Observed

Creating humankind may be one of the Divine Spirit's greatest acts of faith. It's comparable (in a small, small way) to the hope you and I demonstrate when we risk rejection, uncertainty and everything else that comes with sales and business development.

Cathe Dykstra recently began an excellent essay about the organization she directs with an analogy.  She wrote in Louisville’s Courier-Journal that the things that make the rooftop garden at Family Scholar House grow and prosper can be likened to the things that the single, working, college-going participants at Family Scholar House need to grow and prosper.

I’ll extend Cathe’s wonderful analogy.  In addition to support and guidance and patience and so on, many things we do also take hope.

Or, perhaps, faith.  As in, leap of faith.  As in, be prepared, minimize your risk and then…jump.

I realized that what Cathe wrote about is also true of sales, fund raising and business development — and of many, many other things many of us do every day.  Such as having a child, matriculating to law school or making a cold sales call.

So, while I hope my readers get this far in this post (148 words), I know (from plenty of user-habit studies) that a lot of you won’t.

Nevertheless…

1. I write and post anyway, confident that if I don’t (or rarely) post anything, I predictably reduce my chances of Getting Found.
2. I make what I write as engaging as possible.  Such as leading with an interesting bit about Cathe’s rooftop garden and how it’s like the worker-scholars she plants and tends to.
3. I leverage the visual and ensure that I bake my main message into the caption under my post’s main image.

Get it?  I hope so.

When I connect with clients and others at Kentucky Derby time instead of (or, in addition to) the Christmas holidays, I'm being asymmetrical. The better to get noticed and remembered...something I learned a long time ago from Jim Durham.

The calendar says The Holidays are still eight months away.  For business development purposes, however, you might want to try a strategic re-frame.

Over the past few days, for example, I’ve been leveraging one of the times of year that makes Louisville (my home town) Louisville.   I’ve sent a bunch of cards and gifts to clients, prospects and referral sources that follow a Kentucky Derby theme.

When I do this, I…

1. Stand out from the crowd. While I call or write clients and others during the holidays, I understand that I’m probably lost in the deluge when I do that.  Not so when my people get a quirky note or Derby tschotske from me in late April.
2. Brand myself. Most of my clients are on the coasts in major markets.  It helps me to be known as That Writer from Kentucky.  I mean, where else can you claim Hunter Thompson, Robert Penn Warren, Bobbie Ann Mason, Barbara Kingsolver, Louis D. Brandeis, Marsha Norman, Silas House, Ed McClanahan, Sue Grafton and a poet by the name of Muhammad Ali?
3. Show some flair. Hey, it’s Derby!

You get the idea.  When the objective is to Get Found, make it easy.

PS:  This one’s for you, Jim.

My father could have moments of self-awareness.  One of them was a recurring theme, when he would say once a year that everybody in Louisville became an expert on horse racing once a year.

Kal (my dad) was referring to springtime and the annual rites at Churchill Downs.

I’m not claiming to be an expert.   (Though I can pretty much read the Daily Racing Form.  It’s just Who cares?)  I do, however, know a thing or two about the first Saturday in May in my hometown.

So, the following is for any reader who’s never been to the race and doesn’t expect to be one of the 250,000 or so beautiful people passing through the gates at the track Friday and Saturday.  And is still reading this post. (more…)

A week from yesterday, there will be a horse race in Louisville.  A week from today, late Sunday afternoon, May 2,  tens of thousands of race fans will be regaining consciousness right about now.

Either way, thank Irvin S. Cobb.

Cobb was one of the earliest in a long line of great Kentucky authors.  OK, maybe not in the same league as Robert Penn Warren, Wendell Berry or Barbara Kingsolver.

But pretty darned good.  Good enough to make it all the way from Paducah, Ky., to the Saturday Evening Post, Hollywood and beyond. (more…)

Part of the reason I like Sue Grafton so much is her honesty.  Plus, she’s so attached to her hometown, Louisville.  My hometown.

Her honesty may come naturally.  Or, it may be a result of the work she’s done on herself.  Years of therapy, she says.

At least some of that therapy and other work has brought together Grafton, a fabulously successful and hard-working fiction author, and Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology.  Their relationship was apparent in a 1999 interview on which I recently stumbled.

Here’s the excerpt which addresses writer’s block…and its roots in the Shadow nature Dr. Jung described…and which each of us has.  The interviewer asks, “You mentioned a little bit about writer’s block. How do you get around it?” (more…)

I’m a big fan of consistency.  And its cousin, repetition.

These qualities make a lot sense…most of the time.  Such as getting in the habit of flossing my teeth.  Or, putting together an effective ad campaign.  Or, getting my Sunday New York Times delivered every Sunday.

I want some things the same way pretty much every time I want them.

Except when I write.  Or communicate.  That’s when a little variety every once in a while can help. (more…)

There are two things missing from this nice New York Times story about Katie Spotz, a spunky young Buckeye planning to row alone across the Atlantic this winter. The first may not be too obvious…unless you check Wikipedia or some other hard-to-find source; namely, that the story fails to mention Louisville’s Tori Murden.

Tori was the first woman to make a solo crossing of the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat. She completed her journey Dec. 3, 1999. She was also the first woman and first American to ski to the geographic South Pole.

Anyway, writing 1115 words about a woman rowing across the ocean without mentioning Tori Murden is a bit like writing Moby Dick without mentioning the whale.

There is, however, an even more obvious omission from the story about Katie.  What is it?  A prize to the first person who responds correctly.