 Great photo by Grok. You may know—if you don’t, here it comes—that we’ve been writing these blogs, twice a month, for more than ten years, here at Copel Communications.
How do we always have something new to talk about? More important for you and your business: How can you always have something new to talk about? And when we say “talk about,” we’re, well, talking about things like blog entries. Videos. Social posts. Stuff that keeps you out there, in the eyes of your target audience, as a thought leader. Interesting note: This becomes all the more challenging in the age of generative AI. How can you possibly stand out amid the overwhelming tsunami of auto-generated material? Fast forward We recently gave a presentation on this exact topic. We won’t dive into the details here, but AI—tools like ChatGPT—are amazing at effectively ingesting and then memorizing (how’s that for a mixed metaphor?) the entire internet. Just as easily, they can spit out (first half of previous metaphor) content at will, using said input. But they have one massive limitation that you don’t. It’s why their “intelligence” is artificial, and yours is quite real. We’ll circle back to their weakness—and your strength—in just a second. But first, let’s just talk about the mundane challenge of populating your marketing editorial calendar. You do have a marketing editorial calendar, don’t you? Oh, don’t be embarrassed. Lots of companies lack them. But it’s never too late to start. Think of it this way: Why break into a flop sweat every time you need to push out new material on a pre-determined cadence? If that’s an hour of stress, say, twice a month, why not eliminate it? The solution is easy: Dedicate one big chunk of time, typically around year-end, to simply jot down a list of every month of the year, and then brainstorm the topic you’ll develop content for, for each month. It’s hard, but it’s a one-shot effort, and you’ll end up with a year’s worth of topics. Yes, it’s hard. But there’s a neat trick to it, as the headline of this article has not-so-subtly implied. Back to that ChatGPT weakness. Hindsight is overrated ChatGPT seems brilliant because it can memorize the entire internet. That’s some feat. But here’s a feat you accomplish every day, which it can’t do: You look forward. The internet is a repository of stuff from the past. If you can spot trends among your clients, guess what? You’re already smarter than ChatGPT. This dovetails with our populate-the-calendar challenge rather nicely. While you may be doing this at year-end (or right now, no one cares), you’ll be using information that ChatGPT has zero access to: Your thoughts, and your files. So here—finally!—is the trick we’d teased at the outset: Looking for topics for marketing material for your business? Look no further than your recent invoices. Yep. You read right. Your invoices are magic fodder for this assignment. Look at any given one. It shows how you earned your keep, and how you delivered unique value, for any given client. And therein lies a story. Think back on what you’d billed for. There was, invariably, a challenge to solve. And you solved it. (And your client was happy to pay you for that expertise.) That’s a story. It’s a cool story. It’s a story that showcases your uniqueness and thought leadership. It’s also a story that ChatGPT couldn’t write in a million years. Here at Copel Communications, we practice what we preach. We build our editorial blog-post calendar, and stick to it. And we routinely open up our own billing files for cool stories that we can anonymize and share with you for handy tips and lessons learned. Need help with that next marketing challenge? Contact us. We’d be delighted to help!
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 Great photo by Grok. “Blend word”?? What the heck is that?
More importantly, how can you make money off of one of these things? Let’s dive in. As is the case with lots of our articles here at Copel Communications, this one is based on a real client story. And as is the case with all of the real client stories we use as inspiration for articles, this one, like the others, has been anonymized for privacy purposes. But you’ll still get the gist. And the takeaways. Here’s the story: Recently, a client of ours wanted us to develop some pitch materials for a new business they were developing. Excitedly, they told that they’d already come up with a name for this new business, and were looking forward to registering a domain for it. The name of this new business (we’re modifying/anonymizing/making this up) was “Asset Protect.” “Asset Protect.” Hmmm. Well, you can guess, pretty accurately, what they do. So that’s good. But boy is that name ever generic. Which is not good. Can you guess where this story goes? Of course: Our client had one tough time registering that “unique” domain. “Asset Protect” had long been taken, by someone else, in an equally straightforward/uncreative foray. Portmanteau to the rescue To us, the solution to this problem was super simple. Employ a portmanteau or blend word. “Portmanteau” is about as funny a term as “blend word,” and you may not have heard of either. Not a problem. Because you know zillions of examples of these things, and you’ll say “Ohhh!” as soon as you read ones like:
We could go on forever. Applying this mashup concept to branding is equally well established and, we think, effective. Consider:
Need we go on? One of the reasons we mention this is because our frustrated client had considered inventing a totally new made-up name. That certainly comes with benefits: For example, if you invent something completely new, there won’t be any competition for it when it comes to registering your domain, and you’ll have rock-solid IP protection in the potential case of infringement. Still. The drawback is that that’s hard to do, for a basic small-to-midsized business. It takes a ton of (expensive) impressions for the whole world to know what you do. Consider:
Honestly. Would you have any idea what those companies do without their having invested zillions of dollars to inform you? So. The portmanteau/blend-word is a nice middle ground between the uninspired “Asset Protect” and the what-the-heck-is-that “Wazzibobo” or whatever. It’s not perfect. Because great minds think alike. If you’re launching a new brand and come up with what you think is the perfect portmanteau word for it, brace yourself. There’s a decent chance that someone else already came up with that one, and registered it, too. Not to worry. Keep on plugging. Or get help. Like us. Contact us for that next marketing assignment. We do things like this all the time, and would be delighted to help.  Great photo by Ketut Subiyanto. No that’s not a brand of beer. When we refer to “Draft Number 10,” we’re talking about Word docs.
Oh. Which begs the question: Why embrace that? Just by its moniker, “Number 10,” it’s daunting and annoying. Who in their right mind would ever enjoy, let alone embrace, the tenth draft of anything? Wouldn’t you be automatically burned out? Let’s answer that “in their right mind” question first. This is business, not art If you’re a painter or a poet, up in your garret, you can dream and wile away the hours, finessing your grand opus—“a hundred visions and revisions,” in the words of T.S. Eliot—and you’ve only yourself (and perhaps your muse) to answer to. But we’re not talking about art here, despite our decades of experience (not to mention lots of awards) in creative services. We’re talking about business. Money. Deadlines. ROI. Where, then, does a Draft Number 10 even come from? Quick oh-now-you’ll-get-it answer: A client who’s a perfectionist. Aha. Now everything should make sense for you. We have a client—we’ve actually had lots of clients like this—who’s a perfectionist. Who will revise and revise and revise a draft until it’s almost perfect… and then decide that it’s anything but, and then trash it, and start over, and then revise and revise and revise again, taking us along for the ride. As a creative resource, you could fight this. But you know that that would get you in trouble, and perhaps fired. You could just go with the flow: “Oh, this is the way they like to work. I’ll just… endure it, without complaining.” It’s possible that you could coast along like this indefinitely. But neither of the above approaches benefits anybody. Thus our advice to you in these situations: Embrace it. Heck, enjoy it. See it for the invaluable paid education that it is: Our fastidious client in this story—like most of the clients we’re lucky to work with, whether they’re fastidious or not—is quite brilliant. We would pay to learn their thought processes. To try and osmose just a tiny bit of that genius. Why do they toss Draft 5 and do a wholesale rework for Draft 6? Incidentally, the method behind the madness reveals—if you pay attention—that overall, these drafts get better as they go. It’s not a simple straight slope, were you to graph it. But the trend would be positive. Put it this way: Wouldn’t you love to see Einstein’s notes en route to e = mc2? We get paid for our services. It’s incumbent on us to remain profitable. So we don’t lose money on assignments like this—while, at the same time, we don’t take advantage of our clients’ generosity. And while we get paid in dollars, often the greater reward is the knowledge. The insight. And, frankly, the ability to help other clients like this in similar situations. As we’d said, we’re not along simply for the ride. We dive right in, on every single draft, seeing what’s changed and doing our best to make it better throughout. That’s why our clients entrust us on this journey. Need help with a client, or project, that feels unending? Contact us. We’d be happy—truly happy—to help.  Great photo by Alena Darmel. You’d never tell any client that they’re your favorite. If you say that to one of them, you have to say it to all of them.
But c’mon. You know that you have a favorite client. We all do. It’s human nature. It’s also a tacit business proposition: How do you “clone” that client? Wouldn’t you love more of them? (And by extension, fewer of the, um, less-favorite ones?) In this article, we’ll review what makes a “clone-able” client. And then we’ll get to the crux of the matter: Doing the actual cloning. Nobody’s perfect You can certainly describe an “ideal” client. And odds are, your favorite client won’t check all of the boxes. That’s fine. We live in the real world. And it’s hardly a compromise to want to clone your favorite client. But what makes them your favorite? Why are they hovering up near the “Ideal” space? It’s easy to rattle off a bunch of positive attributes of this favorite client of yours:
Wouldn’t that list resonate with you? (Have other attributes we’d missed? Add them to the comments below.) So. How do you go about cloning such a wonderful client? This is a multi-step process—or multi-pronged approach—and while you may know some of the checklist items we’re about to discuss, you probably don’t know them all. The feeding trough Where is this client of yours turning, daily, for information? Are there various groups they belong to? Trade shows they attend? Websites they visit? Answer as many of these as you can for your favorite client, and then “feed from the same trough.” Example: Look up which LinkedIn groups your client belongs to. Then join them. You’ll see the same conversations they’re seeing; you’ll see which posts they like, which articles they read, and which influencers they follow. When you actively join in and comment on a forum like this, LinkedIn rewards you by making your comments visible to more people. In fact, if you can get a vigorous conversation going, LinkedIn will really tell the world about you. We could call this “The Kardashian Effect.” So as your street cred grows, you’ll get exposed to more people like your favorite client. You can then connect with them, comment on stuff they’re posting… and then, politely, ask for a quick chat or Zoom, just to say hello. If you really do this, as a person, and not like some LinkedIn bot that automatically spits out five pages of “personal” messages as soon as you click “Connect” (hate that, don’t you?), you increase your odds of making a real connection. Shake the trees Ask yourself: How did this client find you in the first place? Think through every step of that process—because it contained numerous steps—and then replicate it. Was it a certain person who had referred you? Then reach out to that person. Was it at, say, a certain event? Be sure to attend the next one. On paper, this is a very simple exercise in reverse-engineering. In the real world, few people take the time, or make the effort, to do it. Which is a shame, because there’s a lot of doppelganger favorite clients out there, just waiting for you to discover them. Lubricate the revolving door We have a wonderful client that, well, has a high churn rate when it comes to their employees. And what do we do? We stay in touch with those employees when they move on. LinkedIn is great for this. We can’t tell you how many of them have gone on to become new clients of ours, as they’ve brought us along to their new gigs. And they invariably become very good clients, since our original client did such a nice job of vetting these people for us in the first place! These are just a few tips. There are others. For example, we’ve not even touched upon the entire (huge) topic of marketing outreach to this ultra-targeted audience… and that’s really our specialty here at Copel Communications. Want to learn more? Contact us. We’d be delighted to hear from you.  It’s that time of year again: time for our annual year-in-review wrap-up of our top articles from Copel Communications. We do two of these each December: one for our “Creatives” audience, and another for our consultants audience.
This one (although it's posting first) is the latter. Here are the top articles we’ve published for consultants, chock full of counterintuitive tips and business-building tricks. In case you missed any of these, here’s your chance to get some fast, free pointers. Enjoy!
Have suggestions for topics you’d like us to cover next year? Contact us. We’ve love to hear from you.  It’s that time of year again. Time for our annual wrap-up of business-building posts for consultants from Copel Communications. If you missed any, here’s your chance to catch up; if you had some faves, here’s an easy place to revisit them.
We hope you had a good year, and that 2021 was better than 2020... and that 2022 will be even better than that. Meantime, enjoy the biz-building reading below!
Have a topic you’d like us to weigh in on next year? Let us know. We’d love to hear from you.  How to find and hire a ghost writer—or do it yourself
Halloween it still over a week away, but since it’s October, what better time to address the topic of ghost writing? People always seem to be impressed when we tell them that we do a lot of ghost writing. Maybe there’s some connotation to the term, implying that it’s being done for, say, a celebrity or politician. That’s not the case, in our case. Still, we do tons of ghost writing. You could almost argue that, aside from blog articles like this one, it’s all we do. Put it this way: Whenever you write something that’s ostensibly written by someone else, you’re “ghosting.” But does that mean you’re putting your words into someone else’s mouth? Dispelling the myths The answer to the above question is: “You’d better not be!” The whole idea of ghost writing is to help your “author” express their ideas, only better/faster/more efficiently than they could on their own. Every word should read as if it were written by them. This, incidentally, is why we tag ourselves as a “secret weapon” on our website. By reading this article, you know what we do. But most of the readers of the material we create don’t even know that we exist. And that’s the way it should be. Another myth about ghost writing is that it’s glamorous. We’ll admit that it’s fun, and intellectually stimulating, but “remaining anonymous in the shadows” isn’t exactly a red-carpet activity. It’s a job to be done. And done right, it’s all about helping your “author” to shine. In our case, “shine” means “drive in more business.” This isn’t some touchy-feely branding exercise. This is about helping time-constrained business leaders to get their thought-leading ideas, views, and sales pitches out to their intended audiences, for maximum impact and ROI. So, in case you hadn’t thought about it, our ghost writing encompasses virtually every kind of written communication medium. It could be a thought-leadership article. It could be a book. It could be a sales presentation or video script. It could be—and often is—an email, addressed to, perhaps a C-level prospect. Think about it: Do you honestly believe that our clients—these incredibly smart and busy people—want to spend the time organizing their arguments, let alone word-smithing the copy? They’ve got far bigger fish to fry. Hence the need for ghost writers. Finding the voice Here’s a neat story. We have a client—let’s call her Sue (not her real name)—who, like most of our clients, is downright brilliant. She’s also shy and soft-spoken. Yet we needed to create a piece for her, in her voice, that would sell. There was a mismatch of tone. But after speaking with her at length, and asking her about a certain topic she’s passionate about, that passion started to come through. Indeed, when we probed about specifics, she got even more heated and enthusiastic. And we realized: That’s the voice we need. It’s “Sue, Pissed Off.” So, interviewing her, we got all the facts we needed for this piece. And that’s a job unto itself. It’s important to respect her time and let her go down any rabbit-holes she likes, so long as they’re at least tangentially relevant, and take great notes. It’s not her job, incidentally, to organize these thoughts, or think about the end product’s structure. She just needs to “spout.” Our job—which isn’t easy—afterward is twofold: 1) We need to organize all of those random thoughts, and find the thread which aligns them into the most compelling possible argument. 2) We then need to make that argument in the “Sue, Pissed Off” voice. Is this “putting words into Sue’s mouth”? Hardly! Finding the fit Now let’s turn the tables. Let’s say you need to hire a ghost writer for, say, that upcoming marketing outreach piece that will have your byline at the top of it, or your signature at the bottom of it. What do you do? Well, you can find your list of candidates by whatever means you see fit, whether it’s a LinkedIn search, or through a site such as Upwork, or whatever. But this is not about just finding someone who can write well and will work within your budget. This is all about finding the proper fit. Can that person interview you well and tease out the information that’s needed for the piece and its tactical intent? Do you feel comfortable chatting—indeed, venting—to that person at length? And most importantly, can they empathize? Can they find, and “speak” in, the right voice that you want to project to the world, which will 1) best present your argument, while 2) ringing true as “you”? This is the crucial yet subtle compatibility factor that you really need to weigh, first and foremost, into your hiring decision. Staying on-message Unfortunately, after the interview is over, your work—as the putative “author”—isn’t done. You’ll need to review the draft your ghost writer submits, and check it not only for accuracy but for tone. Does it ring true? Does it “sound” like you wrote it? If you don’t feel comfortable, you’ll need to kick it back. Lest we remind you: Your name, not the ghost writer’s, will be on this thing. It’s personal. This is “you,” to the world. You shouldn’t feel uncomfortable about the product. To the contrary: You should be delighted. When you get a great ghost-written piece, you should be downright elated. We have clients who share our pieces with family and friends, they’re so excited by how they’ve come out. So that’s the bar you want to reach. Have a project you need ghost written? We can help with that. Simply contact us for a no-obligation consultation today.  Tips for this essential marketing and copywriting service
We’ve heard it pronounced “Smeee.” We’ve heard it pronounced “S-M-E.” Either way, it refers to “subject-matter expert” or SME. As experts, SMEs are often tapped for their wisdom. That’s what this article is all about. Why would you need to conduct a SME interview in the first place? It depends on the assignment. Here at Copel Communications, we’re often tapped to ghost-write thought-leading articles for business leaders. This is a classic case of “call in the SME.” Or you might be crafting a strategic situation analysis for your company or another company. You need to know the lay of the land. Consider using a SME when you need to get well-informed opinions about topics such as:
Note, importantly, that we said “opinions” above. This is huge. The whole idea of interviewing a SME is to get opinions, more than facts. Think about that. For “facts,” you could basically go on Wikipedia and seemingly get your questions answered. That’s not worth much, and it’s certainly not unique. The whole advantage of a SME is that this is someone who is toiling at the front lines, at the very bleeding edge of their area of expertise. So naturally they’ll have strong—and well-founded—opinions about all of the topics listed above. And that’s what you want to get from them. Every opinion they offer, of course, will be couched within the context of the facts that surround it. Such as “This new technology is the hot new darling of Wall Street, and the valuations of companies who manufacture it are going through the roof.” That’s the fact. Then comes the opinion: “But as far as I’m concerned, this is all smoke-and-mirrors; it’s another dot-com bust just waiting to happen.” If you’re not asking “Why?” right now, you need to hone your interviewing skills. Succeed in advance Clearly, the example above is made up. But it’s typical. We encounter these types of exchanges all the time. And they’re the best part of the interview. We’ll take ten minutes of opinion for every one minute of facts. Not only that, we love to probe in instances like this. Dig deep. Keep asking “Why?” Get your SME riled up, indignant, and on their high-horse. This stuff is solid gold. All of the above, of course, assumes that you’re already hip-deep in the interview. So let’s back up a little and help you set it up in the first place. Conducting a good SME interview is all about preparation. You want to be totally prepared. Some checklist items to consider:
The medium for the message Not long ago, we did all SME interviews by phone. Post-pandemic, that’s changed. There’s a lot more video going on. But that doesn’t mean that you need to use video. Let’s consider some of the advantages and disadvantages of each:
Key takeaways Depending on the assignment, you might nail the interview in one shot. Sometimes it will go so well, you’ll effectively get two interviews’ worth of information out of a single one. And sometimes the opposite is true: You’ll only get half of what you need. In that case, you’ll need to book a follow-up to complete the assignment. All of this, incidentally, is work. That’s in addition to having, and employing, “soft skills” such as putting the subject at ease, especially when they’re a highly technical person who might not be terribly social or outgoing. This is where we come in. We know how to do great SME interviews, because we do them all the time. We also craft the materials—everything from white papers to blog articles to case studies—that result from them, to our clients’ benefit. Need help with that next SME interview or the deliverable it will inform? Contact us today. We’d be delighted to discuss your needs.  So many marketing topics seem straightforward, until you dive into them. This is one of those.
The germ of this story came from a client assignment we were handed recently. Our client was going to be presenting at a prestigious webinar, and wanted us to write a blog article about the event. So the question became: When should this article run? Before the event? After the event? Which would be better? The answer, incidentally, depended on the answers to a few other questions. Think ahead As always, we wanted to know who the audience would be. Again, not so simple! Because there are two audiences at play here: 1) the audience our client would be presenting to, in the webinar, and 2) the audience for the blog article. You can’t assume they’re the same. Indeed, they weren’t. By the way, we’ve been saying “blog article,” because that’s what this client asked us to write. But it could just as easily have been “press release,” “e-blast,” or “social campaign.” They’re all different flavors of the same assignment. So here are the answers we got to the who-the-audiences-are question: 1) The audience at the webinar would be professional peers within an internal-services vertical that our speaker represented, within the client’s business. 2) The audience for the blog post was to be wholly different: Prospective clients of our client’s business—and not other internal-services professionals. In other words, this was a prestige play. Our client was to be showing off their thought leadership to a distinguished audience of professional peers, and they wanted the rest of the world to know that they were thought leaders, top-to-bottom, even in internal-service functions that prospective clients wouldn’t experience firsthand. Follow? Do the two replies above help to answer the “timing” question? Not on their own. But they’re essential input for creating the blog. Who owns who? (Or what?) The next question we asked was: “Who’s hosting this webinar? Is it you? Or someone else?” Answer: “Someone else.” Aha. That’s the big one. Because if our client were hosting this upcoming webinar, the obvious follow-up question is, “Would you like to boost registrations and attendance?” The obvious answer to that would be “Of course.” And then the obvious answer to “When should this get posted?” would be “In advance. Naturally.” But that wasn’t the case here. Some other entity—in this case, an industry trade group—was hosting the webinar. They were doing all the promoting and attendance-building. That was their problem. At the same time, they had a whole slate of featured speakers to promote; our client was just one of them. So our client would get lost in the sauce of the trade group’s promotional efforts. Which is why they wanted their own self-promoting blog. Which is why they turned to us. Again: Follow? So now we had enough information to discuss with our client, and come to a mutual agreement on, the timing. They certainly could have promoted it in advance: “We will be proud to be presenting at the ABC Webinar next month!” That would show that we’d been selected to join this prestigious group of presenters, so that’s not bad. Side note: There isn’t “the right” answer to the timing question. It’s more like “the best” answer to the timing question. You need to weigh different factors. Working with the client, we chose to promote this after-the-fact. Because it would still show that we’d been selected to join this prestigious group of presenters, so no loss there. We’d have the benefit of final attendance info to bolster our blog (“Over 10,000 attendees from more than 15 countries!” “Keynote speakers included Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, both of whom made last-second commitments!” That kind of stuff.) We could quote the rave reviews our client-speaker received. And, unlike the trade group, we had zero vested interest in boosting attendance in advance. See? “Best answer.” Not “the right” answer. Rules of thumb You might not have noticed this, but all the advertising for a big Hollywood movie always appears before the movie opens. The idea is to build as much hype and excitement as possible in order to have the biggest-possible opening weekend. Once the movie opens, the advertising virtually vanishes. You might not have noticed this before, but watch for it next time—even as theaters are shuttered and “openings” become more firmly cemented online. This is Hollywood’s approach. Is it the best approach? That’s the topic of a different blog. Is your opening-weekend box office the most important thing anymore? Highly debatable. Similarly, you’ll see hype about politicians unveiling their latest initiative... after they do it. They generally won’t tell you, in advance, “We’re working on some new thing.” Sure, you could find that info if you dig, but it’s not what they choose to hype. Their reasoning? They want massed glory and constituent approval, all at the same time. Our point here is that there are pre-existing conventions for the timing of different hype-able events, and you can learn, and draw your own conclusions, from how they are similar, or dissimilar, to your situation. Have a promotional-timing issue you’d like to discuss? Contact us. We dive into these thorny weeds with our clients all the time.  Keep that pipeline replenished
Ordinarily we equate September with back-to-school. That may get cramped by social-distancing and/or Zoom classrooms, but the need to keep current—especially if you’re in the professional-services business—is ongoing. Let’s call it the continuing challenge of continuing education. In this article, we’ll review the “why,” the “what,” and the “how.” Let’s not waste time: The “why” is hugely important. Why continuing ed is vital It’s not degrees. Or awards. Or certificates. Or accreditations. It’s income. Simple as that. Put it the other way: If you can get by, and keep current, and prosper, without continuing education, then by all means, do so. Because education is an investment. And you want ROI. Thing is, no one can keep current, and properly prosper, without continuing education. Know why? Things change. It’s the entropy of business. If you don’t keep up, it’s your loss, quite literally. Think of the common business metaphors you often hear:
Need we go on? If there’s one thought that encapsulates this—if there’s one takeaway in this article that should motivate you—it’s this:
If that doesn’t make your blood chill, then nothing will. Let’s be more specific. What, exactly, changes? What do you need to learn about? Here are some examples:
At this point, you should rightly be wondering: “But how does all of this pertain to education? This goes way beyond what you learn in school.” Bingo. You’re on the right track already. A not-so-tangential tangent: Back when scientists were first measuring the speed of light, they encountered a puzzling phenomenon. No matter what the speed of the observer, the speed of light was always measured as a constant. Think about that, and it makes no sense. If you see a car approach you at 50 mph, that’s one thing. But if you’re also racing toward it at 50 mph, then, clearly, your rate of closure—the apparent speed of the approaching car—is 100 mph. But light didn’t behave like a car. No matter how they measured it, the scientists always came back with the same speed. What were they doing wrong? Turns out that they weren’t measuring anything wrong. Their measurements, to the contrary, were quite accurate. But these brilliant scientists were thinking wrong. And it took an even-more brilliant scientist—yep, Albert Einstein—to realize that in the classic “speed” definition of “distance over time,” the variable here wasn’t distance, but rather time. He figured out that time changes. So the speed of light seems the same. Conceptually, it’s very simple: If one of the two variables isn’t changing, then the other must. But no one, before Einstein, could wrap their heads around it. It was this germ—this passel of head-scratching experimental data about the speed of light—that led to his immortal Theory of Relativity. In other words, he asked the question that no one else was asking. To return to our thread: There is a certain Einsteinian logic to your question about continuing ed. That question about “what they teach in school.” Think big(ger) Yes, you can certainly go (back) to school for your continuing ed. Colleges these days, given the drought of students in the wake of Covid-19, would be more than happy to accept your tuition. And it needn’t be on-campus or even in-person; virtual learning is one of the biggest beneficiaries of the pandemic, along with tech enablers like Zoom and GoToMeeting. So you could do that. But can you sense our, um, indifference toward this topic? There are so many more opportunities available to you these days. And so many of them are richer, cheaper (free, even), faster, more efficient, and infinitely more fun. Now, we can’t narrow this article to your one specific field of professional-service consulting. But we work with enough consultants to know “the usual suspects” when it comes to ongoing educational opportunities:
Those are obvious. We’re also somewhat wary of professional associations—specifically, the ones that are more interested in your dues than delivering value. How much are they charging you, each year, to tack a few letters after your name? Do your clients, um, care? The important question—think like Einstein!—is “Am I gaining new insights that help me grow my business right now?” That’s a good litmus test. Through the looking glass, down the rabbit hole So there’s traditional education. There’s professional societies. Fine. But the interesting, third, often-overlooked category is what we’d call “nontraditional education.” And it’s where you’ll find the answers to some of the thorniest questions. It’s where you’ll gain peer-around-the-corner insights that will impress your clients, and entice prospects to sign on. The fun thing about this third category is that it’s, well, fun. Think about stuff you do when you’re not working, but should be. You might read the news. Watch a TV show. Read a book. Spend time on a social platform. Write in a journal. Do a crossword. Binge on YouTube. Guess what? There are continuing-education iterations of every item on that list. Don’t believe us?
Get help We know about these continuing-ed tricks, because we practice what we preach. A lot of it is in-going attitude. If you approach it like a chore, it will be. If you come at it like it’s something you shouldn’t be doing—like it’s self-indulgent goofing off—you’ll have more fun, and end up learning more. That said, you can also avail yourself to other resources. Like us. Like you, we strive to keep current, because it equips us to help you with your marketing and communications challenges. Contact us today to learn more. |