Hi, this is Alie the Lict and this is Leave Your Mark the podcast where I brew fresh career advice with some of my most inspiring and successful friends.

It's professional advice that you can action immediately, whether you're just starting out in your career or well on your way.

With a massive to-do list and a large cup of coffee, I promise that you can get it all done and still

have time to post about it.

On today's Leave Your Mark Snack segment, I want to talk about something so simple, so

simple that everyone seems to mess up. And that, my friends, is the introduction. How do you introduce yourself to people?

And the inspiration for this snack segment came from a real life situation I was in yesterday,

where I was in a Zoom meeting with 16 people I've never met. They were all probably in their

40s, 50s, maybe a few in their 60s, accomplished,

experienced people, people who should know how to introduce themselves. And the ask from the

moderator was, everyone gets 60 seconds, introduce yourself, and let people know what it is you do.

Okay, simple ask. Time stamped, simple ask.

When I tell you that not one person was able to deliver on that ask, I'm not kidding. I listened

to person after person not only go egregiously over time, but start with, so I was born in New York and literally

people started with where they were born. When someone asks you to tell them about yourself

in a professional setting, they're not asking you where you were born. They're asking to understand what it is you do

professionally and probably what you're most proud of. I was just watching person after person

completely butcher these introductions to the point that I got so frustrated after 50 minutes,

I will say, that I just basically politely messaged the host and I said,

I'm so sorry I have to go. I didn't even introduce myself because you know what, this is not,

this is not the room for me to be in. I'm not going to be in here. But it was important

enough for me to come on here to talk about this. Now, an introduction is different than an elevator, elevator pitch.

...