meaningful
151 posts
The Forgotten Power Of The Single Interaction
On a recent trip to Waiheke Island with my husband, we stopped a bus that wasn’t going our way. The driver told us to hop on anyway, and he’d take us to where we could catch a bus that would get us to where we wanted to go. Then, wait for it—he radioed ahead to…
Who Exactly Is It For?
Alec has been on the road since 4 am. He’s picked up three fares all morning. The arrival of Uber has hit him and other Melbourne taxi drivers hard. According to Alec, the taxi industry has seen a 40% decline. He says he earned as much twenty years ago as he does today. He complains…
The Empathy Profession
When I was growing up (and maybe when you were too), careers like medicine, nursing and teaching, were regarded as being part of the ’empathy profession’. Today, every one of us, from accountants to designers, CEOs to Astronauts, are in the ’empathy profession’. No business or brand can thrive witho
A World Built On Promises
Scott and Joanna are planning to open a two-hundred-seater restaurant along a small shopping strip that backs onto a residential area in their local suburb. They know the neighbours will be concerned about the prospect of increased traffic and noise from the venue, especially at the weekend when the
Who Trusts You?
We spend a lot of time wondering who we can trust. We are careful to work out who is worthy of our friendship, business or time. And yet, we often fail to make the connection between trust and success when it comes to ourselves. You don’t become trusted by being more successful. You become successfu
Marketing Forwards
Lachie was a half-decent painter and decorator, but what he really had going for him was his youth and enthusiasm. He’d been in business long enough to reap some reward for his efforts, but not so long that he’d experienced the bust that inevitably followed the boom in Western Australia. Lachie had
A Measure Of Progress
In the animal kingdom ‘more’ is often the best measure of success. Herds and hoarders have a better chance of survival. But ‘more’ isn’t always the best measure of human progress. The longest queue isn’t always a sign of better quality. The most sales don’t always lead to a more sustainable business
The Difference Between A Weak Brand And A Strong Brand
The biggest mistake a brand can make is to try being all things to everyone. Weak brands settle for doing what’s easy or obvious. They appeal to the market of everyone, avoid the edges and thus become interchangeable with their competitors. Strong brands know they are this and not that. They intenti
The Choice
We know how the trip will pan out even before we get on the tram. The driver is agitated. He uses his bell accordingly. He repeatedly ‘dings’ three times, announcing his tram’s presence on the road. His bell is warning system—reflecting his mood. Everything becomes an emergency. How the driver opera
How To Fill The Gap That’s Yours To Fill
No bookstore can stock more books than Amazon. No local clothing designer can launch a new range faster than Zara. No artisan chocolatier can sell chocolate cheaper than Cadbury. If there’s nothing your bigger, faster, cheaper competitors can’t do, how will your business keep up? How will you surviv
Create The Future You Want To See
The best investment I ever made in myself and my business was buying a copy of Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow. Seth taught me that remarkability was a choice. Just as business owners don’t work just to pay the bills, writers don’t write just so they can eat. They write to create the change they…
The Best Of Us
Our youngest son got his first paying job at a fast food restaurant this summer. He’d walked up and down the street handing out resumes for days and got a single call back. He was interviewed over the phone and invited in for trial one evening. He got the gig. Twenty dollars an hour and…
Make Fewer Promises
It’s a Saturday night. Jeff, the on-call Planning Enforcement Officer for the local council, is just about to sit down to a takeaway meal and a movie with his wife when his phone rings. Residents close to a new nightclub want him to come and assess the noise levels at the venue. Even before the…
Why Do You Want To Tell A Good Brand Story?
Why do you want to get better at storytelling? When I ask clients and potential clients that question, I get a mixed bag of answers. By far the most common reason is to increase brand awareness. Conventional wisdom argues that the more people who know about your product or service, the greater chanc
Now Vs. Next
We’ve come to believe that the ability to focus on the future is the cornerstone of achievement, success and progress. But we’re in such a hurry to get there we often sacrifice the opportunity to do our best work in this moment. The irony, of course, is that tomorrow’s success is dependent on the gr
Who Will You Impact?
The bus headed back over the Golden Gate Bridge as we neared the end of our tour of Sausalito. The driver pulled over at the second last stop and turned off the ignition so that he could ‘address his guests’. Then Dwayne Johnson (the man who had the name before the celebrity who made it…
How Matters
The woman clearing tables in the Qantas airport lounge is almost invisible to the many preoccupied travellers she cleans up after. People are anxious to charge their devices, grab a bite to eat and catch their flights. The lounge attendant scrapes plates of half-eaten food and piles them on a trolle
The Number That Matters
Every so often I look at the list of readers who have subscribed to my blog but have stopped opening the emails they signed up to receive. When I see that they’re no longer interested, I unsubscribe them. I’ve personally done this almost 10,000 times over the past seven years. It’s harder than you t
Goal Getting
At this is the time of year of reflection and resolutions, instead of thinking about and working towards the things you want to do—create that new product, increase revenue, write a book, get fitter or finally visit the place you’ve promised yourself you’d see. Consider the outcome. Explore the reas
Better Than Before
Our plumber, Evan, spends every minute of his day solving problems. There are no breaks to check email or to see who’s commented on Facebook. He’s too busy working things out, wondering where the source of the problem is or deciding how he might make the repair more robust than what was originally i
