Storytelling

Gentle readers, when your MatchGirl was unemployed and looking for a new job. Looking to turn her life into a new direction, she had to learn to tell her own story.

And when you are building your personal brand, you need to figure out the best way to tell you story.

Your MatchGirl lectures you here all the time about the best way for you to tell your story. She talks about the two-minute job interview. She talks about how you can sell yourself with a soundbite. And she shares the stories that others are telling - to inspire you to action.

If you're looking for a new job, if you're a freelancer - you need to be able to tell your story and tell it well. You need to practice sharing it. You need to be able to let others know the key points about you.

People are short on time. They are short on attention. So you need to hold on to it.

And, hey ... everyone likes a good story.

What Democracy Looks Like

Gentle readers, your MatchGirl, as you know, is not afraid to take a political stance on this blog.

She's not afraid of ruffling feathers. And she's not afraid of asking you all to take a stand.

Your MatchGirl was unemployed for a year and a half. At the height of the recession. And during that time, she worked her butt off. Did she take jobs that paid $8 an hour? No. I was lucky that I was able to collect back on my unemployment insurance and get some benefits. And I knew that if I fell into a job making $8 an hour, there would be no time to look for a job to put me in the right direction. But the reason I was unemployed at all was because the banks fucked up. And the small business I worked at couldn't keep going. I was a casualty. And I rose from the ashes of that company - to push myself into a better place. To help you all get to a better place.

But the world, the one we walk in and out of every day, is not becoming a better place. Not for ordinary people.

I hope that you will all take the time, just 10 minutes, to watch this video, embedded below, by my friend Mike Gill.

When your MatchGirl first saw it, tears came to my eyes. To see the veterans, older men, who served a country they loved and who have watched it fall apart, lock arms, and insist on being the first line of defense against the oncoming police... It's powerful stuff.



"What Democracy Looks Like: The View From Occupy Boston"
from Michael Gill on Vimeo.

Your MatchGirl is a liberal person. You all know that.
I think it's fine for you to have different views than I do. I think as long as you're informed, dear readers, on the full picture, with all the facts, and not just collecting soundbites and parroting them to your friends or to those who disagree with you, that we can agree to sit on our opposite sides.
Your MatchGirl is against war. I have friends who are veterans and not only do I respect them, I am in awe of them. I could not do what they have done. I couldn't carry that passion. I also have family members who are veterans - my dad, of Vietnam, and my Grampa, of WWII - and who are still in the military - my cousin Angus joined the Marines in 1992 and still serves, including as a medic in Afghanistan.

I know people who work on Wall Street.

I know the 1% and I am amongst the 99%.

Your MatchGirl is not occupying Wall Street.
But I have friends at both Occupy Wall Street and Occupy Boston. And I'm proud of them.
They are not "lazy hipsters" nor are they "trust fund kids". They are people in their late 30s and 40s, who have worked hard, who have chased their dreams, who are finding their voice. And who are asking for a better life - for themselves and for those who will come after us.

In "An Open Letter to that 53% Guy," Max Urdago writes:

We can have a reasonable standard for what level of work qualifies you for the American Dream, and work to build a society that realizes that dream, or we can chew each other to the bone in a nightmare of merciless competition and mutual contempt.

I suggest you all check out his letter.

Because whether you want to Occupy (Wherever) or you think it's all a crock of shit, Max makes some great points.

It's all about fixing the country. And fighting to keep it a great place to live and work and raise a family.

It's all about the American Dream being about more than working 70 hours a week for just over minimum wage and not even being able to get your teeth fixed or have a regular doctor's visit.

If we really want America to be great again, we need to remember what made it great in the first place.

Revolution. Equality. And Democracy.

Pitch Yourself With a Soundbite

It's all about the headline, isn't it, gentle readers? As our connected society spends more and more time online, it's all about conveying your message, complicated as it may be, in the least amount of characters.

If you think about it, this makes a lot of sense.
And, no, your MatchGirl's not just talking about Twitter.

Think about newspapers, tabloids and those trashy magazines you just can't help but pick up when you're waiting in the checkout line. Why do you pick those up? Why are you drawn to flip through them. It's the headline, of course.

The same goes for our digital world. The Tweets that are most clicked on draw the reader in - they make them want to click the link. Your MatchGirl experiments with this all the time. She will send out the same link several times a day, with a different "teaser" or headline to draw you in. And while I'm still figuring out that formula, it's a great experiment to see what tweets are opened versus how much time is spent on those posts. (If I find a perfect formula, I'll be sure to let you know.)

Now, let's get to the soundbite.
Think about what you know about the Republican presidential candidates.
Think about what you know about the demands of Occupy Wall Street or even the Tea Party Movement.
Or, to be frank, anything that's happening in the news right now.
For the most part, unless you've done some research and due diligence, what you know about this stuff has come to you in soundbites - quick and pithy, 30 seconds or less.

People are the same way.
What you know now about your friends, it's all on Facebook, or Twitter, or LinkedIn. It's the soundbites they are choosing for themselves - it's the face they put out to the world. It's the few moments of the best of them that makes you want to read further into their lives.

And the same is true in your job search. We've talked here about the 2-minute interview and we'll keep talking about it. Practicing your pitch - whether your trying to sell yourself or your product - is the best way to get your story out there. People's attention spans are short, and no it's not due to social networks or Mtv, it's because people are, most of the time, really busy trying to figure out what will be best for them. Not you. It's because they have their own agenda. It's because while they're talking to you, in the back of their minds, they are making a grocery list, or going through their agenda for the next day... even if they are paying attention (OK. Not always, but a lot of the time).

So, practice your soundbite. Think about the 30 seconds of your elevator pitch that you want people to remember most. This is your moment to shine. And most of the time, you don't get much more than that. Just a moment.

In 1492 ...

Just a thought...

A Liberal Arts View of Technology

Your MatchGirl knows that everyone and their mother has been posting about Steve Jobs the past couple of days. And your MatchGirl, given yesterday's post, is no different.

Some posts have been received in controversy. Some have brought tears to people's eyes.. And no matter what you think of Steve Jobs the man, I don't think, gentle readers, that anyone can deny that his point of view changed the way that millions of people approach - and are able to approach - technology. And through that, the world.

A little story for you, dear readers: My grandfather owned a store in the White Mountains of New Hampshire - it was one of those stores where you could buy your groceries, your snow shovel and a new toy for your kid. It was three stories and served people from the many small towns in the area. And I remember walking into the office one day and there was a computer running the show. It was a Macintosh SE. And, while it didn't last long at the store (I can't recall what followed it), it came home with my family and I wrote term papers, mediocre short stories and my college applications on it over the next five years. I learned to play around on MacPaint and MacDraw and, later, on faster computers (with actual internal hard drives) got pretty good with Quark, too. I wrote my first emails on a Macintosh LC.

That's not really the point of this essay, though. So many of you have had a similar experience. So many of you have a first time-Mac story that is part of your personal history.

The point of that little story about the SE - that's more about my Grampa. He heard that the Mac was the best and he wanted the best. I can't recall why he gave it to us, and he's not around any longer to ask. But I do know that in 1998, when that Bondi Blue iMac came out, my Grampa, aged 78, drove two hours to the closest store selling them and took one home.

Listening to Fresh Air on NPR on Thursday night, they replayed part of a 1996 interview with Steve Jobs, where he said, to paraphrase, that he wanted to bring "a liberal arts point of view to the use of computers." He didn't want people to feel confused when setting them up or using them. He wanted them to be intuitive and part of the whole. A liberal arts education is focused on bringing all the parts of academia together to make a whole, a better, person, and, to me, it seems that's what Steve Jobs wished for Apple to bring to computing.

"In my perspective ... science and computer science is a liberal art, it's something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It's not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It's something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that's how we viewed computation and these computation devices."

It's too soon, in my opinion, to see what Steve Jobs' legacy will truly be. He's left behind some amazing innovation. He's left us looking at technology, and what it can be, in an entirely different light. But making computers something that almost everyone has, that everyone can figure out how to use, sometimes with just a swipe of their finger, that will be one of them. Making computers things that are not only great to know how to use, but a coveted and cool part of one's arsenal, that's another.

The ability to stay connected to what matters most to us - that's a pretty nice something to leave behind.

Have The Courage To Follow Your Heart

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” - Steve Jobs


image from apple.com

A Country Built On Rights

On the subway the other morning, your MatchGirl saw a sign for the Ken Burns documentary, Prohibition. And the words on it struck me, gentle readers, so much, that I thought they bore sharing here with you.

The poster posed this question (to paraphrase): In a country built on rights how could everything have gone so wrong?

Oh my.

I feel like this is the question that the people who are occupying Wall Street (and Boston, LA, Chicago, etc...) are asking. I feel like this is a question that we all need to be asking ourselves. Right now.

The unemployment rate is high.
The income gap is seemingly un-bridgeable.
The world is not becoming a better place.

I certainly don't have it any better than my parents did - in fact, when I look around, at my career, at my life - I have it a lot worse than they did when they were my age.

And things are not getting better.

There is no one who will help. Maybe there is no one who can help.

So, dear readers, I ask you this, what are you going to do for yourself? What are you going to do to make your life better - to make the lives of those around you better and richer and brighter?

Give yourself a helping hand and pull up a few friends along the way.

Your MatchGirl is pretty sure it's the only way we can make the world a better place.