The Education of Millionaires - Michael Ellsberg [105]
■ DANIELLE LAPORTE—RADIATING HER WAY TO SUCCESS
In her late twenties, Danielle LaPorte found herself in the position many twentysomethings with college degrees now find themselves: broke and depressed. She had moved back to Canada, after a stint working in the United States flamed out due to the dot-com crash. “I was totally lost. I had a fucked-up identity. I wore pajamas for six months.” (Note: This was long before Marian’s “Pajama Job Hunt”!)
So she did what many twentysomethings in this position do: she decided to go to graduate school. Art school, to be exact. “I remember sitting in one of my first classes—it was like an intro class, I hadn’t been accepted or rejected yet. And I just thought, ‘This is the most pedantic, wanking, navel-gazing crap.’ I had this moment where I looked at everyone and I thought, ‘You are going to pay for this?’ Which is good, because I got rejected from art school. I saved the letter.”
Danielle had a few things going for her, however. She didn’t have a lot of debt from her undergraduate education. (In fact, she didn’t have an undergraduate education.) She had ventured into working straight out of high school. Bartending. (“Everyone should bartend at some point. It’s Psychology 101.”) Then a job at The Body Shop.
She started out pumping peppermint foot cream at a retail store. She asked for and got a series of promotions, all the way up to assistant manager, then a job on the corporate side of the company, in their Department of Social Inventions. Then a job in the United States at a high-profile Washington nonprofit think tank.
How did she get all these promotions? Read the next chapter, on the entrepreneurial mind-set—her strategy was straight out of that mentality. She always looked for the highest-leverage thing that could be accomplished in that moment, and then got it done, never waiting for “permission” or “instructions” to make things better. She just did it. “I just kept doing big things, then asking for promotions once I did them. Doing, asking, doing, asking.”
This points to the second thing Danielle had going for her now that she was looking for her next turn in life: audacity. Her own personal style radiated charming, seductive audacity.
She had always gotten where she wanted to go by cultivating her own personal quirks, charms, and unique personality, rather than fitting herself into some socially expected corporate box and fitting in. “I was so grateful that I never went to a university. I never had a box to get out of.”
She decided she wanted to spread this message—the importance of cultivating, rather than suppressing, your own individual style and expression (your “personal brand,” to use the language of this chapter) in the professional realm. She wanted to write a book on the topic.
Problem was, she had never written a book, and had little formal authority to do so. All she had was her own moxie, and her outsized personality. “I’d never even taken a writing course. I’m not even sure about my grammar sometimes. ‘Should that be I or me?’ [Laughing.] But I wrote the proposal, and I can sell ice to Eskimos, dirt to farmers. This is the other thing about naïveté. I was like, ‘I’ll just call.’ Just pick up the phone. I landed one of the top agents in the business. It’s easy to sell when you believe in stuff. I call it ‘Radiate and State the Facts.’ You just pound out your devotion, your commitment to what you’re doing. Then state the facts in a very measured way about what you’re doing. That’s it. I am going to radiate and state the facts and if you get it, great. If you don’t, then we’re not right for each other.” Danielle, a master of radiating her infectious personality, got the deal, and her first book came out in 2008.
Soon she decided to build up her brand around herself instead, her own place on the Internet. She started her own blog (http://whitehottruth.com), dishing out her own blend of business and marketing advice. If you