The title of this post might suggest one of those fairly generic “look into their eyes and shake their hand firmly” posts but this is far from it.

I run several blogs, one of them being Origin of Cool. It is gathering momentum fast so in order to expand, I have reached out to people around the world to become contributors. The idea is that we will cover ‘the birth of cool in locations around the world’.

On the homepage of Origin of Cool, I wrote a call for action. The most recent one read:

“Origin of Cool is a glorious network of 7 trend spotters from around the world. Do you think you have what it takes to become ‘Number 8‘?”

I get an Email last night from a graphic designer we are following on twitter called Ben Schuster. Here it is:

What I loved about this email was not just the compliment but the way he used his imagination to find a way of being Number 8. He could have said “I want to be your Number 8 because I am passionate, enthusiastic and loyal.” All of things would probably have been true. But he did something which totally blew me away and made me say yes without even really knowing him.

This kind of reminded me of the CV pile analogy where you always hear people telling you that when you write a CV, you have to stand out. I think in this competitive economy, and with Britain’s Youth Unemployment numbers over 1 million, it is vital that graduates adopt the Ben Schuster technique in order to get noticed.

Filed under: business, creativity, entrepreneurship, free thinking, inspiration, personal branding Tagged: blog, Britain, British economy, first impressions, youth unemployment