Producer by Wendy Walker Read Free Book Online Page A

was talking about a president? Apparently so.
    The key to being an interesting person is to stop complaining, step outside yourself, and be interestedin others. Here are some basic rules that will work in your favor:
    •  When someone comes to your table, stand up and show your respect, whether they are older or younger.
    •  Remember what your mother taught you and listen well.
    •  Look people directly in the eye if you expect them to remember you.
    •  Shake someone’s hand and let them know you’re happy to see them.
    •  Smile.
    My boyfriend, Randy, is a master at making people happy. He was trained to do this when he worked with the pharmaceutical
     company Eli Lilly, and it stuck. Today, he treats others with so much interest and kindness, no one ever wants him to leave,
     including me! The point is that when you make someone feel good about themselves, they will remember you and the fact that
     you have good energy. In a spiritual sense, that’s what it’s all about. Good energy attracts good energy. But you have to
     be real about it and not just pay other people lip service. Being available, interested, and interesting is a lifestyle, not
     a momentary action.
    Do you know anyone in your life who says all the right stuff, who “acts” interested, maybe they remember your kid’s name and
     they ask about you, but you know they really don’t care? They’re acting nice but the energy behind their actions doesn’t lie.
     You can tell the difference when someone is truly engaged andwhen someone pretends to care, while in truth they’re thinking only about themselves and what they can get from you.
    I recently attended a seminar near San Diego at the Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California. The seminar was entitled
     Sages and Scientists, and many scientists and philosophers spoke over the three days. There was a great deal of valuable information
     given out, but in my opinion the best advice of the weekend came from one scholar who got up toward the end and said very
     simply, “Be nice. You know, the Golden Rule!”
    This does not exclude being strong, forceful, or creative. We can be nice, too, and that will make you feel better about yourself.
     If you run into a jerk in your life, you don’t have to be one, too. Why drop to a level of negativity and rudeness that will
     hurt everyone involved, including you? As Sun-tzu says about the art of war, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”
     I would add, “And be nice to all of them.”

C HAPTER 3
Details Matter: They Are Everything
    I was still working at the art gallery when I got a call from a woman I didn’t know named Suzy Wills. “Is this Wendy?” she
     asked in a fast-paced voice.
    “Yes, it is,” I said.
    “I work for Ethel Kennedy,” Suzy said, “and she was wondering if you were interested in becoming her private secretary. She
     needs someone to basically run her life. You know, make calls, set up meetings, help her with social events, carry out her
     correspondences, things like that.”
    Suzy went on to inform me that Ethel, a woman of about fifty, was extremely active and extraordinarily focused on details.
     I recalled her high energy level when I had waited on her at Brooks Brothers and at the dinner I had attended at her home.
     She got loads of phone calls every day, Suzy explained, and she was very busy with her huge family and running her charity—a
     humanitarian foundation dedicated to the memory of her late husband, Robert F. Kennedy, gunned down by an assassin’s bullet
     on June 5, 1968. Ethel had been forty years oldat the time. Now, in 1978, ten years later, was I interested in the position?
    I didn’t take long to answer. I was making so little money at the gallery, I could barely eat, and I was getting more bored
     every day. So I listened carefully when Suzy explained what the job would entail. “You’ll be keeping track of what’s going
     on at the house,” she said.