We’re not academics. While we enjoy intellectual debate, we’re not doing this to make a point. Mark, Craig and I want to help people through Social Capital. All of us had to learn to negotiate the business world the hard way and want to save others from the same pain. Success for us isn’t measured by the amount of people who come to our website. It’s measured by the number of people who use our methods to help achieve their business goals, whether they’re job seekers, entrepreneurs, sales people, managers, or simply anyone trying to avoid a lay-off.
What matters to us is action
After reading our work, we don’t want you to just nod your head and agree. We want you to feel energized and excited to put some new practices into action. We’re not interested in unassailable, intellectual definitions of words. Those type of definitions are always of questionable usefulness; great for cocktail parties and your college thesis but very little else. No, we will give you definitions that open up new avenues to act. Everything comes down to action.
We emphasize framework and structure
Most of the advice out there about business socializing and etiquette revolves around what NOT to do. It’s almost always good information but a collection of “don’ts”—no matter how large—will not help you “DO” anything. In fact, it’s been my experience that focusing on a large group of negatives will absolutely prevent you from being proactive. And nobody has ever achieved their business goals by just saying, “No.” Even when you come across tips of positive things to DO, they end up being thrown onto that unorganized pile of tips in your head, which isn’t very useful.
You’ll notice that I gave you a broad structure on how to approach a networking event in a previous post. Each one of those topics can be broken down into a structure itself. We also do that with lunch in our Power Lunch DVD.
There are several advantages to having a template like this;
the most important are consistency and repeatability.
Structure allows you to make use of tips
A structure like this accomplishes two goals. One, you get an understanding of the totality of the event allowing you to adjust to the eventualities that invariably arise. Two, as you collect tips and techniques throughout your career, the structure shows you where they fit in; now all those tips become actually useful.
We’ll give you the tips too. On our Power Lunch DVD, we have interviews with people who are experts in business socializing. From Robert Skurko, formerly of Fairchild Japan to Wendy Lazarus of the Department of Defense, our guests share their experiences with you in a easy to watch format.
But what makes our product uniquely powerful is the structure that is introduced before the interviews. Armed with the framework, you can make use of the tips shared by our interview guests. This is our secret and what makes us different.
It’s like the martial arts. It’s one thing to learn a technique. It’s quite another to be able to use that same technique in a real altercation. A skillful teacher will help you make the transition from theory to practice. That’s what we do. We’ll help you turn all those great ideas into action and practice.
How? Stay with me.
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10. March 2009 by Richard Chen
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