When you first meet someone, at a party, waiting in line, through a friend, etc., there is one question you know will come up, “What do you do?”

This question is asked because either the person really is interested in what you do, or it’s just an automatic response when you first meet someone. Usually the answer is always dull and dry. “I’m a doctor”, “I work at a coffee shop”, “I’m an accountant”, “I sell cars”, etc. Although all of these answers maybe true, they lack an exciting punch that draws people into you. Make your answers a little bit more personal and try to make it about the other person if possible. Also try to tell stories around what you do. Remember the old saying, “Facts tell, stories sell.” Lets take a look at 3 techniques that can help you strengthen a relationship when you first meet someone:

1. Link it to them: Tell the person you are meeting how you can benefit them directly. People are always looking to network and ways to help their lives become easier. If you meet someone who is a small business owner, and you are an IT Consultant, well tell them a time where you have helped a small business owner by saving their IT costs by X amount of dollars.
2. Tell a story: Say you are a car salesman. You could say, “I sell cars”, but that does not help strengthen your relationship at all. What if you instead tell them an interesting story. What about the time you sold 5 cars in one day, or were taking a test drive with a crazy person, or maybe you got into a fender-bender. Whatever story you choose make it interesting and most importantly, unique. Talking about an award you may have been honored with is not interesting to the other person.
3. Make It Interesting: If your job is not exciting to most people, say you try to get new advertising account for phone books, you can still present your occupation in an interesting way by posing a question that the other person may have been curious about. “Have you ever wondered how those coupons get into phone books?”

Keep these 3 tips in mind and most of all remember to just relax and have fun. You may be a doctor, but what about that time you were called at 3AM to perform that emergency appendectomy? Now that’s a little bit more exciting!

Here are a few projects on my plate: I work 40 hours a week representing a small software company named Microsoft, I work on this productivity website, My daily commute is 2 hours and 100 miles roundtrip, I have a successful Network Marketing business, and I have my own Computer Consulting company, I do at least 1 hour of personal development everyday, and sleep for about 4 hours a day. So when someone asks me how I’ve been, I think about it, and I tell them “I’ve been good, just really busy.”

A few days ago, I ran into an old friend I hadn’t seen in a few years. After the pleasantries, I asked her how she has been. She got a frustrated look and said, “I’ve been good, just really busy.” Then she asked me how I have been, and I thought about all of my projects, and also said, “I’ve been good, just really busy”. Now this is the part that I found interesting, she gave me a look in which I knew that she did not believe me. That’s what got me thinking about this topic.

If you ask anyone, at anytime, how they are doing, you will always get the standard response, “I’ve been good, just really busy.” My question is simple, are people really as busy as they claim? There are several reasons why people give the default answer of “I’ve been busy.” Lets take a look at a few of the top reasons:

• Subconscious: Again, my favorite topic, the Subconscious. The subconscious works by believing in repeated messages. If you always say “I’m Busy”, “I’m Busy”, “I’m Busy”, can you guess what the message that your subconscious receives… “I’m Busy”. Again, it doesn’t matter if you are telling the truth or not, to the subconscious, everything is the truth. So not only do you convince yourself that you are busy, but you feel better about yourself.
• Ego: Everyone likes to feel good about themselves, right? So if you say to someone “I’ve been busy”, even though they most likely won’t believe you, it still feels better than saying “I’ve been slacking off and watching TV.”
• Confusion With Being Productive: There is a huge difference in being “Busy” and bring “Productive”. Playing video games all day will keep me busy, but not productive.
• General Answer: For most people, saying “I’ve been Busy” is just a quick standard response.

Now, instead of saying that I’ve just “been busy”, and sending a message to my subconscious to find ways to prove itself right and focuses on keeping me “busy”, I say that I’ve “been productive”. My subconscious now focuses on finding ways on making me more productive.

Give it a try. For the next few people you meet, take a look at their reactions when you simply say that you are “busy” compared to if you say that you are “productive.” If you say you are busy, they will just pass it off as a standard answer, but if you say that you have been productive, they will ask you what you have been up to and show more interest in you.

The other night I was supposed to meet with a person that I am coaching at 6:30 PM at a local coffee shop. At 6:45 I called and left a message. At 7:00 PM I left another message. Finally at 7:30 I left to come back home. The coffee shop is 15 minutes away from my house, and to get ready for the meeting, it took me about 30 minutes. So all said and done, I had just wasted 1 hour at the coffee shop, 1 hour driving back and forth, and 30 minutes getting ready for a total of 2 and a half hours.

I finally got a text message around 10:00 PM that said, “Hey, I fell asleep after I got off of work. Sorry.”

That’s it, no real apology, no real explanation. How likely do you think I am to work with this person again?

I started thinking about how little apologies mean because of how little thought goes into them. How many times a day do you hear, “I’m sorry” said with no emotion or sincerity? Here are 7 points to include in a sincere apology:

1. Be sincere in your apology- “I’m sincerely sorry…”
2. What you did- “That I missed our meeting.”
3. Why you did it, don’t justify by using the word ‘because’- “I had fallen asleep when I got home from work.”
4. How the other person felt- “I know that you must be feeling that I am not reliable…”
5. How it impacted the other person- “And that you wasted a lot of time waiting for me…”
6. Tell them how you can fix it- “But I would really appreciate it if you gave me another chance.”
7. Apologize again and why- “I really am sorry I missed our meeting”

Can you see the difference? Do you think I would work with this person again if they had given me that response? Of course I would because they just let me know that they value my time and want to put forth the effort to make things right. Also, having a sincere apology that explains what happens and how to fix things also does wonders when it comes to defusing a volatile situation.