You've Got Only Three Seconds: How to Make the Right Impression in Your Business and Social Life

In the three seconds it takes you to walk through a door and extend your hand to someone for the first time, that person has already made irreversible judgments about you. You send out hundreds of signals about yourself, and people read those signals and react to them long before you've had a chance to say or do anything of substance.



Camille Lavington is a communications consultant who commands substantial fees for teaching personal marketing to business people from corporate executives to mid-level managers. In You've Only Got Three Seconds, she shares her strategies for defining your personal career goals, taking inventory of your strengths and vulnerabilities, and determining what you must do, say, and wear in order to fit the role you want to fulfill.



Personal marketing isn't about social cimbing or trying to be someone you're not. Success at the end of the millennium comes to people who are versatile, who can make positive impressions in any group, who can peg their peers' or superiors' secret agendas, and use psychodynamics to get what they want. With this book, people from entry-level job applicants to stymied executives will be ready to take their internal and external makeovers into the world, make a smashing first impression, and follow through with finesse.

"Lavington, one of the country's most sought-after personal marketing consultants, writes smart about what you need to know -- and what you need to forget or correct -- in order to fit the role you play in life."

-- Liz Smith, New York Post

"Camille Lavington challenges all of us to see ourselves as others see us and provides ideas and insights for anyone interested in becoming a more effective person."

-- Joseph J. Melone, President and CEO, Equitable Companies Incorporated

"For anyone in business, how you come across to others is an important ingredient of success. Camille Lavington's book is filled with good ideas." -- John C. Whitehead, Chairman, Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

"Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful that a locomotive. Camille Lavington's book helps you to leap previously insurmountable obstacles with surprising ease."

-- Deborah Hicks Midanek, Chairman and CEO, Solon Asset Management

"Camille Lavington writes a power primer to negotiate the crash and burn of today's corporate word."

-- Carol Murray Negron, Vice President, Investor Relations, Avon Products, Inc.