It’s just after 5 a.m. on New Year’s Eve here in San Diego, and I haven’t slept all night. I keep thinking about the events of the last 12 hours and the ramifications of those events as I look forward to the next 12 months.

A few days ago I took some pretty high moral ground regarding honesty and integrity, both professionally and personally.

I’m determined to present myself honestly both professionally and personally and to try to avoid my own identity crisis. This fall has been tough in terms of dealing with relationships with people who seemed to misrepresent themselves…. In these situations this fall and a couple more, I found myself looking at the person in question and saying, “Wow. You’re not who I thought you were.” My resolution is to make sure I stay honest so that neither Avenue Z nor Beth Ziesenis is ever the subject of that observation.

Sure, one should aspire to be honest and to represent oneself accurately. Duh. In reality, I forgot to factor in the human element that makes an otherwise honest business or person make an old-fashioned mistake, which, in hindsight I find very arrogant because I have a whole category called “Avoiding My Mistakes.”

As a new freelance copywriter, I have many new clients, and I try hard to keep their deadlines. I’ve got several deadlines for Wednesday when everyone gets back to the office (January 2). Because I have the best of intentions that I will get things done and do what I’m supposed to, my missing a deadline would be something I consider a major but honest mistake.

But that doesn’t mean that my mistake won’t cause my client to look at me and say, “Wow. You’re not who I thought you were.” And it doesn’t mean that my mistake will be without ramifications. Thus, in the making of this honest mistake, I may lose a client or cause a client to think I’m not honest.

A colleague of mine at a former job used to talk about Steven Covey’s concept of emotional bank accounts from the book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, another business book I haven’t read. Covey says that in business and in life, your relationships with people are built on the amount of trust you have established by making deposits into the emotional bank account. Withdrawals decrease the amount of trust. Covey defines several ways to make deposits and withdrawals:

Deposits come from:

• understanding the individual
• attending to little things
• keeping commitments
• clarifying expectations
• showing personal integrity
• apologizing sincerely when you make a withdrawal

A short list of withdrawals:

• showing discourtesy
• disrespect
• overreacting
• betraying trust
• not honoring commitments
• threatening

So, assuming that I missed a deadline for my client, I’ve made four withdrawals: I showed discourtesy to my client’s deadlines; I’ve disrespected my client; I’ve betrayed his trust; and I’m not honoring commitments. And since I’m just establishing the relationship with my client, it’s likely that he won’t know that I have many deposits to make: personal integrity, keeping commitments, understanding… etc. After the mistake is made, the only deposit I can make into the relationship is to apologize sincerely about the withdrawal. And that probably won’t be enough to save the relationship.

Despite all my lofty goals to represent myself as a person of integrity, I made a big mistake yesterday. A really big mistake. A mistake that I regretted the moment it occurred to me to make the mistake. Losing a new relationship because of a major mistake, personal or professional, is heartbreaking and makes me sick. I want to go back and erase what I did wrong. But I can’t do that, and I can simply hope that the lesson I learned will help me avoid making the same mistake again and that the damage I caused will eventually subside.

But today I will sit here in my pajamas in my chilly little apartment and work hard to make sure I don’t make any more mistakes in 2007. 17 hours and 45 minutes to go.

I find it hard to believe that my one little trip to the nail salon would yield two lessons for my business, but here goes the second one.

In almost any strip mall in America, you will find a small nail salon with a catchy name, a row of massage chairs, and a handful of masked workers bent over two handfuls of soon-to-be-beautiful hands. I have to admit I had a bad pedicure habit before I started my own writing business and realized I couldn’t spend $40 every two weeks to have someone change my toe polish.

The lesson we can take from these nail salons is the concept of up-selling.

Up-selling, according to Wikipedia:

Up-selling is a sales technique whereby a salesman attempts to have the consumer purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Up-selling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products, but up-selling can also be simply exposing the customer to other options he or she may not have considered previously.

Examples of up-sales are adding side dishes and/or hors d’œuvre to a food order, selling an extended service contract for an appliance, suggesting a customer purchase more RAM or a larger hard drive (whether or not they need it) when servicing his computer, or selling luxury finishing on a vehicle. A common technique for successful up-sellers is becoming aware of a customer’s background and budget, allowing them to better understand what the particular person might need. Many companies teach their employees to up-sell products and services.

When I sign in to get my pedicure, the onslaught begins. The receptionist says, “You don’t want a manicure? Are you sure?” and she glances meaningfully at my hands. I indicate I want a basic pedicure, and she says, “But the European Deluxe Pedicure is really what you need.”

Then during the pedicure, a wandering worker comes over and looks me in the eyes. “I do your eyebrows? You need to fix them.” If I’m in for a leg wax, the attendant will tisk at my arm hair. “You need to take off all hair. It’s no good.”

Now, I’m not a particularly hairy chick with a unibrow and arm hair that casts a shadow. Nor do I have particularly ratty fingernails or horribly stressed-out feet that look in desperate need of a massage. But when those workers look down at me and cluck their tongues at the reprehensible way I’ve been managing my own unwanted hair, I tend to give in.

And that’s the beauty of their up-sell technique: a little guilt, a hint of indulgence, a smidge of “don’t you want to look better? Aren’t you worth it?”

As a freelance writer, I don’t have that much to up-sell. I can say, “Would you like me to take care of that for you?” when I am talking about a project, but for the most part, I’m hired to write. I write. I give something written to them.

The trick here is to recognize the elements of your clients’ businesses that they could up-sell. If I write an article for a newsletter that talks about environmental issues, I work with the client to add a product feature about an electronic (i.e. paperless) solution that their clients might use to “green” up. When I am working with my clients, even if they don’t ask for help with the big picture of advertising, marketing and PR convergence, I try to keep my eyes open for a chance to tie in one of their products or services.

I stole today’s graphic from a site that has a good article on up-selling….

Today I broke down and took my calloused feet to a nail salon for a European Deluxe Pedicure. And a manicure. And an eyebrow wax. Ok, I really broke down and treated myself.

The pock-marked Asian man who worked on my fingers clucked as he held my hands. “I think you do no color. The nails too short. You need tips or no color. I think color will look bad.”

I went with a nice buff, and he continued to talk. “No customers today. We work on commission. No customers, no money. I should be home.”

I don’t know how many times during the course of my treatments that he mentioned he wasn’t making any money and that he worked on commission. I started to feel guilty with my little $15 manicure and buff, so I asked for the eyebrow wax. I wanted him to say something like, “I’m glad you came in today, lady. You’re one of my first customers today.” But he was obviously disappointed I wasn’t ordering a big-ticket item like a full set of airbrushed nails and a complete body wax.

When he finished my manicure, he flounced down wearily on a stool and flipped through a very old issue of People magazine. He held up a before-and-after of Kirstie Alley. “I don’t know why she got so fat,” he said. “She not bad now, but why she get fat?”

At least he had changed the subject.

His “poor mouthing,” as my mother calls it, made me uncomfortable. It also made me consider my own business. On this blog, I tell the truth about my business ups and downs. One of my most popular posts was “Is my slip(up) showing? When blogs say too much.” I’ve talked a number of times about how I’m not making the money I did at my last job and how I value every penny I make and see it as a few more weeks of independence.

Again, am I being too honest here? Should I create an illusion that Avenue Z Writing Solutions is a large, established company with an office in downtown San Diego and a team of writers? Should I stop telling the inside story here on my blog and simply concentrate on putting my best face forward?

I don’t think that type of deception would work for me, but I don’t think one has to poor mouth to express an honest thought about budgets or income. Sometimes on this blog I let out a sigh and tell myself, “no customers, no money.” But for the most part, I try not to whine about finances.

Besides — I just treated myself to a spa visit. How bad could things be?

My parents gave me a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble for Christmas. I promptly tried to spend it all on December 26, but it was too tough to pay full price for books since I’ve become so cheap.

One book that I did purchase, however, was The Elements of Style, the ultimate style reference book. I’ve never read it. Truth is, I have been avoiding the book ever since a friend in a short story class suggested I pick it up to help my writing.

As I see it, I have two barriers to reading books or taking classes on writing. I guess I resist somewhat because I’m a bit arrogant about my writing. I make a living with this talent, and I tend to think I do it pretty well. On the flip side, I fear that I’m really not writing well. In the back of my head I fear that Strunk and White or a college professor or a published colleague will prove to me that I’ve been writing horribly since birth.

In the new year, I’ve resolved to do more learning than I did in 2007. I’d like to absorb more education on writing for search engine optimization. I would like to hone my skills for copy for landing pages. And I really want to write subject lines that zing for my clients’ eNewsletters. Thus I need to toss off both the fear that makes me second guess myself and the arrogance that makes me dismiss the advice of others. Neither attitude helps me become a better writer.

Some tasty excerpts from The Elements of Style:

• “The adjective hasn’t been built that can pull a weak or inaccurate noun out of a tight place.”
• “A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.”
• “The writer must, however, be certain that the emphasis is warranted, lest a clipped sentence seem merely a blunder in syntax or in punctuation.”
• “Remember, it is no sign of weakness or defeat that your manuscript ends up in need of major surgery. This is a common occurrence in all writing, and among the best writers.”
• “Rather, very, little, pretty — these are the leeches that infest the pond of prose, sucking the blood of words.”

I had planned to stay here in Denver through the weekend, working a few hours each day and spending a few hours a day playing long-lost sister/daughter/aunt/friend. I’m failing miserably. When I’m working, I feel guilty about not being with my family. When I’m with the family, I worry about not getting work done.

Lesson learned: I’m not the type of person who can find a daily balance of work and family. But I’m the type of person who can figure out a solution to satisfy both. Mission accomplished: I changed my flight. Now, if the weather holds, I’m leaving early Thursday morning. That way I can play with the family members all day today (we’ve got shopping to do and gift cards to spend), and I can be home before noon on Thursday to hit the computer.