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How to Give a 6-Minute Presentation at 1 Million Cups

As an entrepreneur, you’ll often be asked to give a pitch about your company and your offering. Of course, there’s the 30-second elevator pitch, the 2-minute pitch, and so on, but you’ll have to pitch your company no matter what you do.

At 1 Million Cups (I lead the Orlando chapter), you have six minutes to give a presentation, followed by 20 minutes of questions, constructive advice, and feedback, about both your company and your presentation.

I’ve seen countless entrepreneurs give what is likely their first presentation, and they blow it. They try to cram as much information into their slides as they can, they fill us up with statistics and stories, and they tell us as much as they can about the problem, its scope, and the heartbreak of whatever it is they’re fixing. They also include their own journey, their history, how they learned about the problem, and how they decided to fix it.

Eugeniu Rotari of Via Typing presenting at 1 Million Cups Orlando.
They have a couple dozen slides — I once saw a presentation that had 30 slides — and they think six minutes is plenty of time to share their vision about how they’re going to solve this problem that’s plaguing millions.

Except they barely get through the first three slides when time runs out.

They failed. We didn’t learn about the company, their work, whether the problem can actually be fixed, or whether they’re the ones capable of doing it.

Ideally, when you have a six-minute presentation, you should have a slide deck with only six slides. Your slide deck should have very little text on it, and it should have stunning visuals. (Those are less important, but still helpful.)

What it should not have:

  • More than 5 bullet points.
  • More than 5 words in each point.
  • Organizational charts.
  • A doctoral dissertation’s worth of industry statistics.

How should your 1 Million Cups presentation should go

This is a Problem-Solution format that tells people, well, what the problem is, and how you can solve it.

Basically, your ideal slide deck should contain the following information.

  1. Opening splash screen
  2. The problem you want to solve
  3. The cost/size of the problem (the TAM, SAM, and SOM)
  4. The solution to the problem
  5. How YOU provide the solution
  6. Your contact info.

Don’t forget, your presentation should start with a story. Not necessarily a story about you, but about a client who benefitted from your work. Tell this while we’re looking at your second slide.

“ABC company had a problem: they were losing $50,000 per month on employee turnover and onboarding. We helped them identify a manager who was causing the high turnover and fed him to alligators. We also created a digital training and onboarding system that turned a three-month, paper-based onboarding process into a process that beamed important company information directly into a person’s brain. The company saved $600,000 per year, and they gave me a $25 Starbucks gift card.”

Or something like that.

For slide three, talk about how bad management and lengthy turnover cost American businesses eleventy-billion dollars per year. And in your chosen industry, it’s $2 billion. And in your home state, it costs your industry $500 million.

Slide four is about your alligator farm and data-brain transference beam.

Slide five is about how you patented the data-brain transference beam and now license it out to other HR consultants.

Slide six is how people can get ahold of you if they want to reduce their own onboarding costs, or are really tired of their brother-in-law.

Rather than squeezing every piece of information into your presentation that you can, leave that information for the actual Q&A portion of the presentation.

And if there was something you didn’t get to talk about don’t worry, there will be plenty of people with questions. But if it’s critical that you talk about it, then be sure to include it in your presentation. Cut something else out so you can get the most important information in there.

Another possible layout

Unlike the previous format, this is a Problem-Assistance presentation. Basically, you’re saying “I have a problem I need help with.”

Your format will look more like this.

  1. Opening screen
  2. The work you do
  3. How long have you done it/your education or experience
  4. The problem you are facing
  5. The things you have tried —OR — what kind of help you need
  6. Contact info

The information is the same, and maybe you’ll open with a similar story. But the focus of this presentation will be on your struggles with growth and expansion or finding new clients or dealing with pesky alligator inspectors or finding a good defense attorney.

The ideas are the same: You still only have six minutes, and you’ll get 20 minutes of questions and feedback. So don’t try to cram in everything, just include the basic facts and trust that people will ask you the questions that will allow you to share that information.

Be sure to practice your talk a few times, even if it’s just while you’re driving in your car. But as long as you’re telling your stories and sharing your information, the presentation will flow naturally, and it will come easily.

Finally, make sure you prepare your slide deck to show on someone else’s technology.

Good luck!

Photo credit: Erik Deckers

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Conduct Informational Interviews to Land Your Next Job

One of my favorite podcasts is Jeff Pearlman’s Two Writers Slinging Yang, a podcast about writing and journalism. Jeff also writes a Substack called The Yang Slinger.

Sorry I didn’t upgrade to the paid version, Jeff.

In it, he usually dives deep into a particular question or issue he’s wrestling with, getting input from his friends and former colleagues in the sportswriting biz.

This week, he wasn’t wrestling with an issue so much as he was looking for help from those same colleagues. (Read it here.) He asked:

This week’s substack topic is a doozie: a friend of mine, just 23 (former student of mine, actually) just got laid off. He called asking me for advice … and I’m honestly running out of answers. So I’m collecting advice for this week’s substack. What would YOU tell him?

Although Jeff didn’t ask for my advice, I’m going to give it, mostly because I like to hear myself talk. It’s the same advice I have given to aspiring entrepreneurs, college students, and job seekers for the last 14 years. I’ve written about it elsewhere in the past, but I think it’s time I plant this flag on my own blog.

Here goes:

The power of Informational Interviews

If you’re looking for a job, stop looking on the job boards. Frankly, the job boards suck. They are literally bad at what they do.

That’s because roughly 85% of jobs come through networking, although 50% of all job applications come through the job boards.

That means 15% of all jobs are filled through job boards. If you batted .150 in baseball, you would have a very short career.

The rest of the jobs — the EIGHTY-FIVE PERCENT — come from professional connections.

  • You meet someone at a conference.
  • A friend tells you about an opening at their company.
  • Your old boss or colleague calls you from their new company.
  • A friend of a friend of a friend introduces you to someone they know.
  • You had coffee or lunch with someone in the same profession.

It’s these last two that we’re going to focus on. You’re going to interview your way to your next job, and you’re going to do it by having coffee with someone and then with someone else, and then they’ll introduce you to someone else, and on and on.

I learned this from a friend who used this tactic in the 1980s after he moved to Indianapolis from New York. Within three months of informational interviews, he had three job offers and requests for 40 hours/week of freelance work.*

* This is notable because most freelancers usually only hope to work 20 hours a week; the other 20 hours are spent chasing up more work. So set your prices according to a 1,000 hour work year. (Your salary needs ÷ 1,000 = your hourly rate.)

And I’ve used it many times myself, as well as told other people about it. This advice has helped get people job interviews, internships, and brand-new jobs that they never heard about because they never showed up on any job boards.

That’s because 70% of all jobs are never published publicly.

Your job is not to apply for jobs.

Fourteen years ago, I spoke to a job seekers’ support group about informational interviews. Many of them had been searching for a job for many months without luck.

After my talk, one guy stood up and proudly declared, “My current job is to find my next job. I spend 8 hours a day applying on the job boards.” He even seemed a little smug about it.

I did that in 2005 and it was soul killing. After one week of spending four hours a day on the job boards, I was so damn depressed I could barely get out of bed. But the guy was undeterred. He wasn’t going to let the world get him down, he was going to apply and apply and apply.

A year later, I was asked to come back and give the same talk.

You’ll never guess who was still attending the weekly meetings.

When you lose your job, our temptation is to hit the job boards, like our parents, teachers, and guidance counselors all told us to do.

But it’s all bullshit. I mean, sure you can do the job application jitterbug, but the odds are stacked against you.

Our world has changed so much. We communicate differently, we connect differently, we consume media differently, we learn differently. So why the hell would we look jobs the way our parents and grandparents did?

If you’re going to take that path, you might as well apprentice yourself out to a blacksmith or cobbler.

Here’s how to do informational interviews

An old coffee shop in Central Florida that is no longer in existence.

(First, let me apologize for taking so long to get here. I did not mean to pull that same recipe website bullshit, writing a 4,000-word murder mystery before sharing their Memaw’s tomato sandwich recipe. I’m very sorry!)

So here’s how you do informational interviews.

Step 1: Reach out to someone in your industry, field, or company you want to work for.

Ask them to meet you for coffee or lunch because you want to learn more about their career and how they got there. A Zoom call or phone call will also work.

There is a very good chance these people will want to talk to you because they want to talk about themselves.

If you were to call them and ask about a possible job, I can almost guarantee they will not talk to you.

If you asked if you could do some freelance work for them, they probably won’t want to talk to you.

But if you say, “Can you talk about yourself for an hour and I’ll totally listen to everything you say?” they will scramble to meet you because everyone loves to talk about themselves.

Step 2: Ask them questions.

What did they major in? How did they get their first job? What do they like about it? What do they dislike?

Let them do all the talking. You can intersperse little comments like, “Oh, I hate that, too,” or “I did that once.” But this is not your time to do a lot of talking; this is not your interview, it’s theirs.

If they ask you questions, you can answer. But make sure they do most of the talking.

There’s an old adage that the more someone else talks, the smarter you look. So you want to come away from this looking like a genius.

Step 3: Mute your phone!

And put it in your pocket.

Don’t turn it off because you may need to share something with your interviewee. But don’t keep it out where it can be a distraction. And never, ever take a call.

Step 4: Take careful notes.

Get a notebook and a good pen and take as many notes as you can. Make this your interview notebook and fill it up with people’s great advice, ideas, and stories.

Even if you never look at your notebook again, this makes you look like you’re listening and that this is so important, you don’t want to forget it.

Now, you not only look like a genius, you look like a good listener.

Step 5: When it’s all over, ask these two critical questions.

This is the really important part, so pay attention!

When you’re nearly finished, ask them two questions:

  1. Do you know anyone else I should talk to?
  2. Great, can you introduce me to them?

Because you’ve been such a good listener and you seem really smart, they’re going to be happy to introduce you to other people. They’ll say, “Yes, you should talk to my friend, Danielle.”

And then you’re going to ask them to do an email introduction between you and Danielle. (Click here to see how to do a proper email introduction between two people.)

Do NOT let them say, “Just tell Danielle I told you to contact her.”

Because Danielle is not necessarily convinced that your new friend really did tell you to contact her. You could be lying. This could be a trick. Maybe you’re just dropping the friend’s name in the hopes that you can meet with her.

You want to avoid even the slightest appearance of that, which is why you need their introduction.

Step 6: You follow-up first.

Don’t wait for Danielle (or whomever) to contact you first. Once you get that email introduction, follow up with Danielle. Ask them the same questions — “I wanted to learn more about you and your career. Can we meet for coffee?” — and go through the same process: listening, note taking, two critical questions.

Your meeting with Danielle will lead to a meeting with Rosario, which will lead to one with Curt, which will lead to one with Javier, and so on and so on.

Maybe you’ll get lucky and one of them will make two introductions, and now you’ve doubled your productivity.

Along the way, something will happen. Someone will know someone with a job opening. Or they’ll be looking for someone who does what you do. Or they’ll put your résumé on the hiring manager’s desk.

Whatever it is, you will have networked your way into a new job without filling out a single application. You’ll have avoided the job boards, skipped the HR gantlet, or put up with the months of rejections that comes with slogging it out on the job boards and classified ads like our parents and grandparents.

GIVE informational interviews, too

One day, many years from now, you’re going to be sitting at your desk and your email is going to ping (or your intra-cranial implant is going to buzz — I don’t know what the future’s going to bring), some 23-year-old kid is going to ask you to sit down with them over a cup of coffee or Soylent Green or whatever the hell we’re drinking in 2038.

Take that interview. Sit down with that kid. Answer their questions and talk about yourself because this is your moment to shine and share all the cool shit you’ve been doing. They’re going to take notes and they’re not going to talk much, which means they must be really smart.

And when they ask you, you’re going to introduce them to two or three of your colleagues, because you kick ass. And you’re going to help this kid get started on their own career path.

Because someone did it for you and that’s how you ended up having your own awesome career.

Photo credit: Jeff Pearlman’s Substack
Photo credit: Erik Deckers (Hey, that’s me!)

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Who’s Who In Branding Yourself – The Case Studies in the 3rd Edition

We’re five days away from the new edition of Branding Yourself (published by Que Biz-Tech, a Pearson imprint) coming out, when it will be available on Amazon, as well as in Barnes & Noble.

This edition was less of a revision and more of a major overhaul. We had new tools to add and a lot of tools to drop. I deleted a couple mentions of MySpace and had to delete every third-party Twitter app that Twitter had blocked and destroyed. We added a few new sections and fleshed out a few that we had shorted the last time.

We promised them 300 pages; it’s 385 pages now.

We also redid most of the case studies, with a few exceptions, replacing some of the previous studies with new, more up-to-date examples of people who have used certain tools and techniques to build and promote their own brand.

We kept Starla West, Hazel Walker, and Lorraine Ball because they’ve been very important to our own growth in this area, but we added a lot of people who have done some amazing work in the last few years. These are people we have been friends with, appeared on podcasts with, followed like little puppies, or been intrigued and mightily impressed by. In many cases, two or three of those things at once.

These are the people we wrote case studies about, or at least called out, in the book. We’re grateful to all of them for participating and answering our questions, making this edition of Branding Yourself the best — and thickest — one yet.

Who’s Who in Branding Yourself?

  • Mignon Fogarty: Mignon runs one of the most popular language and grammar podcasts, Grammar Girl, and has managed to turn that into a series of grammar books as well as the Quick And Dirty Tips podcast network. She was also kind enough to read two of my essays on her podcast. You can follow her on Twitter at @GrammarGirl, which I strongly recommend.
  • Park Howell: Park (@ParkHowell) runs the Business of Story podcast, and I’ve been lucky enough to appear on it. In fact, I get to be on it again in December to talk about telling your brand story, which is the subject of Chapter 2.
  • Jonathan W. Thomas: Jon and I were travel writers for the Indiana Office of Tourism Development (along with Amy Magan), and he’s also the creator of the very popular Anglotopia, the blog about life, culture, and entertainment in the United Kingdom. His whole career is built on his blog, and it’s even gotten him some free trips to the UK as well.
  • Anthony Juliano: Anthony is VP and general manager at the Asher Agency in Fort Wayne, and a social media strategist. We wanted to include him in the book when we first started talking about the new edition, but forgot until he posted something about teaching on LinkedIn about teaching a LinkedIn class. I said “serendipity, bay-bee!” and emailed him.
  • Qasim Muhammad (@MuslimIQ): I’m a big fan of this guy. Qasim Muhammad is a Muslim writer, speaker, and teacher, and puts up with some of the worst shit from people, but he doesn’t back down, and he looks to teach whenever he can. (But he’s not afraid to clap back either. Hard!) And he’s actually changed some minds about Muslims and gotten people to see them in a different light. Best of all, he loves dad jokes, so that makes us brothers.
  • Paul Anthony Jones (@HaggardHawks): As a lover of language, I have several language-related Twitter accounts I follow. And @HaggardHawks is my other favorite (tied with @GrammarGirl’s). He publishes old terms that were used 100–400 years ago.
  • Lynn Ferguson & Mark Tweddle: This is our big celebrity addition! Lynn Ferguson (@LynnFergy) was a writer on The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson, is a host of The Moth Story Slam, and was also the voice of the Scottish chicken on Chicken Run. She and her husband Mark now have a company, You Tell Yours, where they teach people to tell stories as a way to build self-confidence, learn to speak in public, and learn how to speak their own truth. If we ever do an audio version of this book, I want her to read it.
    • Crystal Washington and me.
  • Crystal Washington: I’ve been a fan of Crystal’s (@CrysWashington) for several years. I’ve watched her turned her social media savvy into an international speaking and consulting career that sees her sharing knowledge with major companies, large conferences, and audiences that measure in the hundreds and thousands. I finally got to meet her in September, when she was in Orlando for a trip, and we got to visit for 20 minutes before she had to fly back home.
  • John Wall: One half of the Marketing Over Coffee podcast with Christopher Penn, John (@JohnJWall) has been podcasting since the early days. They’ve turned their in-depth marketing knowledge and willingness to share into becoming some of the leading marketing voices in the country.
  • The Eephus Podcast: I love baseball and baseball history, and Marty and Larry (@EephusPodcast) tell some of the funniest stories about America’s pastime. Even my kids like to listen, and they don’t like baseball. While they didn’t get a case study, they certainly deserve a shout out. And so I mention them here in the hopes that they’ll feel morally obligated to buy the book.
  • Dewey McGeoch: I met Dewey at the Indianapolis Fringe Festival when he was performing with his now-husband Douglas in the Screw You Revue. (Their 2010 final night’s performance is still the funniest damn show I’ve ever seen.) I gave him a copy of the first edition of Branding Yourself, and he said they had been using social media quite extensively, but had stopped after his laptop was stolen. He started up again (I’d like to think it was because of the book, but I know it wasn’t), built up a strong online audience, and the two are now full-time drag performers in New York City.
  • Sheryl Brown-Madjlessi: Sheryl (@BionicSocialite) used to live in Fort Wayne, Indiana, about two hours from me. But we both had to travel to Boston just to meet at MarketingProf’s B2B Conference. Since then, we’ve been great friends, and I’ve watched, amazed, as she got an entire financial services firm to buck up and start using social media. (I mean, these guys won’t write down directions to the bathroom without running it by Legal first!)
  • Hazel Walker: Hazel (@HazeWalker) is the co-author of several books with Ivan Misner, founder of Business Networking International, including Business Networking And Sex. And she used to hassle Kyle and me about wearing jeans to give presentations. I still wear jeans, but we took her lessons of Giver’s Gain to heart, and totally stole it for Chapter 12 of the book.
  • Dave Delaney: Dave (@DaveDelaney) is a master networker, so much so that he wrote a whole book on it — New Business Networking — also published by Pearson. (We’re publishing buddies!) He also runs the Networking For Nice People, which I write a monthly column for.
  • Lorraine Ball: Kyle’s very first job out of college was working for Lorraine (@LorraineBall), and she was my networking mentor back when I was first learning how it all worked, as well as learning my way around the city. We both owe her a lot, and she continues to influence us even now.
  • Jay Baer: When Jay Baer (@JayBaer) first moved to Indiana from Arizona, he came to the Blog Indiana kickoff party where I had a chance to eat tacos with him and tell him about his new home state. I also took him to MacNiven’s, a Scottish restaurant in downtown Indianapolis on Mass Ave., and took a video of him explaining how to eat their 8″ wide hamburger. (There’s a video of it somewhere on YouTube.)
  • Kate Toon & Belinda Weaver: The Australian hosts of the Hot Copy podcast get a mention because they do a stellar podcast, and have earned a big following for them, their services, and their online copywriting classes.
  • Doug Karr: Doug didn’t have his own case study, but he was mentioned several times throughout the book — I can think of four off the top of my head. Doug (@DouglasKarr) owns DK New Media, and has been one of the leading marketing technology writers and thinkers over the last 10 years. A lot of what we know about social media, we stole from learned from him by paying close attention.
    • The Branding Yourself cover. Isn’t it pretty? The people at Pearson/Que Biz-Tech did that.
  • Starla West: Starla (@StarlaWestIntl) is so accomplished, she always makes me feel like I’m not doing enough. Her story about how her personal network helped her launch her business literally within minutes of quitting her job has been included in this book since the very beginning. And her “I Got a Guy” philosophy is the very essence of networking. I published a version of it on my blog.
  • Jackie Bledsoe: We met Jackie (@JBledsoeJr) the day of the first Branding Yourself book launch in December 2010 at the downtown Scotty’s Brewhouse. It was his birthday night out with his wife, and he wanted to come to our book launch. We sat and talked for a while, and started hanging out and became good friends. I can’t think about that night and how it has led to some amazing opportunities for Jackie and his family without getting a little choked up.
  • Jason Falls: Jason (@JasonFalls) is one of the leading thinkers on social media, and I’m happy to count him as a friend. He was also my co-author on No Bullshit Social Media, the first social media book with a swear word in the title (and the book I started on two months after Branding Yourself was finished. He has used his accomplishments and his personal brand to land two amazing jobs and two start two separate companies, all in the eight or so years that I’ve known him.

These are the people who have had an impact on us, shaped us, or just given us a lot to think about over the last 10 or so years. We liked them enough to include them in our new edition, and I wanted to thank them publicly.

As of today — October 23, 2017 — you can get the latest edition of Branding Yourself for 31% off the cover price. The book is roughly 385 pages long, and retails for $29.99, but you can get it for $20.61.

Be sure to order a copy for you and some for your colleagues or friends who are job hunting right now. We’ve written Branding Yourself to help people change careers, redefine themselves, or even find their very next job.

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LinkedIn Etiquette: No, I Don’t Want What You’re Selling

As I connect with marketers on LinkedIn, I’m reminded about what Gary Vaynerchuk once said about high school kids and relationships.

They’re always trying to close on the first date.

I’ve lost count of the number of people on LinkedIn who wanted to connect with me, only to turn around and immediately email me with whatever they’re selling.

It’s happened to me for nine years, and I can tell you exactly how many people I’ve responded to with any interest: zero.

While I’m not an avid LinkedIn user, I do check it a few times a week, respond to non-sales messages, and will even reach out to a few people for connections.

But I hate it when people I’ve never met try to sell to me on something I never said I needed.

I mean, maybe if I expressed some interest in a particular service, or I publicly lamented about a problem I was having, then I might be interested in what these marketers and salespeople have to say. If I say I hate WordPress because it’s so hard to figure out, or if I gripe that managing my accounts takes too long, then I would expect to hear from WordPress designers or accountants.

(By the way, I’m good on WordPress and accounting. No problems there.)

But when they contact me about their web design, mobile app design, or SEO services, it’s clear they never even read my website, let alone my profile.

When they DM me on Twitter — “Hi, , thanks for connecting! Here’s a free ebook I wrote, which has nothing to do with anything you do for your job!” — I write a similarly-worded message, and invite them to visit my own humor website. I even told a few I would be willing to listen to their sales pitch if they did it. I rarely get a response, which makes me wonder if they read their DMs.

While some people over-connect on LinkedIn, trying to amass as many connections as they can, I take a more reserved approach. I’ll reach out to people I’ve met before, and connect with them. However, I’m less reserved when it comes to accepting connections, because I don’t know if any of them are readers or have bought one of my books. Rather than appear rude, I’ve accepted the connections, only to get a sales message less than 12 hours later.

The Facebook Problem

The problem is easy to identify on Facebook. I think we’ve all gotten these messages. Depending on your gender, a young woman or young man with only two photos on their profile will send a friend request. They’re not in your friend network, except for maybe one mutual friend. Their profile only has one or two photos, slightly sexy, but not overly provocative. And you have no idea how you would know this person.

You only have to accept a couple of these to realize this is some form of spam. The account either changes to porn, or you’re bombarded with private message communication requests. After a couple of these, you learn to ignore friend requests from anyone who does not know several of your friends of both genders.

(Helpful hint: Guys, it’s a telltale sign — and also a little creepy — when a 20-something woman’s only friends are men in their 40s and older.)

We have the same kind of problem on LinkedIn. So many people fail to change their “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn” message that most people just accept it. I used to be more picky, and would only accept people who had updated their message. But I decided I was fighting a losing battle, and gave that up.

As a result, I fall prey to every salesperson who’s using LinkedIn to scope out their next cold call. Rather than trying to build a relationship or gauge my interest, they’re immediately pestering me for phone meetings and conference calls.

An accepted connection on LinkedIn does not mean I want to be sold to, especially when that’s the first communication I get from you. Not even a “hi, thanks for connecting.” Just a “Hi, we provide the identical service hundreds of other people have contacted you about.”

If you truly want to become a potential partner or vendor, take the time to gauge my interest and my needs. Provide me with useful information that will help me do my own job better and make my life easier. Share information, provide valuable content, and prove yourself to be someone who’s smart, knowledgeable, and capable of doing what you claim.

Don’t try to sell me in your very first communication. That’s a guaranteed “No.”

Photo credit: Carol Highsmith (Wikimedia Commons, Library of Congress, Public Domain)

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Networking 101: How to Make a Solid Email Introduction

The key to good networking is not only meeting new people, but to serve as a referral source for others. But it doesn’t work to just tell someone, “you should call Bob. Tell him I sent you.” That’s a cheap cop-out, and those calls are bound to fail.

Just a little tip from our book. I find myself still using this, even six years later.

For one thing, Bob is immediately going to be suspicious of anyone who calls him and starts name dropping. So he’s wary as you explain what you’re looking for.

Plus, he’s not emotionally invested. Sure, I told you to call Bob, but Bob doesn’t know why. And Bob isn’t going to trust you enough to say,”Oh, well if Erik sent you, you must be wonderful!” Bob needs me to tell him that you’re wonderful.

This is where the email introduction comes in. And if you’re a good networker, this is how you’ll introduce people. It’s quick, it’s effective, and it’s certainly a lot cheaper than inviting them both to lunch.

A good email introduction to people involves three things:

  1. An explanation of how you know each person.
  2. An explanation of how and why they can help each other.
  3. Some enthusiasm. You shouldn’t just connect people for the sake of making a connection. Connect them because you think they can actually do some good for each other.

Here’s how that email introduction should look.

Bob, meet Rachel Wentzel. Rachel is a direct mail marketer, and has helped a lot of companies with their own direct mail campaign. I’ve known her for several years, after she helped me with my own business.

Rachel, meet Bob Heintzel. Bob owns a marketing agency that specializes in digital strategies for B2B companies. I’ve worked with Bob for five years and watched him create some effective strategies that helped his clients excel.

Bob and I were talking over coffee today, and he mentioned that he had a client who wanted to launch a catalog campaign, and I immediately thought of Rachel.

I think that together, the two of you can help each other out, and make great things happen for each other and for Bob’s client. I’ll leave it to you to go forward from here. Good luck!

Let’s break it down

In this example, I’ve given a background of each person, and what I think the other person needs to know. I’ve also explained how I know them, so as to add some credibility to my recommendation.

I also explained the inspiration for making the introduction — Bob has a client who needs a catalog campaign. I do this because I can’t wait for them to figure it out themselves. Bob may find a direct mail provider before he ever sits down with Rachel, but I don’t want that. So I make it obvious.

Then, I step back and let them take the reins; they don’t need me for this. They can figure out a time to meet for coffee or lunch, have a nice conversation, learn more about each other, and then hopefully Bob will ask for assistance with his new client. If not, hopefully Rachel will remember to.

Finally, when it comes to an introduction like this, Rachel should take the initiative and reach out to Bob first. Why? Because she needs something Bob has, a paying client. Bob may not be in as much of a rush, so Rachel needs to take the first step, rather than waiting for Bob to clear his calendar.

Successful networkers aren’t known by the number of people in their Contacts list. Successful networkers are known by the number of referrals they make. Don’t just collect people in your email list or LinkedIn network. Do some actual good in the world and make introductions between people you know. (Use one of these email introduction templates.) Explain how you know them, why they should know each other, and be enthusiastic about it.

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5 Secrets Writers Can Learn from Actors

One thing I love about being a creative professional is the kinship with my fellow creatives. We understand the life — the instability, the random free time, and the unreliable flow of money — and we share a knowing-yet-slightly-sad smile when we meet. We get each other.

I had a chance this past April to talk with actor David Schmittou when he was in Indianapolis, playing “The Man in the Chair” in Beef & Board Theatre’s The Drowsy Chaperone (you can read my review of it here).

I wasn’t sure what I wanted when we sat down. I just wanted to see what I could learn from someone who got to be “someone else” professionally. Actors get to lie about who they are; writers lie about everything else.

So David and I sat outside at Paradise Café for nearly two hours, talking about the creative life. He told me about acting, what it’s like to be a working actor, and many of the different roles he’s played. He told me lessons he’s learned from working with people or taking classes from some of the biggest names in the industry.

That got me to thinking about how the keys to good acting are similar to the keys to good writing. Whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, short stories or content marketing, good writers can learn from good actors.

I didn’t write anything down. I didn’t want to disrupt his flow. As if I moved, it would startle him, and he would realize what he was doing and stop. So I made sure to remember the important points, and wrote them down in the car.

These are a few of the ideas I got from two brilliant hours with David Schmittou.

1. Create and absorb as many tiny details as possible.

David Schmittou in Beef & Boards’ production of “The Drowsy Chaperone”
When you’re acting, these details will inform the way the character reacts in certain situations. It might even be a very tiny thing, like setting the needle on a record on stage in just the right place, even though no one is going to hear it, because that’s what we do in real life. Or making sure you put on side 1 in Act 1, and side 2 in Act 2. No one will see this, no one will know, but you will absorb it into your role, and it can have a powerful effect on your performance.

For Hemingway, details were crucial, even if you omitted most of them. That’s what he called The Iceberg Theory (the 1/8 of an iceberg that we see is supported by the 7/8 we don’t). If a writer knows a lot about a subject, he or she can leave certain things out, and the reader would still feel their presence. But if a writer doesn’t know a lot about a topic, and leaves certain things out, there’s a hollowness to the work.

An actor who only recites lines and offers up the barest of tiny details in their actions is wooden and not very memorable. A writer who does it is plain and uninteresting.

2. Live in the world of the play.

Don’t think of yourself as an actor on a stage, David said, be in that world. Absorb the character and imagine you’re him or her. Don’t think about after the show, don’t think about the argument you had with the director. Be present in that world, not this one. For David in The Drowsy Chaperone, he was in New York City, in his apartment, listening to his favorite record of his favorite musical, chasing away the blues.

For writers, especially fiction writers, this means being more than a story teller looking at their story as if they’re watching television. It means being in the world, notebook in hand, chronicling what you see, dodging bullets, storming the castle, and shooting at spaceships.

If you can immerse yourself in the world, you see more details, the experience becomes fuller, and you’re able to deliver a better performance/product to your audience.

3. Create a back story for your character.

Write scenes and short stories about characters. In his mind, David created a whole back story for the Man in the Chair, what he did for work, why he was single (“Since this was the 1970s, he had been married, but was unhappy, because he didn’t know what it meant to be gay,” David told me.)

Oftentimes, characters don’t come with back stories. They don’t have relationships spelled out. Did the Man in the Chair have friends? Why isn’t he with them? Does he get along with his mother? What kind of job does he have? Actors have to answer those questions themselves.

Writers, especially TV writers, will write create a “show bible,” which spells out character back stories, small details, likes and dislikes, and anything that might become important later on. They’ll write out scenes between characters that will never see the light of day, just to know how they would act and react.

If you can know why your characters are made the way they are, who influenced them, and why they like or don’t like other people, this becomes one of those very important iceberg details that shape your writing.

4. Base characters on yourself and other people.

David’s portrayal of the Man in the Chair was based on people he knew, and not past performances. He never even saw the play until he had already done the role once or twice. But he based the mannerisms and the back story on people in his life.

When Hemingway created characters for his stories, he modeled them after people he actually knew. He just changed their names. By using real people, he already had the back story written, he knew the tiny details, and he could more easily inhabit their world.

In a letter to F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hemingway said:

Goddamn it you took liberties with peoples’ pasts and futures that produced not people but damned marvellously faked case histories. . . You could write a fine book about Gerald and Sara for instance if you knew enough about them and they would not have any feeling, except passing, if it were true.

In essence, don’t make up people, because the characters will be fake. Instead, write about real people and make minor changes.

By using real people, you can create real characters who are emotionally rich and deep, not shallow caricatures or archetypes.

5. Listen carefully and react to the other actors.

Actors need to listen to their fellow actors on stage. Whether it’s traditional theatre or improv, listening is a crucial skill. You never know when an actor is going to make a mistake, say the wrong thing, or even change their mood or inflection of their next line. Actors have to be able to react to what was just said, not automatically say what they were going to say.

Sometimes fiction writers will “let the characters take over.” They let their characters act and react to what’s happening on the page. I’ve written stories where I have a basic idea of what should happen, only to have the two characters take the story in a completely different direction.

What’s really happening is the writers imagine how their characters would react in certain situations, and write that down instead. Rather than forcing actions and conversations to reach a certain end, the writer just holds on and goes along for the ride. This can only happen when writers live in the world of their story, create a back story for their characters, and base them on real people they know.

In the nonfiction world, sometimes “you” are the person you should listen to. Imagine yourself delivering your article as a speech, and write what you would say. Build on knowledge, feeding one idea into the next. If you can’t do step 2 without doing step 1 first, put the steps in the right order. This isn’t a mystery to be solved or a secret to be revealed. Listen to the way you would teach this knowledge, and write that.

When you get a chance to meet someone whose work inspires you, take it. When you get a chance to talk about the creative process with other creative people, take it. With a little lateral thinking, you never know what you might learn.