Being on-message, good & bad

I've been spending a lot of time, recently, with new clients, helping them design their Facebook fan and business pages. (Someone reading this, just snorted and thought, "Thank god, you're not wasting your Wellesley education, right? Get a real job, hippie!") And yet, it is a real job: it's called, 'branding,' boys and girls. We all do it, some more successfully than others. Why, for example, do I retain any info about Kim Kardashian's "wedding" in the nooks and crannies of my brain? Especially, why do I retain said information, when all of civil procedure, which I swear to god I studied, is gone?
So here's my point: if and when you grow up, leave the drum circle and decide that yes, a Facebook page, and all the inherent free marketing and advertising (ka-ching!), could be very extremely essential to you and your business: remember what Facebook is there to do. Namely: give people a place to goof-off and waste time; allow people to stay in touch with friends, kinda-friends, girls who married boys so fine it drives me insane, freneies, ex-mens and rivals; receive and post ginormous amounts of cat pictures; dog diaries (don't ask); let people occasionally learn something; post even more kitten pictures.
Therefore, unless your page is promoting a baby orange kitten or some porn star, there is such a thing as being too on-message. Your friends and family, and various strangers, I'm sure, are going to support your cigar business, or real estate business or winery, but 10 postings a day about cigars is seriously TMI. (And not, TMI, in the good way, like when I bitch about being hung to the over.) On the other hand, 3 interesting, informative, even witty postings about cigars, mixed in with links to funny articles, interesting news, relevant products, music and video clips...okay, I'm down. Since now you're keeping your brand in my head...but not shoving it down my throat.
Which is, of course, why this info does not apply to any Facebook page about 1) kittens, 2) baby orange kittens, 3) tiny tabbies, or 4) women with large breasts who have sex in public.

This blog is supposed to be professional, yes? It's supposed to be a way for potential clients to get a taste of my personality, my joie de vivre, and then actually wish to hire me, not back away slowly. But, as one of my fave playwrights, Joe Orton, famously said: "I'm an acquired taste." Oh well...
Anyway, in view of trying to be (somewhat) professional, I'm not going into delve into the grisly details of last night's networking event at Hudson Terrace...I mean, the event itself was fun and great and it always makes me happy to spend time with Wellesley women since they're smart, articulate and determined to take over the world. I have a special place in my heart for Wellesley, and probably all women's colleges, since how many places can you say are focused with helping women succeed? Exactly.
No, when I say "grisly details," I mean the part of the night where I sort of wandered away from the Wellesley section of the crowd--lured by the siren call of free Bombay Sapphire mojitos (so good! Damn them, damn them to hell for being so good!) and kinda fell in with some people from a very prestigious firm that I shan't name here since I don't wish to be sued (...sued for The Kitten I guess, since the rest is law school debt) and had more drinks, while enjoying a conversation about my cleavage and crowd-surfing and raising the roof...which all seemed hilarious at the time, but maybe that's because those mojitos were da bomb, as the kids say.
I also don't think I need to expound upon the other nice young men I met from Staten Island (oy!) who looked like they had just come from an open call casting session for "Jersey Shore," and whom, when asked what they did, said they worked in "cement." That really made me giggle.
No, the only thing I thought was important last night--okay, okay, besides the networking--was, while on my way home, seeing the father carrying his two- or three-year-old Chinese-American daughter, in his arms, like she was a rare, exotic creature. (Which of course she is.) And it was lovely to see this mom and dad, walking along with their little girl, who was sleepy and secure in her dad's embrace, to see this family and be reminded of what's really important in life.  
(That put me in such a good mood, that when, later that night, I was walking through Times Square and the German tourists asked me, "Please...where to Times Square?," I was able to politely respond that lucky them, they were in Times Square, instead of openly snorting with glee.)

Hopefully, by now, my inappropriate, snarky, sarcastic sense of humor has become all-too-obvious to whoever (somebody, anybody) is reading this blog. My feeling about people without an excellent sense of humor is similar to my feeling about people who live without cats or dogs…bewilderment. I’m amazed by how clean their apartments are, that there’s not 4000 damn pieces of toys to trip over, and look: no pet hair on the sofa! No vomit stains on the rug.  Oooh, ahh. But then it strikes me as lonely. It would be weird to open one of my kitchen cabinets, looking for a tea cup and not find a cranky cat giving me the stink eye since I intruded upon their personal time…lonely. (The men come and go, but the cats remain…probably because the door is locked, but anyway.)

Anyway, I’m referencing my sense of humor because as I get deeper in creativity coaching, I am forced to rely upon it ever more. Not just because some, okay many, people, as soon as you tell them you’re a coach give you The Look, and you can tell they’re thinking something like, “Right. And did you ever have any clients who won?” Also, let’s be frank: how many “coaches” have you met who just don’t get it?  And by “it,” I mean the concept of a successful, intellectual, passionate life in general. (These are the coaches who ask me where I got my coaching certificate from. Yeah. Here’s the thing: I have an undergraduate degree from Wellesley, and a law degree from Indiana University so…I’m set. Ima be fine. If a client truly believes that I cannot help him or her figure their ish out because I don’t have a degree (cough cough) from the University (cough cough) of Phoenix…well, go with God, we probably wouldn’t have clicked anyway.)

Just this morning, I got an email from an executive coaching group, expressing their interest in perhaps recruiting me to their team. I was not interested but I checked out their blog anyway…and once I saw all the misspellings, the overall ineptitude, the deadly seriousness…that’s all she wrote. People are going to mock me anyway, I don’t need to go looking for it.

But at least I adore what I do. I’m being forced to chant that to myself like a mantra, since just this morning, I read an article in Bloomberg Business Week about the explosive industry of fake tanning. Explosive as in people paying up to $300 to get spray-tanned in the privacy of their own homes, by people with titles like, “master airbrush tanning guru.” People who charge extra for artistry. Yes. Take a moment to consider that. Me? I’ll wait, right over here, among the ruins of our society, don’t mind me, la la la. Did I mention the woman who holds spray-tan training seminars, costing $2000? Seminars, held virtually ever weekend in cities like Dallas, L.A., Miami and New York? Seminars… that are packed?  

Listen, you can just go ahead and say: damn right I’m jealous. But, I’m not going to become a spray-tanning artist. I never was good at coloring within the lines. But I am obsessed with people using their potential, spray-tanned or not, and who’s to say who can and can’t be a guru? Not me. (And yes, still very jealous…)