The Future of Ideas

With the increasing popularity of the Kindle, Nook, iPad and other digital reading devices, people have voiced concern that intelligence will decline as paper books decrease. Only time will tell, of course, but worrying about new inventions dumbing down society has been around for centuries.

In 370 BC, Socrates shared concern that the new reliance on the written word was going to hinder true insight. He argued that true art could only come from speaking and that true scholars and artists would continue to communicate via speeches rather than writing.

When printed books became more ubiquitous, thanks to Gutenberg and the movable type printing press, people in the fifteenth century thought that the increased volume of books would cause people to study less and become more lazy.

Did the popularity of writing and books stunt intelligence? People rarely die of polio anymore thanks to the vaccine created just last century. Major advances have been made in almost every field thanks to the invention of plastic. Millennials are statistically the most educated generation alive today.

New methods of producing and consuming information typically don't cause people to become less smart. Instead, they allow ideas to reach more people than they did before. Is the true magic of books the paper itself or the ideas held within?




Being Smart About Trying New Things
How Social Media Forces You to Be More Creative

Stop Watering the Weeds

Every entrepreneur has a to-do list a mile long at any given time. The truth is that not everything on that list is high priority and most likely not all of it has to be done by you. Too often we focus on what makes us feel important rather than what actually is important. Busy work is like a weed - it will multiply and then choke and kill the time needed to work on what will truly help your business flourish.

Pull the weeds, water the flowers.




Time Management Tips for Wedding Bloggers
Do You Have a Team or an Entourage?

On Customer Experience

We had employees explaining that the customer shouldn’t really care if the video didn’t work as long as the plane actually flew. But if the number-one thing for the customer is the experience he gets in the cabin, who are we to tell him he’s wrong? We needed employees to understand we were flying people, not planes. -- Pierre Beaudoin, CEO of Bombardier

Your Policies Are Costing You Sales
Where Luxury and Social Media Intersect

The Benefits of Journaling for Business

I have a stack of journals dating back to when I was 14 years old. I'd been using the morning pages method for years before I knew it had an actual name (and entire movement behind it) so I tend to fill up journals quickly.

It’s always interesting to read through old journals because they’re a snapshot into life at different points in time. Some of the goals I once had are laughable now. Some of the ideas or circumstances I agonized over then now seem ridiculous (this is especially true for all journals kept during high school). What’s fascinating to me is reading through the journals I’ve kept in my business years. Some of the things I thought were incredibly important don't matter to me any more. Some of the things I wanted back when I began I still want. And some dreams that I forgot about, scribbled in the early morning as a random thought, have come to reality.

If you don't already keep a journal for your business, grab a notebook and just write for a couple pages. You might be surprised at what comes out on paper. You may not see the benefits immediately, but over time they add up by providing clarity and allowing room for your mind to breathe. It's difficult to celebrate if you don’t remember what you truly wanted along the way.




Getting Creativity Out the Door
On Big Ideas

Are You Uncle Rico-ing Your Business?

In the movie Napoleon Dynamite, there is a character named Uncle Rico who is in his mid- to late-thirties yet is obsessed with his glory days of being the star of his high school football team. The character is funny only because his obsession with the past is so pathetic.

I once had a conversation with a wedding photographer who was lamenting the fact that ten years ago they were the top of the game in their market. Then, a new group of photographers came in and replaced them as the darlings of all the local venues and planners. Recounting this story to me wasn't the issue - everyone needs to vent at times. The problem came with the photographer's refusal to change. Did they need to change their art? No; their work was and is solid. A quick look at their marketing efforts, though, told me their brand was dated rather than timeless.

This conversation took place three years ago. They still haven't made any attempts at updating their marketing. They still gripe about the golden days and how unfair things are now and they are grasping on to an absurd idea that things will return to the way they once were. They are Uncle Rico-ing their business and it is getting them nowhere.

The world is constantly changing. Are you along for the ride or are you stuck in the past?



Originally published May 2010


On Changing Your Mind
We're Not in 2005 Anymore, Toto

Organic vs Rockstar Growth

If you want 10,000 new Twitter followers overnight, there are services you can use to achieve that. If you want a group of people who are interested in what you have to say and trust the content you provide to be relevant to them, then that growth will come much more slowly.

"Organic growth" is a popular term in social media, and one that everyone professes to want. Unfortunately for those with an appetite for speed, organic growth is a slow process. Like any plant or substance that is grown, it also requires thoughtful cultivation.

Social media takes time and effort to work well and produce results that matter. If you have 10,000 Twitter followers and the majority tune you out via a filtering service like Tweetdeck, that number doesn't count for much. If you have 100 followers who are excited about what you have to say, then you have a much more powerful and influential share of voice online.

Don't let yourself be intimidated by companies who seem bigger or who seem to have grown at a faster rate than you have. Most of today's online "rockstars" will last for fifteen minutes. Create a plan that allows you to stand firm for much longer.



Originally published March 2010.

How I Wrote My Book

My new book, Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace, comes out six weeks from today. You can pre-order it on Amazon here. (Shameless plug? Totally. Welcome to needing to sell a book.)

Having earned money as a freelance writer and having blogged for over twelve years, I thought writing a book would be relatively easy. Sure, it would be more work and would take longer, but I thought the process would be similar to the other writing projects I've taken on in the past.

HAHAHAHAHAHA. So naive.

Writing this book was much more difficult than I thought it would be. It still doesn't rank up there with say, brain surgery, but now I know why authors hole away in the mountains in order to write. I never had the luxury of taking time off to focus exclusively on my book, so I built the time for it into my weekly workflow. I worked on it in small chunks, and tried to meet word count goals rather than specific hourly goals.

For the writing itself, I started out using Pages (Apple's version of Word), but didn't like it. I was distracted easily and would find myself checking email or catching up on blog reading. Plus, I found myself editing everything as I wrote, which meant that most of my ideas were staying in my head rather than getting onto the screen.

After researching book writing software, I purchased WriteRoom, a program that blacks out your screen so you're not as easily distracted while you write. Not only does it keep you from easy Internet access, it allows you to just write and worry about editing later. It also has a handy word count feature in the lower corner that stays hidden until you roll your mouse over it. There are some other book writing software programs out there that will help you mindmap and sort by chapter and so forth, but for me, the simplicity of WriteRoom was exactly what I needed.

There were some days when I was just stuck and the computer wasn't helping. I found that using a plain old-fashioned notebook did the trick for those bouts of writer's block. Up until college, all of my papers and projects were required to be handwritten. Since I was initially trained to do my creative thinking with pen and paper, it makes sense that those things are still such a powerful part of how my brain works. Old habits die hard.

Often when I was out, I'd get an idea for the book and I'd use the notes app on my iphone to write it down.

Those were the three ways I actually captured the ideas: computer, paper notebook, iphone.

I have backup programs for my computer, but being paranoid about losing all this work, I used my own DIY backup systems as well. Everything I had was emailed to myself, a backup gmail account, Evernote, and to my Backpack account. Overkill? Perhaps, but being no stranger to hard drive crashes, I wasn't taking any chances.

In the coming weeks I'll share more about pulling the writing together and editing it into something cohesive, the publishing aspect, and the other details that went into seeing this book come to fruition.



Book cover design by Kelly Ashworth

Passion Manifested

Many people equate passion with a feeling. You won't always feel your passion, but that doesn't mean it's gone. Passion manifests itself in many ways: sometimes loud and outgoing, sometimes quiet and cautious.

Passion is what makes you get out of bed in the morning. Passion makes your eyes light up about a topic, it makes your brain turn with new ideas. It won't always mean going full speed as if you had just downed a case of Red Bull.

A car gets the best mileage not when it's accelerating, but when it is driving at an even pace. Don't worry if you're not fired up or feeling like a cheerleader all the time. It doesn't mean your passion has fizzled, it just means that you're focused on the long road ahead.



This post was originally published March 2010.

On Changing Your Mind

One of the greatest gifts we're given is the ability to change our mind. One of the saddest things is watching someone refuse to exercise that gift out of stubbornness, pride, hatred or fear.

On Dream Jobs

It was one of those days. You know those days where everything seems to be going wrong before the coffee maker is finished percolating. It didn’t get any better after that first cup either. Later that afternoon, I arrived at a meeting – looking completely put together on the outside but still totally frazzled in reality. While I and another person waited for the rest of the group to arrive, we made small talk. I asked her how she got started down her career path when she made the comment, “My dream is to do what you do.”

Owning a company is hard and it’s not for everyone. For me though, it’s still a zillion times better than working for someone else. Even the days where nothing seems to go right are still far fewer than the days where I feel really lucky to be able to get to do work that I love in a way that I want to.

If you wake up every day hating your job, find a way to change it. Not always an easy endeavor, but a necessary one. There are a lot of people out there dreaming of having your job.

The Popularity of Mediocrity

It's easy to assume that because something is popular it must be good. This isn't true, of course, and we see proof of that in any industry we look at. The TV and music industries have been making mediocrity popular for decades. In fact, terrible music far outsells good music. Just because something is popular doesn’t make it great. Just because everyone wants it doesn’t make it good.

It’s really hard to stick with your bigger vision when it seems like everyone rewards the mediocrity that’s so popular. And so, little by little, we make compromises in order to chase the numbers and perks of popularity rather than the rewards that come with producing something of excellence.

Produce excellence regardless of whether or not the masses can tell it apart from everything else. Your audience can tell a difference and by sticking to your vision of what your art and work should look like, you'll stand out. It may be the more difficult road, but it is the better road.

On Measuring Success

At some point in their careers, wedding professionals have to decide if they want their target market to be the masses or a select group from the masses. A few people choose the masses and have success with it. Most people find success in working for just a select group ("niches are riches" and so forth).

Problems arise when people try to compare the two as if their success metrics were created equal. The masses and a select group are apples to oranges. If you want to reach everyone, that’s fine, but if you’re only trying to reach a certain segment of everyone, don’t try to compare your success to the companies targeting a different or larger crowd. It's an inaccurate measure and you'll only be left frustrated.