Time: 11 minutes 44 seconds
In a Nutshell
There are 5-7 key skills or traits that trust agents have. Do you know which ones they are and which ones you have? Join the shinobi on his final review of Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust (affiliate link) by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith (the human artist and the hacker).
Another guy with the name Brogan – who also read Trust Agents (Photo via Flickr)
Transcript
Hey everyone, it’s me Sunny, the Shinobi Career Coach and today finally, if I haven’t already done the first part of the review for Trust Agents (affiliate link) by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. It’ll be the last time I ever do it… no just kidding. I actually thoroughly enjoyed the book, I re-read it in a crazy speed reading test using some recent information I learned from the 4 Hour Work Week.
So Trust Agents is by Chris Brogan and Julien Smith. It is an amusing book to be sure, it’s almost like the holy hand bible of all social media tools and gurus and what not. I mean, the only other thing that would come close would be Brian Solis’ Engage (affiliate link), which is much for larger companies more than anything else, surprisingly. And this is a wonderful book, it’s got a lot of useful information with the basic concept and definition of what it means to be a trust agent.
And what does that really mean, to be a trust agent?
You need to be someone who really tries their best to put relationships first and forget about hoping that there’s going to be something down the road, it’s more about putting people first, putting the human back into things as Chris Brogan himself would probably say, especially since he runs a business called “Human Business Works“.
So definitely a must-read for anyone who is going into marketing or advertising, public relations, in fact I’d probably recommend this as a must-read for pretty much any person of this generation for that matter, which some might call, isn’t that crazy talk, what are you doing Sunny?
I would probably say, of course not, totally not, totally absolutely not. Because this book is about, as the very subtitle will say, build influence, improve reputation and build trust. And certainly with all the things that have happened with regard to Wall Street, the economic crisis and what not, trust is still shaken with regard to a lot of other societal and economic issues, environmental degradation, whether or not anyone believes in climate change, there’s still tons of other problems within society that still have to be dealt with, including poverty and hunger, the out of control spending that we all have to grapple with including things like the deficit.
1 and 2. Agent Zero and “One of Us”
So that aside, some of the key things I got out of this book primarily was really about agent zero, the concept of being an agent zero, building networks and bringing groups of people together, no matter how small they are.
Whether it’s a community group, a linchpin (like I’m part of up and coming Linchpin Toronto kind of thing, which was spurred from Seth Godin’s book (affiliate link), surprisingly, the next meeting is on January 25, for example.
So building networks and being at the centre of a network, which isn’t really all that surprising because others talk about a lot of networking in books by people like Ivan Meisner, who’s made part of his network in called BNI (Business Networking International), which I’m not a part of. Though I’ve thought of joining.
2. Leverage (Archimede’s Effect)
And the second thing I got out of Chris’ book is the idea of leverage, something I’m actually quite bad at doing is leveraging previous successes and projects to spur you ahead in new ones. So I used to work as an ex-farmer, so I do know how to grow foods, though some might think I’m completely not a farmer type person, I’ve actually worn a straw hat before.
Like I did communications for a non-profit farm and I had no way of actually leveraging that to help me with my new mission, particularly with my new work, reinvigorate my business of helping people find the career or path that they’re looking for.
And of course this year’s goal as you know, I’m aiming to help 999 people find the true job or path that they’re supposed to be walking on. Which is also why I wrote my book as well as the free version of the book, which is on the front page of the website. Ha ha ha, yes, shameless self promotion, I’m just kidding.
It’s [all material] for you guys to explore if you want to including a free 5 Steps to a Surefire Resume course for resume writing. So leverage is a cool concept that Chris and Julien bring up again in here, which I just talked about.
3 and 4. Hacking and Making Your Own Game
The other thing that I found to be so telling and so important to realize whether you’re a job searcher, PR agent or anything like that is the concept of hacking.
And I do talk about that in the micro lessons in my book as well, is the concept of hacking. And by understanding the system, you have a better chance and capability of being able to hack it. Now hacking can be– has this connotation of being a bad thing, really hacking is just another tool like a wrench.
Whether you use it for good, as in hacking that could help people find the shortcuts that make things easier and get more things done, kind of related to leverage, then hacking is a good thing.
However, when you hack as a bad thing, like hacking into bank accounts, stealing money and stealing people’s hard earned savings, then that’s a bad sort of hacking.
Or cheating and plagiarizing, just so you can get through an engineering exam, which I have heard of and seen before, as well as making people who do do hard work, pretty much feel like, they’re wasting time, while others step ahead.
I suppose that could be a clever hacking, however it could also be considered a bad hack because that also leads to things like the economic crisis where Wall Street bankers hack away at the system and everyone else pays for it.
So that’s another third concept which I found to be fascinating in trust agents and I think everyone, including job searchers should understand that if you want to make a job search work, you have to find ways to speed it up, make it efficient and hack it, which I talk about in the micro lessons in my book.
So that was the third… probably the third most important key thing that I really got out of the book, though I would have to say there was probably one more concept.
5. Army Builder and Leader
So you could say that this book talks about a lot of key skills and core competencies of being a trust agent is the ability to build on these. And that does take a lot of leadership skills and putting yourself out there.
Like I said, a leader is someone who’s going to have to have vision, it’s kind of like the massive version… or like a supersized version of an agent zero skill set, where agent zero focussed on small groups and can cross networks while an army builder is a guy who can really gather all of these different groups together to work a common cause, and that takes a lot of vision, a lot of drive and something that you can really rally people behind.
And I think when I was reading a section about army building, it really brought home to me the ideas from Switch: How to Make Change When Change Is Hard (affiliate link). And they talk about value of finding one simple and easy to do thing, actually a concept, like a small step, and then when you successfully put every last bit of effort and what not into making that small step happen, then they move onto the next one.
It is actually quite slow in terms of change and it does require a huge input of energy. So understand where that goes back to the other parts in this book about hacking, how do you hack, the whole process so that all the other things are easier. You don’t always get all the answers and that’s to be expected because every situation is different.
In Short
So to be sure, should you read Trust Agents (affiliate link)? Just for those three, four, five core competencies and things that are in this book. If anything, you should go to a bookstore and just read the last chapter and you pretty much get a good summary, because as Chris or any other writer will say, the conclusion is really the introduction or vice versa, however you want.
And more so than that is the ability to actually practice what you preach, practice what you aim for and make it happen. Cross the execution gap – that’s what I’m trying to do this year by aiming to help 999 people find the job or path that they follow and finding a way to hack it so that I can make it easy enough for everyone involved including myself.
So that’s my very, very finalized review of Chris Brogan and Julien Smith’s Trust Agents (affiliate link), an excellent book to go through. At the very least, I would say the foundation of any sort of business, okay? So if you have a chance, find it.
I think Chris was clever with this book since it’s in hard copy form only. And I am very much an electronic tool style e-reader guy unfortunately. So pick up a hard copy if you can and/or read the conclusion at a bookstore if you must. I think this is definitely a must-read for any person who wishes to be a communicator and also a relationship builder.
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