065: Dan Schawbel | Networking and Personal Branding for Generation Y

Do you ever feel like you struggle to get ahead at work?

Have you watched your less-talented co-workers get promoted or get plum assignments ahead of you?

Do you ever feel like it might be because you aren’t good enough at promoting yourself?

If any of these ring true for you, then Dan Schawbel has the answers for you. He is the NY Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Promote Yourself: The New Rules For Career Success.

He’s also the managing partner of Millennial Branding, a Generation Y research and consulting firm, and an expert in personal branding.

And here is lesson #1 in personal branding – even though he’s known as an expert in Generation Y workers, really his expertise (and interests) extends far beyond that. He’s very knowledgeable and conversant in the larger larger trends in the workplace and what it takes to get ahead.

In this interview, we discuss:

• Why networking is the #1 most important thing he does for his business
• What you should do if you want to be viewed as an expert in this world
• Dan’s counter-intuitive advice that if you want to become an entrepreneur the best thing you can do is to go work for a big company
• How to identify opportunities to differentiate yourself in the workplace
• The right ways – and wrong ways – to do personal branding
• What you should NOT do if you hate the work you do within your company or if you don?t like the team you work with
• The #1 most important trait you can display that will help you to get ahead in today?s workplace

Dan has some great career advice not just for Generation Y but for anyone looking to get ahead in today?s competitive workplace.

Enjoy!

Resources from this Episode:

• Promote Yourself by Dan Schawbel
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Dan’s Website
• How I Landed My Book Deals And How You Can Land Your Own by Dan Schawbel

Transcript of Interview:

John Corcoran: All right, I am here with Dan Schawbel, who is a personal branding expert. Dan, I want to start off by asking you, because I'm a huge fan of the book How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. I'm sure you've read it. The book's been around for 100 years. That book ? the central premise behind it is that in order to get ahead, you need to basically not promote yourself. You need to take an interest in others and ask a lot of questions of others and help out other people and now you've got this book, Promote Yourself which seems to be the opposite of that. What I want to know is, are we in a different era now? Are the lessons of Dale Carnegie ? which after all, he wrote in the 30s I think originally ? is that outdated advice or do you feel like it still rings true, it's just different advice. Tell me.

Dan Schawbel: Yeah, I think it still rings true. There's various ways that people can become more well known in companies. The first way is to become a subject matter expert. I did a study with American Express for the book and we found that 65 percent of managers are looking to hire and promote subject matter expects. I just released a new study globally in ten different countries where we looked at the interests of Generation Y and Generation Z who's not even in the workplace yet. In terms of the diversity, that they want to surround themselves with, the number of type of diversity is not where someone came from or gender or anything like that. It's actually working with subject matter experts. That's really the most important thing right now in order to stand out. Once you're good at what you do, people will promote you. That's one part of it. The second part of it is, again, you want to do a kind of campaign.

Helping out others, promoting them, promoting their work so that they take more of an interest in you. That's goes back to what you were saying earlier. Another thing is, again, you've got to be really good at it, and then you've got to communicate that you're good at it. If somebody brings up in a meeting hey, we need help on this, that's your opportunity raise your hand. Identify new opportunities in and outside the organization where you can help solve those problems, create better processes, save the company money, increase revenue, whatever it may be. That's when you step up to the plate, try, and take charge. By doing that, you stand out, you're recognized as someone who can complete those type of tasks with those certain skills, and then you get more of that work. That's how you can grow your brand within the company.

Corcoran: What you're saying is a three-step process. One you've got to be a subject matter expert. You?ve got to be good at one particular area. Number two, you're saying looking for opportunities where you can dive in and help and promote others and help them with that subject matter expertise. Number three you're saying promote yourself and your expertise in that particular subject area as well. Let's dive into number one, the first one you talked about. A lot of times, you hear people are worried, or they don't want to pigeonhole themselves. They have a diverse array of interests. People are interested in multiple different things. What do you say to people who say that I don't want to be a subject matter expert in one particular narrow area?

Dan Schawbel: So there was study done two years ago when CareerBuilder conducted it ? they found out that job seekers are branding themselves as generalists but companies are looking to hire specialists. There's that disconnect and you need to bridge that disconnect by becoming an expert. When you think about what you're an expert in, identify your skills. What do people comment on typically in the work place? Also, what is the market looking for? If the market's paying more for a certain skills, that could be a key indicator that it's an area where you want to invest your time and get those skills. Whether you're reading, taking courses, practicing, creating, doing freelance projects or whatever it may be, that's what you need to do because you want to align your strengths with the market and what people are willing to pay for. 

What people don't really know is that you pick a specialty and then you get really good at it. Then people will begin to know you for it. Then from there, you bridge into new things. That's kind of my whole career really in a nutshell. It started out as personal branding spokesperson for Gen-Y and then personal branding expert for Gen-Y and then personal branding expert and now millennial X, millennial workplace expert, and then eventually millennial or just leadership expert. However, this ends up playing out, everything is linked in some way so that it makes sense and you can tell it as part of your story. 

It just becomes much easier to do it like that. Start small and then expand, expand, expand. It's almost like ? I used to talk about this all the time ? if you want to become a lawyer or something like that and you want to become nationally known, be locally known first. Then more people will recognize you and you can be the best lawyer in one area, maybe to a specific demographic and then when you get visibility from there, then it's time to expand. Instead of the best lawyer for, I don't know, for criminals in a small area of DC to just a great lawyer in DC to a nationally recognized lawyer.

It's easier to stand out if you go niche within a company, as an entrepreneur or whatever you're looking to do and then start to expand if that's your goal. 

Corcoran: It's interesting because I was just having a conversation with a friend today about this and what I think people do, they look at someone who's successful like a George Clooney, let's say they want to break into the entertainment industry. They say well, he directs, he produces, he writes and he acts. Therefore, I want to do all those things. Or it could be someone else. It could be an author who writes about multiple different topics and they think I'm going to do all those things, so then they want to be known for all those things. It's almost like they shouldn't be looking at someone who's that successful because they're not at that point yet. Am I right in that interpretation?

Dan Schawbel: Yeah, there was a point in time when Oprah didn't have a magazine. There's a point when Nike didn't have tee shirts. So what ends up happening is you do really good at one thing and then there's demand, there's a brand and then you sell around it. You sell other things, either that or similar. So Nike's not out there selling chairs, but if they sold treadmills ? they obviously sell shorts and other things and basketballs, it's logical because it's now like a lifestyle brand. I think that's ? you've got to see the bigger picture and a lot of people actually ? a lot of people actually stovepipe ? they go too narrow and they don't think about where it could go in the future. For me, the future is everything. So what do I do today to build a strong enough story so that in ten years when people ask me what I do, it's just so obvious? 

When I tell them, people make sense of it immediately. For me, the vision and the mission behind everything I do is helping my generation of millennials from college to CEO. That's it. That's all I'm doing. In order to do that, I have to do so many things. I have to consult big companies so they change their workplace practices and better support millennials. I have to identify the upcoming generation, Generation Z and how they operation so I understand how millennials can manage and connect with them. I need to understand ? I need to create a lot of content. Obviously, the books, the million things that I do ? need to reach out, build that audience, and help them along the way. There's just so much I have to do in order to pull it off, but because I know where I want to go in the next ten or so years, I make better decisions on a daily basis because certain things I might not get paid for. It's not an obvious choice for there's only so much in the short-term where you're just trying to cash out. For me, it's always long-term, what could this do ten years from now. 

Because of that, I've been able to piece together this kind of puzzle and everything I've done in order to craft a story that gives me a direction to head in. I think that should ring true for everyone whether you're a student or you're a CEO or anyone. You have to piece all this together because then it's easy for you to communicate what you do, where you're going. You can answer all these questions so much easier and whether an interview or whether you're trying to land a new client, it's already there for you.

Corcoran: It's so true. It really starts with the goal, what's the end destination in mind because if you don't know where that is, then you're going to be lost along the way and you're not going to be able to piece it together. 

Dan Schawbel: Right. When I get a lot of personal branding consultants ? what I did was I'd always ask where are you going? That's always the first question. Where's this all going to go because if I don't know what the long-term objective is, I can't really help you position yourself to be able to reach that goal. 

Corcoran: Right, right. I do want ask you, you mentioned about creating the content because you've written a couple of books. You generate a ton of content in articles for Forbes and all that. I do want to ask you about that, but before we get there, I wanted to ask about your second point, which was identifying opportunities in the workplace where you can demonstrate your subject matter expertise, whatever that is. Tell us about that. How can people, who are in the workplace, particularly Generation Y, look for opportunities where they can help in their particular area of subject matter expertise?

Dan Schawbel: Yes, first you notice something that's not going well, a process that's ineffective where you yourself is getting frustrated. Then you say, okay, how can we make this better? You do research. You basically create a whole presentation saying this is how it's done now. I know this because I did Six Sigma, a green belt I haven't done in years and years. I did it when I was at EMC. We analyzed the ? how can we make this better, how can we lean this out so it's more effective. You do that and then you can create this presentation that shows that this is the before, this is how you're doing it now; this is how it's affecting the productivity and net revenue or how it's affecting the cost structure of the company. Then you say this is my suggestion, or here are a few suggestions and here's the impact that they would make. Then you get your manager on board and if they like it, they get their manager on board and it starts to build.

You build a team of people who respect what you've done and who want to maybe implement those changes. The other thing is you start to notice what your company isn't taking advantage of. For someone who's young, it typically technology. Maybe Instagram or Pinterest or something, and if you're company's not doing it ? let's say it's a retail chain, then they're missing out. That's a great opportunity if you want to stand out at work because if they're not doing it and they should be doing it ? there's evidence online where you can ? there's enough research to prove that it's effective for retail stores, Pinterest for instance. Then you create a presentation. You're saying this is what we do now. If you use Pinterest, here's how we would use it and here's some examples of how I would use it. 

Then again, you get your manager on board and then you start building it with people who believe in what you're trying to do. Then if it works, you look like the hero. You get promoted and great things happen. 

Corcoran: That's a great practical tip for someone that they can look for those sorts of opportunities where your company is not taking advantage of some kind of technology. Maybe where you already have an interest, maybe you can merge your personal interests in some kind of social media platform with helping out the company and get paid to do it at the same time. Let's talk about this third step, which was promoting yourself when these opportunities come along and promoting it to the ? to your higher ups, to your manager or whatever. You know a lot of people, I think, when it comes to promoting themselves, they're reluctant, they're worried they'll be seen as a scheming or too self-promotional, gets into inner psychology of how people view themselves. What advice do you have for people who have that hesitation?

Dan Schawbel: Yeah, I think a big theme in this book is if you don't invest in yourself, no one's going to invest in you. That's kind of the slogan and the other thing is ? the motto is don't leave your career to chance, promote yourself because my whole idea is don't just wait for things to magically happen. Don't think that people are going to talk positively about you. You have to start creating these conversations. You have to show people what you can do. If you don't do it, you're going to get passed over. It's the cost of actually not doing it. That's really painful for people. In a work environment, that's increasingly hostile, increasingly competitive, more of these jobs are ? people are being replaced, out-sourced. More jobs are being automated than ever before. 

The economy is really not coming back. Forty percent of millennials are unemployed. People are ? another 40-something percent of people in America have given up completely on job searching. In this type of environment, if you're not aggressive, people can just replace you. In order to become someone that is not replaced, which is pretty important, you have to ? it's hard to say be indispensable. I think it's more about if you have the right relationships intact, everything is about favoritism in the workplace, so the soft skills is 40 pages in this book about developing soft skills. If you have those relationships and then if what you do is really important to the company, it's very hard for them to replace you. It's much easier for them to promote you.

Corcoran: Let's talk about those soft skills a little bit. What sorts of things can people be doing to be developing relationships internally within their company?

Dan Schawbel: The top three soft skills that we found that managers are looking for when promoting are having a positive attitude, teamwork skills, and the ability to prioritize work. What's really interesting is I do a ton of studies on this so by the end of this year, there will be 19 primary research studies. Attitude is the running theme in everything. That is the theme that cuts across everything. So we found that managers want ? the number two thing that managers are looking for is having positive attitude when promoting and then when hiring students or recent graduates, number one is having a positive attitude. What does that mean? That means well, you've got to choose the right company to work for. 

You've got to select for a corporate culture and that's how companies are recruiting now over everything else. You getting along with people and working on the right projects ? in this study what we found is that young people want to work ? in order for them to work most effectively and give back to the company and give all that value, they need to work on the right projects and work with the right people. Especially people who have a high degree of work ethic. If you have all that aligned, you're creating that type of corporate culture, you need to get the right people to stay, and they'll be more effective to the individual. You need to do your homework because if you get in the wrong situation, it could be toxic to your career.

Corcoran: How can someone handle the situation if they're working within the company and they find that they're not happy because of the project they're working on? Or the team that they're working with?

Dan Schawbel: Yeah, you know, I mean the thing is if you start a job, you probably shouldn't quit in six months. It's more about a little bit more patience, maybe it gets better, and maybe it doesn't. You assess it after at least a year. Maybe there's another job within the company that you might want to move to. I think the most important thing that company should start doing is let's really start matching people up. If it's not working here, maybe this employee would work better in another group. So more proactive companies ? but I think you can't wait for that to happen. As an individual, you have to really start to be an opportunity seeker. In fact, 60 percent of people who have a job right now are already looking for a new job. The people who just got a job are looking for a new job.

So it's kind of a world where there's a continuous job search, no one's ever happy. Everyone's always looking for the best deal. Part of the reason for that is because of LinkedIn and technology where all these recruiters have access to so many people, they're always getting new job offers. So it's very enticing to people. I think what I say in the book, which I think this is going to be really interesting is that the people who actually look to grow within a company and again, not all companies are set up this way sadly, but the companies that really focus on internal hiring and supporting a strong culture and helping people succeed, getting into those companies and not just leaving after two years, but staying at those companies and building within those companies, leveraging those resources and relationships. Because after the past three years, it shows that all these Millennials are jumping every two years to their next job so if everyone's moving around, if you stay put, you can move up much quicker. People don't realize that. 

That's partly why I wrote the book is that I saw that trend. Everyone's job-hopping so the obvious strategy is to actually be loyal, be the opposite of what all these people are doing. Four research studies show the Millennials leave a company after two years. It just shows that ? I mean people have so many jobs in their lifetime now, but if you are actually loyal, it means that much more because people don't expect it.

Corcoran: Yeah, that does kind of go against the common perceived wisdom these days with people jumping around as much. Do you recommend if someone finds themselves in a situation where maybe they feel like my skill set is not ideal for the job I'm working on right now, but it's a larger company and there are other opportunities. Maybe I don't like the team I'm working with but I'm a good worker. Should they approach their manager and say I'd like to be switched to another position. I think I would be more useful to you somewhere else. 

Dan Schawbel: Especially in big companies, you have to work in that position for probably near two years. Then you can do it, but if you leave too early, it looks really bad on your resume too. Because you're seen as not loyal. That's why it's really difficult. That's why when a lot of Millennials come to me; they're like oh we've only been here for four months. Do we want to go to our next job? I'm like you're crazy. Eventually this is going to come back and haunt you, you'll never get a job. It's too risky to do that. Make the best of the situation. 

Maybe while you're in that position, look and try and expand your role somehow by taking on projects that are not in your job description, maybe cross-functionally because then you can develop relationships in other groups that you can network into eventually when you make the switch. Basically, your role is, especially if you want to grow in that company, asking yourself how can I meet other people and do other projects in other groups that I'm interested in. It's almost like getting informational interviews across the company or just starting to collaborate and work somehow with these other people in other departments so that you get a feeling of what it's like to work there before you make the jump. 

You have the relationship so when you want to make the jump, if there's an opening you have a better chance. It just sets you up for success. I definitely don't think you should leave in six months. It's just going to eventually really hurt you.

Corcoran: Let's talk a little bit more about this study that you did that was called the Gen-Y Workplace Expectations Study and you worked with American Express in doing this study. One of the major findings was that the managers of Generation-Y workers had an overall negative view of those workers. Why do you think that was?

Dan Schawbel: So here's what's really interesting. The study I just released is kind of an add-on to this. We asked the same questions for Gen-Y and Gen-Z. It turns out every generation has a negative or negatively stereotype to the upcoming generation. So Gen-Y's think that Gen-Z's are lazy. I think there's fear, this part of it, these people ? anyone who's born now will have access to more information, resources, and people than we ever did at that age. That'll always happen for everyone who's born. The people have a better chance to become entrepreneurs ? it's going to create this whole new culture potentially. So I think this fear that their jobs are going to be replaced by people who can do it faster and cheaper, right. I think that people read the news too much. In the news, you always see the articles and all the articles are written by people who are older against Millennials. Eventually when Millennials are journalists and they're thriving somehow at these companies, they'll probably write negative articles about Gen-Z. 

You'll just keep seeing that happen. Actually, if you look the Atlantic has a whole bit on this on how every generation has done this, every single cycle. Time Magazine ? they said that the generation as boomers ? it's just continuous which is pretty interesting.

Corcoran: Yeah, it's interesting. Let's talk a little bit about Generation-Y and entrepreneurship. I think I'm probably a little bit in a bubble here. You recently moved from Boston to New York, but I live in the San Francisco Bay area where everyone's got to start-up it seems like. There's a lot of entrepreneurial types. There's a lot of self-employed people. Is that a trend that you're seeing across the generation or is it more of a bubble in certain urban areas like San Francisco or other big cities?

Dan Schawbel: I mean it's overhyped. It's really, really over-hyped. I mean by far, what people are looking for on a global scale from Gen-Y and Gen-Z is working at large companies, by far. Entrepreneurship is less than 20 percent for both generations. Their interest is just not ? it's over-hyped and I also did a study with Monster and we found that boomers are the most entrepreneurial. It's very hard to prove that Gen-Y's are the most entrepreneurial. I mean in our study, Gen-Z's were slightly more entrepreneurial at 17 percent, six percent more than Gen-Y's. Very small. You're going to see more people ? their companies are going to fold and they're going to end up working for other people.

Again, everything is over-hyped. The Social Network movie, David Carp selling his company, Instagram sold for millions, WhatsApp ? all these things are sold for billions of dollars. People think they can do it, maybe they ? in New York I see this all the time. The parents are like oh, you don't want to get a real job. I'll give you a few million dollars, have fun. That happens a lot. I just think we're going to head into this place where a lot of these companies have failed because they're more hobby type companies and it's so competitive right now that if you're not putting the effort in, if things are not working out, it's pretty much over. So a lot of them are going to fold right back into big companies.

Then that's going to be interesting because a lot of big companies don't want to recruit entrepreneurs. Maybe, maybe, just being an entrepreneur to be an entrepreneur is actually really risky now, especially if you haven't had a normal job when you graduated college. It could be a huge risk.

Corcoran: That's interesting because I imagine a lot of people who are driven to try something entrepreneurial think that it's going to be an asset even if it doesn't work out. 

Dan Schawbel: Because companies sadly, not only think that that entrepreneurial hire would leave very quickly at the first chance which costs them money, it costs them at least $20,000 per employee, but they want people to conform. They don't want people be unique and they're 25 years old and they're trying to change everything. They don't want that because it's a political structure in place where the executives call the shots, not these new employees who have great ideas.

Corcoran: Oh, they don't want the revolutionaries there.

Dan Schawbel: See this is interesting, right? I actually haven't really talked about this at all. It's like you have a lot of young people and just people in general that are starting businesses because of the hype and in a sense, they know that they'll probably go work for a company, but they're disqualified themselves. They've given them a disadvantage by starting a company for the wrong reasons. 

Corcoran: So to those young people listening to this who are thinking about starting a company, you say instead ?

Dan Schawbel: Yeah, it's much easier to go to work at a start-up after you've had your own start-up. So think about this, you're a start-up founder, it's much easier to hire other people who were in the start-up world rather than these huge companies that would rather see AOL, or MTV, or Oracle on a resume than some start-up company that they haven't heard of before. Companies want to breed other people. That's why ? an example is my school ? all the Big Four Accounting firms recruit from there. It's originally an accounting school and so a lot of people at those companies are from my school, the alumni just recruit each other. They don't want to recruit someone that's a random start-up. So that's going to be the big challenge for people in the coming years ? these companies are going to fold and then they're going to try and get a job at these bigger companies and that's going to be very challenging. 

I see the start-ups that are becoming successful just being composed of all young people potentially. I'm starting to see that too. I walk around New York and all these start-ups are all young people, people younger than me. 

Corcoran: Well yeah, once you reach my age, if you've got a family and a kid and stuff like that, you don't want to work until midnight. You see a lot of that. That's actually a good transition into what I wanted to ask about next which was you have a chapter in your book about Building Your Network. A lot of people are afraid of networking, in fact the word networking, I don't really use on my sight because it turns off so many people. They think of some slimy person at a networking event who's trying to push a business card into their hand. What advice do you have particularly for young people for Generation-Y? Why they should think about networking? Why it's an important thing to do?

Dan Schawbel: It's everything. I put networking before making money and networking is number one. That's it. That's everything. At the end of the day, if you get laid off and something happens, the only way you're going to be able to really recover from that in the best way possible to be connected to the right opportunity is by having that network already established. I always, always put it first. I never did in college and it was still hard to get a job when I graduated. Now I feel like ? not that you can become invincible by networking, but I think that's the best shield against getting laid off or being unsure of what to do. It's just so ? you have to do it. There's no way around it, I'm the introvert, and I've forced myself to do it. I've forced myself to go to all these meetings and everything because if I don't, it's going to hurt me long-term. It's not worth the risk.

Corcoran: In a sense, you actually moved to New York ? we were talking about this before, in part, in order to build your network more. You brought up a good point. A lot of people consider themselves introverted. I've heard statistics that something like over 90 percent of the population considers themselves a bit of an introvert. What's your advice? Is it sink or swim? Just throw yourself into the deep end?

Dan Schawbel: My strategy has always been the same. I'm not big at walking to a random place and going up to people and saying hi. I just ? that's just not part of who I am and my skillset. What I've done in order to pull this off is I find the right people on line, I network with them, and then I meet with them off line. When I do that, I end up meeting other people because they have networks and they may be more extroverted. That's been my strategy, to avoid the common issue that's kind of plagued me. 

Corcoran: Interesting. Okay that leads me into my final question that I ask everyone which is tell me about your relationships? The relationships that you have that have been instrumental to your success so far? The mentors, the colleagues, the business associates, friends, people who are dedicated to similar work that you're doing ? the impact that those relationships have had on your success so far. The things that you've done or maybe the organizations that you've joined or events that you go that have made a big impact on your career. I think people, a lot of time, struggle with what should I do? There's so many options, there's so many organizations? Which organization should I join? What's been your experiences?

Dan Schawbel: For me, it hasn't been about any of that. I follow a different category. TV and speaking and books ? I know what I want to accomplish in my life and then I really try and learn as much as possible about that industry. I would say for a business about publishing ? I know a lot. I mean everyone asks me for how do I turn a book from zero to best-seller and all of that the right way. Because I've invested so much time on meeting the right people, finding out what they've done, what they haven't done, what works, what doesn't work. Speaking, it's the same thing. It's multiple agents. Just kind of learning how that world works.

A lot of them are very similar actually. Blogging, it's the same thing. Everything I do, it's like who's doing it the best. Let me network with them and figure out how they do it. Let me learn as much as possible and then spread that. I mentor five people right now and so I teach them certain things that I know would make a huge difference in their life. It's kind of this whole cycle, but I look up to ? there's four people that to me are the best. Marcus Buckingham, Tom Peters, Dan Pink and Tom Rath ? to me they're the best in the business book/speaking/whatever world, consulting, research world. So I want to model them in some capacity, I've got to meet them. 

I'm trying to meet them in person, I do favors for my ? I do all this stuff because to me, there're the best in class out of everyone. But I mean, Malcolm Gladwell is great. There's a lot of people who are great, but you only have so much time. Who are you going to focus on? Me, I just try and figure out what they need, what would interest them and provide it as much as possible. I'm constantly networking so I'm always let me network with the CEO's, let me network with the HR people and some of these people might never be able to help me or anything. I don't even care. It doesn't matter to me because I've always thought about it as an association, like brand association by aligning myself with them, but also because you never know when they might bring me up. There's all these situations that could happen. I don't know if they're going to happen, but it's much more fun if I walk in. 

I went to a party two nights ago. I saw Simon Sinek. I don't know, you're probably heard of him. He's very big in the speaking work, conferences, etc. If I didn't connect with him over the past four years, I probably just wouldn't go up to him and just say hi. He already knew who I was. I think that's the key. 

Corcoran: You'd connected with him before?

Dan Schawbel: Yeah, I wanted to be so connected in the world's that I want to be established in that I will literally spend years trying to connect with people in order to make that happen, years. I mean that's just what I'm willing to do because again, this is what I'm going to be doing for life. Why wouldn't I want to spend every day trying to build the relationships and the credibility in the worlds where I want to become part of?

Corcoran: I love this idea of picking four people who you want to be just like, looking at their career, connecting with them, and then building a relationship with them. Building and modeling your career after them. I've actually got a funny story about connecting with Dan Pink, but I want to hear, out of those four, I know Marcus Buckingham has ? he wrote your Foreword on your book. So tell me, out of those four tell, me a story about how you connected with one of those four.

Dan Schawbel: My favorite ? Tom Peters is -- I mean I've never met him. I've interviewed him actually -- and he doesn't really do interviews anymore ? in 2008. He's the reason why I'm doing everything I'm doing today. He's pretty influential. Even though I was already doing a lot of it, I read his article The Brand Called You in Fast Company Magazine which is the reason why Fast Company Magazine is where it is today because of that cover story. It inspired everything for the most part, or it just clicked for me. I realized what was possible. Then that's when I pursued all of this. 

Corcoran: So what did you do? You read the book ? you read the article? You liked the article? Did you email him?

Dan Schawbel: Yeah, it took me, I think it was 2009 I interviewed him, I don't even remember, but it took me at least a year to get him on the phone. It was very tough. He's very out-of-range at this point and even more so now. I mean the guy's getting on ? he getting close to 70, maybe he's at 70. For me, I was talking ? talking with him on the phone was remarkable. I mean he's just so good at connecting with anyone. You could be six years old and he'd connect with you. It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It's almost like when you talk to him on the phone, you feel like he's your best friend. 

Corcoran: Wow, that's how good he is. How did you follow-up with him after you interviewed him? 

Dan Schawbel: We started following each other on Twitter, right when he joined, we connected. It's hard to get in touch him. He's so big-time. He created the whole business book industry. He's somebody who Buckingham, Pink, and Tom Ralf probably look up to. He's like the Godfather and they're probably on the next tier, but yeah, it's interesting. But again, his world when he was competing in his world, it's much different now. He was competing in a world where if you're really good, it's just easier to get found. I mean even when I was promoting and doing PR and all this stuff back in 2007, 2008, and 2009 ? it was so much easier. Now, I mean I had so much firepower going into everything and still I don't even know if it's making an impact. It's so hard now.

Anyone who even wants to write a book and then promote it, I mean it's hard to be like to get pumped ? it's so hard that I had a 35 page-marketing plan. The book's successful and everything, but still ? to even say do this and you'll sell books, I can't even say it. I just say do everything and hope for the best because it's that hard. It's very hard. Last year, look at Dan Pink, it's easier, but I would say for someone who's his first book, who's not famous, very, very tough, and very tough. It's not a pretty situation. 

Corcoran: It's interesting that the tool that you use to connect with Tom Peters is interviewing him. I imagine that probably was a tool you used with the others as well. Very briefly, that's how I connected with Dan Pink, the same thing. Although he and I actually both worked in the Clinton White House around the same time, but I don't recall if we met each other so we had that in common. I ended up asking him to be interviewed on my podcast and made a connection through that. The funny story is that I did it via video Skype, which is what we're using right now. I did that intentionally. I've done a lot of my interviews that way intentionally even though I only use the audio, because I want people to recognize me and see my face. 

Dan Schawbel: That's smart.

Corcoran: Yeah. After the fact, a couple months later, it turns out that he was coming through San Francisco for his book tour and I go down to the event and there's hundreds of people there. I was oh great; I'm not going to have a chance. I go down, I wait in line. There's this long line and I get up to the front of the line and then this big person in front of me, stands aside. I go to stick my hand out and introduce myself and Dan says, oh hi John. The amazing thing is ?

Dan Schawbel: He's a genius.

Corcoran: Yeah, the amazing thing about that is that it was setting your mind on it, setting your sights on it. I want to meet him, I want to get to know him, and we have these tools of interviews and Skypes and podcasts. So those are amazing tools. Answer me this though, what sorts of tools ? I mean now you write for Forbes. You've written for Time. You've written for all these big places, but for someone who is listening to this, who doesn't have a podcast, doesn't write for Forbes, what should they do?

Dan Schawbel: I mean I started all this with zero subscribers on my blog, nothing. I did 10 to 12 articles a week. I interviewed people you've never heard of before. I built and built and built and built and built ? that's it. Now everything's a win, I promote everything, keep building and building and building. You start with nothing and you slowly just keep growing. It's like anything else. Growing your career in a company ? you just have to be patient and you have to be in it for the long haul. Eventually it'll happen. It took me nine months to get Chelsea Handler. 

I have all these stories about the three and a half years to get Trump, three and a half years to get on the Today Show. I still get rejected like crazy to get the study I just launched funded, 149 rejections out of 150. Three and a half years to get the second book deal out after a successful book. I've been through the ringer. I understand how challenging things are. Because I'm, I wouldn't say immune to risks or failures, but I'm so part of my platform and everything I've experienced that if anything just works immediately, I always question it. 

Corcoran: Wow, thank you so much for sharing that. I feel bad. It took me 12 months to get Adam Grant and now it feels like it was easy. It was such great anecdotes, thank you so much for sharing this. Tell us, where can people check you out?

Dan Schawbel: At DanSchawbel.com, Promote Yourself is in bookstores. You can get it at Amazon, Barnes and Nobles.

Corcoran: Great, excellent. Thank you so much Dan.

Dan Schawbel: Thank you.