Stop answering "fine" when people ask how you're doing. Instead, share a specific detail or brief story that makes them curious enough to ask follow-up questions. A real-estate example shows how to hint at complexity without oversharing, making you memorable in any conversation.
Too many people talk about their day in this way. Well, how was your day? Fine. Great. How's the market? Slow. Meh. All right, what are you doing? When somebody asks you a question, you have this opportunity, particularly in your network, to be interesting, to tell a story. I love it when somebody asks me how the real estate market is, because my answer is always going to be, it's a little weird and it depends, because some houses are selling quickly and some are not, and I never know which house is which. That's not a specific story because I don't want to give away all of my client's information, but I can tell enough that they want to ask for more information. It doesn't matter what you do professionally, as long as you're starting conversations, your network is going to find you to be very interesting.
