When you’re on a journey to self-made success, you might meet a millionaire along the way. Part of the process of becoming a self-made millionaire is to meet and network with people who are already successful. Meeting a wealthy person might make you nervous the first time, which is understandable. Unfortunately, no one ever teaches you how to speak to a successful person and make a good impression. Furthermore, it could ultimately make or break your chances of networking with the right people.
Millionaires are normal people, just like you and me. The only difference is that they are hard workers who made good choices with their money. Many of them rose up from nothing. There are plenty of clichés that people make when talking to them for the first time. There are also red flags that will tell them never to speak to you again, so we compiled some topics you should avoid when meeting a millionaire via Success.
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25. “What Do You Do?”
Few questions are more dreaded than the incredibly tedious boilerplate “getting to know you” chitchat than “what do you do?” It’s generic, vague, and while most people mean it to ask your job title or what industry you’re in, the wording is a bit rude. It’s almost like asking the person to justify their own existence based on what they do every day. Suppose you’re interested in questioning a wealthy person about their livelihood. In that case, there are countless better ways to ask about their job or industry than the vague, generic, and boring “what do you do?”
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Some great alternatives are “what industry do you work in?” As long as you know that the person is employed or works somehow, this is a great opening. It allows the person to discuss their industry even if they don’t want to discuss the particulars of their exact job or business. It also shows that you’re interested in learning about an industry as a whole versus just wanting to sniff around at someone’s job title or earnings. It’s also much easier to ask engaging questions or bond over a shared industry than to compare an exact job title, so it’s naturally a more engaging conversational topic.