Think As Inc

Love Those Laxatives

August 19, 2010 on 6:19 pm | In career coaching, life coaching | No Comments

Recently, I met with a top commercial casting director.  He gave me a choice of commercial copy for an Italian restaurant or for laxatives.  Now, as an Asian-American, I have about as much chance at landing an Italian restaurant commercial as I do at landing the lead in a Roots revival, so that choice would be a waste.  But I could be the new laxatives girl, so…. 

Thankfully, I’ve never had to use laxatives, but then I had no inspiration.  I needed to convey that these laxatives were the greatest thing since sliced bread, but the thought of them, well, was just not as great as sliced bread.  How did I get through it?  Whenever the copy called for me to say the product name, I substituted my baby’s name in my mind, and so I cracked a smile, my body relaxed, and I got a twinkle in my eye at just the right moment.  Behold the power of substitution. 

Substitution is a technique I encourage my clients to use when going into a situation that might make them freeze and not do their best.  The idea is to substitute something that gives you the desired effect for the actual thing that makes you freeze.  A business application of this would be at an interview.  One client was interviewing at a top consulting firm.  She was prepared but would completely fall apart at the start of the case interview.  Consulting firms give interviews called “cases” which are business problems the interviewee needs to solve.  These cases are similar to research projects, which this client was comfortable with after two years of graduate study.  Therefore, I coached her to substitute a professor for the interviewee and a proposed research topic for the case.  She still needs to know how to do cases, but the substitution gets her relaxed enough so that the preparation she has done has a chance to show.

If you are in an audition, interview, sales call, or other important event for which you are prepared but during which you might get rattled, consider using substitution.  You won’t forget where you actually are.  You will still be able to harness the adrenaline and the energy of the moment.  You will still need to prepare.  However, you will have one technique to keep you grounded if you feel the need.  At the very least, you’ll now know how to sell those laxatives.