Game Changer: How to Be 10x in the Talent Economy

He who represents himself has a fool for a client.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN

In the 1979 French film L’associé (The Associate), a down-on-his-luck investor creates a make-believe business partner in a last-ditch attempt to save the biz. What happens next is as telling as it is hilarious: Playing the imaginary associate, the man finds “his voice,” business booms like crazy, new clients sign on in droves, and the man’s wife even announces that she’s fallen in love with the partner—all despite the fact that he doesn’t exist.

As silly as it sounds, the movie is a perfect illustration of what we call the Third Party Effect.

Imagine telling someone that you’re amazing at what you do. Now imagine someone else, someone credible, saying the same thing about you. The message is always stronger coming from a third party. When you say, “I went to Harvard, worked in senior management at Facebook, and created the open-source language that runs half the internet,” you sound like a conceited jerk.

If someone else says those very same words about you, you sound like a unicorn.

In a court of law, it’s never advisable to represent yourself, and the same goes for talent. The tendency will always be to oversell or undersell, and either way, there is virtually no credibility where there is no objectivity. The Third Party Effect removes your ego, high and low, and shows the listener that someone else out there believes in you enough to put their own reputation on the line.

One other thing to keep in mind: Most people don’t have great management and struggle to get it. While most companies in the industry are desperate to find and work with great tech talent, as of this writing, our own company has a five-thousand-person-plus waiting list of tech talent hoping to engage our management services. This is because the talent knows if they work with us, they get people with skin in their game who can give them the benefit of the Third Party Effect. The recommendation of a third party (and especially one who has skin in the game) automatically implies value and is one of the few ways to rise above the din.

THE UNDERSELLERS

Long before we took on the management of supercoders, we understood that, on the whole, they had a tendency to sell themselves short. Back in the days when we were mostly music biz managers, we often had to hire tech talent to build out our artists’ websites, as well as apps for the entertainment world, so we already had a fair amount of experience working with skilled (and sometimes not-so-skilled) programmers. What we observed on a consistent basis was that the tech talent did not know their own worth. They would come to the negotiation table with financial figures that were not only lower than what we expected them to ask for, but were lower than what the market would claim they were worth.

It was a real head scratcher.

Without a definite plan in mind, we got to work and did some research in order to determine the real market value of these mavens. As soon as we started 10x Management, we instantly raised the asking price for our tech talent, first, because we armed ourselves with better data about what they could command, and second, because we had the luxury of being an outside party, two guys who were so impressed by their considerable talents that we could sing their praises in ways that they never could.

An outside party can afford to not be wounded by criticism, rejection, blowback, or indifference.

A realistic outside party can state an asking price without the slightest bit of doubt, shame, or fear.

A realistic, credible outside party can hype without sounding ridiculous and bring context without sounding far-fetched.

To this day, we’ll sit in on pitch meetings with partners and hear them try to sell themselves. Even when they mean well, they usually sound like inept boasters. Often, that’s where we’ll step in and ask if they wouldn’t like to have us, or some other outside entity, singing their praises.

We’ve also experienced the opposite of boasting, an aversion to exposing and expressing one’s true worth—especially among tech talent. Unfortunately, the self-effacing wallflower technique doesn’t work either.

Our former co-founder was himself a savvy technologist who also happened to be uncomfortable with representing himself. When we first met and began repping him as his agent for his software engineering, he never wanted to tell people that he had gone to Harvard or speak of his many other outstanding accomplishments. He knew how bad it would sound from his mouth and was just too uncomfortable to ask for market rate or explain why he was worth it. The result was that he regularly got paid about a third below his basic market value. Ironically, as soon as he started repping other technologists, he crushed it. He could sell anyone—anyone but himself, that is.

Just like the French movie we mentioned at the top of this chapter, we had a client named Rafik who, before meeting us, would sometimes call up employers disguised as another person and act as an agent for himself. It’s not entirely ethical, but the ploy worked so well that some of Rafik’s coder friends signed him on to be their fake agent, too. It seems that anyone else negotiating on your behalf will usually get better results, even if they have little experience or reputation.

The Third Party Effect isn’t just about managers and agents speaking for their talent. In the corporate world, whenever bosses go to the powers that be and fight to get their star employee better compensation, you are seeing the Third Party Effect in action. When our client Sean took a job at a major international bank, he made sure his hires had our outside compensation representation. By doing this, he was, in essence, guaranteeing them the Third Party Effect (with an entity that had skin in the game), to bolster his hiring decisions and ensure that the people he was bringing in got the best deal possible. Before they even walked in the door, he showed them he had their backs and would engender trust before they began. He knew that this might cost the institution more money per employee, but it would ensure getting the exact team he needed, which would, in turn, make the bank that much more successful. The Third Party Effect is everywhere someone, with skin in the game, acts as your advocate.

The Third Party Effect isn’t just about advocacy though; it’s also about defense. For instance, if ever a client or customer is aggressive with someone on our staff, we always step in to protect our people, full force. This breeds loyalty from our team members and keeps them feeling safe, knowing that someone has their back. It also allows them to take risks.

We’re sorry to report that many in the corporate world still believe they’re better off deploying a duck-and-cover policy when one of their people is in the hot seat. This strategy might have been a normative part of work culture long ago. Today, it’s an invitation for your team to look elsewhere. The new workforce—10xers and non-10xers, millennials and non-millennials—want and expect their bosses to stand up and protect them, and why shouldn’t they? It’s the classy thing to do and, besides, it pays dividends in all directions. In the Hollywood movie version, it’s the hero who stands in harm’s way to protect others. Any time people fight for you because they know you’re great, they demonstrate their ability to be a positive third party on your behalf, and you love them for it.

Those are the leaders we will follow anywhere.

Combined, skin in the game and the Third Party Effect are a one-two, knock-out punch. With these elements at the ready, strong management is equipped to represent the full breadth and scope of whatever talent is after—their true goals, true drives, true needs. This combo is also the best weapon in dealmaking, when it’s time to employ a flexible negotiation strategy and win big. (We’ll talk more about that in Chapter 10.)

There’s one more benefit to the Third Party Effect that’s so obvious it’s practically invisible. Any time a manager is speaking on your behalf, they are ipso facto presenting a “second opinion,” since you obviously also believe in yourself (we hope!) Thus, when the Third Party speaks, it’s as if you and your manager really make up two voices in agreement, and two voices make a chorus.

BISHOP’S CHECKMATE

For world-class supercoder Bryan Bishop, the implementation of a third party was crucial to his development, but it wasn’t the obvious move at first. He started as a true solo renegade. Bishop grew up in Austin, Texas, and was already a programming ace by middle school.

“I was into video games, and in particular, video game hacking and reverse engineering,” he explains. “I was very adept at using something called the GameShark, which was a device that sat between a game cartridge and a game console, and it allowed you to manipulate the game’s memory.”

After he broke the fourth wall in video games, he branched out into the thicket of the internet and quickly developed an acumen for complex web development. Fueled by super-brain-power and unstoppable digital ambition, it was a natural progression, but he was mostly self-taught and self-directed.

When we took him on, Bishop’s accomplishments were many, even though he was barely twenty, but over time our partnership transformed him into a highly sought-after blockchain/bitcoin expert, commanding anywhere between $600 and $1,000 an hour. Interestingly, he himself doesn’t see the relationship as talent-management. Like Barbara Carr in our previous chapter, Bishop experiences the relationship between parties as symbiotic.

“I’ve never quite agreed with the word manager. It may be true that Michael and Rishon are technically my managers in public, but I call them my talent, because that’s how I think of them. Even in the bitcoin community where my arrangement is pretty unique, the sense I get is that people don’t really understand just how aligned 10x Management and I really are. People ask, ‘Are they recruiters?’ No. There’s nothing recruiter-like about our relationship whatsoever. They are long-term business partners that I have chosen to work with, who provide tremendous value to me.”

For Bishop, the choice of bringing in a third party wasn’t obvious at first. “I’m not completely incompetent at sales. I can do sales. But frankly speaking, my primary skill is programming. And in programming, it’s very common to talk about context-switching. Well, switching to sales drains programmers, it impacts your productivity. And it was draining me.”

(This is a strong example of disrupting the “flow state” we describe in Chapter 1.)

Even by supercoder standards, Bishop is a true adventurer. Talking to him, one sometimes feels as if they’ve dialed into the future via a time machine. In addition to his blockchain/bitcoin work, Bishop has a serious interest in biotech and its implications on DNA, including a commercial venture involving human genetic engineering, also known as genetic modification, using human embryos, and reprogramming sperm stem cells to generate genetically modified sperm. He also holds patents pending on using DNA as a massive digital storage device (like a hard drive).

Toto, we aren’t playing video games in Kansas anymore.

“I recently got involved in a company called Genomic Prediction,” Bishop says, “and they do embryo screening, or genetic testing of embryos. It was such an interesting opportunity and they had a need for my skills and expertise in software development.”

MIT Technology Review recently described the New Jersey-based start-up as purveyors of “a hotly debated new genetic test being called ‘23andMe, but on embryos.’”¹ Bishop concedes that some of what he does raises serious ethical questions. To our great satisfaction, he has turned to us to hash out these issues.

“10x has been very generous with their time, reviewing the implications of some of these topics with me,” he says. “Even if they don’t completely agree with me, they’re a dedicated sounding board, and they know how to communicate my ideas to others. Biology is a form of technology. Genetics is a form of programming. The ability to program biology is going to unlock all sorts of possibilities and opportunities. In fact, I believe that in the future, we’re going to look back and say that what we did before genetic engineering was barbaric and like playing a genetic lottery on our children.”

Bishop knows that his take is not necessarily the popular one, especially since one of the practitioners of this work was recently sentenced to three years in a Chinese prison. “Right now, there’s a very intense culture of conservative values and a push to not rock the boat or try new things. There’s an immense social pressure on people in academia, too, to not do certain things yet. But I’m not a member of academia. I’m an independent individual with my own means and my own plans and ideas. And I don’t necessarily agree that it’s better to let someone suffer from an illness because the drug that treats their condition has not yet been approved by regulators. Still, I understand that there are many people who disagree with me, and 10x Management helps me navigate those waters.”

Above and beyond these ethical debates, Bishop’s relationship to managerial guidance transcends income requirements and lifestyle choices, email editing, or gig interviews. He is a living embodiment of the right way to deploy third party representation.

“The guys at 10x are acutely aware of how I present myself out there in the world. I’m very technical and detail-oriented, and to people who focus on technical details, we assume that other people are really focused on them, too, right? But sometimes, when closing a deal, the details are not what people are actually judging. They might be looking at track record, experience, reputation, brand, or even how polite you are, how responsive you are, things like that. One of their roles is to engage them at their level, to bring in things that I would have forgotten or not have realized to even mention.

“In the clinch, I can even forget about some of my prior experience, just totally forget to bring it up, you know? I was recently talking with someone who wants me to develop a big security solution for storing bitcoin claims, and I forgot to mention that, hey, I’ve developed a system that is currently storing over $50 million. Maybe I should have mentioned that!?”

The benefits of third party representation for a game changer at Bishop’s level are obvious and instantaneous. It means that he can focus on doing great work. In ultra-high-tech, this need for representation grows exponentially. As author William Gibson purportedly puts it, “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed.” Advanced tech is forever in a state of research and preimplementation, with an emphasis on speed. This creates a challenge for the third party rep, who bridges the gap between civilian understanding and arcane elite knowledge.

“A lot of people would be very surprised to learn just what sort of technologies are actually possible today. Let me tell you, my mom has no idea what I do for a living. If I tried to explain what a compiler is to her, her brains would start melting! Because, if you think about it, some forms of computation basically look like magic. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. As my reps, Michael and Rishon can help the other side understand what’s possible.”

One thing I’ve learned is that I’m not the owner of my talent; I’m the manager of it.

—MADONNA, 2004

THIRD PARTYING

Even though we have represented talent for more than twenty-five years, we still sought out someone with skin in the game and a Third Party Effect to represent us when it came time to sell this book. We consider ourselves negotiation experts and are comfortable diving into new industries and new kinds of deals with somewhat reckless abandon. But it’s important to note that those capabilities still don’t make it smart for us to represent ourselves. Much like our clients, we hate representing ourselves in any transaction.

We know, for all the reasons laid out in this chapter, that someone else, someone credible, will likely do a better job. That’s why we sought out literary representation from someone we could trust. Agents need agents and managers need managers. Knowledge and capability are no substitute for the Third Party Effect.

Lucky for us, the literary agent we found, Lucinda Halpern, deeply understands both the vital power and the immeasurable nuances of third party testimony. The very fact that you’re reading this book is living proof that she knows what she’s doing.

Like ourselves, Lucinda got her start managing music artists from Brooklyn. Unlike us, Lucinda was first a child opera singer with real-time stage experience, so she knew firsthand what it felt like to be the artist. Managing bands, she had no credentials per se—she just picked up the phone and started hustling. When she realized she could transfer these skills to the book world where her true passions were, she started knocking on doors, literary agency to literary agency, pitching herself as a marketing manager. “I quickly learned that if you can’t get in the front door, try the side door.”

To prove her mettle, Lucinda was given the charge to go out there and sell books, and that’s just what she did. “It was about as scrappy as it gets. I had to use my network to find good candidates, good authors to take on. I dug into the agency’s slush pile and when I found someone I believed in, I’d shoot up my hands and say, ‘Let me work with this author!’” She took some dangerous gambles, closed a string of big deals, and discovered she had a real knack for representation.

“Talent has to live and breathe what they’re doing, day in and day out,” Lucinda explains. “It takes a different kind of energy. When you’re the third party, the pressure is off in a way, and you can take the longer view.”

Heading her own agency, Lucinda has amassed a stable of unique authors. She won’t play third party for just anybody though.

“For me to represent someone, I not only need to love that person’s work. I also need to know that the person I’m representing is going to be every bit as hardworking as I am and willing to do whatever it takes to keep up momentum. In other words, I need to know that this person is a visionary—as in, someone with a personal vision that they’re going to stick with.”

Lucinda echoes Barbara Carr here—vision is the shared territory for talent and management.

Agents are often likened to therapists, and being a third party representative—whether it’s a literary agent, a music manager, or a corporate team leader—can be an exercise in psychology. “You need to know what kind of person you’re dealing with,” Lucinda says. “You need to know the level of feedback and the tone of feedback that will work, how it will land. Because your goal is to keep the talent on track. You have to edit yourself down in the interest of keeping people motivated, enthusiastic, and positive.”

The manager, playing third party, is the living embodiment of enthusiasm for what a particular talent is doing, or is capable of doing. They’re often the first person that gives credibility to a talent’s idea, and they become a champion for that idea as an expert themselves in a particular industry. This aspect of the role is key for effective third party testimony.

“From the book editor’s point of view,” Lucinda explains, “when a good agent says, ‘This manuscript is something I think can sell,’ there’s this stab of recognition and validation. And if the editor trusts you, they’ll listen.”

Lucinda points out that third partying sometimes involves speaking out of both sides of your mouth, a challenge for those who strive for integrity. “You’re telling your talent one thing—to keep them motivated and excited. But on the other hand, you’re dealing with editors who are often giving you every reason why a book won’t work. It’s tough because you have to keep your own enthusiasm high in the face of skepticism.”

This “double agent” quality cuts to the prismatic complexity of the third party POV. The strong manager or representative needs to foster credibility on both sides, grounded in realities. Yes, you rep the talent, and you’re playing third party for them, first and foremost. But to be a really good third party advocate, you have to know and, to some degree, respect the needs of the other side of the table. The recipients of your message need to believe you are an honest representative, allergic to hyperbole, and only enthusiastic when the level of talent genuinely warrants it.

This ability to see and discourse with both sides, bridging gaps and coming to terms, is the highest level of third party representation.

“In book publishing,” Lucinda explains, “these editors are inundated with pitches and false information around the clock. How can you break out of that? First, from having a personality that people want to deal with. Second, they need to come to trust your taste. And then, of course, they need to be convinced by the pitch at hand. If they know who you are and how you work, that background informs their instinctive reception of your pitch.”

Sometimes referred to as the middleman or gatekeeper, the manager/agent/third party rep is there to protect the recipient from red herrings.

“These are long-term relationships I’m building, and I want to be known to be authentic when I act as a third party advocate,” Lucinda says. “I’m not going to take on a high volume of projects and send things to editors that I don’t really believe in, because they can feel it. When my enthusiasm is genuine, they can feel it.”

THE HONING DEVICE

In December of 2011, our old friend and renowned entertainment business manager, Phil Sarna, invited us to his legendary holiday party. Over the years, Phil’s gained a reputation for throwing these fetes in interesting locations. This time the shindig took place in a garage that was about to be torn down to make way for yet another high-end condo. At the party, Phil mentioned to us that his longtime client, the multiplatinum-selling, Grammy-nominated musician Vanessa Carlton was starting to talk to new managers.

What Phil didn’t yet know is that we’d been following Vanessa’s career closely for many years already. Rishon and his wife actually went on a double-date in early 2002 with Vanessa and a former client of ours whom she was sorta kinda seeing at the time. She also ran a marathon to benefit Musicians On Call. More important, we had a copy of her 2011 CD Rabbits on the Run in the office, and we played it constantly, knocked out by both the artistry of the album and how markedly different it was from her earlier works, yet still distinctly Vanessa.

This was an artist capable of growth.

At Phil’s behest, we visited her in her Soho loft. First impressions count. Vanessa was utterly down to earth, smart, grounded. She’d experienced so much in her career already, and she knew very clearly what she did and didn’t want. This jumped out for us. Knowing what you don’t want is as important as knowing what you do want, and it’s the mark of a true 10xer.

Vanessa wanted to be an artist.

She didn’t want to be a product, manufactured and disposable.

She knew how to work hard, and she had realistic expectations to match her musical sophistication. This is a person who moved to New York on her own at age fourteen to attend the School of American Ballet, signed her first record deal as a teenager, and had a multiplatinum album and Grammy nominations in the first minutes of her twenties.

She played us some demos that day, the songs that ultimately turned into the masterful Liberman, still one of the greatest albums we’ve ever worked on.

In one meeting, we were sold. This time, our instincts were on the money.

As we entered our eighth year working together, we completed a ten-week run of Vanessa playing the lead role in the Broadway production of Beautiful: The Carole King Musical—playing Carole King, that is—and we’re on the precipice of completing Vanessa’s next album, Love Is An Art, being released into the world as we write this book. From where we stand, it feels like we’re just getting started with Vanessa, and we can’t wait to see what the next eight years have in store.

It’s also a personal triumph for us, because the relationship we’ve enjoyed with her is one of the most productive and rewarding partnerships we’ve experienced in twenty-five years in the biz. That’s not to take anything away from the other artists on our roster, but it’s very rare in one’s career to connect with an artist on as many levels. At least in part, it’s a testament to Vanessa’s maturity and to her 10x-level manageability.

For someone with a voice as beautiful as Vanessa’s, off-the-chart piano chops, and songwriting to match, it’s also a mark of her character that she knows when to let the third party do the talking for her.

“I simply cannot sell myself,” she explains. “I’m not that great at networking, and I don’t even really know how to talk about myself in that manner. I’m too close to the subject matter. In fact, the only way I know how to represent what I do is to make records and play music.”

When a talent is as laser-focused on their art as Vanessa is, finding the right representation can sometimes be like having a great weight lifted. Just as with supercoder Bryan Bishop, Vanessa has been set free to do her work, simply by trusting that strategic communication is taking place on her behalf.

Still, the fact is, she’s been through a few managers over the years, and it hasn’t always worked. She insists that it’s important to have the right third party doing the talking.

“I’ve noticed that when I wasn’t working with the right manager, I would often end up in situations that I didn’t feel comfortable in. I would start to second guess my music, and the worst part was, I would fear taking artistic risks. With a great third party rep, you really feel like you can soar.” When you have the protection of great management, you get to take risks, make bold choices, learn new things, and fail as needed. Without the freedom to do that, talent of all kinds often end up feeling stuck and vulnerable in a bad way.

In true 10x fashion, Vanessa goes out of her way to learn how to help us help her. She’s a blackbelt at showing up, and there’s always an element of gratitude in our dealings with her. Real 10x talents understand that gratitude fuels productivity. “When you feel represented,” she explains, “everything changes. The freedom to do more and grow more just goes way up.”

One thing Vanessa told us has been echoed again and again with interviewees from every conceivable field: Whoever represents you, whoever plays Third Party for you, they must feel passionate about your work.

“But,” Vanessa adds, “they’ve also got to be a clear communicator.”

This clarity is no small thing, for at bottom, the Third Party Effect is an act of translation. In fact, one of the key “side bonuses” of the Third Party Effect is the way it helps hone the shape of just what a talent is selling. Better than any CV, a good Third Party spiel gives space for the recipient to experience the talent. This, in turn, frequently helps an artist discover the right “frame” for what they’re doing.

“Over time, I’ve become a better communicator myself as a direct result of working with good management. These guys . . . they show me what good interpersonal communication in our industry is all about.”

OFFICE PARTY

As with skin in the game, we want to make absolutely clear that the benefits of the Third Party Effect do not only play out in formalized manager-talent relations. The Third Party Effect is in effect whenever someone credible speaks on your behalf—and whether you are an employee in a giant corporation or a roaming freelancer on the cusp of your next engagement, you would be wise to ask yourself: Who can be my Third Party? Who can deliver my message with the most credibility, the most clarity, and the greatest impact?

On the other side, if you’re the manager or team leader, you should also be asking who you most need to advocate for, and who most deserves your praise or your sales pitch, because being a Third Party is a core component of your role whether you know it or not.

The late CEO Mark Hurd, a legendary tech executive who served as co-CEO and board member of Oracle Corporation, saw Third Party praise as one of the great lost arts in leadership. As he put it on an episode of Business Insider’s “This is Success” podcast,² there was a time long ago when “it was just an unspoken value in the company that if you could sit around and brag about all the great people you developed in the company who are now in senior positions, this was a merit badge. This was something you wore on your sleeve.” Hurd lamented that this irreplaceable value has faded with time in corporate culture, due to “mercenary hiring” and a deterioration of mentorship practices.

According to Hurd, “You would come out of college, and you would go to work at a company, and you would actually get trained by the company. You’d have trainers, enablers, people that would help you, teach you about how to sell, how to listen, how to communicate. . .. Training was looked at as an investment, not as an expense.”

To counter the trend, Hurd developed a “Class of” program that paired new college grads with a manager-mentor. “There was no stock option for it,” Hurd said. “It was just a source of pride.”

Hurd was on to something in ways he couldn’t have predicted. Today, shorter job tenures, hiring for specialized skill sets, and on-the-fly training have created an overriding need for more substantial mentorship and advocacy in the workplace. The need itself may well be creating a natural turn in the tides.

In another recent piece on Inc.com, writer Firas Kittaneh explores “3 Ways Leaders Can Become Outstanding Advocates for Their Team.³ Kittaneh cites an MSW Research and Dale Carnegie Training study that contends that the relationship with one’s immediate supervisor is one of the key drivers of “employee engagement,” that must-have harbinger of loyalty and growth.

Team leaders, the article contends, must do the following to stay relevant:

• Listen to employee concerns and carry them up the organizational chart.

• Share performance results and positive feedback with other departments.

• Seek out growth opportunities for young performers.

These three directives are like a beautiful primer in New School management. Know that 10xers expect nothing less.

In our next chapter, we’ll turn the Old School workplace pyramid on its head and delve into the new multidirectional art of conducting business, a little something we call 360° Management.

THE THIRD PARTY EFFECT FOR MANAGERS
0x Management	Does not understand the value of having others sing their praises and often spends a lot of time tooting their own horn, sounding like an ass, and stealing credit for the work of others.
5x Management	Sees the value of having someone else sing their praises, and even sometimes does this for people on their team, but has yet to figure out how to get their own praises sung at the right time by others.
10x Management	Not only goes to bat for their team at every turn, which builds the value of the team and thereby increases their own value, but also gets very strategic with who and how to ask during those times that they need an advocate.

THE THIRD PARTY EFFECT FOR TALENT
0x Talent	Does not understand the value of having others sing their praises, or doing the same for others, and spends a lot of time tooting their own horn, making most people around them want to barf.
5x Talent	Knows they can’t run around saying how great they are, and, therefore, is seeking other ways to get the positive halo put over them. Has started to do this for others, calling out people’s great work in the hopes that it will be returned.
10x Talent	Really understands the value of having Third Party advocates, and is creating them, by requesting that other people introduce them or their ideas, knowing that the natural byproduct will be better than any other method of self-expression. Seeks people in their lives who can do this actively and strategically for them, whether it be a manager, lawyer, coach, friend, or team member.

TAKEAWAYS FROM CHAPTER 7

• The Third Party Effect happens every time somebody advocates on your behalf.

• Having a credible Third Party speak on your behalf is the only real (and certainly the best) way to get people to understand your value and your mission.

• Self-promoters will always tend to oversell or undersell themselves. They may succeed in spite of this but at a hefty cost to credibility.

• A realistic, credible Third Party can negotiate on your behalf without being guided by fear, shame, or doubt.

• Third Partying means acting as a credible, reliable translator of values and ideas, a kind of “double agent” that fosters respect and understanding on both sides.

• A good Third Party can also help the talent learn how to better frame or discuss themselves, by honing in on just what it is that talent is offering.

• Readers who exhibit a willingness to act as Third Party advocates will engender the most loyalty and best performance from their people.