The Most Interesting People Know This Self-Marketing Secret

John: All right. Welcome back for another episode of the Green Apple Slices. Thank you so much, Rachel, for joining me again this week.

Rachel: Hello, John, good to be back.

John: Yeah, absolutely! Raving reviews, people wanted more Rachel, more Rachel, and I think it meant less me, so it’s all you, take it from here.

Rachel: I’m sure that’s not true.

John: I saw an article on ink.com and the name of the article was “The Most Interesting People Know this Self-Marketing Secret” and I immediately thought “Well, Rachel must have written this article” but you didn’t.

Rachel: Because it’s got a really catchy title, yeah.

John: Exactly, random markets.

Rachel: Sometimes the best part about a blog is the title, I think.

John: Right, pretty much yes, absolutely. But Miranda Marcus wrote this article about just interesting people and I thought it was really on point with the Green Apple message, just basically that the most interesting people are people that don’t fit the stereotype of what you think they’re going to be or it’s a combination of two things that probably don’t go well together in your brain, and so that’s what makes them stand out.

Tyler: Right, yes, that seem opposite. So in your case you’re talking specifically about like accounting and professionals but what I liked about Miranda’s take on this was that it was opposites basically in every industry. So a fashion designer who loves Project Runway going to be your most interesting person or is it a fashion designer who also likes to skydive or something that seems completely opposite to what their profession is.

John: Right, absolutely. The scary thing is to most people, they don’t want to open up, they don’t want to share those things, but the thing is that the more extreme 180 it is from your job basically or from your stereotype, the more you’re going to stand out and be remembered in a good way. That’s the scary thing to people, I guess, is that they don’t want to open up, they don’t want to let that out or let people know that because then they think that it will make them appear like less of whatever their profession is.

Rachel: Right. But I think that also comes from the fact that what you do as a profession equals who you are as a human being. So when you’re meeting somebody and talking to somebody, a very common question is “So what do you do?” and that kind of starts to build how you’re defined. So instead of being defined by what you do every day from 9:00 to 5:00 you can become more interesting by talking about what you do from 5:00 to 9:00 or what you do outside of work is to kind of do that self-definition of it, which was interesting because I remember when we were talking about preparing for my podcast I’m like the least interesting person in the world because what I really find my passion in is supporting other bookkeeping and accounting professionals and connecting people through this Cloud accounting community and all of that stuff which is very integrated with what I actually do in my job, so I’m like the least interesting person ever according to this article.

John: But the thing is when we were talking during your episode though, it came out this whole singing passion that you have and church choirs and directing the choirs and things like that, that came out. And I think that the article also addressed is that when you’re in it you don’t think it’s that interesting because it’s what you do, but then once we started talking and that came out, I’m like “What do you mean you’re not interesting, are you joking me now?” Like get out of here.

Rachel: So with all the podcasts that you’ve done, what are some of the biggest opposites that you’ve seen for some of the people that have been guest on your podcast?

John: Just last week we had Jon Chudy on and he played a year of professional baseball in between college and tax work. That’s clearly not the stereotype. I guess more with the sports team, there was a consultant out of Boston, John Choe, who he tried out for the Florida Panthers NHL hockey team to be their backup goalie, so that’s pretty not the stereotype.

Then there’s Rebecca Berneck who has the land speed record for vintage motorcycles. And she also halfway through the episode drops “Oh, yeah, and I was also a backup dancer in Purple Rain, the Prince music video.” How’s that not your lead, like what, are you kidding right now?

But the thing is it’s also like the extremes but all the other guests have been also equally interesting because in this day and age, it’s such a gray bland world that anything at all, any personality or anything at all will stand out from everyone else. And so that’s the thing is don’t feel the pressure to do the extreme weird thing, just share what you do and don’t be afraid if it is the extreme weird thing because actually there’s bonus points in the end for that one.

So yeah, this has been really fun, Rachel, and before I pass out I guess we should probably wrap this one up and let everyone get back to their jobs.

Rachel: Sounds good.

John: Thank you so much for being with me today.

Rachel: Of course, any time.