How the ABCs of Attraction has helped my professional career

How the ABCs of Attraction has helped my professional career..... again.

I've posted a few items before about how the ABCs of Attraction, and the application of its core principles, has helped me in my professional life. Today, yet another step forward was made in my professional life thanks to the ABCs of Attraction. The core principles I'm referring to are:

1. Having enough confidence in yourself to get what you want out of life (initially they demonstrate this to you in the form of meeting women, however, the core principle is to get what you want out of life in general, including which job and career you go for)

2. Controlling your own emotional state, and being able to influence the emotional state of others

I'm currently evaluating IT contracts on the west coast. For those of you who are not IT contractors, it's an extremely competitive profession, and when you're trying to look for contracts on the completely opposite side of the US, it's about 100 times harder. Today, I was able to advance through 2 rounds of phone interviews with a head hunter, and the progression basically went like this:

1. They initially offered a contract amount that was 50% of my current contract rate.
2. I told them what my current contract rate is, and didn't pander to them or justify it. I simply said, "I'm VERY good at what I do. I'm worth it." I then told them some of my success stories, (you could also call them DHV stories, if you want).
3. I told them that if the money was not negotiable, that I'd want a clause added to my contract that states that I get to have lunch with the divisional head (in investment banks, that's someone on the Managing Director level) once per month. I basically said that if I can't get monetary compensation, I'd like to meet with the most important person in the department on a regular basis.
4. The simple act of my asking for this impressed them so much that I got to the second round of interviews with the senior VP in that head hunting agency. He immediately started off by saying that he was impressed with my attitude, and indicated that he's, "never met someone like me in all of his years of being a head hunter"

Hold up..... impressed by me? What the hell did I do? I simply asked to be treated like an important person in the organization-- important enough to get face-time with the divisional head. This is similar to what happens when you meet a girl, sort of. If you demand to be treated with respect in the relationship, you will eventually be with a girl who will respect you. If you don't, you will undoubtedly be with a girl who doesn't respect you (i.e., get you to buy drinks for her, driver her around, and generally do things that she'd ask a "friend" to do).

5. By the end of the conversation, this senior VP said that he would "work to bump up the contract rate to be as high as 75% of my current rate." It's not as good as my current rate, but it's a lot better than the original 50%. The strange thing here is that I didn't even ask for them to do that. He just volunteered it. Somewhere in that conversation, he said,

him: "Tell me more about why you want this item in your contract. I've never been asked for something like that before."
me: "Well, I'm currently in the top 2% of highest paid contractors in my department. I understand that market rates are lower on the west coast, but if I am to be one of the highest paid contractors at the market rate on the west coast, I would expect that I'm important enough to have 1 lunch with the divisional head per month as token gesture-- just to show that I'm a valued member of the team and that I'm important. Besides, if I'm NOT an important member of the team, I wouldn't want to be there in the first place."
him: "Great! I like your confidence and attitude. I'll make some calls at the client site and try to get you into the next round of interviews."

He was so caught up in my enthusiasm (controlling my own emotional state), that he also became enthusiastic about me as a candidate for this contract (influencing the emotional state of others)

So, back to the two principles that underlie the entire ABCs of Attraction curriculum:

1. Having enough confidence in yourself to get what you want out of life (initially they demonstrate this to you in the form of meeting women, however, the core principle is to get what you want out of life in general, including which job and career you go for)

2. Controlling your own emotional state, and being able to influence the emotional state of others

I have to say that the application of these principles goes FAR beyond the simple and miniscule goal of "meeting women." The ABCs of attraction, without a doubt, helps you get what you want out of life by obliterating all of the societal-programmed limiting beliefs. Trust me, for an Asian American guy like me, there's plenty of those to go around. After I took the bootcamp, though, they're there, they're in the back of my head, but by no means do they EVER get in my way anymore.

-Man Cannon

Gold.