Too Busy to Blog? Should Never Happen!

I'm always impressed when our pastor is telling us how to live better if he includes the fact that he doesn't always get it right, either. You may not have even noticed if I didn't point it out, but the posting on this blog ended abruptly last Summer, with only a few here and there since then. This is NOT the ideal way to run your blog. Once you have a loyal following you want that group to keep coming back. If they always see the same posting at the top, they will eventually stop visiting. So, do as I say, and not as I do. Make sure that you keep a backlog of good posts to keep you going during dry spells.

It isn't that I ran out of things to say (ask my wife), it's just that I became distracted by what seemed to be things of greater priority at the time. This is not an excuse, but merely an explanation.

So, even though my days are chock full from morning to night, I am going to set a good example and keep three or more posts coming to you weekly. Please bookmark this page or even use your Atom or RSS feeder to subsribe. Ready or not, I'm back.

P.S. Our new website is AMAZING. Visit it now at http://www.californiasprings.com

The World Is Flat by Thomas Friedman

Ten times, at least, this book stared out at me from the bookshelves of my local Barnes and Nobel or the airport shop. Ten times I couldn't part with $25. The good news is that I finally bought it for $15.79. The bad news is that I could have started using the material inside this miraculous book much earlier had I not been so cheap.

The premise of the book is fairly simple and may cause you to think, as I did, "Oh! That's obvious! I don't need to spend money and time to find out that young people in India are doing customer service and support jobs for major tech companies. I know that some companies in the advertising specialty industry are using Russian, Chinese, and Vietnamese artists to do production art. I know that the best way to get a package from Los Angeles to London overnite is UPS.

What I didn't know was that UPS now handles fulfillment for Nike, computer repairs for Toshiba, and assembly for Nikon. What I didn't think of was that I could actually outsource almost my entire office operation to India. I received a complete education in how I could have kept and even increased my business with Target, K Mart, Toys R Us and others by getting some of our products made off shore, packaged, labeled, and bar coded exactly as these companies wanted. We decided we did not have the core competancy to handle the exacting details required by these retailers. But Asian supplier do, and they are only too happy to work with US importers as middlemen to the majors.

Almost every page was an eye-opening experience. The writing is totally accessible to the non-technical reader. For non-fiction the material is very engaging.

I love to prognosticate about the future, and believe that a large part of leadership is based on an ability to be future oriented. In The World Is Flat, Friedman gives us plenty of ideas about what the future might look like. He does this from both a business and a geopolitical standpoint. If your not into politics, you can skip lightly through these sections. However, they are extremely instructive in understanding such issues as why S. Korea does so well and Saudi Arabia is so backward.

In other posts I have tried to persuade those who read these virtual pages that the future of the smallest businesses are just as threatened by a failure to keep up with the kinds of changes Thomas Friedman illustrates throughout the book as are major corporations like Ford.

If I had a rating system from 1-10 for business books, this one would get an 11. You should just click right here and buy it now. (Full disclosure. I make 6% if you buy the book through clicking on that spot. I also make 6% on anything you buy at Amazon if you go to Amazon through my blog. This fact, however, in no way shades my opinion of this book.)

I will have more to say about Thomas Friedman and The World Is Flat in future posts.

Design Your Own Bottle

When developing new products over the years, I have usually figured I had to budget many tens of thousands of dollars for engineering, design, molds and tools, initial set up and such. I have never been in a place where I could create a completely new product for $4000 or so.

But, molds for bottles only cost about that much. And it will only cost you about that much to develop a totally unique bottle concept for your client. Do you need a bottle that is bigger, smaller, shaped different, embossed, debossed, or has a hole in it. We have done quite a number of these special projects this year.

The most common approach is to emboss the bottle at the top in what is called the grip ring area. This allows you to step and repeat the customers logo or name several times. Another method is to emboss or deboss a name, logo, or product 3d on the side of the bottle. If this is done with some parts of the deboss level to the rest of the bottle, you can also print on this part of the deboss.

But sometimes, your client will need a completely different look. We will engage our art department, marketing guru's, and manufacturing team to help you come up with the perfect solution.

A major benefit of creating a special product like this is that the client is now pretty much locked into you and that product for many future promotions.

Call me personally to get the ball rolling. 1-800-245-3737 ext 223

Advice From Steve Jobs

Some folks are gifted. Some are lucky. Some are just amazing. I think of the 4 careers of Ronald Reagan. Or how about the guys who started YouTube 3 years ago. Then there's Steve Jobs. In some ways he isn't as famous as his arch rival, Bill Gates. But Gates only started one successful company. And lets be honest, most of his stuff was copying others.

To Jobs goes credit for Apple MacIntosh, IPod, ITunes, Apple Retail, and Pixar. Any one of those would have been enough for one guy. For all of his success, he isn't a very elegant speaker, but he gets asked anyway. He recently gave a commencement address at Stanford that had quite a few points well worth noting:

"I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first six months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out, they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.

And 17 years later, I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back, it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out, I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.

It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned Coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the seven miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:

Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.

None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards 10 years later.

Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something – your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

My second story is about love and loss.

I was lucky that I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents' garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years, Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4,000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew, we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so, things went well. But then, our visions of the future began to diverge, and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30, I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me that I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the world's first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.

My third story is about death.

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything that all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

About a year ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for "prepare to die." It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.

I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.

This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope it's the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.

Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand, not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960s, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.

Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Thank you all very much."

– Steve Jobs – June 2005

HT to Corporatelogo.com
and to their original source, Charley Johnson, who is Vice President of Salt Lake City-based SnugZ USA.

Why Don't You Have A Blog Yet?

No matter what size your distributorship is, or if you are an salesperson for a distributor, I am convinced that a blog is the least expensive, easiest method you can use to increase your customer list and your contacts with existing customers.

If you have an existing website, you are ahead of those who don't. However, by now you are certainly aware of how difficult, time consuming, and expensive it is to keep that site current, relevant, and as good or better than your competition. We spend at least 40 hours per month on CaliforniaSprings.com, and we could easily spend twice that much. A blog can be kept updated and exciting with 5 - 10 hours per month.

Making your website Search engine friendly is really hard in this industry. There are millions of sites fighting for "advertising specialty" and "promotional products."

With a blog, every article can have potential key words that might draw someone to your site. You could be talking about solar active color change bottles. You will likely have a high location for color change, solar color, solar active bottles.

Blogs are way more personal. They don't feel like your "selling." At least if you do it right. This post is filled with attempts to sell you. But the article is about how you can do something to improve your business. It should seem perfectly fair that I use my own products as examples in the post. Of course, the material in the post has to be true and helpful.

But how easy this would be for you. Examples of promotions that you have done, that you have heard about, or from other writers on the subject will be very useful to your customers.

If you specialize in small businesses, ideas or recommendations for articles about small business make excellent posts. Motivational ideas are very useful for almost everyone.

If you don't have a website, a blog gives you some kind of web presence. They can be 100% free except for you time.

They establish you as more than just another salesperson. Just the fact that you are able to communicate as a writer gives you more credibility. And truly, most of your blog can be copies of other peoples works (give them credit) with a quick cover comment from you. You still become more respected by your clients and potential clients.

You can add personality in a blog that is not quite as appropriate in a website. Pictures of your vacation or your family work here. Short stories of your exploits or the charity work you are involved in give you more depth.

Very little has changed in how to start or optimize your blog since I wrote on this subject last year. Go here and here and here. Today is a perfect day to start.

Ran Across This One - Couldn't Help Myself

Regular readers of this blog saw this last year. Excuse me for posting it again, but it is sooooooo right on in helping to make my points about marketing instead of selling.

New Product Idea
Originally uploaded by Randy Kirk.

Snore Stop paid this guy big money to be their billboard. Why am I wasting my time selling water bottles? I'd even do it in 4 color process.

A Perfect Ending

As I've talked to many of you over the past 90 days, it is amazing how many have had much bigger problems than our nasty moving experience. I have friends in the business with health problems (big ones), family issues (is there anything worse), and business issues that make mine look like a walk in the park.

On a really bad day, other peoples problems help to get me through mine. But I do feel a new burdon for that person and their business as a result. In a few cases, I hope I've been able to offer an idea or two that was worthwhile. So call me or e-mail me if you have something going on that might use a few minutes of counsel. Two our three people actually think I have useful counsel to give sometimes.

Anyway, back to the story. We have had the best ever September-November in the history of the company. We normally lay off a few folks this time of year. We have been doing overtime. And our employees have really responded with outstanding quality and productivity.

So, for those who are going through a tough period. Take heart. Better days are ahead.

The Longest Five Miles

A few months ago, we lost our lease. We fruitlessly argued with our landlord of 15 years that September would be much better for us, moving-wise, since it would be in our slow season, but NOOOO!

After months of trying to figure out the wisest way to do this move, we finally located a building almost as nice as the one we've been in, and proceeded to organize the move. For those of you who do business with us, you already know that we have been blessed with a staff beyond compare. But they outdid themselves on this move. Every aspect that was under the control of our people went of flawlessly.

The only thing we could not do ourselves was electrical. We have 8 blow mold machines, two extruders, and 5 printing machines. These all need peripheral things like chillers, transformers, and air compressors. They are all integrated, and of course, they all require power. As of Wednesday the 12th, we are one week behind plan on having power. We are at full capacity on printing, but only half on bottle making. I have been pulling out what is left of my hair in large clumps.

OK! The truth. I am frustrated. Customer service people are the ones huddled in corners, not wanting to answer the phones. But as I told them today. We will do the best we can with what we have been given. Then we will be past all this and it will seem trivial a few months down the road. One of my friends at church just found out she has cancer. I don't have any problems at all.

Our new address is 13920 Mica St, still in Santa Fe Springs, CA 90670 (just five miles from our last location.) Our 800# is unchanged - 800-245-3737. We will have full production on Saturday. Don't hesitate to call and place your order to help us make up this lost week.

Updates!!

We may not be able to send out email blasts to remind you to check out the incredible content here at Kirk Uncorked. Thus, we would humbly suggest that you bookmark the page right now, AND sign up for email updates to your right. I won't use that email for any other purpose, and when I send out an email, it will clearly show it is from Kirk Uncorked.

Now may I suggest that you look down the right hand column of this page. There you will see 144 articles on subjects ranging from Credit and Collection to How to Start Your own Blog and why. Whenever you are faced with a question about how to proceed in your business, or looking for new ideas of how to build or improve your sales, just come here and look through the list.

We at CaliforniaSprings.com have been so busy that I haven't had time to add anything for a couple of weeks. I will be hitting the keys again soon. So there will always be new articles of inspiration and encouragment. But don't forget to look through the archive, too.

Houston Chronical Review of New Book

In case you don't get the Houston Chronical, I thought you might like to check out what they thought of my new book. I promise. I didn't pay this guy to say this.

Complex topics, digested easily

By STEVE POWERS
For The Chronicle

IN recent years it has become startlingly clear that while many of the biggest companies are constantly paring payrolls, the number of small companies is rising significantly.

But this statistic hides a lot of painful setbacks. Unfortunately, statistics on businesses with 10 or fewer workers show that 65 percent of them fail within the first five years.

With that in mind, Randy Kirk has revised his 13-year-old book to more reflect how the business world has changed. In 1993, he wrote "When Friday Isn't Payday". With this new guide, he has revised and updated the book to better reflect new information, tax laws and the growing importance of electronic commerce.

Kirk seemingly covers every aspect of operating a small business. The 300-plus pages are packed with lots of charts, lists and anecdotes about establishing and running a small business.

The book is divided into five stages of small business development, from the beginning to the process of growing and on into the future. The stages are titled: Before You Begin, Opening the Doors, The First Three Years, Managing Yourself and

Others and Managing Your Assets.

Each of these sections has subtopics that cover crucial aspects of successfully running a small business.

In section two, a subsection offers a comprehensive look at preparing a business plan.

It's obvious that Kirk has done his homework and has experience with running a business.

This book could serve as a textbook for how to run a small business.

Motley Fool

Tom and David Gardner are co-founders of the Motley Fool, which since 1993 has grown from a personal finance Web site into a media company with a syndicated newspaper column, radio shows and books.

"The Motley Fool's Money After 40" is their latest foray. This book addresses the 75 million Americans between 40 and 65 who are contemplating how they'll fare during retirement.

The authors have divided the topic into three sections: Having Enough, Having More Than Enough and Having It All.

Having Enough addresses the subject of organizing finances in order to preserve what one already has and how to calculate what is needed.

Having More Than Enough goes deeper, tackling Social Security and touching on estate planning, caring for elderly parents and teaching a child to be financially independent.

In Having It All, the authors take the whole concept a step further, showing the reader how to live a healthy, productive life, one with hobbies, adventures and another career.

The authors cover many subjects but never dwell on any of them at mind-numbing length. They hit the highlights and quickly move on, making it easy to comprehend.

...

"Running a 21st Century Small Business"

By Randy W. Kirk Warner Business Books, $14.95.

Getting PR

We in this industry are a biased bunch. We believe that promotional products are the smartest way to increase business, create loyalty, reward behavior, etc. And were it any other way, this blogger would be the first to chastise you.

However, if we believe in our own stuff to the exclusion of all else, that would be a mistake also. Promotional products represent a very fine element among many in what should in most cases be an integrated campaign strategy. And so it is for your business as well. You need to be totally educated and in tune with all the other elements that might go into your customer's overall plan. This will help you to better position yourself with the client and better advise him as to appropriate specialty items to use.

In addition, you need to advertise and promote yourself. One of the most cost effective and least utilized methods of promotion is the PR campaign. For our purposes today, I'm going to limit the scope of this post to how you, as a salesman or owner in the promotional products business might use PR to increase your visibility, and thus your sales.

First, lets discuss the types of PR you might be able to use. I would break these down into three types. First, there are the people in the news releases. When someone is hired, promoted, or even leaves for a better position, there is an opportunity to run a release. These are unlikely to be picked up by even a local paper unless there is a professional photo, so be sure to include one.

Make every effort to find a personal interest angle to improve the chances of getting some ink. Is the person active in local charities or other organizations? Have they had some kind of major impact on the community or in the industry? Do they have a rsume of note? Or, are they related to someone who meets one of those criteria.

The second kind of PR that is likely to get printed is where you, your company, or one of your employees is getting recognized for something. This could be an award, a position in a service club or charity, or an invitation to speak or write. Once again, pictures are very important. The best pictures are those that show the local talent receiving the recognition in some kind of ceremony.

The third, though by no means last, PR effort that can pay dividends is an announcement of a new product, a move, a grand opening or other event, or a substantial change in the way you are going to do business in the future (e.g. merger, acquisition, line addition, reorganization.)

On another day, I'll give the details of how to write up the release, who to send it to, and methods for increasing the likelihood of publication. We'll also touch on the internet as a tool for PR.

Short Idea For Your Consideration

There are only three ways to increase your sales volume:

1. More customers to sell the items you already carry

2. Sell more of what you sell to your existing customers

3. Sell something else to new or existing customers

If you will take 10 minutes to study that list, you might find that this is the most important post you've ever read, here or anywhere.

The Rude Salesman - What is Rudest Thing of All

Time for a major admission. When I was younger, I used to use 4-letter words. I suspect there were also some words with 5 letters or so that were just a vulger as the 4 letter kind. I also used those kinds of words in some sales settings or when dealing with salesmen I managed (I used "salesmen" on purpose. I never swore in front of women.)

Somewhere along the line I asked myself: "Will I make one more friend or sale because of my language use. Moreover, might I actually lose friends or sales due to my choice of words. I decided that day to end the use of any and all vulgar words in all settings.

Now, the other day I read this article.

The Rudest Thing You Can Do at Work

The rudest thing you can do at work is to use profanity.
That's the word from a Harris Interactive survey of 2,318 employed adults conducted for Randstad USA, a leading workforce solutions company, about behaviors that interfere with work performance. Fully 91 percent of those surveyed cited profane language as the rudest workplace behavior.
Top 9 office etiquette pet peeves:
Using profanity: 91 percent
Being spoken to in a condescending tone: 44 percent
Public reprimand: 37 percent
Micromanaging: 34 percent
Loud talkers: 32 percent
Cell phones ringing at work: 30 percent
Using speakerphones in public areas: 22 percent
Personal conversations in the workplace: 11 percent
Using PDAs during meetings: 9 percent

Swearing at work--even if it seems like everyone else is doing it, too--can leave a bad impression, according to James O'Connor, founder of Cuss Control. Not only that, but it makes you unpleasant to be around and can endanger your relationships as people lose respect for you. Most of all, it shows you don't have control and could even lead some to think you have a bad attitude or a lack of character. "Swearing is complaining, and it can be infectious," O'Connor told Training magazine. "It also reflects on an individual's lack of maturity and inability to cope with daily aggravations."

To help you stop swearing, devise a new list of tension-releasing words. For example, instead of saying you're "pissed off," try one of these: angry, mad, livid, fuming, irate, furious, enraged, incensed, upset, infuriated, spitting mad, disappointed or frustrated.

Nice to know I made a wise choice. Sorry to think how many I offended before I figured it out.