INSPIRATION
Hey everybody,
I am writing this from Atlanta. This week I gave the keynote at Dreamin’ in Color, a Salesforce community conference, to a room full of people building careers in an ecosystem that did not always keep a seat open for them. The talk was called “Your Network Is Your Currency.”
Here is the part I want you to have.
I did not apply for that stage. There was no form. No submission portal, no committee I sent a proposal to, no application I refreshed my inbox waiting on. Somebody put my name forward when I was not there to put it forward myself, and a few weeks later I was standing at a podium in Atlanta.
And that somebody was not above me. Not a VP. Not an executive with a big title and a bigger org chart. It was somebody doing the same kind of work I do, at roughly the same altitude, who happened to be in a conversation where my name fit.
That is the part we get wrong.
We spend our whole careers trying to network up. Studying the people who already made it. Chasing fifteen minutes with somebody three levels above us. And we save our real support for our friends until after they blow up, once it is safe and obvious and everybody else is already clapping.
Meanwhile there is a whole row of people sitting right across from you. Same grind. Same hours. Nobody is clapping for them yet either. Those are the people who will be in the rooms you need three years from now. Some of them are in those rooms today and you never thought to ask.
I built the whole talk around one question: who are you when the room is watching? Because the second somebody refers you, the first thing they do is look you up on LinkedIn. Your work has to hold up when you are not there to explain it. So do good work. Drive real value. Be the person whose name is easy to say out loud. And build across, not just up, because the person who opens your next door is probably already in your phone contacts.
Look, y’all. You do not have to have it all figured out. I sure do not. Every box does not have to be checked before you are worth putting in a room. But you cannot do this by yourself. I have never once gotten anywhere by myself, and I am not about to start now.
COLLABORATION
Here is a nugget straight from the keynote.
Four words. That is the whole exercise. What four words do you want in somebody’s mouth every single time your name comes up?
Mine are HBCUs, career advice, technology, and higher education. That is it. Those four. Any time one of them comes up in a room, I want people to think of me. And everything I do reinforces them. What I post on LinkedIn. What I say on the podcast. What I write to you on Sunday mornings. It all points back at the same four words.
Here is why that matters for what I just told you. A sponsor cannot advocate for something they cannot describe. When somebody puts your name forward in a room you are not in, they get about one sentence to do it. If they do not know your four words, they will make something up, and whatever they make up is what that room hears about you.
So pick your four. Then be relentless about them.
▶ The TEF Show — If you missed it, this month’s episode with Shea is this whole idea in one conversation. He did senior-level work for eighteen months and the man signing his checks did not know. [Go here]
EXECUTION
Four words. Write them down before Wednesday.
Then go make one thing reinforce them. Rewrite your LinkedIn headline. Change how you introduce yourself in the next meeting. Post one thing that only makes sense if those four words are true about you. One place, this week.
Then hit reply and send me your four words. Just the four, nothing else. I read every single one, and I am curious how many of you have never actually said them out loud.
PASS IT ON
Forward this to the person sitting across from you in the grind. Not the one at the top. The one beside you.
THE EXTRA
In honor of our cookout earlier this week: this young buck plays no games. Check here:
— DéRecco
The Invisible Interview · The Invisible Score · The TEF Show
