the place to be to create a business and life you love, and this whole shindig is Q&A Tuesday.

Today’s question comes from Kristin, and Kristin writes:

“Hi, Marie. I know that I have the talent to make it big with my business, and yet my

business challenge is my introverted nature. I'm contemplative and a great observer, and

that’s a strength with my photography, but not so much with putting myself out there.

The classic artist syndrome of good art and bad marketing. Too many business for introvert

articles I've read imply that we would have fit the go-getter mold in order to succeed.

I find it hard to believe that I have to change my nature so fundamentally. Are there ways

to work the room that don’t drain the life out of us introverts? Thanks again, Marie,

you are creating exactly what your gifts and talents are made for.”

Kristin, this is a question that we hear over and over again so you are so not alone. We

get tons of emails about it and I hear it all the time in B-School. So to answer that

question today, I have the world’s best expert to help me A this Q.

Susan Cain is the author of the award winning NY Times bestseller Quiet, the Power of Introverts

in a World that Can't Stop Talking, which is being translated into over 30 languages

and was named the #1 book of the year by Fast Company. Quiet was a subject of a Time Magazine

cover story and her writing has appeared in the NY Times, the Atlantic, the Wall Street

Journal and many others. Her record smashing Ted Talk has been viewed over 5 million times

and was named by Bill Gates as one of his all time favorites. She's an honors graduate

of Princeton and Harvard law school and lives in the Hudson River Valley with her husband

and two sons. Susan, thank you so much for being here on MarieTV. It is such an honor

to have you here on the show.

Susan: Thank you so much for having me. I love your show.

Marie: So the first thing I want to talk about, and

this is probably something that not a lot of people know, but you and I discussed when

we talked on the phone is that I actually have a lot of introverted qualities and that’s

why I was so excited to talk to you today. Most people don’t realize it but even though

I do this, it’s like when I travel or go speak at a seminar or do anything, I need

a lot of downtime when I come home, and even in my personal life, I actually prefer very

small intimate get togethers like two, three or maybe four people versus big parties. I

know you were quite shocked to hear that.

Susan: It’s so funny because I was shocked when you first told me, and

this was in the phone conversation that we had, and then I hung up the phone and was

like “what were you so surprised for,” because people tell me this all the time.

I find the most unlikely people tell me that either they're introverts or just that they're

extroverts who feel like they wish they could have more downtime than our amped up society

gives anybody. Especially people who are in the media the way you are, media is filled

with introverts, so I sat on a panel recently and it was Candice Bergen and George Stephanopoulos

and all these other people who were really there out in their daily lives; they all said

they're complete introverts.

I think that’s one of the interesting things because I just think so many introverts learn

from a very early age to act more extroverted than they really are, so if you really are

an introvert, you go around thinking that you are the only one who has these needs to

get away sometimes, and that there’s something wrong with you for having them and you don’t

realize that half the population feels the exact same way.

Marie: That’s amazing. Your work is reaching millions and

it’s so important and I think one of the things that struck me the most about you,

and it gave me chills when I read it, is that you really see this like a civil rights movement

in its own way. Tell us more about that.

Susan: I really do. I believe that introverts today are more or less where

women were around the 1950s or 1960s. You have this group that makes up probably half

the population; studies say that it’s anywhere from a half to a third of the population is

introverted. That’s half the population that is feeling discounted because of this

trait that goes to the core of who they are and just the way we were with the women’s

movement in the 1950s or 1960, we’re at the start of this big profound consciousness

raising in terms of getting people to notice that there is this bias towards extroversion.

The other thing that’s great about the analogy is men are great; sexism is a problem, so

same thing here. Extroverts are wonderful; the problem is only that we have this bias

that tells everyone that they have to be an extrovert whether they are or not. We’re

at the start of this big consciousness raising but I believe in the next decades to come,

we’re going to start seeing real impactful concrete changes in the way our schools are

run and the way our businesses are run and in the way people think about themselves and

their psyches.

Marie: What I love about you too is that you wrote this

book, you're doing this work and you had shared with me that you had a real fear of public

speaking of letting yourself out there. Tell us about that.

Susan: Of all the people you have met in your entire life, you’ve never

met anybody as terrified as I once was at public speaking; that’s the only way I can

think of to describe it. The silver lining to it was I couldn’t eat before giving a

speech so I would always lose 5 or 10 pounds before I do a speech and I couldn’t sleep

the night before; it was always this horrendous experience. What happened for me was that

my book was coming out, this was in 2012, and I really deeply, passionately, cared about

what I was saying in the book and I knew that to be able to promote it, I was going to have

to give talks.

I embarked on what I called My Year of Speaking Dangerously where I practiced public speaking

every chance that I could, and I started in very small, very safe, very supportive environments,

which by the way is what you have to do. It does not work to just throw yourself up in

a big high stakes stage situation; you have to start small.

Marie: I love that too. That’s how I did it. I remember

my first workshops when I was a life coach. There were three people in the room, my yoga

and my parents and a pet.

Susan: You really do have to do that, and then this magical thing happens

after a while where you start to become desensitized. It used to be to me was just a primal horror

to have all these people looking at me and I just don’t really feel it anymore, little

by little by little.

Marie: That’s awesome, so its almost like you build up stamina,

you build up your strength and you're able to handle it. I know for me all that energy

looking at you, and most of it is always really good, people generally tend to want to see

a speaker succeed, they’re excited to hear what you have to say. I love that.

Susan: I think on that point one of the other important things for a nervous

speaker is actually to train themselves to look at the people in the audience who do

look happy about what you're saying because there are always going to be people who are

bored or sleepy or disgruntled or whatever they are, and nervous speakers tend to focus

on the disgruntled people, and then that makes me feel bad about what they’re doing, and

so you can train yourself over time to focus on the positive.

Marie: I love what you said there because I think its

something that whether you consider yourself an extrovert or an introvert or anywhere on

that spectrum, I think we tend to do that in our whole lives. For example, even with

MarieTV or maybe even book reviews, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but it’s like

so many people can say great things or have found value or have some kind of awesome dialogue

with you about a creation, but then the one stinker that may not even be a piece of useful

critical information but it could be mean-spirited or just at a left field or maybe it hits personal

where it gets you in a sore spot, and that’s the thing that your mind hangs onto; it’s

the place that you focus and then you're done for a little while.

Susan: That’s so true and I actually think that one of the great things

about being out there online and having those things come to you mediated through a computer

screen is that you can train yourself to deal with those things in the privacy of your own

home; you can take five minutes to be like “okay, that hurt for a moment and now I'm

moving on.” I find you can take that practice into your real life also, your offline life.

Marie: Are you cool if we get into some practical tips?

Again, I love your book by the way. For anyone who has not read Quiet, you have got to get

your hands on this book and read it immediately. It is awesome and Susan also has more cool

stuff coming out that we’re going to tell you about at the end of the show. The first

point, we’ve got a few points to share with you all, but the first point which I really

really love was something in your book and it was like a broad stroke and it was so simple

yet so profound. You talked about choosing your business or your career wisely.

Susan: It’s really important. People, when they are thinking about their

career or evaluating a potential employer, they think about health insurance, they think

about what will my office look like, they think about their salary and they don’t

tend to think about whether the job or career is going to be a good fit for their temperament.

You really need to be thinking, if you're an introvert, “is this a job that’s going

to have me having to be on all day long or is it someplace where the things that I love

to do,” it could be photography or could be the sitting and thinking deeply and strategizing,

could be anything. You need to make sure you're choosing a line of work that fits you.

Also, I do think for everybody, introvert or extrovert, the most important thing of

course is to be doing the work that you're super passionate about. Many introverts find

themselves being passionate about something that requires them to also be out in places

that are beyond their comfort zone. Like what happened to me, I spent seven years happily

writing a book in splendid solitude and then since then my life has been all about being

in public. What do you do with that? I think the answer there is you can act out of character,

and I'm drawing here in the work of the psychologist Brian Little who talks about this all the

time; you act out of character for the sake of work that you really love, but you're doing

it mindfully and as soon as you're done shooting your episode or whatever it happens to be,

you come back and you take a restorative niche where you go into your own space and you have

life working the way you want it to work. All of this has to come from a place of feeling

entitled to be that way.

Marie: The next point, which is genius, you talk about

making a quota. Tell us about that.

Susan: One of the things introverts, like the women who wrote to you, struggle

with all the time is this feeling, I have this party invitation or a networking event,

I really want to stay home but I might be missing out if I don’t go. I would advise,

instead of wrestling with yourself every night for each of these invitations, come up with

a quota system where you say whatever it is, once a week I'm going to go to these networking

events six times a month; you pick what feels reasonable for you. You meet your quota system

and then you don’t have to feel guilty the rest of the time, and you also don’t have

to agonize night after night what you're going to do.

Marie: I love that and it goes to this idea I’ve

been playing with lately which had been talked about before but I’ve been seeing to come

to life in my life is decision free living for a certain spectrum. It’s emotionally

taxing, it’s mental, it’s like you go back and forth and I feel like your creative

energy gets sucked out. Tim Ferris talks a lot about it in all of his work and I was

looking at it, I just did this detox not too long ago, and basically it was regimented

when I was eating, what I was eating and I was like “this is the best thing ever.”

It’s like I know what I'm doing and then all of my creative energy can then be devoted

to the things for me really matter. Making a quota; genius.

Susan: I would also add to that that you can use that kind of quota system

if you find yourself in a relationship as many people do where you're one introvert

and one extrovert and I think this happens all the time because introverts and extroverts

are so attracted to each other. My husband’s an extrovert. You can come up with that kind

of quota system as a couple so that you're not always arguing about whether you're going

to go out as a couple or whether you're going to stay in.

Marie: I love that. Genius. Moving on. Number three.

This was great and this was from your manifesto, the power of one and the rule of thumb for

networking events.

Susan: Everybody tells you for networking that your job is to work the room

and you should emerge from every networking event with a big fistful of business cards,

and I say that is ridiculous. It works for some people but it’s ridiculous as a “one

size fits all” doctrine. You need to reframe networking in a way that works for you. For

me, when I think about networking, I don’t even use the word network because I hate it;

it sounds really machine like and cold to me. I think in terms of kindred spirits, so

I go through the world looking for kindred spirits and there’s always at least one