On her Super Soul Sundays series on OWN, Oprah Winfrey recently talked with author Steven Pressfield about finding your calling. Pressfield suggests four questions to help you find your calling: What are you more afraid of than anything else in the world? What would you do if you knew you were going to die in three months? What would you…
Entrepreneur magazine hosted a half-day workshop on selling professional services last week, anchored by Michael Port, author of “Book Yourself Solid.” I took away several helpful ideas and pointers so today’s Marketing Monday is some highlights: 1. There are certain people you are meant to serve. Your job is to find them and push away the people you are not…
I have a confession. In this marketing series, I write about integrated marketing and aligning all your marketing channels — your website, blog, social media, email newsletter and brochures, for example — to help tell your story. I believe in the importance of using all available methods to talk with your current and potential clients, and the data show consumers…
Today’s post is really more of an invitation, an urging, a fervent pointing elsewhere. Thanks to our friend Lou Rosenfeld for posting the link on Facebook, I read and loved Bill Watterson’s “How to Find Happiness.” It’s beautifully written, with charming Calvin & Hobbes style illustrations by Gavin Aung Than, and Watterson quickly and simply gets across his view of…
A friend recently asked a good question: Is there such a thing as too much marketing? You probably know if you’re doing too little. You haven’t updated your website in years, you never carry business cards, you don’t have an email marketing list. But too much? Isn’t that a matter of taste? I’m loathe to order anything from Victoria’s Secret,…
Wanting to change the world is a lofty goal, but according to a recent post by Public Words, it comes down to some basic principles. In an article headlined, “How to Change the World – 5 Lessons from People Who Have,” the communications strategists boil it down to five characteristics. My very streamlined summary: 1. Take the plunge. No one…
When I talk with people about living life intentionally, one of the common objections I hear is that they don’t know where they want to go. People might know they’re dissatisfied with where they are but can’t yet see a vision of another way. They don’t know what their dream job is or they don’t know what they want in…
The world would be a lovely place if we were all kind and respectful and loving toward one another. Unfortunately, there are greedy people, bullies and manipulators among us, to name just a few of the difficult people we all have to encounter. How should we handle these people who make us feel less than great? A recent Deepak Chopra…
It can be tough to know what to say when someone close to you has lost a job or gotten a terrible diagnosis. When my mom died, I was taken aback by some of the things people said. They were trying to be supportive, to connect with me in my time of grief, but sometimes it just amplified the hurt…
I know it’s the dead of summer, so maybe Christmas cards are the furthest thing from your mind. Since I have a favor to ask, I want to give you time to think it over well ahead of that moment when you’re deciding whether you need 100 cards or if you could scale back to 50 and save a few…
When you hear about social media marketing, maybe you translate that as Facebook and Twitter. In some circles, it’s all about video, so you might think of YouTube, Vine or Vimeo. Or maybe you’re wondering how your business could use Pinterest, Quora or Reddit better. But many of us joined LinkedIn long before we’d even heard of Facebook. It’s 10…
John and I spent last weekend with friends in Newtown, Conn. They have a school-aged child. As they described learning about the terrible events at Sandy Hook Elementary, and how the loss of 26 lives to a gunman continues to play out in their small town, I tried in vain to imagine what their experience must have been like. Shortly…
If you don’t yet read Brain Pickings, the smartly wonderful guide to things you should check out online, here’s yet another endorsement to check it out. I spend a lot of time reading and blogging about happiness, but recently Maria Popova, the curator of Brain Pickings, turned me on to a happiness book I hadn’t heard of: The Antidote: Happiness…
This year at SXSW Interactive, I heard a speaker say something that made me want to leap up, throw my hands in the air and yell, “Amen!” He suggested that many new technologies, whether that’s smartphones, social media or the Internet itself, have been around long enough that we should no longer be infatuated with their gee-whiz factor and instead…
