A mind that is stuck on what's 'mine' cannot see what's 'ours.' Ideas spread through interaction. Demanding the ownership of an idea petrifies it, preventing growth and adoption. Imagine a bumblebee claiming ownership and a dominion of a flower. Preventing all the other bees from interacting with this flower means that the flower will [...]
I learned a great acronym from Col Fink recently, during a live workshop at Thought Leaders Business School. He calls these SPEAR emails: Short Personal Expecting A Reply Contrast this with LINEAR emails: Long Impersonal Not Expecting A Reply When we are nervous about making sales outreach, we confuse our communications by complicating it [...]
I know you're telling the truth. And you know it, too. But your future customers are unsure. Convincing a stranger to become a customer requires you to manufacture a huge amount of trust. You could create this trust slowly, over time, through a series of penance-like acts of devotion to prove your worthiness. Or, [...]
You set the altitude of your mission statement. 'Have A Nice Day' is a mission statement, but so is 'Shit Happens.' The most profound mission statements are often the most simple. You've seen a great one on every map. 'You Are Here.' That's a mission statement, too. What's great about sharing a powerful mission [...]
When I was waiting tables, I had a mnemonic trick I used to remember everyone's order without writing anything down: I would imagine their dish on top of their head. Halfway through a big round table of a dozen people, someone would say, 'Can you remember all of this, without writing it down?' and [...]
A 'freelancer' is literally a professional mercenary. Some kings and queens of the realm have their own sworn knights to fight for them in the joust. Other lords and ladies, and especially the rich merchants who want to set foot in court, have to rely on mercenary muscle. The 'free-lance' was a knight without [...]
The human attention span is less than a goldfish. 8 to 12 seconds. That's how long we have, before we get distracted by something else. This isn't surprising, in a world where we are exposed to an average of 5000 advertisements every day. We have to be selective with our attention, just to handle [...]
Every newsletter I send begins with a Text Expander Snippet. I type ;hey into ConvertKit, and what comes out looks like this: { % if subscriber.first_name != blank % }Hello { { subscriber.first_name } },{ % else % }Hello my friend,{ % endif % } (If I know your first name, I tell you [...]
I recently hosted a Virtual Speed Networking event in Bramble.live, an interactive virtual event platform. Here are some of the questions that participants asked each other in 5-minute speed networking sessions: What are you working on right now that's got you excited? If you could have anyone as your dinner guest, living or dead, [...]
Since I like to stay at the cutting edge of virtual events, I've been researching the different types of meetings and conferences that are becoming popular this year. Everyone has been on a Zoom webinar by now. The least engaging experiences are lame - when an audience is asked to sit back and listen [...]