In this episode, we meet Kelly Green.
LinkedIn profiles give business context and our stories share who we are, so be sure to check out Kelly’s LinkedIn profile too.
Welcome to the Connection Requested Podcast. I'm Mark Tweddle co-founder of YouTellYours providing online team-building events to connect your remote team.
This podcast is about making better connections with other humans. I don't know about you, but I rarely know the people who request to connect with me on LinkedIn. So this podcast is how we're going to get to know them.
I think accepting a LinkedIn connection should mean more than just giving a permission to send me marketing content. I want my LinkedIn connections to be more meaningful.
And the best way I know to create that connection, that human understanding, is through storytelling. So each week. I get a guest to try some of the same exercises that we developed for our team events. Here on the podcast. You'll get to understand the human being behind the LinkedIn profile. So be sure to check out my guest’s profile either before or after listening to the podcast. So you can find out about their businesses, their skills, and their expertise.
That's enough explanation. So let's jump right in with our guest's name story.
Two minutes to tell the story of your name with no preparation.
No one else can tell that story better than you. You are the subject matter expert after all.
My name is Kelly Marguerite Green. Kelly Green is the name I'm called often.
I get full named a lot, meaning people don't just say, you know, "Did you talk to Kelly?"
It's "Did you talk to Kelly Green?"
But Kelly Green is a shade of green. It's like lime green, forest green, olive green. And it was
the only name that my parents could agree upon. They weren't setting out to name me after a color. They thought it might be sort of mean to name me as a color, but they just simply couldn't agree on any other first name, other than Kelly. So Kelly Green, it was.
Um, Marguerite I'll take a slight detour. Marguerite is a family name. Somehow, somewhere, the story that's been passed down to me is that it means Little Daisy. And my grandmother's mother, my great-grandmother on my mother's side was a Daisy and there's kind of a line of daisies and Marguerite's going up the family tree on my mother's side of the family. So that's a special name to me. Kelly Green has been a great name, you know, and I didn't know any different as a child. I used to pretend that I was a teacher and my name was Amy blue. So, you know, I thought that just names were colors and, as an adult it seems like about 50% of the population know that it's a color "Kelly Green" and the other 50% have no idea. But the half that do ask me about it often,
"Is that my real name?"
"Yes, of course it is."
But it's good. It's been memorable, you know, I think that I've just embodied it and , I would never want to give up the name, Kelly Green.
It's just who I am now and I think it's even part of the brand. So that's the story of Kelly Green.
Thanks Kelly.
That was a first for me. I was in that 50% that never heard of the color, kelly green. And now I'll never forget it.
I looked up on Google and it tells me there are quite a few ‘Kelly Green’s, which I guess shouldn't be so surprising. After all I know that there are at least three Mark Tweddle's in the world.
Every so often I'll receive an email for them. These emails have told me that I bought a TV in Australia. I applied for a job in Wales. And my favorite email was from my "girlfriend" saying that I needed to get to Argos to get a phone for my daughter's birthday. Um, Argos is some weird kind of catalog store in the UK. And I have two sons, no daughters, and definitely no girlfriend! Mrs. Tweddle would be quite upset otherwise.
Anyways. Enough about me.
Let's hear Kelly's story about connection.
Connection, I think is kind of the core center piece of, if I have a purpose in life, what that purpose in life is both personally and how I've made my career. How I make a living. I like to think that at some point along the way, I decided that my purpose in life is to help other humans feel comfortable being human.
And, that's all about connection and vulnerability, I think plays a big part into that being authentic and genuine and not necessarily always just following the standard social script, you know, that's given to you that we all kind of follow along, right? Like someone asks how you are today and you say, "Fine. You?" Which in some settings is great, but sometimes, I might say, "You know, I'm not doing that well, but I'm okay today. How are you?"
And some people will grab onto that and want to dig in further.
And other people will just say, "Oh, I'm fine. That sucks" and move on. And so it just I think kind of offers this chance, like, does this person want to connect deeper or do you want to kind of go forward?
So I think just being authentic is really important to connection. And then, I referenced kind of making my career around connection as well. I work in the IT consulting industry and we do both project based solutions, as well as recruitment, head hunting and that's all about who I know.
So throughout my life and kind of any capacity, I'm always curious about humans and I like to get kind of deep with people and get to understand what their story is and what makes them tick and share a little bit about myself if they're curious. And, through that sometimes I will learn about someone's interests or goals or motivations. And then as I'm out and about talking to all these different people- it's all I do all day is talk to people- someone else might have a similar goal or similar project that they're working on or something.
And then I can sometimes facilitate an introduction and that's kind of where the magic happens, you know, and that's turned into a valuable skillset, right? It's literally what pays my bills and kind of keeps me going. And my career is just getting to know people and trying to get a little bit deeper under the surface.
But connection is really important and, I think that it's such a beautiful question to ask about people, because I think right now, especially this day and age we're craving connection. Genuine connection. Everything's over the internet right now. And we're not having as much deep interpersonal face-to-face types of connections, but I wish good connections for everybody out there, and I'm very grateful for the connections that I have.
Thanks Kelly.
I met Kelly through an app called LunchClub, where the app matches people using artificial intelligence so that they can meet on a video call. I use it to meet a new person every week without the need to get business leads or anything specific out of the conversation. For me, it helps me build a broader experience of the working culture of America, as I still feel pretty new here.
Listening to her connection story is there any wonder that Kelly would also be a user of LunchClub?
Anyhow. More importantly, do you feel like you're getting to know Kelly, if you looked at her LinkedIn profile right now, and you needed her help or advice, would you feel more comfortable having a call with her? I do hope so.
And if nothing else, I hope that you have learned that Kelly Green is awesome.
I'd love to know what you think, and if you have any comments or questions about this podcast. You can let me know via the comments in the show notes at connectionrequested.com. Or send me a voice message at the Connection Requested page on anchor.com.
Please share this podcast, preferably on LinkedIn, and keep on having fun making the best of connections.