Make It Easy for Me

Every time I’m asked to write a letter of recommendation my reaction is the same.

“I would be happy to.  Please give me a draft.  Put in whatever is important to you, then send me the letter to edit.”

In other words – make it easy for me.

A few weeks ago I violated my own rule.  Abbot, a friend and business associate of twenty years, asked for a letter of reference. He provided four letters written by other business people.  I thought, “This will be easy,” and immediately forwarded Abbot’s email to my assistant, asking her to write a draft.

An hour later she responded.  “Alan, I don’t know him well enough.”

Fair enough.  I quickly skimmed the four letters that Abbot had provided, then emailed him a three sentence letter.  I heard back right away.

“Alan, this won’t do.  Maybe I should draft the letter for you myself.”

I agreed. It’s what I should have asked him to do in the first place.

Stephanie, another friend of mine, flies to Orlando every year to join a colleague at Disney World.

“I don’t especially love Disney World.” Stephanie said,

“Then why to you go there so regularly?”

““Because I love my friend, and I enjoy spending time with her.  And she makes it so easy for me.  She takes care of all of the airline and hotel reservations, buys the tickets, provides for ground transportation, and plans our schedule in advance and in detail.  All I have to do is pack my suitcase and walk onto the airplane.”

If I were to ask you to “please help me out,” I might be met by your blank stare because I haven’t even told you what I want.  I’ve already made your task difficult, if not impossible.

Three or four times at a restaurant I’ve said to the waiter, “Surprise me.  Bring me something interesting.”

The response, every time, was, “What do you like?”  This is a reasonable question, but once I stood my ground.  “Surprise me.”  And I was surprised by a meal which I hated.  Now I’m more careful in what I ask for, and try to be both specific and clear.

When I talk with someone who might be interested in a commercial real estate investment I provide photos and two pages of information that is easy to understand.  I sometimes provide a rent roll of the tenants on request. I have learned to keep my presentation simple. I don’t talk about two investments at the same time because, in the past, I have always been asked, “Which one is better?”  Then when I talked about the pros and cons of each property I saw only confusion in the eyes of my prospective investor. This always resulted in no sale.

Online retailers such as Amazon make it easy for me to order from them.  I have tried to make it easy for you to subscribe, or unsubscribe, to my blog.  I’m sure that all of us have often failed to complete an order on the internet when we couldn’t complete the process quickly enough.

I want to please you.  Many people want to please you.  Make it easy for each of us to succeed.

Alan