Conversations: The Other Social Media
As far as houseguests go, the one we had this week was benign. No extra meals to cook, no extra housework, and really no disruption in our lives as usual. However, he was unnerving. He didn’t speak to us. He wasn’t mad. He just didn’t make conversation, and frankly, he’s been here before and I just wasn’t up for working that hard in my own home. So, I was pretty quiet, too. Very strange behavior because my personal brand banks on communication. Talking is right there with air and water when it comes to my survival
The Quiet Visitor
instinct.
The young man came from New York City to attend a huge sporting event in Los Angeles, where he works in the media as a freelance sportscaster. He has a Clear Channel radio program for an hour each week and occasionally writes for the sports section of an important metropolitan newspaper. His personal brand is well established in his field, and there’s really no one in his field he can’t access: owners, trainers, athletes, pundits, analysts, and other members of the media.
He is a friend of a friend who is staying with us this month, a joyful, full of life young woman who is in the same field. She has an almost equally well-known personal brand, in the same sport, and she is at 24, a decade and a half younger than the man. She is confident, beautiful and most important to me, as a civilian not involved in their sport: she can create conversation with anyone. She makes you feel good when you speak to her. She’s interested in your life, your pets, your job, your clients, and your aspirations – at least as far as you know. You feel like you are a very important person when you talk to her.
I take her conversational generosity for granted because I know her very well. She’s the type of person I make time for, even on my busiest day. Nearly everyone I introduce her to, always wants to get more deeply connected to her. People fight for “networking” time with her, not because she’ll have a job or deal to recommend, but simply because she is so engaging. She turns down a whole lot of invitations simply because there is just so much time in her week.
Her brand “personality” comes across the same way in her social media communication. She has a ton of fans and friends. None of this interaction is hard for her, she says. She has a tremendous curiosity that drives her to find out more about anyone or anything, when she has the opportunity. It might not turn out to be important, nourishing, or even vaguely useful, but she doesn’t know until she engages.
She also values everyone she meets: the president of a professional sports league and my cleaning lady, for example. Our house was cleaner this week, because she was here (and not because she’s neat – she’s not).
Organic Friend Requests
Your ability to make conversation is critical, if you need to connect with other people in order to succeed in business or life. That should come as no surprise. But, the widespread inability to create conversation is surprising.
Your ability to smile and project positive energy is critical, if you are seeking work, clients, promotions, or people to come over to your point of view. A smile is your signal, like the beam from a lighthouse. It draws people to you.
Why? Because looking down into your phone, indulging your shy side or appearing aloof doesn’t generate: “Yes, I’d love to work with you!”
Dreamworks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg in Sunday’s NY Times says the quality he looks for most in a potential new hire is “somebody who believes in themselves. If you don’t have a strong sense of you are and what you have to offer, and a strong conviction about that, then you cannot expect somebody else to have that for you.”
The only thing I’d add to Katzenberg’s comment is this. If you can’t connect on anything other than your skill set, you may be very lucky to get something, but not get anything richer, broadening and more lucrative once you get in. The young man whom we hosteled this week has been doing the same thing for 15 years, and has not moved an inch forward in his chosen field. He finds his life both stable and depressing. It shows.
Here’s what to do now
How To...
1. Make a list of 5 questions you can ask anyone. Hint: with the job situation right now, switch from “what do you do?” to “what keeps you busy?”
2. Talk to 5 strangers a day. Remember, talking might just be: “Have you tried Starbucks’ ‘perfect’ oatmeal? I love oatmeal, so ‘perfect’ is a really high bar for me.”
3. Find your curiosity bone. If you have to connect it to your ability to get a job or build your personal brand, connect that wire in your brain. If it feels uncomfortable to approach people in a friendly manner and ask them questions, it’s a sign you’re doing something right.
Lastly, a plea from my sparkling young woman friend who looks over my shoulder right now. She says, “If you update your tanning color or your haircut – change your Facebook profile photo.” Otherwise, when she meets you in real life for the first time, she has no idea who you are. So, she’ll pose her signature newcomer questions, and miss the opportunity to greet you like the old friend you are. Believe me, that greeting makes your day. It’s an indelible part of her personal brand.
Nance Rosen is the author of Speak Up! & Succeed. She speaks to business audiences around the world and is a resource for press, including print, broadcast and online journalists and bloggers covering social media and careers.
Do-It-Together Club for Entrepreneurs
Nance Rosen’s October 27, 2009 keynote to the United Chambers of Commerce on Personal Branding: How to Build Your Reputation & Gain Visibility for Your Organization. Nance spoke on increasing company value, developing new relationships to increase revenue, and the new
Do-It-Together Club for Entrepreneurs.
Personal Branding: How to Build Your Reputation & Gain Visibility for Your Organization from PegasusMediaWorld on Vimeo.
When You Don’t Know What Else To Do.
What do you do when you are at odds with yourself? When you have a pile of folders or papers? When you’re almost out of underwear? When you should be doing your taxes? My daughter Molly Jo reads.
Not to infer that her life is out of order (actually the examples are from my own quick inventory of what I’m not doing right now). Just to say that even when I’m at odds with myself, I think about Molly Jo. And that today, leaving Kentucky and going back to New York, she reported that she read a new book, per her airplane ritual. Behavior that is reassuringly contagious.
A few weeks ago, Mo was home with me in LA from Manhattan, for her typical 36-hour turnaround. She has a dozen friends to see and multiple places to go in my new car. She has a tiny wardrobe (size not number of garments), packed like a perfect scoring Tetris level 7 in a chic bag that defies the word backpack and isn’t clumsy like luggage. It’s her…. whatever. In less than two days and four times as many changes, she finally needs to borrow a small dress and a much smaller evening bag.
As her professional dresser (think Gypsy with Rosalind Russell and Natalie Wood), I pick through her outsized teal leather silver studded carryall to select only the essentials to fit into my 4 x 4 (inches, not all wheel drive) vehicle on loan that will be slung on her shoulder. We have few secrets (from each other, not you) so nothing shocks me about her life as represented by the contents in her bag that contains a good bit of it. But, I do look for evidence that nothing has changed, the way she looks at me when we meet at airports.
There it is: the book! It doesn’t matter what book. It’s the book. Typically soft cover, 6 x 9 inches in dimension, as thick as a baby doll’s arm. Later, when she digs through my handbag for a lipstick I’m wearing that she decides she likes, she finds the same proof of life as we live it, just with a different title.
We both write relentlessly, each on nearly a dozen different projects, some for print, some online, some for others and some for ourselves. We both like to hear our writing out loud. I especially like to hear her read her pieces to me on the phone.
She read aloud all the early drafts of my last book, when I pushed her wheelchair through the weather in Kentucky after the accident. I would write when she slept and later when she worked. I can still see her reading in winter, when the words made puffs of smoke while icicles froze on fences made for keeping horses in their places.
My sister once asked me if I liked reading for the same reason she did. She liked the way reading felt when the words ran over her eyes. I do, especially when I don’t know what else to do.
Sunshine and Rain
Picked from the source and nearly alive on your table: vegetables, fish and information. We like them fresh or not at all. We know it takes a sometimes difficult to manage, dichotomy of forces to bring something delicious to fruition.
I’m drawn to farmers’ markets for that “just picked taste” and flowers that are closed so tight that the bloom is a surprise. I like blogs because they each are a singular fusion of an uneven mix of facts with a bit of fantasy drizzled in. I love cartoon contests where a challenge is put out and people contribute their most absurd captions, because everyone who enters seems smarter than I am.
Frankly, I’m a bit deflated when I read a re-tweet.
I feel positively refreshed when an expert or author reveals something that’s never been said before. I especially appreciate when they deliver a new take on an evergreen topic like success, leadership or well-being.
Those are the drivers behind the Pegasus Media World vision: fresh and fulfilling perspectives from people who are famous for their punditry, and also from those up and coming experts whose platforms blossom under our umbrella.
We’re on the prowl for topics and takes that make us open our eyes and stretch our limbs, like we do when the smell of fresh coffee and the sound of pancakes hits the griddle in the middle of Sunday morning.
If you’ve got something new cooking, we welcome the opportunity to sample it. And in advance of your approach, we appreciate your effort to make us awake and aware every day, all day.
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