Business Without the Bullsh*t: 49 Secrets and Shortcuts You Need to Know (10 page)

Few things can gum up a business deal or put a damper on a great idea like the presence of an overzealous corporate lawyer. Fortunately corporate lawyers are relatively easy to handle. Here’s how:

Assuming you actually want to get things done, it’s generally in your interest to keep lawyers out of the picture, unless your industry is one in which nothing gets done without them.

If you trust the people you’re working with, conduct the majority of your business using simple, self-created contracts. These take the form of simple statements like “You will do A” and “I will do B.”

Needless to say, flying below the radar means that you’re taking on the risk yourself should something go wrong. If that
really
bothers you, then go ahead and get lawyers involved. However, remember that there’s a price to pay, and it’s not just the lawyer’s fees.

Corporate lawyers are natural pessimists. It’s their job to manage risks and to make certain that if something (like a contract dispute) goes to court, you and your company don’t end up on the losing end.

The easiest way for a lawyer to eliminate risk is to make sure nothing happens—at all. That’s why if you ask a corporate lawyer, “Should we do this unusual or unprecedented thing?” the answer will usually be no, regardless of whether it’s a good idea or not.

Once you realize this, you’re free to decide whether the risks (which the lawyer will definitely identify) are worth the benefits of going ahead anyway. You can also solicit suggestions for limiting those risks.

Lawyers, like all experts, have a tendency to speak and write using jargon that’s specific to their profession. In the case of lawyers, this habit is worse because they tend to see language as a way to create wiggle room rather than to communicate clearly.

In some situations (as when drawing up a complicated contract) it may be in your interest to let your lawyer play that game. However, when you’re on the receiving end of this tactic, insist on clarifying these intentional ambiguities.

To do this, read each paragraph aloud to the lawyer and ask, “What does this mean in plain English?” When the lawyer responds, scratch out the legalese and write down what the lawyer just said.

Corporate lawyers don’t benefit if a deal goes through, but they
do
get blamed if the deal turns into a debacle. Delay, to a corporate lawyer, is a good thing, because delay prevents bad things from happening.

Asking a corporate lawyer to do something quickly is like pushing a mule. The harder you push, the slower the mule moves. It’s wiser to lay out a schedule and ask the lawyer if it’s possible to get the work done by then.

If the situation involves opposing lawyers (e.g., your corporate
lawyers are negotiating with your client’s corporate lawyers), your best approach is to hunker down for a long wait.

Contrary to popular opinion, lawyers are human beings and, as with all human beings, more likely to help those they know and like rather than those they don’t know or actively dislike.

Therefore, if your firm has corporate lawyers, cultivate some kind of relationship with them ahead of time—long before you get into the situation where you need them to move quickly on your behalf.

Developing a relationship with corporate lawyers is just like developing one with anyone else at work. Ask about their jobs and backgrounds. Cultivate common interests.

Ideally you want lawyers to see you as you are: a person trying to get a job done, rather than a nuisance who wants them to commit to the unnatural act of approving an exceptional case quickly.

Companies create brands because brands help buyers remember the experience they’ve had (or expect to have) with a company’s products. A brand consists of three major elements: a brand name, a brand logo, and a corporate history.

For example, the Coca-Cola Company has several brand names (the most famous being Coke), a distinctive logo that the company infrequently changes, and a well-established history as a provider of tasty soft drinks for over a hundred years.

Similarly, you (as an individual) have a brand consisting of elements in the social media in which you participate: your name (brand name), your photo (brand logo), and your profile information (corporate history).

Here’s how to use social media to brand yourself:

Social media sites are fundamentally different from other forms of business communication. Conversations, voice mails, e-mails, and presentations are
narrowcast media
, meaning they are either one-to-one or one-to-few.

Social networking, on the other hand, is broadcast media on steroids, which means it is one-to-many-to-many-to-many. While you can limit access to your profiles on some sites, these sites are intended to be seen by all and sundry. Because of this they can have an outsize effect on your career, for good or bad.

Social networking is your primary vehicle for creating your brand and expanding awareness of it. However, like a corporation, you must protect your brand from becoming tarnished even as you work to establish it.

Since your photo is your brand logo, you want a profile photo—the same on all sites—that reinforces your brand in a way that helps rather than hinders your career. If you can afford it, hire a professional photographer to shoot publicity photos. No selfies.

Meanwhile, try to expunge any online evidence of behavior that runs contrary to the image you’re trying to create. Scrub your old social networking pages; if your friends have posted stuff you’d prefer not be seen, ask them to delete it.

Even unusual hobbies can throw employers and customers off, if you’re not well known enough in your own field to make such details irrelevant. Despite the pressure to meld your business and personal lives, I recommend keeping your private life private.

Sometimes it’s not possible to scrub something questionable from your past. For example, if you’re arrested, your name and face can end up on a mug shot website and remain there even if you’re not charged. If so, you’ll need to change your name.

Another element of brand image is your literacy or lack of same. Spelling and grammatical errors in your profile will make people think that you’re either stupid or careless, or both. If you’re not a strong writer, hire a copy editor to go over your profile.

For work purposes, the most important social media sites are the ones, such as LinkedIn, where you post your résumé. Most people make the dumb mistake of using that forum to post a generalized version of their employment history.

Why is that dumb? Because your online résumé is useful for only two things: positioning you for a new job, or strengthening your ability to do your current job. A generalized résumé accomplishes neither of these tasks.

If you are job hunting, you want your résumé to reflect whatever job you are currently pursuing. (I discuss this issue elsewhere in “Secret 25. How to Land a Job Interview.”) Therefore, during a job hunt, you must constantly tweak your résumé to match your efforts.

If you are currently employed and not looking for another job, you want the people you work with (or sell to or buy from) to see you as qualified and authoritative in your current job. Therefore, scrub everything that’s irrelevant to your current job.

In your résumé, describe only actions that you personally took, along with the specific, quantifiable effects of those actions. For example, if you work in public relations, nobody cares if your job title was “communications director.” However, they might very well take notice if you got your CEO on CNN and the stock rose by 10 percent.

Finally, LinkedIn allows other people to post recommendations. The problem with these endorsements is that everyone suspects you’ve simply queued up your best pals to be sock puppets that say nice things.

Nevertheless, it doesn’t hurt to get some recommendations, but you want them to be realistic and believable, which means that they can’t attempt to paint you as the most wonderful person in the world.

Ideally you want recommendations that reinforce the relevance of your résumé. Therefore, you may want to change or switch them, depending on whether you’re job hunting or not, or on the type of job you’re pursuing.

Almost everybody who starts blogging gives up after a few weeks, after which the posts become few and far between, and eventually peter out altogether. What remains is an out-of-date blog that’s a testament to your inability to blog regularly.

Blogging with substantial content is easy when you start (because everyone has something to say) but gets more difficult over time. I say this as a professional blogger who (as of this writing) has posted content every business day since February 2007.

If you’re determined to blog, be realistic rather than ambitious. If you think you can post once a week, set a schedule to post every two weeks or every month. That way you’re less likely to run out of things to say.

Microblogging (as on Twitter) is less of an issue because there’s no need to constantly create anything of substance. In this case you’re generally alerting people to content they might find useful or interesting, rather than creating it yourself.

Finally, don’t expect your blog to generate lots of traffic. Very few blogs acquire a significant number of readers. Most of the time, the value of the blog is in providing more detail—about who you are and how you think—to people who are already interested in you.

Because a poorly placed remark or off-color joke by an employee can damage a company’s brand image, most big firms have very specific guidelines for what employees can and can’t write online.

The same is true for your brand image. You are not doing yourself
any favors by getting your brand name associated with discussions of anything that’s irrelevant to your career. That’s especially true if the discussions are political, religious, or sexual in nature.

If you feel that you simply
must
comment on such forums, use a pseudonym, not your brand name, and be aware that even then you might still be outed. Many careers have been ruined this way.