Be A Cool Person | Wendy Day

Hey, my little cutie booties! Wake the kids and phone the neighbors, it is another video from Wendy Day! Okay, that's one intro, right? Here's another one. Hey guys, sup? Okay, of those two introductions, which one says that I'm happy to do this? Which one says that I'm glad to be here with you? The first one, right? Okay, this video is about attitude. I guess you figured that out, didn't you? Okay, I've done a video about this before, um, and sadly I feel a need to do one again. Okay, you know, how you come at somebody says a lot about who you are as a person and what's on your mind. And what I mean by that is, if somebody walks up to me and they're trying to be too cool and too stiff and they're playing too hard I'm gonna react to them a certain way in comparison to somebody who comes up to me, is very open, has a big smile, and wants— and I can tell really wants to interact with me. I'm gonna spend more time and more energy on the person that's giving me back good energy and good attitude. I know that we all live stressful lives. I know that shit happens. That's the reality in this world. But if you're in a bad mood, then you need to readjust your attitude before you go out into public. I too have really bad days. I have days where I'm just like, and, you know, the world is just killing me, right? Um, but I make sure that I don't go around other people. And if I'm out in public and something happens to trigger negative emotions, then I make sure that I step back and think about things that make me happy. Um, some people call it going to a happy place. That just sounds a little too woo-woo for me. Um, but what I'll do is I'll try to put what's bothering me out of my mind temporarily and I'll remember the last time I was on vacation, or I'll remember the last time I was in a situation with somebody that, you know, gave me a gift that made me really happy, or I'll think about, you know, the last time that Tony and I spent time together and it was just comforting and reassuring. So I'll do whatever it takes to readjust that bad mood. Um, and I suggest that you follow this advice closely. You've got one chance to make a good impression with somebody. You don't usually get a second shot. Um, with me, I'm a little bit more forgiving than most people, so you might get a second shot with me. Um, but you're already on that list in my mind where it's like, I don't know about this person. Um, if you blow the second shot you won't get a third shot. Um, remember that when you're approaching somebody that you don't know, your goal is to put them at ease and make them comfortable with you so that they can see who you are as a human being. Your goal is not to suck up to them. Your goal is not to be so hard that they think you're not sucking up to them. There's two extremes to that, right? You don't want to be at either extreme. You want to be right down the center, even keel, and somebody that they're going to want to interact with on a, on a more personal basis. I say this because I've been doing these videos since October, and I've made myself really accessible to you guys. I've taken your advice. I've made videos about topics that you care about, and every Wednesday night I answer questions. And this is not a bitching session. I'm, I'm not about to like go off on somebody. I'm just saying that because I've taken my time to help you guys when I didn't have to, that if someone were to come to me with a bad attitude, I would shut them down immediately and put them on my, on my, on my shit list, right? We all have things that we're trying to accomplish in our lives and with our jobs. And I've noticed that human beings are really frail. And this was probably one of the biggest lessons of my life because I thought that people were strong and that they could take criticism, they could take reproach. They can't. People are frail and it's very easy to hurt somebody's feelings. And until you get to know them and they see that you're not malicious or you're not a troll, you should probably hold back any advice or any negativity until they get to know who you are and see where that, that sharing is coming from. And what I mean by that is I'm not a malicious person, so if I give you some advice, like I say to you, um, don't write in Sharpie on your CD because it makes you look unprofessional. Or don't send links to blogs using your Reverb account because it makes you look like an amateur. When I'm telling you that, those of you that know me know I'm not being malicious. I'm really trying to help you. But if you didn't know me and I just came up to you and said some shit like that, I could see where you might take offense at that, right? Another point that I want to make here is that people help people that they like. Okay, let me try that again. People help people that they like. So if there are two different people in my life, both of whom need something from me, and one is super cool and grateful and has a good attitude, and the other person acts like I owe them or my advice doesn't mean anything to them, or they're asking me for advice that they're not going to follow, that's not someone who's going to get a lot of my energy or my time. Their attitude is dictating how I react to them. We all have 24 hours in a day. We all have personal lives, so— and we all have a lot of work to do. So if I'm going to give somebody my time I'm going to choose to give it to somebody that is worthy of my time. If I'm going to help somebody, I'm going to help somebody that really wants the help, not somebody who says they want the help but then blocks me at every step where I try to help them, or asks me for advice but never follows it, does something completely different, and then comes back to me to ask me for help to fix what they fucked up because they didn't listen to me. Attitude is everything. The way that you come to somebody, the way that you follow up, the way that you interact with them, it all matters. And if you're having a bad day or you find that you're about to go off on somebody, your best bet is to take a step back, get away from the situation, and come back at another time when you've had a chance to really think out how you're gonna, how you're going to say what you have to say, or how you're gonna stand up for yourself, or how you're gonna come at them if you feel they were really out of line. But sometimes it's better to take a step back rather than burn the bridge, right? I've burned bridges in my career, but I've never arbitrarily burned bridges. I've burned bridges with people that I don't care if I burned the bridge with them. I've given it a lot of thought. I've looked at it from all angles. In most cases, I've given them plenty of chances to come correct, and when they don't, I tell them what I think of them. Yes, I could very easily just walk away and never mess with them again and not have to deal with that, but that's not how I handle things. I let people know why I'm cutting them off. I'm pretty vocal about it. Um, this week, for example, um, a gentleman who has emailed me a couple times over the years— I don't know him, um, he's just somebody that's emailed me a couple times. And understand, I get 300 and some odd emails a day, so if you email me a couple times, I don't really know who you are until I have to go back in and search for your email, and then I can see exactly how many times you've emailed me over the years and what our conversations were. And a gentleman emailed me explaining that he's got a film company and he was looking for somebody to run the record label portion of his film company for the soundtracks, which falls under film. It doesn't really fall under music when all you do is soundtracks. And I wrote him back. I thought it was awesome that he even considered Wendy Day, um, wanting me to work with him, but I have no interest in running a record label. If I did run a record label, I wouldn't be an employee. Um, I've been independent and on my own and very successful at what I do for the past 25 years, so the chances of me taking a job with somebody, even if I wanted to run a label, which I don't, um, it's very slim. And I was very humbled by the offer. I just thought it was really cool that he thought of me, and I said that to him, and he hit me back with something so rude and so left field because I passed on the opportunity, um, that it was really offensive. Like, had he been there, I probably would have hit him. That's how offensive it was. So I wrote back and said, wow, you know, I'm sorry that you feel this way. I'm sorry that you took it this way, but just know that you burned a bridge. You can never reach out to me again. Lose my contact information. And basically, in a nice way, I said fuck you, but I didn't say fuck you. I just said, you know, I did it quite nicely. And he has been emailing me repeatedly for the past week trying to apologize, but the bridge is burned. This is someone that can never come back to me. Attitude is everything. It probably would have been good for him to take a step back and maybe take a day to, you know, think about how he was going to respond so that it wouldn't have been so emotional. And it probably would have been a great idea had he reached out to me first and instead of making me an offer blindly, said to me, hey, have you ever thought about running your own own record label, or, you know, have you ever considered running a label for somebody? Um, to which I would have explained happily, hell no, I have no interest in that. And he wouldn't have gotten in his feelings by having me turn him down. In this industry, it's a very small industry, and if someone were to come to me and say, hey, do you know this guy? It's not hard to figure out that this is the story that would come to mind. And it's a story that I would share because he was really out of line. And that is a core problem inside of a person when a reaction so negative and so visceral and so angry comes out from somebody saying, "Wow, I'm really honored that you thought about me, but I'm not interested in— I know nothing about the film industry, and I'm not interested in running a label, but I'm honored that you thought of me. How somebody could turn that into something negative, it just shows me the type of human being that is, and it tells me that I dodged a bullet in ever having to interact with him again. Because if he's got a problem with something so kind, imagine the problem he's going to have when something bad arises, right? So all that to say, guys, your attitude and how you interact with people definitely colors how they see you and how they will continue to see you. You can make it easy for them to deal with you. You can make it a pleasure for them to help you and deal with you, or you can make it really challenging and have them avoid you. And there are more people in this industry trying to establish themselves than there are people that are established. So if you're building your career, you don't have a lot of leverage with people that already have a career. So you're gonna have to be pleasant, and you're gonna have to be easy to work with, and you're gonna have to be approachable. And if you're trying to build relationships, and this industry is all relationships, you need relationships. You need to be able to call people for advice. You need to be able to call people to get your artists on a tour. You need to be able to call people when you have a question. You need to be able to call people to get recommendations. You need a radio guy, you got to call somebody who's the best radio guy right now. You need a publicist, who's doing great at publicity right now. You've got to be able to interact with people in the industry and successful people in the industry. And if you want to be taken seriously, you're going to have to be a really cool person. That's just the reality of it. If people don't like you, it's going to be really hard for you to get ahead. Yes, you can succeed without people liking you, but at the end of the day, if there's somebody over here that you like and somebody over here that you don't like, who do you spend more time with? Who do you interact with more? Who can get what they need from you more easily? Somebody that's cool with you or somebody that's a jerk to you? It's just basic human principles. So build your relationships, treat people with respect no matter who they are. I treat stars like regular people, and I treat regular people like stars, and it's worked for me, and I've built a pretty awesome career doing that. So guys, make it easy for the people that are trying to help you and be super respectful. If you're having a bad day, we all do, get away from people. Come back to them when you're rational and when you can put a little bump into what you're doing. And it comes back to that— do you want to be this when you're approaching somebody, or do you want to be this when you're approaching somebody? You know, it's up to you. It's your call. Fuck it.