I’ve always been drawn to water, especially the ocean.  I find the reflections and refractions mesmerizing. I also find them illuminating.  A solitary walk along the ocean or just standing in the water and feeling the waves lapping against my legs helps me find a clarity that the hustle and bustle of a normal day can obscure.  I know that I need a few of those ocean front days a year just to keep myself on track.   There are times of the year that also invite that same sort of introspection and if the end of last year doesn’t call us to be a little more thoughtful, I’m not sure what would.  Let me give you a few questions to get you started, if you have been too busy to start down this path on your own. Reflections: What was the biggest goal you had for 2021 and how did that turn out?  Did it matter in the end? What did you have to remind yourself more than once in 2021 and how can you avoid that same pattern in 2020? What’s the most painful thing that could happen in 2022 and how do you protect yourself from it now? Who came to your rescue in 2021 and helped in some way — profound or not? What are you most proud of, when you look back on the last year? What is your biggest regret of 2021? How do you avoid it in 2022? Refractions: Who surprised you this past year and what does it mean for the coming year? What worry never came to pass or turned out differently than you expected in 2021? What’s the lesson there? What did you pursue in 2021 [...]

I read a statistic once about the frequency of floral deliveries in relation to the length of the relationship and as you might imagine, the longer the relationship had been around, the less often flowers got sent. It was an old article in Psychology Today and the point of the article was that in the mind of the sender, because he/she had been sending flowers for so long and because the relationship was stable — they viewed the flowers as less significant. Interestingly — from the recipient’s side of things, the exact opposite is true. The longer the relationship had been around and the less turbulent it was, the more the flowers meant because they were sent from the heart with no agenda other than to express the sender’s affection. The fact that they are frivolous and serve no functional purpose was part of the significance, from the receiver’s point of view. The article went on to talk about how during the courtship, gestures like sending flowers is almost expected. But once you’re an old married couple (I am paraphrasing) they’re more special because it’s not expected anymore. A few years ago, in one of our Agency Edge research projects, we identified that one of the triggers for a client to start being susceptible to another agency’s advances is because they feel like we don’t appreciate them anymore. We take the relationship for granted. When we were chasing after them — they got all of our time and attention. And we did it for free! But in many cases, they don’t feel our desire or love for them as much anymore. We don’t send flowers or write them love sonnets like we did in the [...]

In case you haven’t heard, you are supposed to be a thought leader and your clients are as well.  Thought leadership goes by many names — authority, expertise, having a niche, being an expert, etc. But at the end of the day it’s all about having a depth of expertise and sharing it so that others can learn and identify you as a subject matter expert. That’s, unfortunately, the part that many agencies miss the mark.  Our content is generic and impersonal.  Sure — we’re telling people why they should care about the latest Pantone color of the year or five ways to maximize something vital — but it’s not specifically about our unique expertise and it doesn’t give the reader a sense of who you are as a leader or a person. If I ask you to think of people that create content that you actually look forward to reading and find value in, my guess is that it’s most often going to be a person (as opposed to a company) and someone who has earned the right to be seen as an expert.  Good news — that’s you!  You have spent decades honing your craft and earning the right to be respected for what you know.  Your content should reflect that. I wrote an article for Spin Sucks on how marketers get thought leadership wrong and what we can do about it.  I absolutely know for a fact that this needs to be a significant strategy in your biz dev efforts.  I have seen it work many times for agencies big and small.  I’d love to see how you could increase genuine connection, open the door to new relationships, and carve out a [...]