Category: Authenticity & Brand Consistency

Eyes Wide Shut

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19 COMMENTS

I was standing on the second-floor landing of a hotel lobby waiting for my wife. I knew she was coming soon, so I just stood there. I wasn’t looking at my phone … I wasn’t walking around … I was just standing there. Suddenly, I heard a door unlock and immediately realized I was directly in front of somebody’s room. Uh oh. I didn’t want to run away as if I had been deliberately lurking. But I couldn’t just stand there either without looking like someone who had been deliberately lurking. Fortunately, there […] Click to read more…

Presumed Competent

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4 COMMENTS

Long ago, I had a client, a financial planner. One day, while visiting his home office, I noticed a BMW sportscar sitting in his driveway. He had always driven a pickup truck, so I assumed it wasn’t his. But he said no, it was. Except pretty much the only time he drove it was when he was going to meet with a client. As he explained, “If your financial planner shows up in a pickup truck, you assume he’s not very good.” That seemed to make sense. And I guess it […] Click to read more…

Impersonal Personalization 

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16 COMMENTS

(Listen to this post, here.) Back in the day – and I mean WAY back in the day – my dentist used to send me a birthday card every year. It was snail-mailed (that’s all there was at the time), hand-addressed, and hand-signed by both he and the three or four other people working in his office. Now the truth is, I don’t know for sure any of these people actually signed the cards. Maybe they hired someone to use different colored pens and fake different signatures to make it look like they did. […] Click to read more…

Artificial (Lack Of) Intelligence

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25 COMMENTS

(Listen to this post, here.) Like many earthlings, I began baking sourdough bread during the pandemic. I don’t exactly remember why, but I assume it had something to do with needing an at-home activity that didn’t involve Zoom and could be accomplished pantless. (Warning: never combine these two activities.) I’ve been baking bread ever since. My routine is simple: I feed the starter about twice a week; I bake a new loaf about once a week; I cut it up into slices, freeze it, and toast as needed. Interestingly, and […] Click to read more…

Lessons From Eleven Newsletters

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38 COMMENTS

(Listen to this post, here.) Let me ask you a question. When was the last time you were a beginner at something?  Not a modification or tweak to a thing you already know how to do. I mean a true, green as they come, “no idea which end is up,” beginner. I’ve tried a few things like that in recent years – golf, Spanish, the obligatory middle-aged-man attempt at playing the guitar. In all three cases, the experiences were an uncomfortable mix of awkward, difficult, and embarrassing. You know, like serving in Congress, minus the […] Click to read more…