How to Capture People’s Attention from the Moment You Introduce Yourself?

[This is from Neil Strauss’s “The Life Mastery Program”- Module 1.4- INTRO & GROUNDING STORY]

Why is an Interesting Introduction Important?

You introduce yourself nearly 1000 times per year, no matter your bio, speaking at events or at a party. So you want to introduce yourself in an interesting, concise, genuine and relatable way that is memorable.

Principles for Constructing an Interesting Introduction

1. Boil down to the most interesting thing that you do
2. Be concise. Just limit down to the one thing that makes you interesting, even though you may have a lot of projects. Otherwise, it would sound confusing to the audience.
3. “Stop trying to be understood, focus on being remembered.” You don’t need the technical details for people to fully understand what you do, your goal is to hook them, and being honest and truthful at the same time.
4. The goal is to sound interesting, not high social proof. For example, sea captain, worm farmer, and superfood hunter sounds more interesting than a hedge fund manager
5. Use “the” instead of “a”. “I created the mobile garden”, sounds better than “I created a mobile garden”.
6. If you are super successful, you want to be humble, and let others do the talking for you. For example, if you have won 12 times academy award, you can just say “I’m an actor.” If you say it by yourself, it sounds bragging.
7. You have to see yourself as interesting, give yourself credit for the stuff that you do
8. Avoid jargon- cryptocurrency, database, portfolio… they just don’t sound interesting
9. Avoid negativity in your story. People read things in terms of status, so don’t include anything that can be interpreted as negative. For example, “ I got injured from playing basketball and dropped out of college. And now I’m a serial entrepreneur.” The injury and dropped out part can be removed.

Examples

1. “ I protect the security of thousands of families around the world.”, instead of “I build the database for an insurance company in Sweden.” A follow-up to the intro can be, “A lot is super technical, but I work with tons of life insurance companies in Sweden, so people can get the maximum benefit from them.”

EXERCISE

There are 3 parts to an amazing introduction- “Your Introduction”, “Invisible Thread”, and “Your Grounding Story”.

Part 1: Your Introduction

Keep this compelling, honest and short (no more than one sentence). Let people make follow-up questions because they are trying to create rapport with you.

Guiding questions

1. What do you really help people do?
2. What benefits do people get from your service?
3. What problems do you solve?
4. What are your accomplishments?
5. What are your job title and job description?
6. How can you make the statement specific and interesting? (e.g. “I’m a film composer, who had worked on The Avengers”, instead of “ I’m a composer, and I also invest in real estates and cryptocurrency.”)
7. How can you make the statement general and interesting? (e.g. “ I meet with governments around the world and analyze their energy needs, I bring money to their country to develop it.”)

Examples

1. I help people xxx
2. I help Fortune 500 companies xxx
3. Through my work, xxx number of people achieved xxx

Part 2: Invisible Threads

What is a follow-up question that someone will probably ask after hearing your intro? Prepare your response.

Question: ______________________________________________

Answer: ________________________________________________

Part 3: Grounding Story

Pull from your personal experiences to find a story that explains why you became who you are. Who or what got you interested in doing what you do today? Be experiential, not technical. We want the story out of you, not technical details.

Guiding questions

1. What is your relationship to it?
2. What do you enjoy about it?
3. What’s the story behind how you get into it?
4. What are the lessons that you learned from it?
5. Are there stories about how you do it?

Last Words

Write your killer introduction in the comment section below. I’ll give comments to you all on how to make it more intriguing. I’m sure you will leave a phenomenal first impression, starting now.