Hanging with the wrong crowd including Richard Laermer

While I have not explicitly asked Richard Laermer to my mentor and my PR guru, he is.

He is also my friend, so maybe he won’t be comfortable with mentoring me.  Well, oh well. Anyway, he’s currently working on sharing his How to Fame manifesto — today’s HTF Tip #3 is how and why to Hang with the wrong crowd:

Culpability for lack of fame does not fall completely on the shoulders of the Fameless. Enablers are all around us, supporting our misguided attempts to Fame. We call them friends, and they’re usually just like us.  But, it’s because of that shared identity that we don’t always get, as Paul Harvey would say, “the rest of the story” about how we’re truly viewed by the rest of the world.

Our friends know us really well; probably even to the point that they’ve seen through our veiled public persona (knowing that our actual personality is very different). They don’t call us on it, though, because they’re our friends … and there’s a good chance they share many of the same traits! Now, this doesn’t particularly bother us because, after all, we have friends and might not necessarily feel like we need new ones.

Or, we don’t think we have an impact on others’ lives, so why bother?  Remember, you don’t have to be a “person of influence” to be influential.  Faming isn’t about making friends; it’s about taking hold of your positive traits and using them to influence the rest of humanity (non-friends). Think about who influences you on a daily basis …  Why did you buy that shirt? Why did you follow the career path you’re on? Why, indeed.  Inevitably, there is “someone” that influences you every single day. And, whether you know it or not, you’re influencing them.

To maximize our Faming experience, we need to step out of Plato’s cave for a while. You don’t have to ditch all of your friends and forget your roots, like a character in every sports movie ever made; you just need to be aware (see Tip #1: Perception) that your social group is not likely to be a representative sample of the people who make snap judgments about you on an every day basis.

Here’s to stepping out of your comfort zone, becoming more aware and tuning in to the cues that matter.

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Tagged as: Friends of the Library, How to Fame, Libraries, Paul Harvey, relationships, Richard Laermer, Services, Social group, Social Sciences, United States