Meeting new people? Fill out the F.O.R.M.

Yesterday, I talked about meeting a new person every day for a year and I mentioned F.O.R.M. I thought that I'd posted about it previously but realized that I hadn't...so here it is.

F.O.R.M. is an acronym. From most of what I've seen on the web the F.O.R. is consistent in what they stand for, but I've seen several different meanings for the M.

Here is what the letters stand for:

F - Family
O - Occupation
R - Recreation
M - Message, Motivation or Money (I learned it as Money)

So, how do you use FORM? (I'm going to leave the periods out for the rest of this post). You use it to ask questions of someone you've just met. As was suggested yesterday, it's often best to start with a compliment and then continue by asking the FORM questions in rotation. The first F question can be something like "Are you from around here?". Or if you're at a children's event, you can directly ask about their children. Then you move on to O..."What do you do?", that is if it's not obvious like they're wearing a guard uniform (since the person I talked to yesterday, Phil, is a security guard here at work). R - "What do you do for fun?". And M can be something to do with Message, Motivation or Money, such as this list from Small Talk, Big Results talking about Motivation:

Aside from work and recreation, what is really important to you?
If you didn’t have to work, what would you do with your time?
If time and money were no object, what would you do?
What in the past has made you the happiest?
If you were given 5 minutes to talk with the President, what would you say?
If you had a month to live, what would you do?
If you could do X all over again, what would you do differently?

Message could be to tell them what you are doing and make an invitation to learn more as shown in this video:

And Money could be as simple as asking them if they're interested in making more money.

The first time I heard the use of FORM was by Casey Eberhart. In fact, Casey talks about FORM quite often, when he's speaking live as well as in his podcasts.

And one other similar acronym is FORD. Do you have any idea as to what the D might stand for? I could be cruel and make you wait for another blog post, but I'm not quite that heartless (close, but not quite). But now I think I've filled in enough space that I can safely tell you that it stands for Dreams.

I guess what you'd choose as the fourth topic of conversation would depend on the person you're talking to, why you're talking to them as well as where the conversation is naturally heading.

BTW - I didn't really follow FORM when I was talking to Phil, Phil liked to talk and the conversation flowed pretty easily. However, if I was trying to recruit him into SendOutCards (which I may do at some point after I send him a card with our photo on it), I'd probably try to guide the conversation more.

Interesting days

Today - Cheese Fondue Day, Be Kind To Lawyers Day, Pet Day, Equal Pay Day, Barbershop Quartet Day, World Parkinson’s Disease Day and Library Workers Day

Tomorrow -  Grilled Cheese Sandwich Day, Walk On Your Wild Side Day, Bookmobile Day and Licorice Day

Next Tuesday - World Heritage Day, Piñata Day, Pet Owners Independence Day, Amateur Radio Day, Lineman Appreciation Day and Columnists Day

May 11 - Eat What You Want Day Although if you're not careful, you may end up having to celebrate Root Canal Appreciation Day too. It's also Twilight Zone Day I already have the entire series ready to go on Netflix. Since this is on a Thursday, I might just take the night off and start watching a Twilight Zone marathon when I get off work on Thursday morning and keep going until I'm done! And possibly celebrate with a Twilight Zone cocktail