THIS MIGHT HURT: "Who are you and Why are you here?" - THE NEED TO STATE YOUR MISSION

“Words are Tools; Words are Weapons.” – Douglas Castle

This Article written and © by Douglas Castle and originally published in THE NATIONAL NETWORKER™ Newsletter. All rights reserved. This article may be reproduced only in its complete form, inclusive of all hyperlinks, with full attribution to both the author and to the publication. For information about the author, go to Linked In/ Douglas Castle or to Douglas Castle’s Blog ; for information about the publication, go to THE NATIONAL NETWORKER™ Newsletter.

"Who are you and Why are you here?" - THE NEED TO STATE YOUR MISSION.

Stand at any gathering long enough and someone (the hostess, the Secret Service, a River City Chamber of Commerce meeting, the guard posted outside of the star's dressing room) will approach and ask you, "Who are you and why are you here?" These might not be exact words used, but the import and intensity behind them will be deadly certain. And if you are not prepared with a fast, solid and easily understandable answer, you will find yourself removed from the premises. Nobody wants an uninvited guest, a loiterer, a gatecrasher, a freeloader or any person without a permit or a definite purpose.

People in positions of decision making authority have become increasingly impatient and frustrated with answers which are either laden with technical language or which are nebulous. Some wonderful examples follow:

A) "I am a Six Sigma Sensei specializing in collaborative solutions utilizing hybrid and eco-friendly technologies to empower your C-suite team through the liberation of trapped liquidity in expressive assets" (In Plain English: "I'm Tony, a licensed plumber from City Plumbing, and if you'll show me to the executive washroom I'll use my case of rotary tools to unstop the toilet bowl so that your top employees can use the bathroom there instead of going constantly taking the elevator to the eleventh floor to use the bathroom in the guest waiting area."); or

B) "Utilizing a four-tiered personality analysis of the individual client on a comparative basis with a three-tiered market analysis of existing and prospective market recipients, I conceive, design and create works on paper which communicate amicability and accessibility in order to inspire reciprocal acts on the part of the recipients/observers." (In Plain English: "I'm Diane and I am a card designer for QuoteActions creations. I'm here to create unique, personalized New Year's calendars for you to send out to each of your accounts so that they'll keep them on their desks and think of you and your company all year long.").

In a society that is increasingly obsessed with technical jargon and obscurantism, your host or your audience (if you are a visitor, a salesperson, a BizNetwork inductee or a parasite) will be appreciative and impressed with you if you answer this initial qualifying question: "Who are you and why are you here?" so that they can simply get a handle on who you are and what you might be able to do for them. The persons who have the easiest time answering these questions are usually in the acknowledged professions or trades, such as estate planning attorneys, tax accountants, cardiac surgeons, firemen, locksmiths and massage therapists. The persons who struggle with giving a simple answer to these questions are usually those who are in fields which involve consultation, education and training, or technical specialties, or those persons who do things which involve unusual "twists" on, or refinements to seemingly ordinary businesses.

In brief, the more complex or specialized the nature of your business, the more difficult it will be to construct the best answer to this question. What hurts us most (personally and in our dealings with prospective clients, employers and others who may wish to use our services) is that we tend to use rehearsed catchy phrases and slogans which:

• showcase our wit and wordsmithing capability, but which do not permit people to either understand precisely what we do, or to explain to others, in simple terms, what we do;

• do not permit people to categorize what we do in ways that are directly meaningful to them or to others...we resist being labeled in certain circumstances where it could actually help us to convert a prospective client into a paying client, and to further convert that paying client into a referral source;

• make us look bright, but which do not make us appear useful - as a result, people grin at us, scratch their heads and then don't take us seriously;

• do not truly focus in on exactly how we benefit the person who engages us - this can often be accomplished by using a very brief, very simple example fo what we may typically be called upon to do for a client;

• make us look either uncomfortable, indecisive or defensive about what we do. None of these things is desirable. We wind up sounding like we're making excuses for not having well-defined jobs.

Slogans and wit are wonderful in terms of branding, advertising and promoting, but they are not a substitute for brief, understandable explanations of what we do. Some simple parameters for constructing your personal mission statement might help you build a good one:

1. Start with "I am";

2. Keep it brief, direct and intensely focused, although you may use an example for the purposes of memorability and clarification;

3. Cite cause and effect (benefit), i.e., "we send in our team of experts to analyze your delinquent accounts and and we will either a) purchase them from you for cash, or b) help you collect them in order to produce cash to help you finance your operations." Your Personal Mission Statement is the key to your fortune or failure;

4. Avoid acronyms and technical pop-jargon or people will think that you are hiding behind your words, or worse...they'll think that you're an S.O.B. tgrying to BS them into some obscure IT arrangement;

5. Resist the urge to use humor in a Personal Mission Statement - it distracts people from your message and alienates those who don't appreciate humor in an initial business meeting (the world is filled with folks like these).

If I were to create my Personal Mission Statement regarding this article, I might say:

"I am Douglas Castle, of The Castle Consultancy. I meet with business owners, interview them, learn about their services, and I compose a concise Personal Mission Statement for them which they can use on every occasion where they may be asked to present what they do. These Personal Mission Statements are brief, powerful, memorable and immediately attract business to my clients. When I construct a Personal Mission Statement for my client, it is not a clever slogan - it is a statement of what he does, how well he does it, and why every person in that room will want to get in touch with him. Every businessperson and professional needs a Personal Mission Statement. Call me - after we've met, I will create one exclusively for you. It's great to meet you, and I'll look forward to hearing from each of you."

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle

p.s. Do you have a unique, powerful, brief and memorable Personal Mission Statement? You must have one. Please feel free to email me directly at douglas.castle@yahoo.com, and include the words "Personal Mission Statement" in the subject line.





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THIS MIGHT HURT: "Who are you and Why are you here?" - THE NEED TO STATE YOUR MISSION

THE REHUMANITIZATION OF NETWORKING - Why Should I Listen to You?

Whoever You Are:

This is my newly-featured column. Adam J. Kovitz (who loves to see his name in print) appeared to me in a vision and said, "Son, I believe it is time for you to write about whatever you want to write about, instead of the usual insipid, prosaic pap that I force you write about. Go off and build a life for yourself. Make me proud. Try not to be too graphic or use too much profanity."

I ask everyone -- WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO YOU?

I receive more than 100 emails per hour, I belong to well in excess of 100 "social media" groups (and that's not including LinkedIn), and I literally receive dozens of news alerts, blog comments and ezine bulletins weekly. I am inundated (as is everyone else) with sensorial input. Most of what I receive is useless, meaningless junk.
For example:

- "How I get more followers on Twitter!";

- "Great App (Application) for Social Media -- MediaMashup";

- "Make money with your website...it's automatic...you can't stop earning money with this system (even if you want to!)";

- "Optimize Your Search Engine Ranking with Adwords!";

- "Coverage of the Business Roundtable Power Breakfast and Bowling Event in Izzard, Iowa.";

- "Make Your Summer The Best Networking Season of Your Year";

- "Biggest Payouts in the Industry!";

- "A Firmer Handshake -- A Better Connection";

- "Get Your Piece of The Government Bailout";

- "How Helping Others will Make Your Rich!';

- "How to get 25,000 Fans on your FaceBook Fan Page.";

- "Attitude Makes All the Difference";

- Viagra and Cialis solicitations in Cantonese;

- Offers from various corrupt, but very polite African Bankers from Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Liberia, and Diptheria whose rich client died (usually in a tragic plane crash) without heirs, and who want my personal cooperation (e.g., money) to access my unlawful inheritance, which I can then share with them. Note: They have sent this message to me because they have heard that I can be trusted -- probably as much as the rest of the persons on the 'undisclosed recipients' list of their email correspondence;

- A steaming, fly-laden manure mountain of open-ended, boring, questions like: "How Are You Going to Use Linked In to make 2010 Your Best Year Ever?" ... "Do you think that Blitter will make Twitter Obsolete?"

- "Five HOT Technology Stocks to Watch."

- "Personal Success Coach wants to show you how to become a winner overnight!";

- A veritable cesspool of stuff about branding, image-building, ranking, SEO, and other pop-culture or techo-fad acronym-laden stuff which someone thinks that I should be interested in.

Lastly, there are numerous items from various "Life Coaches" who do not, in fact, have lives of their own, "Success Coaches" who have yet to experience a single, credible success in achieving anything, and a host of other panderers who want to tell me things about having plenty of business cards handy, smiling, making eye contact, preparing a "one-minute commercial" for myself, and harnessing the power of The Law of Affinity.

This material (I've alluded to what the specific material actually is) is wasteful of my eyesight, my computer capacity of and my precious and fleeting time. When you waste my time, you insult me, you keep me from accomplishing other things, and you make me indifferent to you. You will have become a part of the increasing ambient background noise in a society where everyone is loudly hawking intangible, undefinable "stuff", and nobody is really buying any of it. I will not give you a second chance. Very few other people will either.

[By the way, this is not the time to utter something trite, like: "You only get one chance to make a first impression!" -- Don't speak in cliches and "conventional wisdom" -- Don't talk down to me, as if I were as stupid as my college transcript would indicate. I would like to think that you believe me to be intelligent...most people want to be thought of as intelligent, and to be treated as if they were].

You Ask (in a cynical, skeptical, perhaps even sarcastic tone, with your hands on your hips, or with your arms crossed over your chest) -- THEN WHY SHOULD I LISTEN TO YOU, DOUGLAS CASTLE?

I Respond (with a haughty attitude) -- You will listen to me because...

1. I will tell you important things that you don't already know, and which will improve your social, professional and financial success. Each will have an immediate, practical application. You will have actions to follow. Each will give you results.

2. I will engage you, and capture your attention and interest. I won't bore you with a trowelful of crap. I will offer you information and tools which you cannot find anywhere else.

3. I will be candid, and I won't patronize you. Ever.

4. I will occasionally make you laugh...either at me, at yourself, or at others. You will (despite yourself) enjoy what I write.

5. I will talk to you on a Human-to-Human basis.

Incidentally, if you want me to listen to you, here's what you should do:

1. Get my attention, in any way that you can --

2. Tell me something important and interesting ... speak with authority ... and put your unique personality into it ... make it about you and me ... if you are eccentric, it might actually help --

3. Give me an action or actions to take. I will await your command.

Here's a rule:

"If it's not interesting to you, it won't be interesting to your audience."

Tell me about what you know; what you are actually interested in; something which have a personal passion for. Don't be conventional. Conventional people never change anything, and they are boring as hell. Take your personality out of the moth balls (by the way, have you ever smelled moth balls?), brush it off and tell it, in no uncertain terms that it is your greatest personal asset. It is what separates you from the rest of the crowd.

Please stay tuned for my first real article, which should be coming up soon.

Thank you, one and all.

Faithfully,

Douglas Castle

*Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/douglascastle http://twitter.com/TNNW_BUZZWORKS
*Check me out: http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com http://www.LinkedIn.com/in/douglascastle

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THE REHUMANITIZATION OF NETWORKING - Why Should I Listen to You?