Great Expectations
I’m a bad “meeter”. What I mean by that is that I don’t feel like I do meetings well. Which is weird because I have a lot of meetings and I’m always sitting down with people that I don’t know. But that doesn’t make me good at it. So, the other day I was thinking about the meetings that I have coming up and how I should prepare for them. I also started thinking about the expectation I have going into these meetings.
See, here’s the thing. I don’t really prepare for meetings probably the way I should and typically I only have one goal going into them. I want whoever I am meeting with to be either A.) Happy they are working with me, and thrilled about what’s to come, or B.) Encouraged by what took place in the meeting. I feel like going into meetings with that as the goal both puts me at ease with what I’m there to accomplish and also hopefully leave with the person I talked to feeling happy about our interaction.
Now, obviously, this doesn’t happen every time, but I think with this being the goal, it takes away the expectation of leaving having “sealed the deal” or anything like that. I think if I can go into a meeting looking to encourage or reenforce a positive feeling, then I’ve achieved what it is that I came there to do. And hopefully helped both that person and myself out in the process.
I know this is sort of a weird topic, but I have just been to too many meetings where if you don’t leave with a “sealed the deal” handshake, the other folks are dissatisfied and want to keep ‘selling’. And I get that to some degree. Why meet if you’re not going to accomplish anything? But here’s the thing. Just as it is with an online interaction I think it’s that way in real life too. If I’m bombarding you with ads and “buy this” text on my website, you’re not going to stick around long. Same with actual, sit down, get coffee meetings. No one wants to be blasted with sales pitch after sales pitch. They want coffee, genuine interaction, respect and (in my opinion) time to think on it.
This may not be the best approach to business meetings, but it makes me leave feeling a lot better.
Thoughts?
Seven Meetings In Three Days
So, I’m finishing out day two of my ‘seven meetings in three days’ stretch and I’m still alive. Can’t really think that well right now, so here’s a picture of some cats fighting with light sabers. Some pretty big SkörInc news coming up that I’m excited about, but you’ll have to wait.
Favorite Animal?
Ready? Go.
Trendy Coffee With Daniel
There’s only a couple places in Nashville that everyone goes to meet. Since Daniel was near downtown Nashville and needed to be at the airport, there was really only one place to go. The trendiest place in this fine city. Fido.
One cool thing about what we do for work is that we can do work with people that live across the country and never actually sit down with them to meet. It’s great to be able to communicate with someone online and on the phone, but there is something really cool about being able to sit down and have some trendy coffee with them. Yesterday was the first day that Daniel and I were actually able to meet in person and we had a great time. He’s a genuine guy and has a great record on top of it.
Now, if you still haven’t gotten Daniel’s record, what’s wrong with you? It’s time. Go to iTunes, spend six dollars, and get it. He’s gonna explode one of these days and then you can tell your friends at your trendy coffee shop meetings that you got his EP way back in the day and you already know four of his songs in guitar, and all that. See I’m looking out for you and helping you be cool. Now go.
In Nashville we have Fido, what’s your “trendy coffee place” called?
Meetings Today
I don’t have meetings often but it seems like when I have them, they all fall around the same time. I kind of like it that way. I like to be in that mindset. Today is one of those days. I have three meetings and I’m looking forward to each one.
The first is at ten o’clock with the folks over at INO Records. Since I work with a handful of their artists, it’s important that we hang out every once in a while. Plus it’s cool to hear what they are up to and I know they want to know what this blogging thing is up to.
After that I have a meeting at noon about the company. At this point it’s un-officially called “The Company”. It has a name, but we are still working on getting all the legal stuff in order, hence the meeting. We are getting close though. Once all these ducks are in a row, we can move forward a little better. A good meeting to have.
Then at two o’clock I am meeting with the blogfather himself. Randy and Spence are facilitating an event called LifeWork 2.0 and I am excited to hear what Randy has to say about all of that. Not to mention we haven’t ever really hung out so what do you do when you want to hang out with someone in this area and industry? You go to coffee.
So there’s my day in a nutshell. What’s your friday look like?
