Larry Chiang interrogates business leaders, celebrities and even mascots. Sometimes he interrogates to get granular specifics into learning something new. Most often, Chiang interrogates to get mentored. In this post, he corners DMA attendees to unearth the truth about America’s convention of direct marketers.
The Direct Marketing Association convention is the annual meeting of people that send out solicitations. Oops that’s a lie, I won’t follow you back |
By Larry Chiang
I catch people in lies.
One of the most important things I learned outside b-school was ‘How to Interrogate’. I learned from the best in the field, interrogation expert, John Reid.
He mainly coaches law enforcement and corporate security while I use his strategies to out people at conferences. Here are the nine lies told at the Direct Marketing Association’s annual convention in San Diego, California.
Most business lies are not malicious and many are polite. These are the lies you’ll hear that are down right OBVIOUS.
-1- Harvard is doing a case study on my company.
-2- I think I met you on that privacy panel we were at together
-3- I’ve never cut and pasted my old stuff
-4- Condoms in my laptop bag?! They’re from the LifeStyles grab-bag
-5- I can’t go the after party because I am going to my boss’ morning session
-6- I have a Twitter account, I just can’t remember my username
-7- It’s a side business, but I never work on it during the day.
-8- I book two hotel rooms. One for me and one for my staffer.
-9- I wanna have you speak to our local DMA chapter!
Ok, I lied… There are fifteen. I told you nine because I didn’t think you’d click an article with 15 things to read. I know I bait-and-switched, but hey!, Isn’t that what we do?! JK. More ‘lies’ below…
-10- I am buying his book on Amazon when I get back to the office
-11- The text message feature is broken on my Blackberry. Just email me.
-12- I’ll totally visit you next time I’m in New York!
-13- We should collaborate on a partnership joint-venture, wanna sit on my sofa and talk about it. Did you say you did co-registration?!
-14- What happens in San Diego, stays in San Diego.
#15 is all YOU.
Submit ONE lie you hear. Report your ‘lie’ in the comments below.
| If you liked this, you may also check:
His own book comes out Wednesday, 09-09-09. It is called ‘What They Don’t Teach You At Stanford Business School‘. The Art of Moderating a Panel in the Partial Attention Economy |
This post was cranked out in about an hour so email me if you see a spelling or grammatical error(s)… larry@larrychiang com or send him a Facebook message
Larry Chiang speaks on credit and has a credit education company called Duck9. He started his first company, United College Marketing Services, in college after reading his mentor’s book, “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School“. He has testified before Congress and the World Bank on credit.
His best-selling book has a business case study that is getting turned into a movie (he hopes). Its been listed at NY Times, Amazon and the WSJ. He’s promoting the movie rights to his book at the Sundance Film Festival AfterParty. He has a goal to put his book and his mentor’s book on the bestseller list at the same time.
Larry speaks on stuff they don't teach in B-school to help you get street smart in doing business. In college, he started a business that helps college students with their FICO score. He loves entrepreneurs, Ben and Jerry's ice cream and after parties. You can reach him at:
