Authentic Personal Branding

The Branding Point

By Michael Bungay Stanier and Rosemary Davies-Janes

Originally Published in Choice Magazine, Volume 2 Issues 3 and 4 as a 2-part series
www.choice-online.com

You versus 180 million others.

When it comes to standing out in the coaching world, you (yes, you!) are probably as easy for clients to find as the proverbial needle in a hayfield. A Google search for “coach” delivers 180 million hits, “life coach” nearly 3 million. And when you consider that the majority of life coaches don’t even have a website, it’s clear that there are a heck of a lot of needles in the life coaching hayfield! (Given these odds, ‘hayfield’ is a more apt descriptor than ‘haystack’!)

So just who is making it as a coach? Leading the pack are good coaches with good branding and marketing. A close second are mediocre to lousy coaches with good branding and marketing. And trailing in (a distant third) is the huge majority of good, bad and mediocre coaches with non-descript/non-existent brands and marketing. (Where are you?)

First, we’ll tell you why most coaches’ approaches don’t produce the results they want. Then we’ll show you the five things you can do to take your brand from dull, meaningless and boring to powerful, relevant and resonant!

Effective brands have three key components. The first is a clear-eyed, precise understanding of your personal genius. Your genius is a composite of your natural strengths, learned skills, values and preferences. Secondly, you’ll need an equally clear understanding of your target audience; where they hang out, what they do, what they think about, what they long to achieve. Finally, you’ll need to build benefit statements that connect your genius with what your target audience ‘thinks they want’ — as opposed to “what they really need” — (more about that later). A simple but powerful model that brings these key components together is the “Brand Onion”. We’ve used Starbucks as the ‘model brand’ to demonstrate how use it to ‘cut through’.

Cutting into the Brand Onion

Five elements you can use to create a differentiated and lucrative brandThese will enable you to define your Branding Point; the place where your passion fuses with your customers’ desire. To illustrate our points we’ve used examples both from our own businesses and from our clients’ practices.

1. Get clear on what you offer
Most of us are not clear on our own core genius. As human beings, we come with blind spots that obscure our perception, no matter what our level of evolution or ‘consciousness’ may be. By utilizing this mix of formal and informal methodologies you can discern for yourself what is obvious to others.

Combine behaviour and temperament profiles (such as MBTI and DISC) with strengths and work-style assessments (such as Gallup’s Strengths Finder and Kolbe’s Work-Style Index).

Conduct a focused micro market research campaign that asks, “What is it about who I am and/or what I do that is unique, special and/or different?” These methods will deliver you an abundance of useful information riddled with consistent personal patterns or themes.

Measure these patterns against your personal values, preferences and past experience, and your core genius becomes so obvious that you will be amazed. Because this information comes from multiple sources (self reporting, other-reporting and assessment reporting) it is difficult to deny.

However, people going through the branding process often express a yearning to exchange their genius (such as ‘building strong interpersonal connections’) for another genius that sounds more fun, cool, different or interesting (such as ‘creating innovative solutions’).

Accepting your brand is a process of surrender and acceptance. No matter how much you might like Butterscotch Ripple, if you’re Vanilla, be Vanilla. If you’re Rocky Road – be the best Rocky Road you can be. Your self-awareness, acceptance and appreciation form the foundation of your brand.

2. Get under the skin of your target audience.
And for now, enough about you. (Most coaches spend too much time on “me” and not nearly enough time on “them” which leads to unbalanced and weak brands). It’s time to get really clear on just who you’re targeting. You know less than you think you do. Many of you know the arguments for defining your niche (bottom-line: appealing to everyone means standing out to no-one) and many of you feel the resistance against. But this discussion is for another time, another article.

For now, we’ll assume that you’re brave enough to target a niche. Let’s say it’s “men who want to work less and play more.” Not bad. But there’s more to articulate. Get specific about how much money they have, what their patterns of work are, what age they are, where they hang out, what their favorite activities are, what they don’t do, what are the important relationships in their life.

And now, get out there and start talking to these men. Test out your hypotheses. Challenge your assumptions. Find what really bothers them. Find out if what you suspect is a need is really a need or if you’re just making it up. Find out what solves their problems for them now. If you must, you can begin to explore with them different services you could provide, but that’s not really the point. You need to get deep under the skin of the people you want to target.

3. Create a powerful benefit statement
You know who it is you’re targeting. The question now is what is it exactly that you’re offering? Coaches, for the most part, are lousy at expressing this. They tend to rely on sample sessions, past client success stories and vague rhetoric about bridging gaps and achieving fulfillment, rather than articulating real benefits in clear everyday language. The secret is to create a benefit statement.

Benefit statements tell people WHAT tangible outcomes your products and services provide (not HOW they will achieve this result). If you help clients (for instance) “develop action plans that take them from where they are to where they want to be,” then this is your process (the HOW). The benefit (the WHAT) may be landing a dream job, revitalizing a shaky relationship, or making a business more profitable.

As a Branding Coach, Rosemary’s benefit statement is “I help people and organizations expose, expand and express their genius so that others get what they’re all about, instantly.” A lot of time with her clients is devoted to assessments, profiles, brand positioning and the development of branded marketing materials. But is that an appealing benefit? No! But do people want to identify their core genius? Distinguish themselves from their competitors? Attract ideal clients? Yes, yes and yes.

4. Discover what’s actually working
Having done all that hard work, you now have a brilliant, polished and powerful benefit statement. At least, you think you do. And this is another moment of truth. Do you now throw your marketing weight behind this benefit statement and launch it to the world… or do you test it out? Here’s a clue. The most powerful brands in the world spend millions of dollars each year on market research. Most coaches spend barely a minute. Don’t test it out with your friends or with coach colleagues. They’re not the ones who will be buying your services.

You need to speak to people in your target audience. If you trust them to tell you the truth, that’s an added bonus. But above and beyond all else, test it out with your future customers (and of course, doing this is actually the start of a sales conversation).

When Michael developed his Box of Crayons brand, he first went through a series of brand names and positionings that he thought were quite wonderful – until the feedback came in. Michael had particularly liked Espresso Coaching, which for him was about intensity, depth of flavour and la dolce vita. The feedback? It was all about being brief, bitter, and overpriced.
A simple yet powerful format used by the leading market research companies is this: - Insight/need
The “A-ha, yes, that’s me!” moment. For instance, “Do you feel that you’re stuck in debt and can never get out?”- Benefit/reward
The WHAT. For instance, “No-Debt Coaching gets you out of debt and with savings in the bank.”

- Rationale/process
The HOW. For instance, “The 12-step No-Debt Program gets you out of debt and into the black.”What are your Insights/needs, Benefits/rewards and Rationales/processes? Create ten versions (variations on the need, variations on the benefit) – and then test them with your core customers. 5. Build the experience
So now you have a brand and a benefit statement. It’s a glorious fusion of your passion and your customer’s desire. Hurrah! And the fun has just begun – you now have something to live up to. Your challenge is to infuse your brand through every single touchpoint you have with your customers. Michael Eisner of Disney talks about the brand being, “like a pointillist painting … everything you do for your brand is a point on the canvas…. If you want to be strong, each point along the way has to be as close to perfect as possible.”

Here’s an exercise. Write down every single step you take with your clients (and clients to be) from before meeting them through completing your relationship with them. Be specific and minutely detailed. For instance, some steps might be “client dials my phone number”; “client gets my voicemail”; “client listens to my message”; “client leaves a message”; “I call client back within 48 hours”. In total, you will have at least 50 steps. Then, for each one of these steps ask yourself: How can I make this single step outrageously different and true to my brand? What do I need to do? You’ll start by focusing on some steps before others, but to create a consistent brand experience, you need to be thinking about how each and every step reflects your brand.As a specific example, do you send your clients a welcome pack? What’s in it? How does it capture the essence of your brand? How is it different from every other welcome pack in the world? If your welcome pack was playing at the maximum brand volume, what would it be? So where do you go from here?
Building a brand is a never-ending journey. It takes courage, discipline and insight to get clear, take a stand and put it out to the world. But like solving the puzzle of Rubik’s cube, it’s an amazing moment when you hit the Branding Point and find that magical fusion of your passion and your client’s desires.

* * *

Rosemary Davies-Janes is a Personal Brand Strategist who hosts a popular radio talk show, “The Many Faces of Coaching,” serving up fresh coaching perspectives, every week. www.miboso.comMichael Bungay Stanier is a Corporate Branding Consultant and Coach who helps people get unstuck and get going. He is currently inventing coach-free coaching. www.boxofcrayons.biz

Brand Resources

Eating the Big Fish, Adam Morgan
The Experience Economy, Joseph Pines & James Gilmore
The New Brand World, Scott Bedbury
A Purple Cow, Seth Godin

The Hidden “Wrinkle” to Developing an Authentic Personal Brand

There’s a hidden wrinkle to developing a personal brand that I’d like to expose. The problem is simply that we, as humans, are unable to be truly objective about ourselves. We aren’t able to tell “what sets us apart” or makes up our “core genius” without external input. And even when it’s pointed out by others (a boss delivering a performance review or a friend offering a compliment) many of us will deny our own core genius. We just don’t get how whatever it is that we do so easily could be perceived to be SO outstanding.

I have been a personal brand strategist for 10 years and the process I have developed that delivers the clearest, most valid and authentic response includes self reporting and input from others, balanced by the results of multiple personality profiles. When you look at input from all three channels, and find the common threads - you will have the rock solid foundation you need to build a strong, compelling and “salable” personal brand.

Of course, it is possible to create a brand based on who and what you WANT to be – that’s how corporate branding is done. A product brand is built on the specific strengths, attitudes and values that have been chosen to appeal to the people who will buy it. But there’s a very real danger in doing that in personal branding, as it won’t be long before “you” show up, and the people or opportunities that your made-up brand has attracted will disappear when that happens. At best, you’ll be seen as confusing, at worst, as a phony.

Martha Stewart experienced this dilemma. She set herself up originally as the “perfect” homemaker or Domestic Diva. And despite the fact that what she represented was often more intimidating and exhausting than inspiring, (who could compare with “Perfect Martha?”) millions of women bought into her brand because they wanted to emulate her domestic flare. Then a Martha we had never met before showed up and created a stock trading scandal that cost her investors tens of millions. The stock price tied to the Martha Stewart brand has never recovered.

So in addition to building a strong, compelling and “salable” personal brand - make sure it’s real, as it’s far easier to “be yourself” than continually have to strive to be someone else.

Brand Building Blocks

The Purpose of a Personal Brand

A well developed, compelling brand will:
▪ Clearly distinguish, or differentiate you from your competitors (in the business world, as well as within organizations).
▪ Demonstrate your unique benefits to your identified target market (clients or companies that will hire or employ you).
▪ Create emotional bonds with your ideal target market who will be attracted to the values that your brand represents.

According to Scott Bedbury, co-author of A New Brand World: Eight Principles for achieving Brand Leadership in the Twenty-First Century, “A great brand taps into emotions. Emotions drive most, if not all of our decisions. A brand reaches out with a powerful connecting experience. It’s an emotional connecting point that transcends the product.”

The Structure of a Personal Brand

A well developed, compelling brand is NOT just a collection of adjectives that describe aspects of yourself that you particularly like. These “word salads” can masquerade as legitimate brands.In short, branding is what identifies your genius!

Cattle were originally branded to make them easier to identify because cows of the same breed look alike to all but those who care for them. Likewise, to new clients or employers, you “look like” every other trainer, accountant or analyst. Once they get to know what makes you unique and different, you cease to look like anyone else. The challenge is to help them cross that bridge. That’s what great branding does.

“How do I build a brand? I already have a logo and website, what else do I need?” This article explains the structure of a well developed brand, so that it’s easy to look at what you’ve already built, and see where you need to do some deconstruction, renovation or new construction.

Just as a building is a composite of concrete, bricks, wood and metal beams, wiring, plumbing, wall board and roofing materials, a personal brand is made up of many different elements, such as an individual’s values, strengths, talents, attitudes, opinions, experience and even their unique sense of humor!

Michael Eisner of Disney talks about the brand being “like a pointillist painting … everything you do for your brand is a point on the canvas…. If you want to be strong, each point along the way has to be as close to perfect as possible.”
That’s one of the best branding descriptions I have ever come across! But to go back to the construction metaphor I began earlier…

We all know that buildings are constructed to serve different visions and purposes. A home shelters and nurtures its family, a church or temple inspires its congregation and protects them from the elements, and an art gallery preserves and exhibits works of art to large numbers of people. Likewise a personal brand serves YOUR vision and purpose which are represented by your products and/or services and fulfilled by how you provide them to the specific groups of people that have been identified as having a strong need or desire for them.

That sounds a little cryptic, so here’s an example: If Apple made products that looked and worked just like those of its competitions, if they did not inspire their users’ creativity and were not developed and marketed in creative ways, Apple would NOT have a brand that creative types love to love!

In order to construct a building, it is necessary to create a construction strategy that overlays structural blueprints and interior design concepts with topographical criteria, traffic patterns, accessibility and zoning regulations. Altogether, they create a comprehensive perspective that enables the building to become a tangible entity that takes its pre-planned form. In order to thrive, a personal brand must be supported by an inspiring vision, a solid business plan and marketing strategy (or career direction strategy) that ensure it has a specific and consistent way of showing up in the world.

Let’s take a few minutes now to explore the various elements of a strong, distinctive and compelling personal brand.

The Foundation of a Personal BrandYour Personal Branding Statement is a descriptive summary of the essence of your brand. It demonstrates how you leverage your strengths, values, preferences, natural talents and learned skills. A simple Personal Branding Statement can run from one to three paragraphs while a more complex Personal Branding Statement can fill up an entire page.Your Personal Vision Statement is a distillation of the dreams and desires that your personal visioning process has exposed which you have chosen to pursueand achieve.

Your Personal Vision Strategy is the action-based plan that keeps you on track with your vision in the present and enables you reach it in the future. It cascades your vision’s key goals down into specific and prioritized actions and tactics.

Your Branded Business Plan or your Branded Career Direction Strategy details “what” your brand represents, “how” it ranks in the competitive spectrum and “who” it serves.

The Positioning of your Personal Brand defines:

1. Who you are and what are you “one of.”
Have you ever met someone why introduces themselves in a way that totally confuses you? I recently met a “Neuropsychologist who recruits other neuropsychologists to provide cognitive testing services to hospitals, who is also a life coach specializing in aging issues, who does marketing for plastic surgeons.”
What on earth is a neuropsychologist / recruiter / life coach / marketer?A clear and succinct Professional Positioning (i.e., “a Business Success Strategist”) ensures that others understand your professional focus so you have their full attention when you go on to talk about the people you work with and how your products and services will benefit them. If they’re still trying to figure out “what you are one of,” they won’t be able to hear anything you say.2. Who you serve.
Your Target Audience Profile provides a detailed overview of the people and businesses you will serve most effectively and most enjoyably.

Target Audience Profiles include demographics (ages, education levels, occupations, geographical locations, income levels, etc.) and psychographics (values, interests, concerns, dreams, etc.). When all of this information is reduced to a synopsis, it paints a very clear picture of those who want what you offer. When the subject of target audience profiling comes up, people often express concern about the numbers of potential prospects who might be excluded by the process. Actually, the people who will be filtered out by your profile are the “nightmare clients” you should never take on. They are the colleagues and bosses who inspired you to leave your last workplace. If you think of an archery target, your ideal audience would be represented by the bulls-eye, and those who just share some of their characteristics, would fall somewhere in the outer rings.

3. What you offer that’s unique, special or different.
Your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) is the one thing about you that makes you unique and different. Ironically, it’s also the one thing that is so easy and natural that it’s easy to fail to see it as the genius that it is.

Think back to what you have been consistently complimented on and you may get a sense of your USP. Ask yourself who you are or what you do that is special, unique and/or different from who others are and what they do? Take that question to a few of your friends and colleagues. Their feedback may surprise you – as might your reaction. Typically, people say, “Oh that! That’s no big deal!”

Jane, a Personal Branding client, was not impressed to learn that she “enables people, teams and organizations to generate consistently high productivity and performance levels.” “Can’t everyone do that?” she asked. Likewise, when Chris’ USP was identified as “breaking people out of the limiting beliefs that lock them down,” he was unimpressed, but his friends, family and colleagues were blown away by the powerful accuracy of this description of his core USP.

So, are you the person who can’t resist “taking on, and successfully completing, “impossible” tasks?” Are you the artist who “translates energy, intelligence and emotions into unique concepts?” Perhaps you “simplify and communicate complex information in clear, practical ways that people can easily and effectively apply.” Whatever it is, your USP summarizes your genius!

4. Why they should believe you.
Your Credentialing Statement explains how you came to have the expertise, interests, passions and focus that you do. A combination bio/resume/brief life story, when people read your credentialing statement, they know why you are who you are and do what you do.

Here’s a brief example:
“With economics and advanced business degrees from the Wharton School and the Harvard Business School, Andrew is one of a select few business coaches trained by Michael Gerber (Author of the E-Myth). Andrew literally ‘grew up’ in the beauty business. His family owned and operated a private chain of 1500 beauty salons. After progressively heading up marketing, operations, merchandising and retailing for a national beauty business, he also launched an internationally recognized beauty business brand. While serving as President of A European Beauty Corporation’s US division, Andrew honed his expertise as a turn-around specialist by reducing staff turnover from 80% to 10%, doubling the number of new customers served and making the division saleable as a “stand alone” entity. Having also owned and managed a private salon, Andrew knows, first hand, the challenge and satisfaction of running a successful single-unit operation.”

Could anyone appeal more to Beauty Salon & Day Spa Owners wanting increased profitability? You can learn more about Andrew’s work on his website at www.thebeautyresource.com

The Building Blocks of a Personal Brand
Here’s a list that you can use to determine which of the following brand building blocks you have in place right now.
- USP
- Core Benefits
- Supporting Benefits
- Professional Positioning
- Detailed Target Audience Profile(s)
- Logo
- Compelling Slogan or Tagline
- Branded Sound Bytes and Elevator Speech
- Branded Voice (the consistent style, complexity level and tone in which you communicate with your target audience).
- Branded Voicemail Message(s) and way of answering the phone
- Branded E-mail and Auto-Responder Formats
- Branded Radio and Print Interviews and Ads, Audio Products and Keynotes or spoken Presentations, Market Research Surveys, Reports on Findings, Website, Product Packaging, Direct Marketing pieces, Print Ads and E-newsletter.
- Branded Intellectual Property: your products and programs, books and articles
- Client Feedback / Testimonials – formatted in such as ways as to align with your brand direction and reinforce that your target audience are who you say they are.
- Branded Visual Style: consistent color palette, font choices, logo positioning, etc.
- Branded Personal Style for yourself and others who are associated with your brand.
- Branded Stationery, Fax, Presentation, Proposals and Handout Templates
- Branded Modus Operandi (MO). Is it direct and solution focused? Or nurturing and supportive?Your personal brand must be infused throughout all of the elements listed above. You build a brand by showing up consistently in the way you run meetings and client sessions, the way you respond to customer and prospect inquiries, the way you organize your marketing materials.

Your personal brand must be infused throughout all of the elements listed above. You build a brand by showing up consistently in the way you run meetings and client sessions, the way you respond to customer and prospect inquiries, the way you organize your marketing materials.Your brand essence is communicated by your most basic sell sheet and by your flagship products/programs and even your website navigation.Your brand is also largely created (or destroyed) by what others say about you.**

Does your brand show up consistently everywhere? Do your suppliers, your customers, colleagues and staff see you as consistently “on brand?”

Summary
We have described the elements required to construct a well developed brand. What’s missing from you brand “building?” A foundation? A roof? Electrical wiring? Windows? Whatever it is, it’s important to get your personal brand deficiencies addressed so you can fulfill YOUR brand vision and purpose!

Learn more about personal brand development at http://www.miboso.com

Writer, Producer, Star!

A cold winter weekend offered an ideal opportunity to curl up on the couch with a cozy blanket, a remote control and a raft of “new release” movies. The films I chose were enjoyable and entertaining, but afterwards I found myself thinking—not about their story lines, heroes or villains—but about their predictability.In the romantic comedy, after some absurd and amusing antics and near misses, the girl finally saw that Mr. Right has been “right there” all along… The drama also neatly resolved its characters’ issues and challenges in 157 minutes. The hardened criminal discovered compassion, took responsibility for his actions and turned in his ill gotten gains, then returned to the jail to enlighten and inspire other inmates to do likewise.

While we can learn a lot from movie characters’ experiences and discoveries, it’s useful to notice the impressions that these productions make on our thinking, values and expectations. Considering how Cinderella’s story has impacted generations of women’s expectation of men, how are movie characters’ goals, values and beliefs influencing our own? Are our expressed desires truly the yearnings of our own hearts, or are they merely concepts adopted from the silver screen? How can we tell?

After watching countless lives unfold on the big screen, many of us find that when real life shows up, loose threads and all, it feels like something’s wrong. It’s not “supposed” to be this way. Dad was not supposed to die before we had a chance to tell him how much we loved him. Our romantic hero is not supposed to marry someone else, much less stay happily married to them for a lifetime! Killers should not get away with murder—and yet they do. This discrepancy between real life and life as portrayed by movies can create serious cognitive dissonance for those of us who are unaware of their pervasive influence.

In Philadelphia in 2003, I introduced a new exercise into my Authentic Personal Branding workshops which required participants to describe their “dream lives.” They were asked, “If you had a magic wand and could recreate your life without time, physical, geographic or financial limitations, what would it be like?” While most participants were able to generate lists of socially acceptable desires (“A luxury home.” “A sports car.” “A million dollar jackpot.” “To be thin.” “To travel around the world.” “To be successful in business.” ), no one could explain why or what having them would do for them. A few even complained that the exercise was “too hard.” They were right! Surfacing our heart’s desires isn’t easy, but it is important, for while fiction can inspire original thinking, allowing mainstream cultural ideals to masquerade as our authentic desires can cost us our very lives. We can’t get back the years of effort and sacrifice we invested in getting “what we thought we wanted.”

To create exciting, fulfilling lives, we must first examine our soul-felt yearnings and distinguish them from the pre-packaged cultural ideals that we “buy into.” (Do you really want to find your soul mate – or are you happy on your own? Will you truly be happier if you are 20 pounds lighter – or have perfect teeth?) We need to develop the ability to tune out the razzle dazzle clamoring of our culture and tune in to the gentle murmurings of our hearts. Now I won’t pretend that this is easy, for we are as enmeshed in our culture as the peanuts in a Snickers bar are in the chocolate and caramel. But by identifying our true desires, we can create lives that are incredibly personally rewarding. And when we truly believe we can have what we want, we get to watch in wonder as synchronicities unfold, creating outcomes that far exceed our original expectations.

So enjoy movies for their ability to present new ideas and information, but don’t confuse their reality with your own. You can choose to live life as an independent producer, writing your original screenplay and starring in the lead role as the story unfolds, or you can spend your life replaying the same roles over and over again.

Tips for Writing, Directing and Starring in Your Own Life-Long Feature Film…

1. Look back to find times in your life when you were on top of the world, supremely happy and fulfilled. Write down as many as you can recall as stories (minimum 3). Compare them to uncover common themes, consistent plot lines, and similarities between the other characters who were involved. What sorts of activities/people do you consistently enjoy? What sorts of challenges bring out your best, time and time again? Who and what brings you down/makes you angry/wastes your time? This exercise will help you to differentiate fantasies from authentic, achievable dreams.

2. Make a list of everything that you have declared you want and feel is important to you. Prioritize the list. Now surface your heart’s desires by inviting your heart to expose its deepest yearnings. (You can do this by meditating, actively or passively, or by simply jotting down what comes up in your notebook or journal. Be sure to stock up on soap crayons if you get your best ideas in the shower!) Compile your notes into a new list that’s ordered from what is most to least important.

3. Take a trip into the future, to the end of your life. What do you want to be able to say you have achieved? What do you want to be remembered for? How do you absolutely not want to be remembered?

Combine all of your outcomes to create a strong plot outline – then cast your co-stars, choose your location, sets, props and costumes, write your daily scenes to match your heart’s desires and live the role of your life! they wanted these things or

Lightning vs. the Lightning Bug

Mark Twain once said that the difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and the lightning bug.

The immediate challenge we all have when we communicate is how to find and deploy these right words - the words that are lightning.

The best words I know are the ones that impact the listener. Everything else is filler. To a man proposing to his lady the most important word is “yes.” Many years ago my wife turned to me and said: “you will be a daddy soon.” And our lives would never be the same.

Lightning words do not have to be complex. They seek to express, not necessarily impress. Actually they impress by expressing quickly and well. “We will always have Paris” is a simple sentence. Its effect in the film Casablanca is powerful.

Lightning words are memorable: I came, I saw, I conquered; Blood, Sweat and Tears; All we have to fear is fear itself. Simple words. Immortal words.

Listen to your audience, and you will be on your way to lightning words. Listen to its needs, its hopes, its dreams. And then feel your own responses. Would you want to hear what you are about to say?

Practice, practice, practice. Listen to yourself as others listen to you. Let someone (like us at Miboso.com) listen to you as your audience will. You will find that together we can identify a lot of lightning words - words that do your heavy lifting, build trust, and call for action.

Say yes!

The Telegram is Dead; Long Live the Telegram

The telegram was once a marvel of high tech. Then it was eclipsed by better, faster technology. The last telegram was sent over a decade ago.

When you sent a telegram you paid by the word. So people sent terse, short messages. “It’s a boy!,” “Grandpa is ill. Come soon.” No frills - the essence of your message in a few key words. One reporter wanted to save money so he sent Cary Grant a telegram saying “How old Cary Grant.” He received the following answer “Old cary Grant fine. How you?”

The Internet has taken “telegramese” to new heights. Increasingly e-mails are sent by PDAs and the messages are not only getting shorter, they also create their own acronyms to speed up communication: “gtg, lol, imho, pos” (”parent over shoulder” - my favorite!)

The distillation of a message to its core meaning is impacting all communications - oral and written. Many of us still write long messages and presentations because we grew up in an academic tradition that favored repetition and explanation - a lot of words presented to assure the reader of our credentials and engagement with the subject.

Welcome back, telegram. Now it’s electronic, fast and global, and often free. I’ve been sending messages through my free Google mail account for two years now and still have only used up 3% of my allotted storage. I can search my more than 7000 messages in seconds and thus my responses tend to be more relevant and precise.

When we sp