Category: Communication Skills

“How many pisco sours have you had?!?!?!” The words galloped out of my mouth when my best friend, M, asked me—the girl who spells god with a lowercase g and who has openly questioned the institution of marriage—to officiate her wedding. The first image that came to mind was me standing on an altar wearing a maroon-colored robe, flicking water onto their foreheads and cueing Whoopi Goldberg in Sister Act. The fact that my fingers wanted to type “alter” instead

Are these people on crack? It was the first thought that came to mind as I read this Inc. article that advises you to take your glass of warm Yellowtail, roll up to a stranger at a networking event and all but murmur in their ear: How can I help you? The theory is that you’ll get a better response by trying to be helpful than trying to be salesy—but in execution, this thinly veiled, “I’m here to help!” Pee-wee

There’s this collective group groan that happens when the words, “elevator pitch” are spoken. (For the record, it sounds like: gggggeeerrrrrrrrrrrrrduuuurrrrrruhhhhhhSPLAT.) In my experience, this is usually for one of three reasons: Someone once insisted that if you’re ever riding in an elevator, you MUST! BE! ABLE! TO! SELL! YOURSELF! BEFORE! THE! NEXT! STOP! (So now you have PTSD every time someone asks you if you’re—ding, ding ding—going up.) You couldn’t explain what you do in thirty minutes, let alone

Well isn’t this the motherloving question of the year. It gets asked a lot sometime between the stages of that time you started your business and worked for peanuts because you were feeling wildly insecure about your worth and holy bananas I’ve been doing this for years and I’m still barely making rent even though I work around the clock, my armpits stink, and I haven’t seen the outside in days. You’ve come to the sobering reality that your rates

Boundaries in business are important. I’m obsessed with them. I talk about boundaries a lot. Probably because when I was young, I was very, very horrible at setting them. Girlfriends would nag me into doing whatever dumb thing they wanted me to do that weekend, like crochet. Or sneak out bedroom windows at 1 o’clock in the morning to go meet cute boys next door who wanted us to take off our shirts. I actually have a diary entry where