How You Respond MATTERS!!!

How You Respond MATTERS!!! I am a sucker for Tim Ferrisss Muse writeups.  Ill share more of them when I get a chance, but today I wanted to take one sentence from an interview from someone who is following his system to create his own business, and income. Christopher Odell started his muse, which is a low-maintenance business that generates significant income, based on two of his passions.  He needed to find a company to manufacture the product, and he went to a site called Alibaba to look for manufacturers.  In describing that processes he says: We reached out to several companies, judged them by how good their responses were, then chose a few to make our first prototype. Ive done something similar, using a site called elance, to find service providers.  Like Christopher, I sent out my specs and waited to see how good their responses were.  Those with canned, impersonal responses were scratched off the list.  Those who had good/awesome responses made it to my short list, and then other judging criteria entered. I thought I was somewhat petty, putting so much value in their initial responses, but Im human.  And that first impression carried a lot of weight in my decision-making process. Did I miss out on amazing people?  Im sure I did. But that was one of my limitations. How good are your responses? Even though you are the most amazing person in the room, or have the most amazing resume people will ever see, are your responses keeping you out of that next round? Work on your responses.  Whether they are email responses, networking 30 second statements, interview responses, whatever it is, be more conscience of how you communicate, and what your first impression is. Why? Because you are always being judged always. So make a great first (and second, third, etc.) impression, and stop keeping yourself off the short list! How You Respond MATTERS!!! I am a sucker for Tim Ferrisss Muse writeups.  Ill share more of them when I get a chance, but today I wanted to take one sentence from an interview from someone who is following his system to create his own business, and income. Christopher Odell started his muse, which is a low-maintenance business that generates significant income, based on two of his passions.  He needed to find a company to manufacture the product, and he went to a site called Alibaba to look for manufacturers.  In describing that processes he says: We reached out to several companies, judged them by how good their responses were, then chose a few to make our first prototype. Ive done something similar, using a site called elance, to find service providers.  Like Christopher, I sent out my specs and waited to see how good their responses were.  Those with canned, impersonal responses were scratched off the list.  Those who had good/awesome responses made it to my short list, and then other judging criteria entered. I thought I was somewhat petty, putting so much value in their initial responses, but Im human.  And that first impression carried a lot of weight in my decision-making process. Did I miss out on amazing people?  Im sure I did. But that was one of my limitations. How good are your responses? Even though you are the most amazing person in the room, or have the most amazing resume people will ever see, are your responses keeping you out of that next round? Work on your responses.  Whether they are email responses, networking 30 second statements, interview responses, whatever it is, be more conscience of how you communicate, and what your first impression is. Why? Because you are always being judged always. So make a great first (and second, third, etc.) impression, and stop keeping yourself off the short list!