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Your Campaign Plan

One of the things I mean that I think has been a real through line during the course of our conversation has been the importance of authenticity and of generosity when we're dealing with personal brand to many people shy away from even having a discussion about personal branding or networking, you know, these sort of elements that complement each other because they have this this reputation in some people's minds as being fake, sleazy, you know, all about pushing things on other people that people don't want. And as we've heard over the past two days, that's really the opposite of what we're talking about, a relationship quote unquote, that you form through being something other than yourself isn't even really a relationship because it's founded on false premises, what we want to do is really understand ourselves that goes back to what we were talking about earlier when it comes to, you know, drilling down on our narrative and understanding, you know, what is our brand and then communi...

cate that with other like minded people so that when we form relationships, we're sharing our brand on the basis of honesty and transparency and giving. And so one of the things that I think really is most critical in this element is that it's not all about us it's about the relationship which means it's about you and another person and what you can give to each other to make sure that one plus one equals three that's that's really the goal one of the people who has inspired me who I think really summarized it best in a lot of ways is this gentleman here his name is harvey mackay and some of you may remember him from from his heyday on the new york times bestseller lists in the nineteen eighties he wrote a book that was his big new york times bestseller called swim with the sharks is that right? No way yes swim with the sharks without being eaten alive and it was his business book and what I like about harvey mackay and his approach is that he he comes from literally and this is a situation that more and more of us face as we go through a very globalized economy he comes from a business that is the ultimate commodity business you know, you might feel like you know what? There are so many photographers in the world you know how can I distinguish myself as a photographer there's so many graphic designers why would anybody ever pick me? You know it could be hard teo teo really come up with a compelling reason to be able to articulate it and it can get depressing sometimes it feels like there's this whole world of competition but harvey mackay even you know, back in the day he ran a business which was the ultimate commodity literally he was an envelope salesman and this is pretty tough, right? Because as long as the envelope is decent enough that doesn't like corrode, you know, in in the male locks like why on earth would you want to buy one envelope versus another envelope you go to the ones cheapest obviously there's no other reason as long as the envelope is like reasonably passable but harvey mackay in spite of this really uphill circumstance that he had to face was able to be a tremendously successful salesman and he wrote he wrote a series of books based on what he learned over the process because how do you get someone to buy from you rather than someone else that's kind of the essence of personal brand in a lot of ways, right? What makes somebody pick you and say, you know what? Even with all these other options out here I want to work with you specifically if we could if we could figure that out that's cracking the code right? And so one of his books that I think I cz really you know he's got a great title dig your well before you're thirsty I think that that kind of sums it up in a lot of ways what he's talking about is the fact that when you and you know we all know this from our personal experience when you go to someone and you need something let's say you're launching a new product line or maybe you know like me, you write a book and it's like oh it's time to publicize the book if you go out to people and with the ask first it's very easy for them to say no to you because you know, nobody likes it when somebody is just coming at them and you know, full of need and saying do this for me it's kind of a grabby way to be in the world you want to build relationships that are not about that it's about getting to know someone and you know, we all know that in a good relationship with your friends you know you're not keeping score you're not keeping track oh, well, you know, when you took me out too toe lunch last week you paid thirteen dollars for my sandwich and when I took you out this week I paid fifteen for your lunch so we better even that up. You know, if you care about somebody it's not like that you give and you get and it's a natural symbiosis and it's not it is terrible kind of tit for tat and that's what we want is the kind of relationships with all of our contacts so that they feel like friends and in many cases they are actually our friends but how do we get there? So harvey mackay came up with something that I think is fantastic and it's actually available on his website for those who are interested in it but it's a concept called the mckay sixty six and this was something that he gave toe all of his salesman at his envelope company and he said, look this this is how we're going to get people to choose us to do business with us um you know, if you have if you have a powerful brand, it means that the people you know, they recognize you for some special skill or, you know, something thatyou dio but it also means that they like you as a person that there's a kind of connection that kind of just crowds out everybody else they focus in and say I must have samantha bee my photographer you know, I don't care who else is doing it I'm taking her and so that's the kind of thing so the mckay sixty six allowed them to do that. Basically what it is is a list of sixty six questions and clearly if you were sitting with your envelope salesman who's coming to visit you you are not going to sit there and be interviewed and answer sixty six questions in a row from your out at you from your envelope salesman that would take like three hours and nobody wants to do that and so that was actually the nature of the challenge the questions were things like what college did the person go to how many kids do they have? What are the ages of the kids where where the kids go to school what's your favorite color? What are their favorite foods? What are their hobbies what's their husband or wife's name? You know how you know all these things, what charities are they involved in all of these incredibly detailed things and these are things that because the salesmen were not permitted to literally, you know, sit there and ask like you're grilling or interrogating someone it inspired them to do something very different. The requirement was they had to fill out over the course of, say, a year they'd fill out the mckay sixty six the on ly way they could get that information was to spend quality time enough with the people that you know with their customers so that they could pick it up by osmosis or ask a few questions at a time and really learn about the people in a deep way. So the end you know, you have this sort of dossier on the client, you know, all these things about it, but it's not because you've done a road exercise it's because you've spent enough time you legitimately know this person and have such a close relationship that at the end of the process they would never dream of doing business with somebody else. So if you adopt your own mckay sixty six with your best clients and the people that you really want to form strong relationships with I mean that's the secret we were talking with susan rohan earlier and you know about how so many people get nervous they hate these big events I'm one of them, you know, with five hundred people in a ballroom and you're trading cards and it's loud and you talk to him for two minutes and then you know, okay, we'll buy and then you know, maybe you friend them on lengthen or you don't and it's like, well, what do I say to them after that? It's just you have you have nothing to go with because you've talked to them for two minutes and you don't know anything about them. This is the antithesis of that because when you're building riel legitimate lasting relationships, which is what counts and you know what's more gratifying for you personally but also better for you professionally in the long run it's about investing in people over time. Earlier in the segment with susan, we were talking about the idea of of really kind of triaging or contacts, you know who our a and b and c contacts meaning, you know, not that you're saying some people don't matter, but what you're saying is that proactively, I want to make a point of ensuring that I stay in touch with the people who matter most to me and matter most of my business, if somebody is a really great client, if somebody's a really great mentor, if there's someone who always inspires me and teaches me new things or new ways to look at the world, I don't want just by neglect just because, oh, I'm busy, and I forgot that I don't talk to that person for two years. I want I want them in my life, and you need to be strategic in order to do that, to actually make that effort to be the person who maybe, like, tomorrow, writes the handwritten card and says, hey, how's it going? I've been thinking about you, how are you that really matters in today's society? So the mckay sixty six is one way of really making that happen and and making sure that you know enough about the person that there's always a reason moving forward, you know, you send how do you keep in touch? Everything makes you think of that person because, you know what if you know what their favorite sports team is in their sports team wins? You send them a note if you know who their favorite author is you know and maybe their favorite author is maya angelou and she just dies and it's like always just terribly send them a condolence note and you talk to them about that maybe you know what you know what college they went teo and they've just announced a really exciting commencement speaker remember the president decides to speak at their call you send him a note it's actually easy to keep in touch and have a real ongoing relationship with people the more you know about them and the deeper the relationship is in the beginning and so that's why one of the other things that I think is is useful this gentleman here whose picture gary vaynerchuk he is you know, somebody that we talked about a little bit earlier john corcoran just had him on his podcast and we're earlier in the day talking about him because he you know has a slightly complicated name which he likes toe spell out phonetically for people in order to make it a little easier and also a little bit more memorable but gary vaynerchuk is interesting for more reasons than just that he is a businessman he started out because his family owned a small wine shop small liquor shop and they say gary will you help us learn to sell wine online and so he did he created a youtube show called wine library tv and it became so enormously popular maybe some of you guys you know watched it or subscribe to it that he became a social media phenomenon he got on all the tv shows he amassed a huge social following got a book contract and has now become himself a new york times best selling author and has a social media agency so I interviewed him for my forms blawg but one of the books that he's written was called the thank you economy and the idea behind it is that there's a certain degree of person you know, one of the things that he talks about is there's a certain degree of personalization which if we can make the effort to do it in this increasingly homogenized society it really makes a difference for people he told the story about a customer who bought a huge order of wine you know something really massive and so it would've been very easy you know let's say your store has a standard policy in that policy is oh if somebody buys x amount of wine maybe you send them flowers maybe you send them a gift card you know whatever it is but it's it's great it is so good to do that compared to most businesses which never even thanked anyone I mean it's kind of criminal but what gary vaynerchuk does which is even better is he took this guy who he didn't know you know who had made this huge order looks him up online immediately discovers the guy is a sports fanatic finds out what team he likes and instead of doing the standard thing oh maybe you like amazon gift card maybe you like an itunes gift card you know that's great everybody likes that for sure but he thought what would this guy love? And so he goes on ebay and he buys an autocrat aft team jersey from the guys sport's cheam he does that sends it off the guy's ecstatic the guy is a customer for life and so if you can think about ways in everything we do to try to push the envelope to go above and beyond and surprise people mean people unfortunately right there used teo mediocre service they're used to you know things that are good enough and if you can find ways to really say you are special to me I want I want to build a relationship with you not not just you know you do this for me and then I send you a thank you note or you just do this for me and I'll send you a gift card that that's great it's better than most people but if you say you you and I have an ongoing connection that's that's something that will yield you not just a more personally satisfying relationship but it will be ten times the business results because you can imagine that person he's telling all his friends he's on social media saying you would not believe what just happened to me I got the greatest surprise so surprising and delighting that's that's something that if we can strive for can be really powerful in terms of how we bring things together and make it happen so I wanted to talk to you a little bit you know I have a background in politics about a concept that we use in polish six called power mapping and you know this may be sounds a little machiavellian but I can assure you it's not uh it's it's a helpful technique which you know sometimes advocacy groups use and things like that because basically what we need to dio is if we want to make a connection with somebody maybe it is a potential client maybe it's it's a potential mentor that we'd really like to cultivate or just somebody that you know you don't have a connection to them now and they might be a little tricky to figure out how to get teo you create a power map to see if you can find a way to tap them and so here here's how we do it basically I'll draw you a map here um so power map you find your uh your person and make a circle for them so let's say I will I will invent I will invent a scenario here so tamara wants to be in touch as we were talking about earlier she wants to connect with the ceo of the international racing horse federation. Okay, so this is good. So this is the ceo and if we want to try to really understand you know how this works, what are the connections? You want to try to do everything you can through, you know, maybe it's it's research online reading articles you begin to see if, you know, like, on linked in if their mutual connections and things like that but you want to try to figure out who influences that person because if you can't get to them directly, maybe you can find a way to connect with them through their channels. So in terms of of power mapping, maybe it's that here we go, who are the people that would influence the ceo of the international racing horse federation? Maybe there is the editor of my writings pretty bad, so I apologize. But there's an editor of the international horse racing journal and so of course the ceo is reading that every week like, you know, it's it's like, oh, it lands on his desk? Yes, I must read it so this person's gonna be pretty influential who else would do it? Maybe there is a huge donor and so that person is going to be pretty influential as well maybe there is somebody who is a member that is particularly important because we'll call them an owner of like one hundred racehorses and so clearly the ceo has to listen to that person probably there's a board structure so maybe the board chair would be a big person it would be influential and then you know let's let's say one more oh well, you know we can't forget people's personal lives right? Let's see the ceo has a wife and if that's the case then all of these people are you know, pretty much being influential toward the toward the ceo so tomorrow's secret goal is that she would really love to get a contract from this person to photograph every racehorse in america and she knows there's a budget for it and this could happen this is going to be fantastic, right? So but she doesn't know the ceo she can't connect there so really what you want to dio is to try to ask yourself ok, off the people who influence the ceo directly how what is your relationship with these other folks? And sometimes it may be a second degree connection so maybe tomorrow knows some of the folks directly maybe she knows people who knows who know them this is like where linked in comes in so for instance, it could be that tamara's friend is friends with the editor of the horse racing journal so the next way to think about it once we kind of created the baseline map here, and for those of you who are employees at it organizations to this is this is actually based on an article that I wrote for the harvard business for you in the november two thousand twelve issue, a campaign mapped for your career, and you can actually do this literally thinking about, like your boss and who influences your boss because if you want to try to have a positive relationship and, you know, get a good performance review if you if you want to make sure that happens, it's useful to think about all right, well, who's whispering in your boss's ear and do I have a good relationship with those folks? So it applies in many levels, so let's say tomorrow has a really good market green if it's a good relationship she's a really good relationship with her friend, and then she also it turns out, amazingly enough, she knows the wife of the ceo and yellow doesn't really show up on on camera, too well, so we're going to use purple instead would say purple is like, maybe you know the medium well, she knows she knows the board share a little bit and maybe through her friend at a party she met, the editor once you know, she knows thie editor a little bit and then there's plenty of people that she doesn't know it all, they're they're a little harder she doesn't know the the owner of the hundred horses, she doesn't know the ceo yet, and she doesn't know the big donor. But so from this power map you're able tto to really begin to think about, okay, it might seem really hard and impossible on the surface to get to the ceo and to be able to reach them, but there are ways to do it. I mean, even though she doesn't know him directly, you see a route, then you go through the people with the green, the people that you actually have a pretty good relationship with and you say, oh, can you help me? You don't get introduced or, you know, can you help me spend more time with this editor and the people you know, a little bit you say, oh, well, you know is you know, can I ask you for some advice and it's just showing you a root that you can cultivate so that you could begin to create the connections that you need because fundamentally there's a couple of things going on when it comes to networking in relationships, you need teo to make sure that you have your mess clear, which is what we spent yesterday talking about you want, you know, to be really crisp when it comes to talking about I am the greatest horse photographer and here's why here's my proof points, but you can't get very far without the network for it, so power mapping allows you to really visually think about who's important to you who's important to your career and if you know them directly great, but if you don't, how can you get to them through your network in a way that you could begin to build those authentic relationships? So that's the basic idea of how that works and it's the strategy we used in politics all the time? If you're trying to, if you're trying to advance something it like a bill in city council, it turns out there might be a swing vote of a city councilor and you say, okay, well, you know, it's it's hard to influence that person directly because they're getting ten thousand letters about this issue, but maybe the chief donor to the campaign or maybe the treasurer for the campaign, or maybe somebody who's, the head of a group that endorsed that city councillor in the last election, if those people are folks that I know and can leverage, then I can help influence things that way, so really it's about influence and persuasion and so that's that's why power mapping can be so useful and so what I'd love to ask you guys to do now we actually have this in our magic workbook on on page ten and what I'd like to ask you to dio is to draw to think of someone you'd really like to cultivate in your own life it could be a you know, major business prospect it could be a potential you know, someone who I have in the works call the potential endorser by which I mean, you know, maybe somebody who who's who's backing or support would be really helpful to you maybe it's a mentor prospect and so we draw circle like I did here with a ceo draw circle without person's name around it and then create a power map to think about who is it that influences them? And do you have any connections with those folks? Is there a way that through your network you can work to get to that person and you know, by get to I don't mean in like a mafia sense? But I mean, how can you how can you develop a legitimate relationship with them so that when you're introduced it's not just this cold calling hey, will you be my friend? Can we have coffee? But instead you're being introduced and connected by other people who know you both and respect you so if you could just start the process there thinking through whose influential in your in your own life who would you like to connect to and then who does influenced them? And I'll tell a quick story about this as you're doing it, which is a story about a guy that I interviewed initially for my book reinventing you, although ultimately, you know, there's all kinds of cuts for different things. So we told a bunch of other stories in that book, and this ended up, uh, getting published in my forms, blawg instead, this gentleman was named chris and chris worked at a company, and he was having trouble because he kept not getting promoted. It was, you know, kind of this rough thing where he thought his career was going really well, and then all of a sudden he was supposed to get a promotion he didn't then he, you know, again, he didn't get promoted. Finally, the third time, one of his colleagues got promoted to be his boss, and he thought, wow, something's really going wrong? But he didn't know what, because the whole time he was getting reviews from his boss that he was, you know, performing you know above above satisfactory is performing above average, they thought, well, you know, what am I missing? And so finally, he went to his boss and he said, you've gotta level with me. I know something's wrong because I'm not getting the promotions and other people are, you know, please be honest. And so his boss said, well, actually, yeah, it's true, he said, you know, you're chris was from another country, and the boss said, it's, your attitude, it doesn't really work because you don't seem enthusiastic enough. It doesn't seem like you want to be here at work and chris, you know, I thought he was being fine, but but it's true, I mean, because sometimes of cultural differences, americans are supposed to be a little bit smile eras we were talking about with tamara and and so, you know, chris was just it was not working out, and so he realised, ok, I really have to make an effort here. So he decided to really get serious because he's a goal was that he wanted to be promoted to vice president. And so he he came up with this whole campaign for himself and he, you know, literally all these things. We had talked yesterday about the importance when you are at some kind of like an event. You know a cocktail party or whatever when somebody asks you like what what do you do or whatever you need to have a good answer you can't just say oh nothing you know that doesn't really inspire a lot of confidence or get people excited so similarly chris created his own his own kind of map for himself whenever people asked him how is your day which seems like a pretty pretty innocuous thing you know in america were just like great, you know it's always the answer but chris decided he would have some fun with it and so he decided he would go through the alphabet and every single day he would come up with a different you know, different adjective from the alphabet so day one he was awesome and day two he was brilliant and you know, it kind of go on down from there imagine probably got a little ah little difficult with certain letters but you know, he was trying and so okay people were noticing mary was more enthusiastic but one of the most powerful things when he got really serious about figuring out, you know, look, if I'm going to be a v p I need to make it happen was that he realized that it wasn't just his boss that he needed to win over and convince that you know yeah he's the guy for the job he needed to convince ah whole team uh v p s and s p piece because like twenty people vote and he when he was realizing it he made a power map like this and he would color it in in greene if he knew the person really well had a good relationship with them he'd colored in yellow if he kind of knew them a little bit and he colored in in red if he didn't know them at all and he said there was a lot of red on the page and so for any of you guys you know whether you work in a large corporation or you're self employed professional for all of us we have key people in our lives maybe it's you know the ceo of a company that's a potential client maybe it's you know, people who are on the board of an organisation it would really like to join our whatever it is but we need to make sure in our power maps that there aren't a sea of red there that would be blocking us and his chris did we all have to do find a way to turn the red into green and the way that you do that is by, you know, really thinking through okay who you know who are the important folks, the decision makers here and what's the level of my relationship can can I if I only know them a little bit find a way through some of the strategies that we talked about earlier, to get to know them better and to intensify that relationship so that we can be, we could be closer and, like harvey mackay, you know, turn somebody who might have been just a sort of, you know, commodity buyer? Oh, I'll buy the, you know, the cheapest envelopes into somebody that is always going to choose you both because they know who you are. They understand your value proposition, but because they really like you, and you've taken the time to build a strong relationship in a strong personal brand with that person that's the challenge for us, and so I'm curious, if there's there's anything that people I want to know or have been shining in, we do have a question. The question from wa is when doing a power map for a company where you work, how do you get in front of the people who are in red, the ones that you don't know and are higher up than you, especially without your boss feeling like you're going there? You're going over their head? Yes. So that's, a really important question, and I can tell you the way that chris handled it, which is that he actually identified some things, some certain behaviors at his company that were there were, you know, kind of commonly done but but we're useful and I think every every company probably has certain aspects of this in their culture and so for chris, he worked at a company that had a big corporate campus and he said that that people paid really close attention to who had lunch with who and so he said that he would really try to think through what he could do that would be a legitimate reason for him to spend fifteen minutes with somebody or to you know, have a quick lunch with somebody so you know, it is a little weird if if you're just kind of randomly saying, oh, you know, I don't know you at all, but I'd like to connect with you, but if you can find some kind of an excuse whether it's, you know, you want to ask somebody about a project they're working on or you volunteer for a committee that somebody's on or maybe you know you say, hey, would you be interested in being briefed about this? This thing that I've been doing? If it's a legitimate reason, then I think that can often allay the concerns of the boss that, you know, you know, like, why are you talking to him it's like, oh, well, I'm briefing him about this, okay, well, that makes sense and so chris would do that and he'd come up with a legitimate reason to make contact with these people that he wanted teo to connect with and he would try to do it in the cafeteria so that people would see him with them and all of a sudden it's like who's this chris guy you know, he's having lunch with everybody and because he was talking with some powerful s v p s oftentimes at lunch while he was talking with them, other powerful people would come by and talk and introduce themselves and it would give chris and opportunity to say, oh, hi well, I'm chris and then he'd have that connection and he'd think, well, what's what's my reason for keeping in touch with that person and it helped his network grow over time so that's that's one way of being able to do it that I think could be valuable? I'm curious if our front row here has any questions is this is this exercise something that you think you you have a handle on or that you would do? Um I would love to start a dialogue here with actually samantha I'm kind of thinking it's something I need teo again go back and think about so you know, for myers banker job yeah, I've done a really good job at knowing everybody yeah, we're even though I'm a shy person like I don't think there's one person that wouldn't say like they didn't know who you are but I for my creative you know where I can my business itself it's like who who I go to well and why so I'm thinking okay like he's mentioned earlier your your potential clients but in that relationship so I got out first identify those people on like figure out where they are in the world so maybe like I would start loco yeah dressmakers, boutiques maybe even thrift stores you know? So when I'm stalin to shoot but then beyond that it's like I just need to figure out you know who I need to be connected tio yeah that's so that's so important. Smith I'm really glad you mentioned that because that's the thing I mean when we talk about building our brand, I think for a lot of us we think in this sort of grand sense, you know, I'm going I'm going to build my brand and share it with the world and you know, that's that's true, I mean absolutely, you know, particularly anything you do online, you are technically sharing it with the world, but more specifically, you know, the world is probably not going to randomly stumble across you mean people might but we have to be strategic and thinking about it who is our audience that's a really fundamental question and the reason that I like the power map act activity and exercise is it really forces us to think, who do we want to be read, etching if we really had to prioritize it, who is most important to understand and recognize our brand? I mean, it's great if somebody across the world knows who we are and knows what our brand is, but if we want to be really successful in sustainable entrepreneurs, were we we need the person who could, like, hire rice, tiu know what our brand is? And so thinking through who are those people? And who do they know? And how can I get in front of them? That's a very tangible, I think that we need to do I mean, it could be it could be tricky, and you're right, it could take a little time because, you know, we have to really think well, gosh, I mean, if we're doing this the right way, we want to say, ok, sir, dressmakers, let's, let's, take it down. And actually, how many dress shops are there in your town? And who are they? Literally and okay, do you know any of them, and what do they have in common? Maybe all of them are members of the chamber of commerce. And so if they are might not be a bad idea for you to join the chamber so that at the networking events you could go up and say hello or even better harking back to yesterday's discussion you could volunteer to be the membership chair of the chamber of commerce so it gives you an excuse to reach out and talk to all those spokes but it starts with knowing who our target audience is who we really want to reach and who's important to us and then we step back and say, well how can we do that and you know where to our connections fit in so I love that point it looked like you had a comment as well honestly I have more like resistance to this than just like which is ironic because I'm really strategic person by nature but when the strategic thing goes over into this social sphere it becomes kind of manipulative and weird to me and it makes me uncomfortable and then it makes the part of me that's uncomfortable sabotages the part of me that wants to be strategic and smart and maneuver in a certain way so I find that like if I'm at an event and there's part of me that wants like work the room and finally powerful people and find my way get myself in front of them the other part of myself that wants to be realigned organic and authentic and like more balanced and not power grabbing and whatever like the house judgments and issues about it will just be like you don't need that you're not that person and then we'll make me just go be totally passive and like go the opposite way like warring with yourself yeah so I know that like it makes sense from a strategic career perspective but I just feel like some judgment and resistance so it has a technique yes so don't tell me what's weird and fake about this like what is it that's kind of freaking out? Um I don't know it's kind of like it's sort of like finding a man that I want to date and then instead of going about it and I like uh attract him to me kind of way of being like I'm in again with his friends and like sneak my way in you're something but I don't know it's just some weird judgment I'm overlaying onto it I'm just being honest about exams sure some people at home are probably feeling it too right the room actually and I wonder if anyone else is sharing this resistance. Tamara barbara well, yeah can ish I kind of share that because there's this thing about like, you always have this secret agenda yeah, like it almost feels like everybody who you talk to his like yeah dear yeah goler yeah, it is really hard to be sincere when you have this thought that yeah, he can connect me to this person yeah no I totally hear it I think we kind of in some ways that we all sort of have a secret agenda right? Like our secret agenda is like if you are professional, you kind of would like people to hire you and your kind of would like people to say, oh, this is so interesting we should we should connect I mean in fact we probably all have a secret agenda to like, you know, it would be nice if people recognize that we would be cool friends and you know said, hey, we should you know we should hang out we should be friends so I don't I don't think that there's anything fundamentally wrong we've wanting to be an entrepreneur and have, you know, have people notice us and be able teo, you know, to connect you know I hear you though because, you know, it may seem like oh it's so it's so sneaky it's so devious guess what it's only sneaky and devious if you are fooling people and I want to be clear it's not about fooling people in any way really what we're talking about let's see, there is a perfect man for you, okay? And you discover him and but you don't know him at all so I mean if you did it would be a different thing because then you know, if you know him a little bit you can say well, hey let's go have coffee and we can get to know each other more but you find out about the perfect man you don't you don't know him at all you do have a friend who's friends with him and so you know, I think that if if you were sort of secretly conspiring to lor him you know somewhere it might feel weird but if you had if you we're friends with a friend and said, you know what? Hi this guy seems really cool I actually would like to meet him because you know, we might hit it off if if the friend said you know what? Well I'm going to a party and he's going to be there do you want to come with me and you say, well, yeah let's let's do that I mean this is basically what we're talking about is how do you take connections that you have and find ways to put yourself in the orbit of the right people and just, you know, make make a point to think it through because you know, it would be so great if clients just magically appeared and came to us would be so great if the love of our life was just like, you know it happened to be there, and so and some people do some people the first week of freshman year of college, they, you know, are on the same hall as the person they fall in love with and that's it, and they're and they're married, but for the rest of us, we might have to just, you know, think about it a little bit more, and so I'm not implying any kind of deviousness with a strategy, and I'm thinking, how do you get yourself in the right room so that magic can happen? Because if you're not in the right room, they're never going to find out about you. You had a comment, barbara, I think that if you have it in your mind that you love what you do and you're offering them something that's beneficial than that changes a little bit. Yeah, that's so true, exactly. I mean, I think a lot of it too, I'm not saying this is about you, but I think for a lot of people to it's about self esteem because if we, you know, and this is a theme that we're talking about a lot with john and was susan earlier today, if we think that, you know, oh, this person that I want to meet, they could just give me this stuff if we're if we're literally thinking of it in the frame is like they air the magic giver and when I can access them I can trick them into giving me the business are giving me whatever then of course it feels terrible it feels weird we need to come at it from the place of self esteem where we say you know what, they can give me something sure I can give them something because if we're if we're doing our power map here and tamara is connecting with a guy who's the head of the international racehorse federation of course you know you could get a contract you could make money it would be wonderful but you would be giving them something because my god they've got the best horse photographer in the country and you are making their life easier because they've probably been looking for one they've found you and now you can promote the sport of horse racing more widely because you have these amazing iconic images that air capturing the public's imagination we have to believe we have to summon it in ourselves to believe in our heart of hearts that we have something equally valuable to give to that person if we think of it as a peer level relationship wow, I really want to meet that person because you know yes they could give me something I can give them something then I don't think it's it's at least for me it's not picky anymore because it's not we're not using them um we're connecting with them you had a thought tomorrow uh yeah I think that may be something that can help them to remove this awkwardness and is um it almost sounds like we only go to this party to talk to this single person probably it's not like that you're gonna be specializing with owe other people and I think if we think about it in this way that maybe a little bit less according absolutely absolutely and just have fun and put to yourself what cassette in the right room and you were the average off like seven people around you say something like that remember the one but yeah just being around those people I think that's the biggest part yeah that's right because I mean I think I think that most people recognize that you know, it may feel weird to be like, you know, if we seem to strategic but the truth is the opposite of being strategic about it is just saying like well, you know I'll meet some people in the course of my day to day business and you know maybe they'll want to hire me and yes that's true, maybe they will but if you have a sort of specialized service if you're like a debt and you have a business where you're providing cirque du soleil style entertainment for high end corporate events it's a very specific person that is buying that and if you're if you're just kind of going to a regular event you know you might chance upon someone that could want or could afford something like that but you probably wouldn't. And so it's actually I think okay and good I mean, this is you know, this is a place I mean, I think it's nice to have this workshop and have you guys here because you know, it makes sense that in this last workshop where it really is the like okay let's just put it put it, put the plan into action guys, this is the place where people begin to feel weird because the idea is good oh yeah I like all this you know? But then when it's time to do it it's like oh my gash but so if a debt can find ways to put herself in a room and the room could be literally could be metaphorical maybe she's speaking at a meeting planner event that would be pretty great maybe she decides to join the board of an organisation of meeting planners so she can network with them pretty great maybe she's writing an article for the meeting planner association, blogger or newsletter or maybe there's a particular person that you know, this goes back to the power that maybe there's a particular person that she's heard about who is aa meeting planner for a local bay area company? She plans one hundred events a year and our debts heard about these parties. They sound great and they really thinks it would be a match, you know that she does a lot of parties and our debt has a unique service. They could really benefit her. I don't think it's weird to try to say, how could I meet that person? What would be the way that I could have a conversation with her? Because we may have some things in common and I might she could help me, sure, but I might be able to help her. And if we think about that power mapping, you know, it might it might sound like kinda freaky to people, but really all it's doing is saying, who do I want to meet and who do they know? How can I connect with them in a way? That's, you know, a little bit a little bit better than just sending them a cold email like, hey, you're cool want to talk so that's the thought yeah, thank you for livening this debate because sometimes it is a debate you struggle with your with your concept of what you think something is but diving and deep you really understand oh, you know, this is actually another way of seeing it I have a quandary. Yes, quandary with this power, nothing exercise for me, and I feel like maybe or did I feel like maybe you might have a bit of this? I'm not sure feel like anyone out there that you know, at the very beginning, and this is all being clarifying to a point, and I tried me to complete quandary tum if you're if you're a created this multi faceted, so you're doing a whole lot of different things don't necessarily relate, and the brand is okay because it comes back to you, so you might as consent to mae. But I do all these things, but when it comes to power mapping really liked the concept of the power mething. But in my tea, this is sign for politician, but you've got a map that actually fractures into a satellite thing where the paper was trying a list. Is there one key person of the five key people that me as me apart from? Maybe you know, someone that will give me a tv show? Yeah, right, so so then you go to each of your fractured you of your facets and find the people, and then it just starts getting very confusing in turns into this sort of map, like a mind map in it. Yeah, yeah, I mean, a politician would have that right? Because they would have old eyes different lobby area is like, what would you do with my country? Sure. Yeah. So this is all over and everything was so clear and now it's just going to musch phone? Yeah. No, this is this is really kind of meant to be something that we turn into an action plan because you're right, you can't necessarily map all of your connections it's not like you know, you create one power map and like, this is my life, you know, basically what this is is that you want teo to create a sort of priority list. Almost this is this is thinking through for various facets of your life. You know, it could be simple. Like, if you work at a company probably the main person in your life who has control over over you know, your future is your boss and so it's like okay, well, who who does my boss listen, teo? And do those people think highly of me? And if you can solve that problem, you know, if if that seems good, you know, your life is probably pretty good professionally, but for all of us who are creative professionals and maybe, you know, worked for ourselves or have multiple identities, maybe you know you have a day job and you do artwork on the side maybe you have a lot of different things, you know it could be it could be tricky but so creating a power map is a tool not to to be the sort of definitive end all thing but really it's to say, what are the relationships that I need to be mined couple of cultivating in my life and so I would say for for each facet of what you do maybe you know, your your work in entertainment you could and, you know, doing tv and things like that you could say, well, who are the people I'd really like to connect with their deep in my relationship with and maybe there's a few and that's okay, you create a power map for each of them and then you just prioritise it and say, you know what number one number two number three that's you know, that's kind of my action plan for the next six months is I'll try, you know, maybe there's people that you should be having coffee with or connecting with who are your friends that can help lead you closer to connecting to people you'd like to meet and being in the right room? Maybe you do a similar thing for the other facet of your life that you do in terms of design, work or architectural work in fact that when you put it that way mighty if you look at the doable things for each of those things and perhaps and again you know the people that at the start was saying it's confusing because I do all these things yeah maybe that clarifies what's possible right now exactly that thinking that maybe if you took some action on just one power map and you had a little bit of momenta maybe that would give you the confidence we actually have an interesting comment from memo saying this is a similar topic to the tall poppy syndrome of wanting to connect with people and the perspective of what you bring to the party maybe it's an issue of self esteem yes I think I think that's a really huge one I mean, sometimes you hear so often from people like oh I you know I can't do that our or whatever and it's it's frustrating I think particularly sometimes for creative people I mean I know that one form that tall poppy syndrome takes in the creative world particularly in the art world specifically but in various things is the idea of like, you know, like selling out you know I'm gonna you know well you would sell out if you did that and you know what that is that is like the third rail that keeps you away from doing many of the things that actually you kind of need due to be successful and you know that's that's not t you know selling out is a label that people throw on other people to just be like you know don't go there and you know I think that that they try to attack people's integrity and maybe we've internalized it to a certain extent and it's like oh gosh I would be a bad person if I behaved that way selling out is something we don't want to dio but it's almost like you know warning warning people about like what's on the other side of the forest you know like oh you know beware there are dragons and ultimately you know what is what is selling out mean well oftentimes what it means is that person's more successful than we are and we assume because of a lack of self esteem and because of the way that you know we're sort of trained in some ways to think oh they must have done something bad to get there they must have done something wrong teo accomplished that there is not one thing you know home audience there's not one thing wrong with accomplishment in achievement I want you to be successful I want you to have tons of business and make lots of money and that's a great thing because it means that you are sharing your art and your vision with the world that's a good thing that's that's the situation we want if people are clamoring for your services, if they're clamoring to pay you money, it also means you have more choice because it means that you can turn down assignments or engagements you don't want, it gives you the freedom and the creativity. So thinking about success, striving for success that, you know, I think that's that's a great thing as long as we're doing it the right way in the ethical way, which is what we've been talking about today, it's about building really relationships with people, it's about not treating people like tools, it's about really understanding like the mckay sixty six, asking questions, learning about them, caring about them and finding ways that you can help them with power mapping. Really, all this is is crystallizing the idea who do I want to meet? Who would be helpful to me? But how also can I bring value to them? And, you know, what's the best path in if we need to come up with our own sort of agenda? Not just, you know, we're talking about in mentor relationships, how do we create an agenda for our own learning and professional development? How do we know what questions to ask? But we want to create our own agenda for relationships? Who were the people we wanted to get to know better? Who were the people who are in our circle now that we really want to treasure and deep in those ties and spend time with them and who do we also not know it all but would really love the chance to connect with and build something with that's what I'm talking about? So I am excited to have this and thank you a debt for raising the qualms because you know, we we do you know everybody has sort of different reactions teo things and is good to talk about and something's may feel more comfortable other people than others but I really want to stress that you know, power mapping and all of all of its ilk it's it's not about, you know, some sort of sleazy like how can I how can I get stuff from you it's it's really about if we believe in ourselves if we believe in the value that we can give to other people it's about okay, how do I make really connections with the folks that that actually could could benefit from that? And that I think might you know we might have a good symbiotic relationship with I did a forbes post actually about a year and a half ago about a great guy steven lad and he has a business with his brother called stephen and william and they are artists and designers in brooklyn and it's really interesting what they've done they have, you know, they're not even represented by a gallery, which I think in many ways is considered, you know, like the thing. You have to have a gallery to be a successful artist. But they've been able to make a great living and actually have solo museum shows without gallery representation and part of the way that they've been able to do that. Use that. They take a very entrepreneurial and enterprising approach with with people who might be buyers of their artwork. And they researched them. They find they find people that they think based on their research, you know, they're not spamming people based on their research, who would legitimately be interested in the work that they dio. And then you just reach out and make a connection, whether it's through friends or a cold call, and they've been so incredibly successful with this, that built a fantastic career. So I think there's, sort of an embodiment of some of this.