Don't be a dick

If you behave like a dickhead, this place isn’t for you.

• Meredith Music Festival - No Dickhead policy

Be easy to work with.

You want to make any collaboration, engagement, or partnership effortless for the other person.

I used to show my clients a slide about LinkedIn, it goes like this:

Imagine you’re at a cocktail party.

Now you start shoving your business card in every person’s hand that you meet.

You pay a robot to go and introduce yourself to everyone in the room so you can connect (and sell) to more people.

Whenever someone does end up talking to you, you launch a pain grenade “and how are you solving that problem that keeps you up at night?”

You’re also jumping up and down with a small coterie of people you’ve paid to like everything you do.

You shout “Look at me - JUST LOOK AT ME!”

Even if you’ve never been to a cocktail party you know that’s not how you behave.

Yet for some reason there are people out there that think this is normal.

While this story is about LinkedIn, the core message is the same for all marketing: Don’t be a Dick.

Most channels you’ll be looking at will have a curator, gatekeeper, editor, host, or other kind human who manages what is shown and not shown in their channel.

I’m sharing ways you can pitch to these humans and create win-win partnerships that will help them and in turn help you.

All of that is worth enough if you aren’t a good human.