my parents

My friend Omar M. Khateeb is an unorthodox and innovative marketing leader with a background in science and medicine. He is very interesting and I recommend following him on Twitter and read his articles on Linkedin. I met Omar at the wedding of Matt Doka (FiveStars CTO). I immediately liked him and was impressed by his magnetic character (and his impeccable gentleman fashion). Recently, he revealed one of his secrets in connecting to people. He wrote on Facebook:

Dale Carnegie once said “you can make more friends in 2 months by being genuinely interested in other people than you can in two years trying to get others to be interested in you.” What is one question you can ask that would really catch someone by surprise and delight them to answer? Here’s mine- “what’s the most memorable thing your mother or father ever told you?”

And here is my answer to his question:

My father runs a printing company. When I was in the grad school in Japan, I arranged with my professor to print the internal research publication at my father’s. On the day the books were printed, I was helping my father to load them up in the van. I was careless and dropped one of the packs on the ground. My father got mad and told me, “You were raised by this.”, pointing the packs of the books. I didn’t know how to react, struck by how furious he was by what seemed to be just an accident. But very soon I realized and it became my life long impression that my father was so serious in delivering the best work and how hard he worked to run the company with my mother to bring food on our dinner table. (Oh boy, I am shedding tears now.)

Very good question, Omar!