A Dinner With Strangers: Lessons in Branding
Recently, I attended a “Dinner With Strangers”. Exactly as it sounds, I met 9 people who, until that moment, were total strangers. Run by Justin, a very nice guy from Belgium, these events were created because he wanted to find a community in LA. The idea was that we’d get to know each other throughout the night, facilitated by conversation questions Justin had prepared.
There were only three rules:
You can’t sit by anyone you know, if you happened to come with someone you knew.
No phones.
No talking about work.
That last one got me. While I knew this wasn’t a professional networking event, I had just launched “My Brand Mirror” the day before and I was really excited to share it. However, if I wanted to play by the rules (and I am a good rule follower), that was now off the table.
I have heard from people while traveling that Americans, more than other cultures, start conversations with “what do you do?”. I have no data to back that up, but given our society’s focus on work, that doesn’t necessarily surprise me. Thinking back to my days as a teacher, I struggled to find ways to define myself outside of what I do as the label “choir teacher” became my identity. I used to challenge myself to not talk about choir or teaching for a day. I still am not sure I can do it.
By the end of the night, however, I loved that we weren’t allowed to talk about work because it forced me to think about other stories that define my life instead of just what I do for a living. I also learned some valuable lessons about what personal brand storytelling can be–and that it’s so much more than just some text on a website or an elevator pitch. Here are some of my takeaways from the evening.
Talking about yourself is hard
I love to talk–and I like attention, so I do like talking about myself. But when my crutch of talking about what I do was taken away, I found it a bit harder to come up with anecdotes to answer some of the prompt questions.
Take the first question, for example: “What is the best compliment you’ve received?”
I had my answer immediately–but it related both to my former life as a teacher and what I do now. A former student once told me “you make me feel seen” (I did get permission to talk about former work), and it remains the best compliment someone has ever given me.
All I want in life is to be seen–seen for who I am authentically–and recognized by the people around me, so the fact that a 14-year old girl told me that meant the world to me. It’s the idea that formed the basis of “My Brand Mirror” as well, applying my favorite part of being a teacher to working with clients on defining their brands and sharing their stories. Recently, a client told me that I “reflect back what she was trying to say”. Mission accomplished. Of course, for the purposes of this dinner, I left out the specifics about my branding business, needing to find other creative stories to get this idea across…
In that first round, I noticed how hard it was for everyone to come up with stories that didn’t have to do with work. Everyone said some variation on “nope, that relates to my job” before they answered the question. This makes sense when you really think about it–we spend a good portion of our waking hours on our work, so it’s logical that many stories come from that. When you add the fact that we often introduce ourselves with “I’m a [insert job title here]”, these work stories can be very definitive. Taking those labels and stories away required all of us to get a bit more creative and dig a bit deeper into who we are.
Finding new stories and recognizing themes
The one person who easily started the night finding stories about herself was our dining compatriot who had recently quit a toxic job and was reevaluating what role she wanted work to play in her life. Not being immersed in a work-life, she had been practicing defining herself in different ways for the better part of a year, and her joy in expanding her self-definition was so evident. Following her lead, we all got more comfortable with each other, opening up about ourselves in ways that we might not have if talking about work was an option.
As the night progressed, we answered questions that dug deeper into who we are as people: ”what’s something you did that surprised you this year?”, “what’s something you regret?”, “what’s something you’re proud of?”, etc. (I told you we dug deep)
The answers to these questions were profound, funny, heartbreaking, and real. They had a certain depth of meaning that we wouldn’t have gotten to if we kept on the surface of talking about our jobs.
What was interesting, however, was that there were themes that were present in everyone’s answers. One woman’s answers were all people-centric and focused on social justice. One man embedded psychology into a lot of his answers (and just a hint of competitiveness). Another discussed finding new hobbies through a process of trial and error. I talked about the importance of stories and human connection–with a hefty dose of humor. Without defining ourselves by a label, we showed who we are through our interests, ways of thinking, and what we valued.
What do you do?
The last half an hour of the evening was a game: guess what everyone does.
This is where my storytelling branding brain perked up. We had just gotten to know these strangers without having any idea of their professional lives, but we had gained an understanding of them as people–as how they show up in the world authentically outside of their work. As I often tell clients, brand storytelling is developing your story so you show up authentically when you present yourself to your clients instead of fitting a mold of what you think you should say. Now that we were charged with guessing what each other did, I was interested to see how these personal conversations led us to accurate guesses or if we would be totally off base.
We were in the ballpark for eight out of nine.
The woman who focused on people and social justice was a teacher, the man who talked about psychology worked in mental health, and the man who prioritized experimentation was a product designer. Their stories may not have been directly connected to their day-to-day job, but the heart of who they were was so evident in every story they told that we could guess–that’s good branding.
My dinner compatriots were dead on about me as well. Well, close. A first guess was “screenwriter” (which isn’t completely inaccurate as it is why I moved to LA), followed by marketing. Another person guessed that I had my own business. The reasoning behind their guesses? I was an engaging storyteller, it was clear that I valued humor and creativity, and I was intently focused on others as they told their stories and asked follow up questions.
Not bad for not being able to use any of my go-to stories about what I do.
Now I know that this isn’t always true–I know plenty of people whose job is just that–a job. Their passions show up in what they do outside of work, be it with friends, family, their community, or themselves. In fact, most of us are a combination of it all. However, we all have things that we gravitate toward based on our interests and talents. You’ll never catch me organizing spreadsheets to find meaning in the data because numbers and spreadsheets scramble my brain just like I don’t really love physical puzzles because I find them tedious (unless I’m doing them with my mother).
Additionally, it was fun to get to know people without filtering it through preconceived notions based on what they did. The engineer wasn’t “nerdy” and the artist wasn’t “a free-spirit”, we saw each other as the multi-faceted human beings that we are.
Applying a Dinner with Strangers to branding
This experience made me think about how this can apply to a professional networking event. Are you just talking about your job or business without telling stories that show why you do what you do and how it lights you up? And if you are just talking about what you do in a prescribed manner, is your authentic passion resonating with your audience? Are there some ways your life outside of your work can bring life to your professional messages?
In my work with clients, I ask them one question over and over again: why?
So many times, we fall into explaining our work in a rote manner that just gets at the surface of what we do because we think fitting the mold is expected of us. But, this takes our passion and individuality out of our stories. By asking clients “why”, I ask them to dig deeper and really think about why they do what they do and what value they provide their customers. Through these conversations, they often come up with stories–work related or not–that illustrate their message in a way that is much more engaging to an audience because it is authentic and unique to them. These stories become foundations of their brand narrative as they inform everything: the tone we use, the taglines we develop, a content strategy, and so much more.
Think about this next time you’re at a dinner with strangers. Share a story that showcases you and your brand in a way that is outside of what you do day-to-day. I bet it will be easier than you think.
Have you been to a dinner with strangers? What have you learned from the experience? I’d love to hear about it.
