Charles Dickens was in a serious professional slump – and dead broke – when he sat down to write A Christmas Carol, his timeless tale of loss, hope and redemption. Perhaps one of the best passages in the book is the exchange at the beginning between Scrooge and his nephew on the value of the …
Author: John Stevenson
Safety and connections – The Sunday Snippet – [12.18.11]
Brain science is a complex field of study – it’s estimated our brains make as many as 10 quadrillion calculations per second. Heady stuff! Most of this processing power occurs in the background, but perhaps the most fascinating part – and the simplest part – is that almost all of the calculations our brains make …
Courage, Camille – The Sunday Snippet [12.11.11]
Fear is natural, it’s part of our daily lives, and it can be crippling if not successfully neutralized. “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade …
Your unique promise – The Sunday Snippet [12.4.11]
A good business is really one that delivers on what it says. Day in and day out it’s about keeping promises to complete tasks and deliver results. As business people, that’s our duty to colleagues, clients and customers. There’s also the promise of delivering at the absolute highest levels and developing a reputation for it. …
Gratitude – The Sunday Snippet [11.27.11]
This week I write to you in the spirit of the holiday weekend with a simple and sincere thank you. Thank you, Loyal Readers, for opening this email each week and letting me share an idea or two. Thank you, Fellow Entrepreneurs and Colleagues, for sharing your insights and taking a few moments to learn …
She’s my buttercup – The Sunday Snippet [11.20.11]
A metaphor is simply describing one thing by likening it to another: She’s my buttercup. That dude’s a rock. Basic as they are, metaphors can be extremely powerful thought and language tools. They can be playful, descriptive, and colorful. They are the enemy of dry, boring and dull. Linguists and writers have long known that …
You say tomato, I say tomahto – The Sunday Snippet [11.13.11]
What we call in our business “success story marketing” is regularly referred to among Fortune 1000 companies as “client reference marketing.” I like our terminology better because I think it sounds more fun and exciting, but that’s not the point. The point is success story marketing is a large and growing discipline and it’s being …
You are not alone – The Sunday Snippet [11.6.11]
If you’ve seen the term “content marketing” and wondered what it means, you’re not alone. The smart folks at copyblogger have a simple definition for this hot marketing term: creating and freely sharing informative articles – copy that at its core educates and informs, and sometimes – entertains. Good examples of educational and informational content …
Chief shoe giver and storyteller – The Sunday Snippet [10.30.11]
This past week a friend and fellow entrepreneur was kind enough to give me a copy of Start Something That Matters, a book by Blake Mycoskie, founder of TOMS. The TOMS story is simple: they make great shoes and give away a pair to a child in need for every pair they sell. They call …
Facts and figures are forgotten, stories are retold – The Sunday Snippet [10.23.11]
Bits and bytes, throughput and output, uptime and downtime – whatever the facts and figures are in your business – are measurable and impactful, but they rarely have the power to inspire buying decisions. All of us have at some point in our careers tried to overwhelm our prospects with air-tight financial models that show …