The Career Clinic Blog

The author of Little Princes: One Man’s Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal didn’t set out to change the world. Conor Grennan, who’s also the founder of Next Generation Nepal, was just trying to get a date.

It would’ve worked on me!

“I moved to Prague after graduating from college,” Conor says, “not because I was adventurous or super cool, but because I wanted to appear adventurous and super cool. I wanted to distract attention from the fact that I couldn’t get a job.” What about his work in an orphanage in Nepal? “It helped me justify a trip around the world,” he says.

What can you do when confronted by such honesty besides dabble in that yourself? So while were still on the air I told Conor and Darrell the real reason I majored in engineering.

I’ll tell you tomorrow.

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“Is there something wrong with it?” the woman processing our department store return wanted to know.

“Well,” I said, “when I showed it to my husband he said it was the ugliest thing he’d ever seen in his life.”

Before Darrell swept in with a reference to how it doesn’t really fit, before she wrote “changed mind” next to “reason” on the form, she looked at me.

And I wanted to say, “You asked!”

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An Oklahoma woman who won awards for her work in television news makes better lemonade than anyone I don’t know very well. Cindy Morrison weathered a layoff, the discovery of a grapefruit-sized tumor, and a lightning strike to her house…in five weeks! She recovered so well and--and so successfully--she’s been invited to join this year’s Spark & Hustle national tour.

This is no ordinary conference. When you’re on the roster with people like Gary Vaynerchuk, whose passion for wine is exceeded only by his popularity, you know you’re in good company.

What strikes me about Cindy is her honesty.

“I didn’t make my family a priority until I got out of television news,” Cindy admitted. “Now I do.”

No wonder she joins the ranks of people who can report, eventually, that losing a job was the best thing that ever happened to them.

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Your prospective client asks you a question. Telling her the truth means sending her to the competition. So naturally you do that, right?

Sure, it’ll probably cost you this sale. But Richard Gallagher, an expert on the art of communication, wants you to look forward to the next sale--and the sale after that. Honesty really is the best policy, he says: “People want to do business with people who tell them the truth.”

Richard’s known for teaching people how to handle difficult interpersonal situations--like closing a sale. “I don’t close,” he says. “I don’t create a false sense of urgency, and I never do a hard sell or any of those other things they tell you to do.”

Here’s how Richard sums up his sales advice: “Get really good at something and tell people you’re available if they need help with that. Become known as a reliable source of information, and you'll have as much business as you can handle...eventually."

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Do you remember your first job? I do. I lied to get it.

I wanted to work as a beverage girl at a buffet restaurant, but I was only fifteen. The law required you to be sixteen. So I lied. So, apparently, had several other teenagers. One night the dessert girl got an attack of honesty and confessed to the floor manager--during a huddle in the walk-in freezer where they kept tubs of cherry filling and whipped cream and chocolate shavings--that she was underage. She got fired instantly, and the manager said, "I know there are others." He started with the salad girl and worked his way back down the line toward the beverages--and me. One by one his employees fell like dominoes.

I was sick. I waited for the axe. Instead I got, "Please tell me you're not..." I'm not saying I worked any harder than the others, but the manager apparently thought so. I kept water glasses filled and coffee pots going and checkout girls backed up as if entire civilizations depended on it. I didn't know there was such a thing as a "nothing" job--turns out there isn't--and I gave this one everything I had. When I got a ten-cent raise--from a dollar sixty-five an hour!--well, I still get a little puffy thinking about it.

"How long before you're sixteen?" the manager asked. A couple of months. He patted me on the back. "Let's just see how it goes..."

Oh!

At the ripe old age of fifteen years and ten months I was already a big fan of working hard. But to have that hard work rewarded in such a unique way, I was hooked. I marched on for the next fifteen years or so with the belief that hard work defines you--and is the only excuse you have for being on the planet, really. To contribute, to save money, and to be a good kid--which I have since amended to include...not lying.

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