Austin Parker – The Official Blog Of Scot McKay

The Magic Word That Leads To A Better Social Life

I’ve been a bit of a workaholic lately. I bring this up because I’m tired after my work weeks and don’t always feel the energy.

A friend of mine recently called and said “Hey, Austin, how would you like to go do this zombie walk?” What’s a “zombie walk”? As it turns out, it’s a several hour affair where you rip up the shirt, stain it with fake blood, white stage makeup, and wander around aimlessly looking for babes and braiiiins. At 5pm on that certain Friday my friend called, however, I wasn’t really in the mood to commit to such a thing. But I said “yes”…because I knew I had to.

And here is why.

“Yes” is the secret word that will bestow social riches upon you. Your friends, girlfriends, and acquaintances are likely throwing interesting opportunities at you all the time. Sometimes these opportunities sound like more work than fun. I mean tearing up a shirt, wearing make up…who wants to do all that, especially on short notice? But I went for it, and once I got going I had some momentum and had a really kick ass time.

So next time you’re asked something by your friends, say “yes”. Always say “yes”. It’s the secret word that will lead to more opportunities.

–Austin

Presence Vs. Attention = Happy Women Everywhere

X & Y Communications Coach Austin Parker Having spent the last year of my life on entrepreneurial pursuits, I’ve learned some hard lessons about keeping a woman happy. At the height of my working tirades I’d get a call from my girlfriend at the time and I’d keep clicky clacking away on the computer. I’d talk and I’d try to stay in the conversation. I figured she wanted some of my attention and time and in my mind, I thought I was giving it to her. This didn’t work.

I started to ask myself, why? Attention without presence is disrespectful. It sent the message that the other person isn’t as important as whatever I was doing. It made them feel less valuable in my life.

Sometimes I can’t be present. My mind goes a hundred miles an hour and it takes time to calm down. During these situations I inform the woman (or man, this is a general social skill) that I just finished or am in the middle of doing something. It’s consuming me and I set a specific time when I expect I’ll be ready to give them my full presence. People are respectful of this.

Otherwise I step away from what I’m doing and go to another room and have the conversation. The quality of the conversation goes up greatly from there. And with quality it’s easy to end it in a timely manner and get back to what I’m doing. Everyone wins.

So next time, give your presence not your attention. It’s the respectful thing to do.

–Austin

Success With Women: Recognize Breakthroughs…And Kick The Door In.

X & Y Communications Coach Austin Parker We’re all on our own journey and I’d like to share with you part of mine. One year ago I left my former career to start business, even though I had never sold anything before and had no idea what I was going to do.

I’ll spare the details as they don’t add much, but I struggled for months. I read a lot hoping to avoid failure, but as it turned out I tried two projects and they both failed.

Nearly crushed, I launched a third project, and waited for the onset of failure. Except that didn’t happen this time. It took off, and I made my first profits.

I then faced the question “how do I grow this business?” and I had to learn marketing. I stumbled at first seeing no results for my efforts, but I kept trying and eventually started seeing success in this area as well.

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Universal Conversation Skills: Talk To Anyone, Anytime, Anywhere

X & Y Communications Coach Austin Parker For the longest time I was frustrated. I wanted people to take an interest in me. After all I thought I was interesting. I had just returned to the states after two years living abroad. I thought I was a master conversationalist with the most interesting topic in the world: Me.

Little did I know I was ignoring the needs of everyone I met. It turns out they didn’t want to talk about me. They wanted to talk about themselves.

Then I learned the trick to connecting with people is to take an interest in them. There are specific ways to do this and today I will share them with you. Without further ado, I present:

Universal Conversational Skills (i.e. the ones that work with anyone, anywhere)

1) Ask open ended questions

An open ended question is something you can’t answer with just a yes or a no. If you ask someone, “Do you like this place?” you are inviting a yes or no answer. Unfortunately this doesn’t give much to go on. “What do you like about this place?” is a better one. When I ask a leading question I always try to emphasize the positive. It works.

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Name Memorization And The Art Of Working the Room

Before you read this post, I ask that you ready yourself to learn and apply what you’re about to read.

When I first got into pickup this was my “working the room” game and it brought me much success. I challenge you to try this at your next customer meeting, house party, or night out.

Without further ado:

In the past I was terrible with names. When I was in college I was an orientation team leader one year. I had 20 freshman and I struggled with their names. To me this was embarrassing. Ask yourself, how can you hope to project any kind of interest in someone if you can’t even get their name right?

For this post I will discuss three types of learning senses: Audio, visual, and kinesthetic. We’ve all heard “use someones name as soon as you meet them”, or “visualize the person naked with their name tattooed across their forehead”, and you can think of others. I learned another technique that helped me as a kinesthetic (learn by doing!) guy. After you learn someone’s name and successfully repeat it, use your writing hand and discreetly go through the motion of writing their name with your hand.

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Be a Social Leader in One Easy Step

In my journey through pickup I’ve found this whole thing is more about learning social leadership than anything else.

One thing we all have in common is we are leaders.

If we weren’t leaders we would settle for what we get like everyone else does. Today I’d like to help you assume your role as social leader among your friends in one easy step. Are you nervous?

Don’t be. This is really easy.

Being a social leader isn’t dominating the conversation, talking too much, or acting like a jerk to your friends.

Rather being a social leader is that fun guy (or gal) who brings something to the lives of those around them.

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Change Your Life! Delete These Songs From Your iPod

Yes, you read the title correctly.

If you want to change your life and get better with everything, take this step now. Delete the following songs from your iPod.

Here’s my “Top-Ten List Countdown”:

10. My Everything (98 Degrees)

“You are my everything
Nothing your love won’t bring
My life is yours alone”

9. Faith (George Michael)

“Before you throw my heart back on the floor
Oh baby I reconsider
My foolish notion
Well I need someone to hold me
But I’ll wait for something more”

8. When It’s Over (Sugar Ray)

“I’m wishing you
You feel the same and just come back to me
I need you and when you go go go go”

7. Wait for You (Elliot Yamin)

“Baby I will wait for you
If you think I find it just ain’t true
I really need you in my life
No matter what I have to do
I’ll wait for you”

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