How about the real estate section? Yawn. Maybe you dont find real
estate especially engrossing. However, sooner or later youre going to find
yourself with a group of people who are dicussing properties, deals, and
todays market. Scanning the real estate section just once every few weeks
will keep you au courant with their conversation.
The advertising column? Maybe you think the world would be a far, far
better place without Madison Avenue. But your botom line wont be better
off if you cant hold your own discussing matters with the marketing maven
youve just contracted to adver157
tise your companys widgets. Just a few peeks at the advertising news
section and youll soon be chatting about campaigns and crative people, and
doing print or TV. Instead of saying words, youll be saying copy. Instead of
the agency, youll be bandying about real insider terms like the shop.
Using outsider words is one of the biggest giveaways that you are not in
the know. On the ship, if a passenger asked any of my staff, How long have
you been working on the boat? theyd squelch a groan. Cruise staffers
proudly worked on a ship, and the word boat revealed the passenger as a
real landlubber.
The right word can perform conversational miracles. In the receiving
line, whenever passengers asked our laconic captain, When did you first
become a master? or What was your first command? he would hold up the
entire line of people snaking around the ballroom waiting to shake his hand.
Captain Cafiero would enthusiastically recount his naval history to the
savvy inquirer who might have just learned the words master or comand
last week in the newspaper shipping notices. (If the passeger had simply
said, How long have you been a captain? or What was your first boat? he or
she would have gotten the ca tains usual Italian gentlemans version of the
bums rush.)
Soon youll become addicted to the high that establishing raport with so
many people gives you. All it takes is reading diffeent sections of the
newspaper.
Pump Their Pulp for Even More Fuel
Then, when you crave a bigger hit of insider lingo, start reading trade
journals. Those are the closed-circulation magazines that go to members of
various industries. Ask your friends in different jobs to lend you one so
youll have even more fuel for the convers tional fire.
ooja
(Ooja)
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