was that we open our minds and Do The Thing—skepticism was welcome and invited, so we all felt very free to ask questions and make suggestions. There were even note boards for those of us who were too shy to ask something outright, and Millicent made a regular point of getting to those boards and getting questions answered for the whole group.

There were 38 people in the class. Two of them were younger than me (both pre-college, one several years younger than that) and most of them were older professionals—30’s, 40’s, 50’s, and one at least one septuagenarian with entertaining anecdotes and a great sense of humor. They were all very warm, open-hearted people with an interest in this thing that felt important to me, this thing I wanted to learn well, and that endeared them to me. By the end of the weekend we’d pooled our contact information so that it would be easy to create a post-seminar support structure in the name of helping each other and talking about our PhotoReading exploits. Millicent was very excited and encouraging on this score, and I think that made us even more hellbent on making it happen. I was constantly impressed at how on the ball she was in regards to creative, mindful learning all the way down to the bits and pieces; she a consistent motivator in all the ways that mattered.

Millicent used a whole slew of super-interesting techniques to help us learn. These were widely varied and ranged from neuro-linguistic programming to Brain Gym exercises to visualization and interpersonal conversations (and writing poetry!). These made a huge difference for me, and I made a point of writing many of them down so that I can look into them more in the future. (I will probably be blogging about some of them!)

Many of the techniques we used were not specific to the PhotoReading course itself. I bought the home study course quite awhile ago, so I was particularly curious about how much would be different in the seminar. The answer? Everything but the basics! We did a lot from the course, and all the important things were included, but we learned them in a huge variety of creative ways. A lot of these I had heard of before, a lot of them were new to me—and a lot of them were bits and pieces from other Learning Strategies materials used specifically for learning to PhotoRead. I loved this, because it let me see first-hand how I felt about methods and workshops that I’d been curious about but not ready to test on my pocketbook. (This resulted in me picking up other Learning Strategies offerings while I was there, since I liked some of the techniques so much and had a feel for their benefits—and there were special weekend discounts available to the seminar participants. That was awesome, since I likely would have bought those things anyway.)

I also loved having the opportunity to hear from seminar participants who’d done the seminar before, once and twice in some cases. Some people had incredible personal stories to tell about how PhotoReading has affected their lives and work, and some of those stories were amazing—just knocked me out of my seat. Some of those people were back to brush up on their technique, but after experiencing the weekend for myself I’m pretty sure I’d go again even if I felt completely solid. It only costs $80 to attend and audit after you’ve completed the first seminar, which of course is an excellent marketing strategy, because it makes me want to register again with other interested parties. I’m seriously, seriously thinking about it; it would be a fantastic thing to do with friends or family.

The seminar weekend in its entirety was unbelievably relaxing and empowering for me. I drove home from Dallas feeling really refreshed, proud, confident. There was so much positivity, so much creative productivity, so many reminders to me (and to all the participants) that we are powerful, unique, amazing. I spent a total of $550 to register (a discount because I had the home study course, and a discount because I purchased the registration in July), but if I had paid the full price of $750 I would still feel that it was the best money I’ve spent in a very, very long time. It was absolutely astonishing.

Ultimately I left feeling a) damn accomplished for a beginning PhotoReader! b) completely relaxed and excited to go back to work, like I’d taken a great vacation! c) thrilled with all the neat people I’d met and could keep in touch with, and d) incredibly, overwhelmingly positive about myself and my ability to deal with the world. That last one feels really good.

There’s no way I’ve covered it all in this post, because the weekend was packed full of fascinating experiences and new information. But if you want to ask me questions, please feel free. I love talking about it.

Dude, the coolest thing just happened to me.

Last night I tried to order the Classic PhotoReading course from Learning Strategies. I tried to order it three or four times and every time it gave me an AVS error—on two different cards, when I’d been using my cards successfully all over the place this week. The 24-hour sales line couldn’t help me and suggested that I call customer service in the morning, so I left customer service an email (just in case) and planned to call them when they opened at 8.

This morning I called in and they explained that because their security system was so hardcore, even a small inaccuracy in the billing address would cause an AVS problem. I talked to Ryan, who was very helpful and friendly, and ultimately it looked like I needed to call my bank to make sure they didn’t have a slight difference in my billing address—something that might not cause problems with many processing systems, but was probably the issue here. Ryan gave me his direct number, and I set off to call my bank.

I kid you not: For twenty minutes I sat here and pressed buttons and begged the automated system to transfer me to a real person. Most of the options that sounded like what I needed either sent me to a dead-end automation or a very persistent gatekeeper function that wanted a particular telephone-specific number or code from me that I have never had. I looked through all my banking materials and could not discover a way to locate, or obtain, this number that it wanted. I was becoming extremely frustrated and a little bit angry. Why does this have to be so difficult?

I say twenty minutes because about twenty minutes into this horrible process, I got an incoming call. The number looked a bit like the direct line number Ryan had given me, so I took a chance and picked up, ditching the endless, futile phone call with Chase. It was Ryan! He said that they had reset their security system and he thought the card would go through now with no problem. We gave it a shot and it worked brilliantly! I was so relieved that he had called me back, because who knows how long I might have stayed in Chase’s system, cursing the gods of commerce?

You might think that Ryan sounds like an awesome and amiable guy, but you don’t even know the half of it. I was ordering the Classic PhotoReading course for $245, plus 2-day shipping for a total of $266. That was my plan. I had a customer code that entitled me to a little bit of bonus information, but it turned out that the code was long since expired and it wasn’t possible to put it through. But Ryan—I can only assume because of the lengthy back-and-forth, but maybe just because he is a nice guy, or because this is a nice company—offered to give me the “sale price”. He asked if I had considered getting the Deluxe course instead, and I explained that I was buying it in two pieces instead of all at once to be careful with money. He said he had a code, however, that would give me the entire Deluxe course with additional materials, plus overnight shipping, for $253.85—less than I had been planning to pay, for half as many materials, to arrive tomorrow before noon, instead of Wednesday.

Yeah, whoa, that’s what I said! I thanked him and told him to please have a particularly wonderful day. And now I am telling you, because despite my difficult experience with my bank and what could arguably be called a difficult experience with the Learning Strategies payment processing system, I am walking away from this whole situation filled with gratitude and glee, and wanting to tell people about my awesome morning with this company and the dude who picked up the customer service line.

That’s what good business is, folks.