TUESDAY TIPS: June 3rd, 2014: Make me care.
So many people, the first thing they’ll tell you about are their fancy degrees, or their important certificates, or what school they went to…and that’s awesome. I am also proud of my education. But clients don’t hire me because I went to Wellesley. (No, usually they ask me why I went to a “girls’ school,” was I scared of boys or something? And then, in the sudden hush, my eyebrow shoots into my hairline like lighting on a summer night, and um, no further questions, Your Honor.) Clients hire me because we have an emotional connection–i.e. I make them giggle like hyenas with my inappropriate humor, and/or I talk them down off the ledge–and they think,”…this crazy b*tch…maybe she can help me stop sabotaging myself and start the healing. Or, what the hell, at least we can watch true crime documentaries together.” #samedifference
If you’re trying to change your life, in ways big or small, you have to sell yourself. Like some primal ritual, you have to make other people aware of you. Before potential clients or employers will even begin to notice all the letters after your name, or what sorority you were in, you have to get them interested. You have to make them care.
So, when I see people on LinkedIn who blithely reel off all their degrees, but don’t tell me anything about why they spent the blood, sweat and tears to get all of those degrees…danger, Will Robinson! #notsomuch I don’t care about your degrees, I care about your story. I want to hear about your passion.
You want to sell other people? You have to let them in. You have to give me a reason to pay attention, and listen to your story and, ideally, empathize with you. Very few people, for example, hire me because I went to IU School of Law, or Middlebury Language School (Russian). But tons of people have hired me because I admit that I went to law school for the worst reasons, and it was 3 years of professors with social skills a notch below child-killers life lessons. People don’t hire me because I went to Middlebury to study Russian, but people do hire me because they wanted to spend a year abroad at some point, but it didn’t work our…or because they believe that if I had the discipline to master a language like Russian, I can probably be safely trusted to ignore their whining, and kick their ass as necessary. (PS: Some people are surprised that dominatrices make so much money. I myself am not. Not one little bit.) Some people hire me because we show each other photos of our cats. (That makes my cats feel sorry for me. Cats are like teenagers; they smell fear.)
People want to make a connection with you, and no one makes a connection over diplomas or pretty pieces of paper. You connect because you both grew up in NYC in the 1980s, and you both listened to similar types of music and it reminds you of all you have in common. Allow people to connect with you!
If you’re trying to change your life, you need to get people interested in you. To do that, you have to give people a reason to care. That reason simply cannot be solely that you went to Cornell or that you have a ton of coaching certificates, or that you speak 5 languages. But part of that reason can be your personality, your love of Daft Punk, the fact that you rescue Beagles, the info that you regularly run marathons to raise money to fight leukemia in honor of your sister who passed, or that you’re obsessed with Benedict Cumberbatch yadda yadda yadda. There’s always going to be someone else with a better degree or title or website…but there won’t be someone else with your heart. You know what to do: make me care.